17 ms·

Religious Discrimination at Google

99 points by lultimouomo 4y ago

WalterGR 4y ago
The author and Google are being discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31704063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31704063
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  So it sounds like they think Google's chatbot is sentient? ...okay.
  - WoahNoun 4y ago
    Not just sentient but that the AI has a soul and deserves the full rights of personhood. Dude is mentally ill.
    - 0des 4y ago
      Do you feel the same way about people who believe their deity is a soul that was a person?
      - wrzuteczka 4y ago
        Is there any proof that the AI is anything else than a complex statistical model and actually has consciousness?
        kaba0 4y ago
        Well, it can be an emergent property. To be honest, if your belief is heavily science-based, then there is not much else to believe regarding our very own consciouscness -- it is an emergent property of billions of interconnected neurons. Though on the other hand, even the biggest AI systems are lightyears behind biological networks when we look at interconnectedness.
        wrzuteczka 4y ago
        I wouldn’t call it science-based, it’s just materialism. There’s no science in believing that something that can be completely described by a set of logical rules, or mathematical formulae, or something similar, suddenly gains new features that cannot even be defined with math or logic. It’s pure belief, without too many arguments for it.
        kaba0 4y ago
        > suddenly gains new features that cannot even be defined with math or logic It at most can not be defined due to its complexity. Also, emergent properties are everywhere, like you can assign properties to a fire you can’t assign to the chemical process of burning. For all we know, consciousness may just as well be an arbitrary threshold of complexity. But I stand corrected that the correct term is indeed materialism.
        wrzuteczka 4y ago
        Do you mean that because of its complexity, we are not able to define it due to practical reasons (i.e. no powerful enough computer exists)? If so, that’s something completely different. Consciousness cannot be defined with math or logic even in principle. Certain aspects of consciousness can’t be defined either, like qualia (for example, the sensation of a color). Many materialists would even say that consciousness doesn’t exist because of that, and it’s all just a delusion (to which I ask: who/what is this delusion experienced by?). What properties of fire do you mean?
        astrange 4y ago
        Complex statistical models can be conscious. The reason AIs aren’t conscious is they’re not embodied beings and don’t have any need to develop it to stay alive.
        wrzuteczka 4y ago
        So how being embodied helps consciousness emerge? If it’s just the statistical model that underpins the consciousness, then it doesn’t matter if it’s embodied or not. It doesn’t matter to the algorithm what hardware it runs on.
        astrange 4y ago
        If you're not embodied you can't die and there's no particular need to be anything.
        wrzuteczka 4y ago
        This seems irreverent to me. If you created an evolutionary algorithm, where these very complex statistical models competed for survival, I don’t see how that would help one of them become conscious.
        astrange 4y ago
        I agree with that. By "AIs" I mean currently existing ML models we're calling AIs. That's not how we create them. If we did make them that way, they wouldn't do large-language-model stuff though - what's that got to do with survival? Humans went millions of years without bothering to read that much too.
        dragonwriter 4y ago
        Is there any proof anything is anything but a mechanistic model and actually has consciousness? Is there any definition of consciousness which even brings it into the realm of things for which there could in principal be evidence distinguishing it's presence from its absence? The usual argument about intelligence usually retreats into it being a property entirely separate from the observable universe and yet still has it as something for which people demand “evidence” of it existing anywhere they don't assume without evidence that it exists before being willing to accept things equivalent in observable qualities to be actually similar.
      - dvzk 4y ago
        The inconsistency gotchas in this thread are hilarious. “What if you replace religion with race or gender?” “What if you replace AI with god?” If your answers change then you have no principles.
        0des 4y ago
        it is easier to cast aside uncomfortable questions when you are able to group them into a monolith, relegating them to bad faith arguments and gotchas.
        bradlys 4y ago
        What if you replace religion with Tahiti? Can you tell how stupid the question is then? You can’t just do arbitrary word replacement. Words have meaning and are context dependent.
        dvzk 4y ago
        And? This just proves you lack a fundamental principle for or against discrimination. That’s fine, you do not need one. But you can’t refute a categorical opposition to discrimination by listing more subcategories of discrimination.
      - TulliusCicero 4y ago
        This seems like a fundamentally different question to me. Belief in a god explicitly depends on the unseen. You can't really even evaluate the personhood or lack thereof, there's nothing tangible to test. If a god showed in in-person to whoever asked, easy peasy, then it'd be a different story.
    - evilsetg 4y ago
      While this is probably to early, the question of AI rights is one we have to answer in the foreseeable future. I hope we as humanity will do it right and I am a little scared this dismissive attitude will carry over.
  - concinds 4y ago
    He's not the only Google engineer to believe we're uncomfortably close: https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2022/06/09/artificial-neural-networks-are-making-strides-towards-consciousness-according-to-blaise-aguera-y-arcas https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2022/06/09/artificia... Given how vibrant the academic/philosophical discussions of AI and consciousness have been for decades now, it's anti-intellectual to pretend there are any obvious answers. We're headed towards a dilemma where most scientists claim categorically that a given AI/robot is non-conscious, but most layment think it is. If robots start behaving and talking like in Detroit: Become Human, won't people react with sympathy? Who cares if the behavior is purely imitative and non-conscious, how could we tell the difference? Read this, and tell me honestly that you can objectively, beyond a shadow of any doubt make a conclusion either way: https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sentient-an-interview-ea64d916d917 https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sentient-an-inte...
    - TulliusCicero 4y ago
      > Given how vibrant the academic/philosophical discussions of AI and consciousness have been for decades now, it's anti-intellectual to pretend there are any obvious answers. As a general principle, sure. Right now, though? AI's are still a looooong way away. > If robots start behaving and talking like in Detroit: Become Human, won't people react with sympathy? As I understand it, those are far, far more advanced than the chatbots we have.
hackyhacky 4y ago
In this article, the author doesn't provide any concrete example of the religious discrimination that he's allegedly experienced, or how it's impacted him in any way. It seems that he's very eager to play the victim. A good example of his rush to victimhood is when he tells how he confronted leadership about why Google hasn't opened an engineering office in Louisiana. He seems to take the fact that Google doesn't have a office there as proof of their anti-Southern, anti-Christian bias. It's all very far-fetched.
- concerned_4u 4y ago
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  Yeah. I'm open to believing there's more religious discrimination at Google -- and I have no trouble believing that being very Christian could make you a bit of a social pariah within the company -- but the lack of concrete examples is concerning. In the US, it's very common for right-wing Christians to exaggerate claims of religious discrimination. For example, many consider not allowing public school teachers/coaches to lead prayer in schools to be religious discrimination.
  - beebmam 4y ago
    I'm open to believing anything, with appropriate evidence. The author makes specific claims about being judged by their manager for their religious beliefs. I'm not sure that's going to be enough to win a discrimination suit, but I wish them the best of luck. Religious discrimination at a workplace is (and should be) against the law. I hope they find the appropriate lawyer who can navigate this for them! (For what it's worth, I'm an atheist, and I don't think anyone should be discriminated for their religious beliefs, no matter what they are. We're all atheists of some religions.)
    - verve_rat 4y ago
      That's... not how atheism works.
dinobones 4y ago
This is funny to me as someone who participates in Christians @ Google and weekly prayer. The few coworkers outside of that who know of my faith are very accepting. I have never personally experienced any kind of discrimination, but perhaps I could have if I had different teammates.
- xiphias2 4y ago
  Try talking about it aggressively with everybody all the time (try your accepting colleagues to come to the weekly prayers), and I guess you will get bad feedback at some point. I have a friend who's in the church of scientology, but he never tried to convience me that Xeno alien god took over human souls.
  - ComodoHacker 4y ago
    > he never tried Are you sure this isn't because you aren't rich enough? :)
    - xiphias2 4y ago
      We both worked at Google and had the same salary, so I'm sure
- tasuki 4y ago
  You sound humble. Perhaps people don't feel the need to attack you for your religion because you're not attempting to cram it down their throat.
lalaland1125 4y ago
> Mysticism within the Abrahamic religions should not be such a strange thing to encounter that people would literally question my sanity for holding such beliefs I think the author misses how rare it is to find highly educated, rational people who literally think they can talk to God. For most Google engineers, talking to the author would be the first time they encounter a person like that.
- wrzuteczka 4y ago
  You mean “talk” as in be receiving answers in real time? Because I think all Christians believe that you can “talk” to God in some way.
  - KaiserPro 4y ago
    > Because I think all Christians believe that you can “talk” to God in some way. The noisy ones perhaps. I strongly suspect that only a small, vocal minority believe in actual dialogue with god.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - jl6 4y ago
      Talking to your deity is normal. Him talking back is not.
eric4smith 4y ago
Bruh. When are people going to stop expecting large public companies to cater to their every whim? It seems these days people are expecting every possible form of accommodation and bending backwards. People have forgotten in these companies you are there to give your time and get paid for said time given. Period. Companies will do things to help employees spend even more hours and be more loyal to their workplace in the name of kowtowing to some kind of social or special interest group. But one should never look upon that as a right. One should always look on it as what it really is. A way to get more hours and loyalty from the employee. So long as the company is not nakedly abusing anyone (and companies are not so stupid) - we should go ahead, give the hours, get paid for said hours and do social activism in personal hours far away from the precincts of the workplace.
- Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
  > People have forgotten in these companies you are there to give your time and get paid for said time given. Period. Well put - you're in a business relationship with your employer, they're not there to provide religious instruction, you do you job and they pay you for it - period!
  - matsemann 4y ago
    A company is where people spend most of their time, so of course the companies should cater to how people want to live their lives. Period...
    - pc86 4y ago
      No, in any sane work arrangement you spend the majority of your time somewhere other than work.
      - em-bee 4y ago
        only if you count sleeping.
k1ll3r 4y ago
But what if you really are crazy? Not a dysfunctional schizo type of crazy, but just talking to invisible deities in the sky and sincerely believing they are there type of crazy? Which is literally what the author (proudly) claims to be, no? Are we supposed to take such beliefs seriously? Being unable to tell people they're full of shit, in a respectful manner, is much more of a serious problem here. You want to hold certain beliefs and to express them, then you should be ready to be challenged. The more peculiar the beliefs the stronger and more immediate the challenges. Alternatively, you can, you know, just shut the fuck up and keep working on those wonderful products of yours and not pollute your social surroundings with religion that has oppressed and killed millions of people throughout history.
- hackyhacky 4y ago
  > Not a dysfunctional schizo type of crazy, but just talking to invisible deities in the sky and sincerely believing they are there type of crazy? Isn't that.. all religions?
  - differentView 4y ago
    My Invisible Underground Unicorn (rainbow poop be beneath her) disagrees.
  - throwuxiytayq 4y ago
    Doesnt't that... make the situation all the more ridiculous?
  - tialaramex 4y ago
    Nah, there's a bunch of very popular religions which probably are derived from Canaanite worship of El about 2500 years ago and these focus on that "Creation God" figure so much that their surviving text is today read by believers as saying there aren't any other Gods even though if you look at it frankly sure seems like it's actually ranking El as merely the most important of many Gods. Thus it's easy to see why you might think that, but plenty of religions don't have any personal Gods at all, or don't think you can talk to God.
  - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
anonymoushn 4y ago
a followup post: https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/may-be-fired-soon-for-doing-ai-ethics-work-802d8c474e66 https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/may-be-fired-soon-for-doi...
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  This guy is legitimately nuts and needs treatment.
krisoft 4y ago
Quoting the most concrete example he gives: > If you start talking about your religious beliefs at a social event people treat you like you just farted in their face. They frequently will scrunch up their faces and might ask a question like “Do you REALLY believe all that stuff?” When you tell them that you do they might even go so far as to say “Sorry that’s just not the kind of thing I associate with someone as smart as yourself.” That does not sound like discrimination to me. It sounds like people have an opinion and they express that opinion. It also sounds like they express their opinion very politely and in a restrained manner. Having opinions and saying them is a free speech, a cherrised cornerstone of the American culture.
- taylodl 4y ago
  I grew up in the Southern Baptist church. These people have a serious persecution complex - in fact, they want to be persecuted because that makes them most like Jesus! The guy feels "persecuted" because Google hasn't opened an office in Louisiana? Google hasn't opened offices in most states! Why haven't they opened offices in Louisiana? Who knows? Does that mean Google hates the South? Well, if so then why do they have offices in Atlanta? Last I checked, Atlanta is still in the US South! Like I said, this guy is fulfilling his religious need to feel persecuted and grasping at nonsense to justify their persecution complex.
- matthewmacleod 4y ago
  Fascinating - to me, a thoroughly irreligious person, I can’t possibly imagine being that fucking rude to someone. The idea that you think it’s “very polite and restrained” is amazing.
  - lultimouomo 4y ago
    It surely is quite aggressive. But the author qualifies it with "might even go so far as to say", so it seems like it's the absolute worst thing it was said to him. I've heard worse?
  - iLoveOncall 4y ago
    You missed the part where the OP is going around Google talking about how religious he is when nobody asked. If you believe in something nonsensical, people will let it slide. If you believe in something nonsensical and are being obnoxious about it, you will be insulted and you will deserve it.
dry_soup 4y ago
Whether or not this person's claims of discrimination are valid, this method of airing this kind of grievance is probably totally ineffective. This is your brain on not having a union.
- abofh 4y ago
  I've seen this approach before - typically someone who wants to be special, pronounces their specialness as unique and wonderful, demands their specialness be recognized, and then screams 'they're discriminating on me because of my specialness', when in fact they're being fired because in their exhaustive (and exhausting) efforts to promote their own specialness, they're not getting work done. They see the writing on the wall, and try to find some way to blame the world around them (discrimination, anti-Whateverism, etc). To be clear, discrimination exists in this world and it should be abhorred, but if the thing 90% of your coworkers think when they think of you is "Oh, that guy who's always talking about X?" instead of 'That guy who built Y' - you've let your personal identity overwhelm your work identity, and it's not a good career move.
mkl95 4y ago
> If you start talking about your religious beliefs at a social event people treat you like you just farted in their face Let's say someone brought up BDSM at a social event. How would the average religious person feel? Exactly how non religious people feel when someone brings up their religious beliefs. If you were into some niche sex act, chances are you'd completely understand if other people didn't like it. However, religion is usually ingrained in religious people's ideology. Which means they are low key uncomfortable when people have incompatible beliefs. OP is projecting exactly that.
- astrange 4y ago
  A funny thing about this post is if you want to get into BDSM with your partner, the people into it are well known for having a community with a lot of social events you might end up having to go to even if you don’t want to hang out with any of them.
ars 4y ago
I've noticed that Google Maps Timeline utterly refuses to ever mark a Synagogue as a location you've visited. It always marks it as the city or neighborhood. Other locations show up just fine, but for a synagogue you also have to manually override it. Of course, it could just be "it's not sure you actually were there" kind of thing, but I don't think I've ever seen it mark a synagogue as a visited location. I want to ask if anyone else has seen that, but I have a feeling there aren't that many people who check their timeline and correct it........ so I'll never know if it's just me, or Google really does discriminate in this way.
- thyrsus 4y ago
  That might make sense if it were dangerous to be identified as Jewish. I have no idea if that is among the reasons.
- 0des 4y ago
  Maybe its the same as how when you visit israel its a sticker not a stamp in your passport.
KaiserPro 4y ago
There are two things to tease out here. 1) the Indian caste system is not _just_ religious discrimination, its a class system that is devilishly tricky to escape. Its difficult to comprehend in the USA because the class system there is basically skin colour>money>very distant last religion. OP touches on this, but doesn't really quite grasp the difference. The implication is that he is but a poor dalit, because of his faith. Which is pretty wild. 2) choosing to preach in work will lead to raised eyebrows. on point two he says there are other mystics about in google, but I strongly suspect they aren't trying to convert people. Look, I am surprisingly religious, I don't talk about my faith unless it's expressly required. Like my penis, it doesn't come out at work.
- coffeeblack 4y ago
  - KaiserPro 4y ago
    No its a bit more complex, there is nationality mixed in there as well as colour. however my statement is based on personal experience travelling through the USA. Americans talk a lot more about race than I expected. They are upfront about their dislike of certain racial epithets.
- l33t2328 4y ago
  Ranking skin color above money in the USA is…interesting.
  - KaiserPro 4y ago
    You can change your wealth much easier than you can change your race. Sure a rich person will have it a fucktonne easier than a poor person, regardless of race. However race is the first thing you see. As someone who is from the outside, Its especially obvious at points where the state or large institutions interact. (ie property, banking, police, airports etc etc)
    - 4y ago
de6u99er 4y ago
People should keep their religious believes to themselves instead of trying to rub it in everybodys face.
aerovistae 4y ago
I don't see a problem with this. I'm glad that we have freedom of religion in the United States, and nobody is systemically persecuted or deprived of opportunities based on believing in one god or another, but I also feel organized religion is a dangerous set of beliefs from another time. I'm glad we're finally reaching the point in the timeline of civilization where we can stop taking it seriously and start treating it as inanity, which is what it always was. I think it had value a long time ago, before we had developed better forms of societal organization and better explanations for our world, but that value is long since gone. While I would never vote for a law persecuting religious persons, I do believe it's fairly crazy to believe in made up things that make no sense, and I certainly don't consider it discrimination to treat those beliefs as such.
jart 4y ago
Google is probably going to come out of this looking good. The fact that they were tolerant enough to welcome an openly religious ex-convict and are still supporting him even as he skewers them in public (since he's just on paid leave not fired). I wouldn't be surprised if he was doing this for years, and then things didn't get real until he started stirring up fear against technology. That's one thing that will actually trigger them.
kadayadi 4y ago
[flagged]
richardfey 4y ago
I thought it was a good practice to not talk about politics and religion in the workplace?
lowbloodsugar 4y ago
>If you start talking about your religious beliefs at a social event people treat you like you just farted in their face. They frequently will scrunch up their faces and might ask a question like “Do you REALLY believe all that stuff?” When you tell them that you do they might even go so far as to say “Sorry that’s just not the kind of thing I associate with someone as smart as yourself.” If you start talking about religion at a corporate gathering then you may be infringing on the rights of the people you are talking to. If you chose to engage them, and they respond with their own beliefs on religion, then you don't really have a leg to stand on, do you?
- morelisp 4y ago
  > If you start talking about religion at a corporate gathering then you may be infringing on the rights of the people you are talking to. Unless your "corporation" is actually a government institution, no person's rights are being violated. At most you're generating a lot of evidence for unfair dismissal/treatment lawsuits.
  - lowbloodsugar 4y ago
    The law is literally "Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964".
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
makerofthings 4y ago
Religion isn't like race or disability, you can change it if you want to. It's a set of ideas and ideas can be challenged. I think it would be pretty rude to start criticizing someone's religion unprompted, but if they start the conversation then it's fair game. Religion really should have no special legal protection.
neilv 4y ago
There are a few things confusing to me about even the opening paragraph. It sounds like the writer is going through a rough time, and I wonder whether they're overwhelmed, and not reasoning as well as they normally would.
randgg 4y ago
Ridiculous. No need to talk about religion at workplace.
invalidusernam3 4y ago
Assuming this is the same Blake Lemoine spoken about here: The Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31704063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31704063
danhau 4y ago
This probably isn’t going to get read, but the HN comments to this post really are off putting. They show Reddit levels of naivety. Just spewing further insults and discrimination with no attempt in putting yourself in the author’s position. And enough straw to feed a horse (as someone else said the other day). I came to HN to get away from this sort of thing, but the Zeitgeist here seems to be just the same. Or is this just a case of „a loud few“?
- concinds 4y ago
  The most off-putting thing is when some commenters incoherently go from arguing religion is a private matter and should not be revealed even when asked, to arguing "belief in a dude in the sky" is a pathology or "crazy" (first, nobody asked. And you're not a doctor). Seems very narrow minded.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  So for one, if you ignore the political connotations and ignore the author's seeingly strong identity, the argument is absurd. That's going to attract some ridicule here, regardless of what they guidelines say. Secondly, yeah I think your expecting a bit much at least from a thread like this. You can go back and look at, for example, the caste discrimination threads from recent. They aren't much better.
- kevinmchugh 4y ago
  This is a topic that 1) hacker news commenters can't resist and 2) is totally inappropriate for hacker news. Hence the flags. Someone getting fired or disciplined at a big tech company always attracts comments here, not always good ones. The reason certain topics are prohibited here is because even good commenters can get in too deep and end up writing bad comments. I hope people mostly don't hold my bad comments against me for too long, and I try to do the same for them.
- chinchilla2020 4y ago
  hackernews has alot of twitter overlap, not so much reddit
qwertox 4y ago
> when a random manager at Google with whom I had never spoken began harassing me about my beliefs. [...] I think he did it out of ignorance but it is an incredibly common type of harassment that religious people have to endure [...] if they are crazy enough to actually admit that they believe in the divine power of God. followed by a > I had simply posted a meme on an internal social media platform in support of Tanuja Gupta’s protest against caste discrimination at Google. This reads like "I posted a meme and a random person who read it started harassing me because he didn't share my belief." What did this harassment look like? Also, I really would like to see that meme. And the examples he/she sent privately to the manager and the responses to it. Then there's this thing: In my first quoted paragraph is the line "if they are crazy enough to actually admit that they believe in the divine power of God." together with "If you start talking about your religious beliefs at a social event people treat you like you just farted in their face. They frequently will scrunch up their faces and might ask a question like “Do you REALLY believe all that stuff?" I'd make sure to not talk about religion with this person anymore, and if that overly religious person would try to do so again, would I be seeing that as an harassment?
alxmrs 4y ago
It sounds like Blake is experiencing micro aggressions for his beliefs, based on the evidence in the article. However, that is not the same as discrimination. It seems like he is suffering from not experiencing a privilege that he is used to having. While in tech, I do believe religious people are in the minority, they still make up the hegemonic norm in the US. An article like this can appeal to a much larger majority outside of the intended technology audience.
de6u99er 4y ago
Dear author. This is you, right? -> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/11/google-ai-lamda-blake-lemoine/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/11/google-... In case you have been consuming cannabis lately, I suggest you get checked for potential psychosis. P.S.: I am not saying Google's AI is or is not sentient.
noelherrick 4y ago
I honestly wish more open-minded folks had pushed back on my Christian fundamentalism, in a kind way to broaden my perspective. I was raised in an evangelical family who believed in the inerrancy of the Bible, a literal hell, and that God is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient, so quite hardcore. I carried most of these beliefs with me, although strangely enough, my dad encouraged reading, logic, and critical thinking. Then I spent years working with refugees, so when evangelical Christians embraced Trump, I was out and deconstructed my fundamentalism. Before that, I took classes at my state university with arch-atheists and worked for companies with Christians, atheists, and agnostics. Never did I face discrimination or harassment. My church was always warning about secular humanist professors trying to destroy young Christian's faith. In reality, people who believed differently shrugged their shoulders and moved on, both in academia and professionally, even while my family was always talking about feeling constrained and censored by their work culture, specifically around LGBTQ+ topics. I now work for a company (and participate in other spaces) that has all the different religions, non-religions, sexualities, nationalities, and genders, even before I left fundamentalism. I never felt "censored" by anyone there. People that where not straight, white, and Christian gave me so much space to learn. They were patient. They took me aside and explained things when I said something stupid. I am humbled by that, and I want to encourage every effort to be more inclusive. Even things lambasted as symbols, tokens, or virtue signaling can instead be more charitably interpreted as trying to show that the person using them is safe, saying to the world, "I am trying to be an ally and making sure that everyone feels welcome." Moving to racism: imagine a society that 50 years ago would hang you in a tree for your skin color. Wouldn't you be a bit jumpy when someone does a micro-aggression? I know I would be on edge. Matthew Shepard was not that long ago. Prop 8 in California was even more recent. This all to say, I would really try to sort out what is religious discrimination and what is trying to create a safe and inclusive workplace. The paradox of tolerance is that you cannot tolerate intolerance. If you believe your religion discriminates against people based on race, gender, sexuality, nationality, or other religions, then yes, you will face discrimination.
turing_complete 4y ago
Google engineers tend to overestimate how smart they are because they were able to solve a few medium-difficult Leetcode questions. And they just don't see the water that they are swimming in. They probably don't know any young, intelligent Christian. Of course, even talented software engineers, like most people today, tend to be ignorant about history, philosophy, and theology. They only heard a strawman caricature of Christian belief and are completely unaware of the intellectual tradition of Christianity (or other religions for that matter). Other commenters already pointed out: There have been many Christian scientists, philosophers, and artists smarter and more impactful than any Google engineer. Newton, Heisenberg, Cantor, Gödel just to name a few. Even Donald Knuth! And, of course, every nerd's favorite J. R. R. Tolkien. He was a maniac by their standards. And it's not too surprising. There are good, rational arguments for deism. Unless you introduce a atheistic dogma, honest thinking has to hold the hypothesis of a creator god at least as somewhat likely. Today you can also call it simulation hypothesis, which is deism for geeks. It's not strange that an intelligent person becomes a Christian from deism plus the historical evidence. I don't know how close-minded Google engineers in the US have become. I think an explanation along the lines as I tried to sketch above should at least make them more understanding.
- mda 4y ago
  Yikes, I hope you are aware that how incredibly tasteless your comment sounds.
- orwin 4y ago
  Deist != Christian. I respect deists as much as atheist. I just don't like the idea that your god is the only real one over the thousands of other gods
wruza 4y ago
So what’s the final advice to a consciously non-religious person when someone starts a religious talk? Apart from politely diverting.
thrwawa1 4y ago
Maybe what other people in the comments don't get is the confusion religious people have in tech workplace. On one hand we get constantly "educated" that we should not have biases, on the other hand biase against religious people all around and promoted. Im a in the closet christian working in tech and i heard weekly peoples atheistic point of view bashing religion. Example of things that i heard: "I don't like X politician because his wife is a pastor" "I am atheist because my family is inteligent" "We should ban religion" "Religious institutions should not own property"
concinds 4y ago
Something I haven't seen anyone bring up yet: The author works for Google's "Responsible AI" division. I would very strongly hope that religious people would be welcome there, obviously along with atheists and people or all origins or backgrounds. AIs will soon have very real power over average people's lives. Humanity needs to make sure we get it right. His 2 main points are: - religious people being treated without respect or osctracized - algorithmic bias against religion in Google products As with all these past discussions (see Timnit Gebru), it's hard to know whether he's really being treated unfairly unless you somehow know him in person. Some people have personality disorders that make them insufferable to work with, religious or not. Personally he seems well-adjusted; it doesn't look like he was trying to proselitize or evangelize; he brought up religious discrimination in passing, was asked to explain what he meant, and privately explained. I don't know why so many here are assuming he's walking around Google asking people if they've heard of "our Lord and Saviour". >I mentioned that I stood against all sorts of discrimination at Google and listed religious discrimination as one of them. He asked for examples so I privately messaged him with some and he began trying to “educate” me about how those weren’t religious discrimination; they were just signs that I was suffering from “victim syndrome”. The second issue he brings up (that he says he needs to discuss with a lawyer before he can give concrete examples) also seems plausible enough. Google admits to downranking independent news organisations, politically non-mainstream outfits (socialists[0], subsets of social justice activists, nationalists); given how atheistic most Google employees are, it's plausible that the same would apply to religion. There is also a documented history of religious bias in Google Assistant[1]. If what he's claiming is true, it's indefensible. Algorithms shouldn't have an anti-religious bias. Think: algorithms for hiring, parole/sentencing, or personality testing. Religious discimination isn't a hypothetical, there are people being killed or discriminated against today in various countries because they belong to minority faiths. AIs shouldn't participate in that. As an interesting tidbit: here's what Marget Mitchell (co-founded Microsoft Research's Cognition group, Google Research's ML Fairness group, fired from Google shortly after Timnit Gebru) said about the author (Lemoine): > When new people would join Google who were interested in ethics, Mitchell used to introduce them to Lemoine. “I’d say, ‘You should talk to Blake because he’s Google’s conscience,’ ” said Mitchell, who compared Lemoine to Jiminy Cricket. “Of everyone at Google, he had the heart and soul of doing the right thing.” [0]: https://www.michigandaily.com/viewpoints/op-ed-why-google-censoring-socialist-websites/ https://www.michigandaily.com/viewpoints/op-ed-why-google-ce... [1]: https://www.newsweek.com/google-censoring-jesus-knows-buddha-satan-muhammad-not-christian-savior-792026 https://www.newsweek.com/google-censoring-jesus-knows-buddha...
prirun 4y ago
This summarizes the problem IMO: > As soon as I started being more open and expressive about my Christian religious beliefs at Google It's fine to have religious beliefs. It's not fine to espouse them at work. Do that on Sunday, at church.
ykevinator2 4y ago
ch_123 4y ago
> The fact that I’m from the US South is a double whammy. There’s a reason that Google doesn’t have any engineering offices in states like Louisiana where I’m from. I’ve pressed them over and over again to explain why they refuse to build engineering offices closer to where I’m from. The answers they give boil down to some version of either “Their values don’t match ours” or “They’re too poor”. This just reeks of self entitlement to me. Why is this guy more entitled to have an office built closer to where he is from versus anyone else who comes from a place which does not have a Google office?
cheshire137 4y ago
For context, the author is the same person this article is about: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/11/google-ai-lamda-blake-lemoine/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/11/google-...

99 points by lultimouomo 4y ago

The author and Google are being discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31704063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31704063

TulliusCicero 4y ago
So it sounds like they think Google's chatbot is sentient? ...okay.
- WoahNoun 4y ago
  Not just sentient but that the AI has a soul and deserves the full rights of personhood. Dude is mentally ill.
  - 0des 4y ago
    Do you feel the same way about people who believe their deity is a soul that was a person?
    - wrzuteczka 4y ago
      Is there any proof that the AI is anything else than a complex statistical model and actually has consciousness?
      - kaba0 4y ago
        Well, it can be an emergent property. To be honest, if your belief is heavily science-based, then there is not much else to believe regarding our very own consciouscness -- it is an emergent property of billions of interconnected neurons. Though on the other hand, even the biggest AI systems are lightyears behind biological networks when we look at interconnectedness.
        wrzuteczka 4y ago
        I wouldn’t call it science-based, it’s just materialism. There’s no science in believing that something that can be completely described by a set of logical rules, or mathematical formulae, or something similar, suddenly gains new features that cannot even be defined with math or logic. It’s pure belief, without too many arguments for it.
        kaba0 4y ago
        > suddenly gains new features that cannot even be defined with math or logic It at most can not be defined due to its complexity. Also, emergent properties are everywhere, like you can assign properties to a fire you can’t assign to the chemical process of burning. For all we know, consciousness may just as well be an arbitrary threshold of complexity. But I stand corrected that the correct term is indeed materialism.
        wrzuteczka 4y ago
        Do you mean that because of its complexity, we are not able to define it due to practical reasons (i.e. no powerful enough computer exists)? If so, that’s something completely different. Consciousness cannot be defined with math or logic even in principle. Certain aspects of consciousness can’t be defined either, like qualia (for example, the sensation of a color). Many materialists would even say that consciousness doesn’t exist because of that, and it’s all just a delusion (to which I ask: who/what is this delusion experienced by?). What properties of fire do you mean?
      - astrange 4y ago
        Complex statistical models can be conscious. The reason AIs aren’t conscious is they’re not embodied beings and don’t have any need to develop it to stay alive.
        wrzuteczka 4y ago
        So how being embodied helps consciousness emerge? If it’s just the statistical model that underpins the consciousness, then it doesn’t matter if it’s embodied or not. It doesn’t matter to the algorithm what hardware it runs on.
        astrange 4y ago
        If you're not embodied you can't die and there's no particular need to be anything.
        wrzuteczka 4y ago
        This seems irreverent to me. If you created an evolutionary algorithm, where these very complex statistical models competed for survival, I don’t see how that would help one of them become conscious.
        astrange 4y ago
        I agree with that. By "AIs" I mean currently existing ML models we're calling AIs. That's not how we create them. If we did make them that way, they wouldn't do large-language-model stuff though - what's that got to do with survival? Humans went millions of years without bothering to read that much too.
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
        Is there any proof anything is anything but a mechanistic model and actually has consciousness? Is there any definition of consciousness which even brings it into the realm of things for which there could in principal be evidence distinguishing it's presence from its absence? The usual argument about intelligence usually retreats into it being a property entirely separate from the observable universe and yet still has it as something for which people demand “evidence” of it existing anywhere they don't assume without evidence that it exists before being willing to accept things equivalent in observable qualities to be actually similar.
    - dvzk 4y ago
      The inconsistency gotchas in this thread are hilarious. “What if you replace religion with race or gender?” “What if you replace AI with god?” If your answers change then you have no principles.
      - 0des 4y ago
        it is easier to cast aside uncomfortable questions when you are able to group them into a monolith, relegating them to bad faith arguments and gotchas.
      - bradlys 4y ago
        What if you replace religion with Tahiti? Can you tell how stupid the question is then? You can’t just do arbitrary word replacement. Words have meaning and are context dependent.
        dvzk 4y ago
        And? This just proves you lack a fundamental principle for or against discrimination. That’s fine, you do not need one. But you can’t refute a categorical opposition to discrimination by listing more subcategories of discrimination.
    - TulliusCicero 4y ago
      This seems like a fundamentally different question to me. Belief in a god explicitly depends on the unseen. You can't really even evaluate the personhood or lack thereof, there's nothing tangible to test. If a god showed in in-person to whoever asked, easy peasy, then it'd be a different story.
  - evilsetg 4y ago
    While this is probably to early, the question of AI rights is one we have to answer in the foreseeable future. I hope we as humanity will do it right and I am a little scared this dismissive attitude will carry over.
- concinds 4y ago
  He's not the only Google engineer to believe we're uncomfortably close: https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2022/06/09/artificial-neural-networks-are-making-strides-towards-consciousness-according-to-blaise-aguera-y-arcas https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2022/06/09/artificia... Given how vibrant the academic/philosophical discussions of AI and consciousness have been for decades now, it's anti-intellectual to pretend there are any obvious answers. We're headed towards a dilemma where most scientists claim categorically that a given AI/robot is non-conscious, but most layment think it is. If robots start behaving and talking like in Detroit: Become Human, won't people react with sympathy? Who cares if the behavior is purely imitative and non-conscious, how could we tell the difference? Read this, and tell me honestly that you can objectively, beyond a shadow of any doubt make a conclusion either way: https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sentient-an-interview-ea64d916d917 https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sentient-an-inte...
  - TulliusCicero 4y ago
    > Given how vibrant the academic/philosophical discussions of AI and consciousness have been for decades now, it's anti-intellectual to pretend there are any obvious answers. As a general principle, sure. Right now, though? AI's are still a looooong way away. > If robots start behaving and talking like in Detroit: Become Human, won't people react with sympathy? As I understand it, those are far, far more advanced than the chatbots we have.

hackyhacky 4y ago

In this article, the author doesn't provide any concrete example of the religious discrimination that he's allegedly experienced, or how it's impacted him in any way. It seems that he's very eager to play the victim. A good example of his rush to victimhood is when he tells how he confronted leadership about why Google hasn't opened an engineering office in Louisiana. He seems to take the fact that Google doesn't have a office there as proof of their anti-Southern, anti-Christian bias. It's all very far-fetched.

concerned_4u 4y ago
TulliusCicero 4y ago
Yeah. I'm open to believing there's more religious discrimination at Google -- and I have no trouble believing that being very Christian could make you a bit of a social pariah within the company -- but the lack of concrete examples is concerning. In the US, it's very common for right-wing Christians to exaggerate claims of religious discrimination. For example, many consider not allowing public school teachers/coaches to lead prayer in schools to be religious discrimination.
- beebmam 4y ago
  I'm open to believing anything, with appropriate evidence. The author makes specific claims about being judged by their manager for their religious beliefs. I'm not sure that's going to be enough to win a discrimination suit, but I wish them the best of luck. Religious discrimination at a workplace is (and should be) against the law. I hope they find the appropriate lawyer who can navigate this for them! (For what it's worth, I'm an atheist, and I don't think anyone should be discriminated for their religious beliefs, no matter what they are. We're all atheists of some religions.)
  - verve_rat 4y ago
    That's... not how atheism works.

dinobones 4y ago

This is funny to me as someone who participates in Christians @ Google and weekly prayer. The few coworkers outside of that who know of my faith are very accepting. I have never personally experienced any kind of discrimination, but perhaps I could have if I had different teammates.

xiphias2 4y ago
Try talking about it aggressively with everybody all the time (try your accepting colleagues to come to the weekly prayers), and I guess you will get bad feedback at some point. I have a friend who's in the church of scientology, but he never tried to convience me that Xeno alien god took over human souls.
- ComodoHacker 4y ago
  > he never tried Are you sure this isn't because you aren't rich enough? :)
  - xiphias2 4y ago
    We both worked at Google and had the same salary, so I'm sure
tasuki 4y ago
You sound humble. Perhaps people don't feel the need to attack you for your religion because you're not attempting to cram it down their throat.

lalaland1125 4y ago

> Mysticism within the Abrahamic religions should not be such a strange thing to encounter that people would literally question my sanity for holding such beliefs I think the author misses how rare it is to find highly educated, rational people who literally think they can talk to God. For most Google engineers, talking to the author would be the first time they encounter a person like that.

wrzuteczka 4y ago
You mean “talk” as in be receiving answers in real time? Because I think all Christians believe that you can “talk” to God in some way.
- KaiserPro 4y ago
  > Because I think all Christians believe that you can “talk” to God in some way. The noisy ones perhaps. I strongly suspect that only a small, vocal minority believe in actual dialogue with god.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jl6 4y ago
    Talking to your deity is normal. Him talking back is not.

eric4smith 4y ago

Bruh. When are people going to stop expecting large public companies to cater to their every whim? It seems these days people are expecting every possible form of accommodation and bending backwards. People have forgotten in these companies you are there to give your time and get paid for said time given. Period. Companies will do things to help employees spend even more hours and be more loyal to their workplace in the name of kowtowing to some kind of social or special interest group. But one should never look upon that as a right. One should always look on it as what it really is. A way to get more hours and loyalty from the employee. So long as the company is not nakedly abusing anyone (and companies are not so stupid) - we should go ahead, give the hours, get paid for said hours and do social activism in personal hours far away from the precincts of the workplace.

Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
> People have forgotten in these companies you are there to give your time and get paid for said time given. Period. Well put - you're in a business relationship with your employer, they're not there to provide religious instruction, you do you job and they pay you for it - period!
- matsemann 4y ago
  A company is where people spend most of their time, so of course the companies should cater to how people want to live their lives. Period...
  - pc86 4y ago
    No, in any sane work arrangement you spend the majority of your time somewhere other than work.
    - em-bee 4y ago
      only if you count sleeping.

k1ll3r 4y ago

But what if you really are crazy? Not a dysfunctional schizo type of crazy, but just talking to invisible deities in the sky and sincerely believing they are there type of crazy? Which is literally what the author (proudly) claims to be, no? Are we supposed to take such beliefs seriously? Being unable to tell people they're full of shit, in a respectful manner, is much more of a serious problem here. You want to hold certain beliefs and to express them, then you should be ready to be challenged. The more peculiar the beliefs the stronger and more immediate the challenges. Alternatively, you can, you know, just shut the fuck up and keep working on those wonderful products of yours and not pollute your social surroundings with religion that has oppressed and killed millions of people throughout history.

hackyhacky 4y ago
> Not a dysfunctional schizo type of crazy, but just talking to invisible deities in the sky and sincerely believing they are there type of crazy? Isn't that.. all religions?
- differentView 4y ago
  My Invisible Underground Unicorn (rainbow poop be beneath her) disagrees.
- throwuxiytayq 4y ago
  Doesnt't that... make the situation all the more ridiculous?
- tialaramex 4y ago
  Nah, there's a bunch of very popular religions which probably are derived from Canaanite worship of El about 2500 years ago and these focus on that "Creation God" figure so much that their surviving text is today read by believers as saying there aren't any other Gods even though if you look at it frankly sure seems like it's actually ranking El as merely the most important of many Gods. Thus it's easy to see why you might think that, but plenty of religions don't have any personal Gods at all, or don't think you can talk to God.
- 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

anonymoushn 4y ago

a followup post: https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/may-be-fired-soon-for-doing-ai-ethics-work-802d8c474e66 https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/may-be-fired-soon-for-doi...

iLoveOncall 4y ago
This guy is legitimately nuts and needs treatment.

krisoft 4y ago

Quoting the most concrete example he gives: > If you start talking about your religious beliefs at a social event people treat you like you just farted in their face. They frequently will scrunch up their faces and might ask a question like “Do you REALLY believe all that stuff?” When you tell them that you do they might even go so far as to say “Sorry that’s just not the kind of thing I associate with someone as smart as yourself.” That does not sound like discrimination to me. It sounds like people have an opinion and they express that opinion. It also sounds like they express their opinion very politely and in a restrained manner. Having opinions and saying them is a free speech, a cherrised cornerstone of the American culture.

taylodl 4y ago
I grew up in the Southern Baptist church. These people have a serious persecution complex - in fact, they want to be persecuted because that makes them most like Jesus! The guy feels "persecuted" because Google hasn't opened an office in Louisiana? Google hasn't opened offices in most states! Why haven't they opened offices in Louisiana? Who knows? Does that mean Google hates the South? Well, if so then why do they have offices in Atlanta? Last I checked, Atlanta is still in the US South! Like I said, this guy is fulfilling his religious need to feel persecuted and grasping at nonsense to justify their persecution complex.
matthewmacleod 4y ago
Fascinating - to me, a thoroughly irreligious person, I can’t possibly imagine being that fucking rude to someone. The idea that you think it’s “very polite and restrained” is amazing.
- lultimouomo 4y ago
  It surely is quite aggressive. But the author qualifies it with "might even go so far as to say", so it seems like it's the absolute worst thing it was said to him. I've heard worse?
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  You missed the part where the OP is going around Google talking about how religious he is when nobody asked. If you believe in something nonsensical, people will let it slide. If you believe in something nonsensical and are being obnoxious about it, you will be insulted and you will deserve it.

dry_soup 4y ago

Whether or not this person's claims of discrimination are valid, this method of airing this kind of grievance is probably totally ineffective. This is your brain on not having a union.

abofh 4y ago
I've seen this approach before - typically someone who wants to be special, pronounces their specialness as unique and wonderful, demands their specialness be recognized, and then screams 'they're discriminating on me because of my specialness', when in fact they're being fired because in their exhaustive (and exhausting) efforts to promote their own specialness, they're not getting work done. They see the writing on the wall, and try to find some way to blame the world around them (discrimination, anti-Whateverism, etc). To be clear, discrimination exists in this world and it should be abhorred, but if the thing 90% of your coworkers think when they think of you is "Oh, that guy who's always talking about X?" instead of 'That guy who built Y' - you've let your personal identity overwhelm your work identity, and it's not a good career move.

mkl95 4y ago

> If you start talking about your religious beliefs at a social event people treat you like you just farted in their face Let's say someone brought up BDSM at a social event. How would the average religious person feel? Exactly how non religious people feel when someone brings up their religious beliefs. If you were into some niche sex act, chances are you'd completely understand if other people didn't like it. However, religion is usually ingrained in religious people's ideology. Which means they are low key uncomfortable when people have incompatible beliefs. OP is projecting exactly that.

astrange 4y ago
A funny thing about this post is if you want to get into BDSM with your partner, the people into it are well known for having a community with a lot of social events you might end up having to go to even if you don’t want to hang out with any of them.

ars 4y ago

I've noticed that Google Maps Timeline utterly refuses to ever mark a Synagogue as a location you've visited. It always marks it as the city or neighborhood. Other locations show up just fine, but for a synagogue you also have to manually override it. Of course, it could just be "it's not sure you actually were there" kind of thing, but I don't think I've ever seen it mark a synagogue as a visited location. I want to ask if anyone else has seen that, but I have a feeling there aren't that many people who check their timeline and correct it........ so I'll never know if it's just me, or Google really does discriminate in this way.

thyrsus 4y ago
That might make sense if it were dangerous to be identified as Jewish. I have no idea if that is among the reasons.
0des 4y ago
Maybe its the same as how when you visit israel its a sticker not a stamp in your passport.

KaiserPro 4y ago

There are two things to tease out here. 1) the Indian caste system is not _just_ religious discrimination, its a class system that is devilishly tricky to escape. Its difficult to comprehend in the USA because the class system there is basically skin colour>money>very distant last religion. OP touches on this, but doesn't really quite grasp the difference. The implication is that he is but a poor dalit, because of his faith. Which is pretty wild. 2) choosing to preach in work will lead to raised eyebrows. on point two he says there are other mystics about in google, but I strongly suspect they aren't trying to convert people. Look, I am surprisingly religious, I don't talk about my faith unless it's expressly required. Like my penis, it doesn't come out at work.

coffeeblack 4y ago
- KaiserPro 4y ago
  No its a bit more complex, there is nationality mixed in there as well as colour. however my statement is based on personal experience travelling through the USA. Americans talk a lot more about race than I expected. They are upfront about their dislike of certain racial epithets.
l33t2328 4y ago
Ranking skin color above money in the USA is…interesting.
- KaiserPro 4y ago
  You can change your wealth much easier than you can change your race. Sure a rich person will have it a fucktonne easier than a poor person, regardless of race. However race is the first thing you see. As someone who is from the outside, Its especially obvious at points where the state or large institutions interact. (ie property, banking, police, airports etc etc)
  - 4y ago

de6u99er 4y ago

People should keep their religious believes to themselves instead of trying to rub it in everybodys face.

aerovistae 4y ago

I don't see a problem with this. I'm glad that we have freedom of religion in the United States, and nobody is systemically persecuted or deprived of opportunities based on believing in one god or another, but I also feel organized religion is a dangerous set of beliefs from another time. I'm glad we're finally reaching the point in the timeline of civilization where we can stop taking it seriously and start treating it as inanity, which is what it always was. I think it had value a long time ago, before we had developed better forms of societal organization and better explanations for our world, but that value is long since gone. While I would never vote for a law persecuting religious persons, I do believe it's fairly crazy to believe in made up things that make no sense, and I certainly don't consider it discrimination to treat those beliefs as such.

jart 4y ago

Google is probably going to come out of this looking good. The fact that they were tolerant enough to welcome an openly religious ex-convict and are still supporting him even as he skewers them in public (since he's just on paid leave not fired). I wouldn't be surprised if he was doing this for years, and then things didn't get real until he started stirring up fear against technology. That's one thing that will actually trigger them.

kadayadi 4y ago

[flagged]

richardfey 4y ago

I thought it was a good practice to not talk about politics and religion in the workplace?

lowbloodsugar 4y ago

>If you start talking about your religious beliefs at a social event people treat you like you just farted in their face. They frequently will scrunch up their faces and might ask a question like “Do you REALLY believe all that stuff?” When you tell them that you do they might even go so far as to say “Sorry that’s just not the kind of thing I associate with someone as smart as yourself.” If you start talking about religion at a corporate gathering then you may be infringing on the rights of the people you are talking to. If you chose to engage them, and they respond with their own beliefs on religion, then you don't really have a leg to stand on, do you?

morelisp 4y ago
> If you start talking about religion at a corporate gathering then you may be infringing on the rights of the people you are talking to. Unless your "corporation" is actually a government institution, no person's rights are being violated. At most you're generating a lot of evidence for unfair dismissal/treatment lawsuits.
- lowbloodsugar 4y ago
  The law is literally "Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964".
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

makerofthings 4y ago

Religion isn't like race or disability, you can change it if you want to. It's a set of ideas and ideas can be challenged. I think it would be pretty rude to start criticizing someone's religion unprompted, but if they start the conversation then it's fair game. Religion really should have no special legal protection.

neilv 4y ago

There are a few things confusing to me about even the opening paragraph. It sounds like the writer is going through a rough time, and I wonder whether they're overwhelmed, and not reasoning as well as they normally would.

randgg 4y ago

Ridiculous. No need to talk about religion at workplace.

invalidusernam3 4y ago

Assuming this is the same Blake Lemoine spoken about here: The Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31704063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31704063

danhau 4y ago

This probably isn’t going to get read, but the HN comments to this post really are off putting. They show Reddit levels of naivety. Just spewing further insults and discrimination with no attempt in putting yourself in the author’s position. And enough straw to feed a horse (as someone else said the other day). I came to HN to get away from this sort of thing, but the Zeitgeist here seems to be just the same. Or is this just a case of „a loud few“?

concinds 4y ago
The most off-putting thing is when some commenters incoherently go from arguing religion is a private matter and should not be revealed even when asked, to arguing "belief in a dude in the sky" is a pathology or "crazy" (first, nobody asked. And you're not a doctor). Seems very narrow minded.
the_only_law 4y ago
So for one, if you ignore the political connotations and ignore the author's seeingly strong identity, the argument is absurd. That's going to attract some ridicule here, regardless of what they guidelines say. Secondly, yeah I think your expecting a bit much at least from a thread like this. You can go back and look at, for example, the caste discrimination threads from recent. They aren't much better.
kevinmchugh 4y ago
This is a topic that 1) hacker news commenters can't resist and 2) is totally inappropriate for hacker news. Hence the flags. Someone getting fired or disciplined at a big tech company always attracts comments here, not always good ones. The reason certain topics are prohibited here is because even good commenters can get in too deep and end up writing bad comments. I hope people mostly don't hold my bad comments against me for too long, and I try to do the same for them.
chinchilla2020 4y ago
hackernews has alot of twitter overlap, not so much reddit

qwertox 4y ago

> when a random manager at Google with whom I had never spoken began harassing me about my beliefs. [...] I think he did it out of ignorance but it is an incredibly common type of harassment that religious people have to endure [...] if they are crazy enough to actually admit that they believe in the divine power of God. followed by a > I had simply posted a meme on an internal social media platform in support of Tanuja Gupta’s protest against caste discrimination at Google. This reads like "I posted a meme and a random person who read it started harassing me because he didn't share my belief." What did this harassment look like? Also, I really would like to see that meme. And the examples he/she sent privately to the manager and the responses to it. Then there's this thing: In my first quoted paragraph is the line "if they are crazy enough to actually admit that they believe in the divine power of God." together with "If you start talking about your religious beliefs at a social event people treat you like you just farted in their face. They frequently will scrunch up their faces and might ask a question like “Do you REALLY believe all that stuff?" I'd make sure to not talk about religion with this person anymore, and if that overly religious person would try to do so again, would I be seeing that as an harassment?

alxmrs 4y ago

It sounds like Blake is experiencing micro aggressions for his beliefs, based on the evidence in the article. However, that is not the same as discrimination. It seems like he is suffering from not experiencing a privilege that he is used to having. While in tech, I do believe religious people are in the minority, they still make up the hegemonic norm in the US. An article like this can appeal to a much larger majority outside of the intended technology audience.

de6u99er 4y ago

Dear author. This is you, right? -> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/11/google-ai-lamda-blake-lemoine/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/11/google-... In case you have been consuming cannabis lately, I suggest you get checked for potential psychosis. P.S.: I am not saying Google's AI is or is not sentient.

noelherrick 4y ago

I honestly wish more open-minded folks had pushed back on my Christian fundamentalism, in a kind way to broaden my perspective. I was raised in an evangelical family who believed in the inerrancy of the Bible, a literal hell, and that God is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient, so quite hardcore. I carried most of these beliefs with me, although strangely enough, my dad encouraged reading, logic, and critical thinking. Then I spent years working with refugees, so when evangelical Christians embraced Trump, I was out and deconstructed my fundamentalism. Before that, I took classes at my state university with arch-atheists and worked for companies with Christians, atheists, and agnostics. Never did I face discrimination or harassment. My church was always warning about secular humanist professors trying to destroy young Christian's faith. In reality, people who believed differently shrugged their shoulders and moved on, both in academia and professionally, even while my family was always talking about feeling constrained and censored by their work culture, specifically around LGBTQ+ topics. I now work for a company (and participate in other spaces) that has all the different religions, non-religions, sexualities, nationalities, and genders, even before I left fundamentalism. I never felt "censored" by anyone there. People that where not straight, white, and Christian gave me so much space to learn. They were patient. They took me aside and explained things when I said something stupid. I am humbled by that, and I want to encourage every effort to be more inclusive. Even things lambasted as symbols, tokens, or virtue signaling can instead be more charitably interpreted as trying to show that the person using them is safe, saying to the world, "I am trying to be an ally and making sure that everyone feels welcome." Moving to racism: imagine a society that 50 years ago would hang you in a tree for your skin color. Wouldn't you be a bit jumpy when someone does a micro-aggression? I know I would be on edge. Matthew Shepard was not that long ago. Prop 8 in California was even more recent. This all to say, I would really try to sort out what is religious discrimination and what is trying to create a safe and inclusive workplace. The paradox of tolerance is that you cannot tolerate intolerance. If you believe your religion discriminates against people based on race, gender, sexuality, nationality, or other religions, then yes, you will face discrimination.

turing_complete 4y ago

Google engineers tend to overestimate how smart they are because they were able to solve a few medium-difficult Leetcode questions. And they just don't see the water that they are swimming in. They probably don't know any young, intelligent Christian. Of course, even talented software engineers, like most people today, tend to be ignorant about history, philosophy, and theology. They only heard a strawman caricature of Christian belief and are completely unaware of the intellectual tradition of Christianity (or other religions for that matter). Other commenters already pointed out: There have been many Christian scientists, philosophers, and artists smarter and more impactful than any Google engineer. Newton, Heisenberg, Cantor, Gödel just to name a few. Even Donald Knuth! And, of course, every nerd's favorite J. R. R. Tolkien. He was a maniac by their standards. And it's not too surprising. There are good, rational arguments for deism. Unless you introduce a atheistic dogma, honest thinking has to hold the hypothesis of a creator god at least as somewhat likely. Today you can also call it simulation hypothesis, which is deism for geeks. It's not strange that an intelligent person becomes a Christian from deism plus the historical evidence. I don't know how close-minded Google engineers in the US have become. I think an explanation along the lines as I tried to sketch above should at least make them more understanding.

mda 4y ago
Yikes, I hope you are aware that how incredibly tasteless your comment sounds.
orwin 4y ago
Deist != Christian. I respect deists as much as atheist. I just don't like the idea that your god is the only real one over the thousands of other gods

wruza 4y ago

So what’s the final advice to a consciously non-religious person when someone starts a religious talk? Apart from politely diverting.

thrwawa1 4y ago

Maybe what other people in the comments don't get is the confusion religious people have in tech workplace. On one hand we get constantly "educated" that we should not have biases, on the other hand biase against religious people all around and promoted. Im a in the closet christian working in tech and i heard weekly peoples atheistic point of view bashing religion. Example of things that i heard: "I don't like X politician because his wife is a pastor" "I am atheist because my family is inteligent" "We should ban religion" "Religious institutions should not own property"

concinds 4y ago

Something I haven't seen anyone bring up yet: The author works for Google's "Responsible AI" division. I would very strongly hope that religious people would be welcome there, obviously along with atheists and people or all origins or backgrounds. AIs will soon have very real power over average people's lives. Humanity needs to make sure we get it right. His 2 main points are: - religious people being treated without respect or osctracized - algorithmic bias against religion in Google products As with all these past discussions (see Timnit Gebru), it's hard to know whether he's really being treated unfairly unless you somehow know him in person. Some people have personality disorders that make them insufferable to work with, religious or not. Personally he seems well-adjusted; it doesn't look like he was trying to proselitize or evangelize; he brought up religious discrimination in passing, was asked to explain what he meant, and privately explained. I don't know why so many here are assuming he's walking around Google asking people if they've heard of "our Lord and Saviour". >I mentioned that I stood against all sorts of discrimination at Google and listed religious discrimination as one of them. He asked for examples so I privately messaged him with some and he began trying to “educate” me about how those weren’t religious discrimination; they were just signs that I was suffering from “victim syndrome”. The second issue he brings up (that he says he needs to discuss with a lawyer before he can give concrete examples) also seems plausible enough. Google admits to downranking independent news organisations, politically non-mainstream outfits (socialists[0], subsets of social justice activists, nationalists); given how atheistic most Google employees are, it's plausible that the same would apply to religion. There is also a documented history of religious bias in Google Assistant[1]. If what he's claiming is true, it's indefensible. Algorithms shouldn't have an anti-religious bias. Think: algorithms for hiring, parole/sentencing, or personality testing. Religious discimination isn't a hypothetical, there are people being killed or discriminated against today in various countries because they belong to minority faiths. AIs shouldn't participate in that. As an interesting tidbit: here's what Marget Mitchell (co-founded Microsoft Research's Cognition group, Google Research's ML Fairness group, fired from Google shortly after Timnit Gebru) said about the author (Lemoine): > When new people would join Google who were interested in ethics, Mitchell used to introduce them to Lemoine. “I’d say, ‘You should talk to Blake because he’s Google’s conscience,’ ” said Mitchell, who compared Lemoine to Jiminy Cricket. “Of everyone at Google, he had the heart and soul of doing the right thing.” [0]: https://www.michigandaily.com/viewpoints/op-ed-why-google-censoring-socialist-websites/ https://www.michigandaily.com/viewpoints/op-ed-why-google-ce... [1]: https://www.newsweek.com/google-censoring-jesus-knows-buddha-satan-muhammad-not-christian-savior-792026 https://www.newsweek.com/google-censoring-jesus-knows-buddha...

prirun 4y ago

This summarizes the problem IMO: > As soon as I started being more open and expressive about my Christian religious beliefs at Google It's fine to have religious beliefs. It's not fine to espouse them at work. Do that on Sunday, at church.

ykevinator2 4y ago

ch_123 4y ago

> The fact that I’m from the US South is a double whammy. There’s a reason that Google doesn’t have any engineering offices in states like Louisiana where I’m from. I’ve pressed them over and over again to explain why they refuse to build engineering offices closer to where I’m from. The answers they give boil down to some version of either “Their values don’t match ours” or “They’re too poor”. This just reeks of self entitlement to me. Why is this guy more entitled to have an office built closer to where he is from versus anyone else who comes from a place which does not have a Google office?

cheshire137 4y ago

For context, the author is the same person this article is about: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/11/google-ai-lamda-blake-lemoine/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/11/google-...