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This is not surprising. On Twitter there is a strong cancel culture to irrationally oppose anything that fails to unquestioningly accept “wokeness” narratives.

by mlthoughts2018 6y ago

This is not surprising. On Twitter there is a strong cancel culture to irrationally oppose anything that fails to unquestioningly accept “wokeness” narratives. Critical thinking and evaluation of evidence is not really permitted. Twitter is more about trying to look (publicly) like you affiliate with this or that celebrity, so the regular person can feel some sense of patronage to their chosen circle of intellectuals or artists. It has no connection to objective appraisal of evidence. It’s more tribal. It’s “Team Timnit” (all the details supporting wokeness narratives are believed, all details supporting Google taking an appropriate action are heresy) or “Team Google” and you feel the opposite. The James Damore episode is another example. It is essentially 100% equivalent to what Timnit has done in this chain of events, but in that case the “wokeness” bloc on Twitter called for Damore’s firing and railed against his perspective - virtually a complete double standard compared to how they view Timnit’s behavior. By the mostly anonymous nature of Hacker News, and the removal of any type of social credit for patronage of different ideologues, the commentary here is able to be much more nuanced and try to really account for a much greater variety of facts or perspectives.

rbanffy 6y ago
The basic difference is that she implied I&D work at Google was ineffective while he implied half his co-workers were unworthy of their jobs. She made her managers mad while he made half the company mad.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  I would say she did much more than imply - she wrote a workplace email imploring her coworkers to stop doing their jobs - something that would get you fired anywhere, any time. I also think you’re overstating Damore’s claims and you’re taking the interpretation or reaction to his claims to be equivalent to the claims themselves. The claims themselves, that innate biological differences between men and women can partly account for their different representation in hiring in certain professions, is pretty much beyond dispute and has so much academic research supporting it that it’s pure gaslighting to treat someone like they are sexist or discriminating or biased for saying so. Note this has to do with factors that lead to representation in certain fields, and is not a statement about whether people of a given gender actually perform jobs in that field in any better or worse way. Both Gebru and Damore are pushing agenda-based interpretations of existing facts, and both are doing so in ways that are not appropriate for a professional workplace. I am glad at least to see that Google handled both situations relatively consistently, given how extremely similar in scope and impact Gebru’s comments are to Damore’s.
  - kenjackson 6y ago
    Did she say to stop doing your job? Or to stop writing about achieving diversity? Damore said more than just that there might be reasons for the lack of women in tech. He also said that we should stop trying to increase their representation. Among a bunch of other things.
    - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
      She said to stop doing your job. Re: Damore, I agree. He was pushing a bad agenda that tried to draw more than is reasonable from some academic research on gender disparity. Very, very similar to what Gebru did as well. First by pushing agendas in a publication leading to its disapproval, then in her follow up email.
      - kenjackson 6y ago
        I can’t find where she said to stop doing your job. Can you quote it here?
        mlthoughts2018 6y ago
        It’s directly in the email Timnit wrote, among just the first few lines. If you were unable to find it, then either you did not try whatsoever, or you are disingenuously pretending like there is some other potential way to interpret Timnit’s email that miraculously causes it to not refer to the explicit labor tasks of the Google employees she sent it to. The direct quote (which can be read in the link [0]) is: > “What I want to say is stop writing your documents because it doesn’t make a difference.” This is a direct, explicit, unequivocal reference to researchers and ethicists employed by Google to write research and policy documents on fairness, DE&I, and bias, within machine learning, staffing and hiring, and other areas. The phrase, “stop writing your documents because it doesn’t make a difference,” cannot be falsely made to apply to any context other than actively encouraging coworkers to specifically stop performing their direct job responsibilities. My suspicion is that you would try to falsely misrepresent Timnit’s imploring to stop work as instead being about some type of non-work related activities or optional / extra-curricular activities that Google wouldn’t have a formal labor productivity stake in - and if that is in fact what your response would be, it is completely and wholly false and wrong. [0]: https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-an-ethical https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-a...
- skinkestek 6y ago
  > while he implied half his co-workers were unworthy of their jobs. Why do you and other keep propagating this myth? If anything I think you are making it harder for women in IT: You are building a narrative that many respected people doesn't respect girls in IT which probably makes it even harder for them to choose IT. Also I think you are building up under the idea that men and women are enemies in the workplace. At this point I think it is well established for anyone that cared to read what he actually wrote that he was trying to help bring more women into Google, not saying that those who were there were somehow unworthy.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - TotallyHaram 6y ago
    Do you really think women belong in business? As a woman I have never in the past questioned this, however this particular episode and reading through the 'ethical' female responses has made me question having women in the workplace at all due to a total disregard for ethical behavior AND a total inability to understand that they were even acting unethically. Attempting to extort your employer for your own political narrative is un-ethical. Honestly she sounds like a total nightmare. The last thing in the world I would want to see is someone like that involved in machine learning and ethics.

rbanffy 6y ago

The basic difference is that she implied I&D work at Google was ineffective while he implied half his co-workers were unworthy of their jobs. She made her managers mad while he made half the company mad.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago
I would say she did much more than imply - she wrote a workplace email imploring her coworkers to stop doing their jobs - something that would get you fired anywhere, any time. I also think you’re overstating Damore’s claims and you’re taking the interpretation or reaction to his claims to be equivalent to the claims themselves. The claims themselves, that innate biological differences between men and women can partly account for their different representation in hiring in certain professions, is pretty much beyond dispute and has so much academic research supporting it that it’s pure gaslighting to treat someone like they are sexist or discriminating or biased for saying so. Note this has to do with factors that lead to representation in certain fields, and is not a statement about whether people of a given gender actually perform jobs in that field in any better or worse way. Both Gebru and Damore are pushing agenda-based interpretations of existing facts, and both are doing so in ways that are not appropriate for a professional workplace. I am glad at least to see that Google handled both situations relatively consistently, given how extremely similar in scope and impact Gebru’s comments are to Damore’s.
- kenjackson 6y ago
  Did she say to stop doing your job? Or to stop writing about achieving diversity? Damore said more than just that there might be reasons for the lack of women in tech. He also said that we should stop trying to increase their representation. Among a bunch of other things.
  - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
    She said to stop doing your job. Re: Damore, I agree. He was pushing a bad agenda that tried to draw more than is reasonable from some academic research on gender disparity. Very, very similar to what Gebru did as well. First by pushing agendas in a publication leading to its disapproval, then in her follow up email.
    - kenjackson 6y ago
      I can’t find where she said to stop doing your job. Can you quote it here?
      - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
        It’s directly in the email Timnit wrote, among just the first few lines. If you were unable to find it, then either you did not try whatsoever, or you are disingenuously pretending like there is some other potential way to interpret Timnit’s email that miraculously causes it to not refer to the explicit labor tasks of the Google employees she sent it to. The direct quote (which can be read in the link [0]) is: > “What I want to say is stop writing your documents because it doesn’t make a difference.” This is a direct, explicit, unequivocal reference to researchers and ethicists employed by Google to write research and policy documents on fairness, DE&I, and bias, within machine learning, staffing and hiring, and other areas. The phrase, “stop writing your documents because it doesn’t make a difference,” cannot be falsely made to apply to any context other than actively encouraging coworkers to specifically stop performing their direct job responsibilities. My suspicion is that you would try to falsely misrepresent Timnit’s imploring to stop work as instead being about some type of non-work related activities or optional / extra-curricular activities that Google wouldn’t have a formal labor productivity stake in - and if that is in fact what your response would be, it is completely and wholly false and wrong. [0]: https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-an-ethical https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-a...
skinkestek 6y ago
> while he implied half his co-workers were unworthy of their jobs. Why do you and other keep propagating this myth? If anything I think you are making it harder for women in IT: You are building a narrative that many respected people doesn't respect girls in IT which probably makes it even harder for them to choose IT. Also I think you are building up under the idea that men and women are enemies in the workplace. At this point I think it is well established for anyone that cared to read what he actually wrote that he was trying to help bring more women into Google, not saying that those who were there were somehow unworthy.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- TotallyHaram 6y ago
  Do you really think women belong in business? As a woman I have never in the past questioned this, however this particular episode and reading through the 'ethical' female responses has made me question having women in the workplace at all due to a total disregard for ethical behavior AND a total inability to understand that they were even acting unethically. Attempting to extort your employer for your own political narrative is un-ethical. Honestly she sounds like a total nightmare. The last thing in the world I would want to see is someone like that involved in machine learning and ethics.