4 ms·

I agree — race and culture are very different things. That’s why it’s only meaningful to draw these conclusions once you control for cultural variation. No on

I agree — race and culture are very different things. That’s why it’s only meaningful to draw these conclusions once you control for cultural variation. No one has shown that they drew conclusions based on race: they drew conclusions based on written words, which correlated with race. The claim is that this demonstrates racial discrimination. However, an equally valid explanation is culture as a confounding variable correlated with both race and hiring, and which is the actual causative factor. My point is that no one has shown this is hiring based on race, because the only things being judged are cultural artifacts. It’s merely presumed that anything correlated with race is inherently racist, when that’s not true. No one has even remotely tried to address that, including yourself, preferring to merely assume it’s racism or special pleading like “well, there is some correlation — but without doing the math, I know that can’t be it!” (All these same point apply to sexism.)

michaelmior 7y ago
You're right, I didn't try to address it. I also didn't make any assumptions of racism in my comment. However, generally speaking, I don't think one culture is better than another either and discrimination based on culture is also a problem. (I understand that this is an opinion and many would disagree with me on that point.)
- FakeComments 7y ago
  It’s an absolute nonsense opinion, because there are obviously cultural beliefs that have an impact on work performance, particularly over a lifetime — eg, beliefs in honesty, hard work, and obtaining education. Different cultures place different values on these things, and it leads to different outcomes — even just looking at the impact of cultural drift over time, among a single people. I also find it absolutely abhorrent to claim there is no ethical difference in whether or not groups of humans cut the clitorises off young girls or own slaves, as you’ve done here. That’s what it means to say you don’t believe some cultures are better: that it’s just fine to mutilate children and own other humans, because hey, that’s just a cultural belief. You’re so woke, your brain broke.
  - dang 7y ago
    If you keep doing ideological flamewars on HN we will ban you. Also, if you keep doing personal attacks on HN we will ban you. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting here from now on.
    - FakeComments 7y ago
      Again, I wish you would admit to ideological censorship: You’re simply using etiquette as a guise for people who don’t want to have an honest discussion about the relevant philosophy (or in this case, the actual logic involved in the inference) to shut it down in favor of group think. This problem is so widespread among the tech community, Congress is talking about it. Just look at how fast this was downvoted and flagged — the point is to silence wrongthink. Censorship for etiquette has always been used as a tool of political coercion — and I simply don’t take your vague claims I broke decorum, which always target one side of a sensitive issue, seriously. You can absolutely use your power in your fiefdom; but you can’t use it to make me not talk honestly about issues — only remove me. You’re just a political thug, who doesn’t like honest, blunt language. Show me. Ed: There’s hundreds of comments like this without a peep, because they’re rightthink: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763553
      - dang 7y ago
        "Censorshop for etiquette" is not even close to being the active ingredient here. I hear that it looks that way to you, but what's actually going on when we moderate threads is so different, that I wonder how to convey the difference. Any ideas? Let me put it this way: I wonder how to convince you how little we give a shit about decorum. What a miserable life it would be to spend one's days enforcing something that...limited. Such a concept appears nowhere in the site guidelines or in its moderation history. It's pretty striking to hear "You’re just a political thug", and I can certainly understand why your comments have so much force in them if you feel that way. When you say we "always target one side of a sensitive issue", though, that's so factually inaccurate that I'm not sure what else I can do that would help.
jakelazaroff 7y ago
"X correlates with race" and "X correlates with culture, which correlates with race" are the same thing. If neither X nor culture are related to what you're trying to measure, it's still just racial bias. We've been using "ice hockey" as an example, right? Given that it's not obviously correlated with fitness for a job at Amazon, it's incumbent on you to show that it actually is. Until then, we should assume that it's at best a false positive from unrelated data (like the ruler in the skin cancer example) and at worst a proxy for race and gender.

michaelmior 7y ago

You're right, I didn't try to address it. I also didn't make any assumptions of racism in my comment. However, generally speaking, I don't think one culture is better than another either and discrimination based on culture is also a problem. (I understand that this is an opinion and many would disagree with me on that point.)

FakeComments 7y ago
It’s an absolute nonsense opinion, because there are obviously cultural beliefs that have an impact on work performance, particularly over a lifetime — eg, beliefs in honesty, hard work, and obtaining education. Different cultures place different values on these things, and it leads to different outcomes — even just looking at the impact of cultural drift over time, among a single people. I also find it absolutely abhorrent to claim there is no ethical difference in whether or not groups of humans cut the clitorises off young girls or own slaves, as you’ve done here. That’s what it means to say you don’t believe some cultures are better: that it’s just fine to mutilate children and own other humans, because hey, that’s just a cultural belief. You’re so woke, your brain broke.
- dang 7y ago
  If you keep doing ideological flamewars on HN we will ban you. Also, if you keep doing personal attacks on HN we will ban you. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting here from now on.
  - FakeComments 7y ago
    Again, I wish you would admit to ideological censorship: You’re simply using etiquette as a guise for people who don’t want to have an honest discussion about the relevant philosophy (or in this case, the actual logic involved in the inference) to shut it down in favor of group think. This problem is so widespread among the tech community, Congress is talking about it. Just look at how fast this was downvoted and flagged — the point is to silence wrongthink. Censorship for etiquette has always been used as a tool of political coercion — and I simply don’t take your vague claims I broke decorum, which always target one side of a sensitive issue, seriously. You can absolutely use your power in your fiefdom; but you can’t use it to make me not talk honestly about issues — only remove me. You’re just a political thug, who doesn’t like honest, blunt language. Show me. Ed: There’s hundreds of comments like this without a peep, because they’re rightthink: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763553
    - dang 7y ago
      "Censorshop for etiquette" is not even close to being the active ingredient here. I hear that it looks that way to you, but what's actually going on when we moderate threads is so different, that I wonder how to convey the difference. Any ideas? Let me put it this way: I wonder how to convince you how little we give a shit about decorum. What a miserable life it would be to spend one's days enforcing something that...limited. Such a concept appears nowhere in the site guidelines or in its moderation history. It's pretty striking to hear "You’re just a political thug", and I can certainly understand why your comments have so much force in them if you feel that way. When you say we "always target one side of a sensitive issue", though, that's so factually inaccurate that I'm not sure what else I can do that would help.

jakelazaroff 7y ago

"X correlates with race" and "X correlates with culture, which correlates with race" are the same thing. If neither X nor culture are related to what you're trying to measure, it's still just racial bias. We've been using "ice hockey" as an example, right? Given that it's not obviously correlated with fitness for a job at Amazon, it's incumbent on you to show that it actually is. Until then, we should assume that it's at best a false positive from unrelated data (like the ruler in the skin cancer example) and at worst a proxy for race and gender.