9 ms·

EDIT: To clarify that the money is going directly to private individuals, as per Austen. Incredible, thanks for putting your money where your values are @jl.

• zimablue 8y ago
  1. Free market doesn't mean that your choices are exempt from criticism. I was going to say silly but honestly this is a very stupid point. "To people who are criticising me for funding ISIS - FREE MARKET".
  • ajiang 8y ago
    I'd like to think HN is a place where people can have debate without resorting to saying things like "very stupid point" ;) You're absolutely right that free market doesn't mean your choices are exempt from criticism. That isn't my point, nor where I applied 'Free Market'. My point was: If you're going to argue against this donation, saying that it fuels the trend of reverse racism / sexism that makes the free market more distorted, I would argue that this donation is very much a part of the free market. Private donations to private organizations for private causes.
    • zimablue 8y ago
      Yeah I comment a lot and pretty much never insult people. No-one is arguing that this is wrong because it's a government market distortion, they're arguing against it because it's injust, and proceeding from incorrect principles. So you invented an argument that's invalid by it's own definition as a straw man to rebut. It's stupid, there's no other word for it.
      • dang 8y ago
        There are plenty of other words, and you're breaking the site guidelines. Please read them, especially the one about calling names: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    • AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      > My point was: If you're going to argue against this donation, saying that it fuels the trend of reverse racism / sexism that makes the free market more distorted, I would argue that this donation is very much a part of the free market. Private donations to private organizations for private causes. This is trying to eat your cake and still have it though. If you ask a staunch free market person whether we should have laws restricting private activity or freedom of association, they say no. If you want to have a private organization and only invite women or only invite men then have at it. But if you're going to have a law against that, over their objection, then it should at least be enforced consistently against everyone. Objecting to the lack of consistency is different than objecting to the original principle.
      • ajiang 8y ago
        That's a very intriguing point! Can you help me understand it better? Are you saying that it is currently against the law for @jl to donate to Lambda School to sponsor 40 men to attend for free? I don't think that is your point, but I'm having trouble interpreting it any other way.
        • AnthonyMouse 8y ago
• yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
  Overcorrecting for bias is not the same as removing bias. You never heard the phrase "two wrongs don't make a right?"
  • turbohz 8y ago
    You're the one calling it an overcorrection. To me it is a weight scaling correction
    • pathseeker 8y ago
      It's still bias to against some men to correct for previous bias against some other women. Still unjust.
    • yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
      Obviously I now can’t prove it as I didn’t take a screenshot, but when I wrote my reply their comment specifically used the word “overcorrecting”. Clearly, they have edited their comment. I was quoting that commenter.
• colpabar 8y ago
  What do 'reverse sexism' and 'reverse discrimination' mean?
  • azangru 8y ago
    I would understand reverse sexism to mean consciously giving preferential treatment to women, all other things being equal (because sexism, bizarrly, means discrimination against women, not just discrimination based on sex/gender). But, of course many versed in feminist theory would disagree with such definition.
  • 2spicy_thrwaway 8y ago
    Sexism and racism in favor of a group which is usually hurt by sexism or racism. Or equivalently, sexism and racism against a group which usually benefits from sexism and racism.
  • jimbokun 8y ago
    Discrimination benefiting historically under represented or discriminated against groups.
• commandlinefan 8y ago
  > arbitrary euphemisms for gender / racial bias like 'bad culture fit'. You make it sound like there are people out there saying to themselves, "I know I should stop discriminating against under-represented minorities, but I just can't seem to stop myself" as if discriminating were addictive like smoking. If somebody used to discriminate and wants to stop, the solution is to stop discriminating, not discriminate in the other direction. But this isn't somebody who used to reject people under vague euphemisms and needs this "nicotine patch" to help them kick the habit - this is somebody who's creating new euphemisms to discriminate in a way that's socially acceptable.
  • CydeWeys 8y ago
    Unconscious bias is a real thing. You can easily have a situation in which no one is intentionally discriminating and yet end up with decidedly non-equal outcomes.
    • rjayatilleka 8y ago
      One thing I learned in interview training about unconscious bias. "No one thinks they're immune to bias, but no one thinks in the moment that they're making a biased decision."
    • elliekelly 8y ago
      One of my favorite examples from the Boston Symphony Orchestra[1]: > For the auditions, the musicians would be playing behind a screen, in an effort to remove all chance of bias and allow for a merit based selection only - a selection that would hopefully increase the number of women in the orchestra. > To their surprise, their initial audition results still skewed male. > Then they asked the musicians to take off their shoes. The reason? The sound of the women's heels as they entered the audition unknowingly influenced the adjudicators. Once the musicians removed their shoes, almost 50% of the women made it past the first audition. [1] https://www.upworthy.com/this-orchestras-blind-audition-proves-bias-sneaks-in-when-you-least-expect-it https://www.upworthy.com/this-orchestras-blind-audition-prov...
      • 8y ago
• protonimitate 8y ago
  >3. None of this is to say that you personally are not experiencing a challenging time or are not subject to bias in any way. None of this should diminish your personal challenges in the work environment. That should be addressed. This particular individual (@jl) and this particular company (Lambda School) are just not addressing that particular cause at this moment. And that should be ok. I think you summed up perfectly what causes people to have knee-jerk reactions against correcting biases. Just because one effort doesn't address all issues at once, doesn't mean its futile. Progress isn't instantaneous. It takes many attempts over long periods of time to move the needle. I'm not sure why people feel the need to criticize any and all attempts at doing so.
  • leereeves 8y ago
    It's generally always the same groups that receive these advantages, and other groups that never do. So this is helping those who are already privileged, while the actual underprivileged are ignored once again.
    • wsy 8y ago
      Which underpriviledged groups are never supported?
      • mywrathacademia 8y ago
        Isn't it obvious? Poor people. The politically favored are women but by opening this to all women you only help women who are already privileged not poor women living in ghettos or from other poor backgrounds
        • wsy 8y ago
          There are so many initiatives out there supporting poor people. True, this one does not. But it seems a bit far-fetched to conclude from this one example that the poor are not supported at all.
• austenallred 8y ago
  To be clear, nobody is giving money to Lambda School. Jessica is giving people money directly to help them be able to participate. Lambda School is also making the course work available for free. Lambda School is not being paid by anyone, and no money is changing hands, other than Jessica literally giving money away.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• tracker1 8y ago
  As to #2, is it bias when the candidate pool is self-selecting? I mean, generally we're talking about an industry where a self-starter can learn, get their foot in the door and build a career. Every actual study I've seen actually indicates bias in favor of women. The fact that the candidate pool is so unbalanced to me seems to indicate an issue in education or no issue at all (self-selecting), not corporate hiring.
  • UncleMeat 8y ago
    But not everybody is a self starter. We also have a ton of people who were nudged in this direction and men get those nudges far more often. I certainly didn't learn software totally independent of other structures. Both my parents were software engineers. I had toys (marketed at boys) that encouraged creativity with computers. I had teachers who encouraged me to work in software. Etc etc.
    • cimmanom 8y ago
      As well as nudges (often subconscious ones) away from it that are more frequent for girls/women.
    • tracker1 8y ago
      But those nudges are LONG before the hiring process, which as I mention seems to be biased in favor of women in the field. Education and other bits take a different approach. Media changes: * Don't show techs/ops and programmers as interchangeable in practice * Don't make techs or programmers look uncool * Show more diverse techs and programmers in roles * Don't dumb down smart female characters (some seasons of Arrow) * Don't turn smart female tech characters out of tech (Daisy on Agents of Shield) Education Changes: I'm not sure here, between K-12 vs >12, as I really think better normalization in media would go a long way. I also think actual gaming with broader appeal is helping a lot too. I do find it interesting that given college women outnumber men by almost 2:1 that the majority of STEM and more specifically CS graduates are men. I think that colleges really need to look at their own practices here more and that cuts both ways. I find a lot of modern progressive feminist extremism to be far different than any classic goal of equal opportunity which is disenfranchising.
• manfredo 8y ago
  > Private companies making hiring decisions are correcting for an indefinite history of bias. That doesn't mean they're hiring unqualified individuals, simply that they're making sure they put in measure to correct for biases and can identify individuals with the great qualifications that in the past would have been past up due to arbitrary euphemisms for gender / racial bias like 'bad culture fit'. Perhaps at some companies but not at mine. We do deny employment on the basis of sex and race, in order to increase percentages of women and URM. It's not just including women and URM that would otherwise be left out. It's also about making that a significant chunk of qualified white and Asian males don't get offers. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19464944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19464944