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Technical and socially competent leadership is compatible -- actually, well-aligned -- with diverse representation.

by bo1024 4y ago

yarg 4y ago
There's a difference between organic and forced diversity. When someone starts out with bullet-point one devoted to orthogonal social issues and not the actual goals of the foundation and how to reach them, it's fairly clear where they stand.
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  "Orthogonal social issues?" So are we just going to pretend that unauditable, proprietary facial recognition software isn't being actively weaponized against minorities? Like, cops using secret rules to determine guilt would be considered dystopian basically anywhere.
  - yarg 4y ago
    Yes, the issues are completely orthogonal to the effective operation of an open source software foundation. If you want to have a talk about the also completely unrelated issue of facial recognition, we can do that too.
    - ParetoOptimal 4y ago
      > Yes, the issues are completely orthogonal to the effective operation of an open source software foundation. Only if you begin by presuming diversity isn't a benefit on it's own.
    - kmeisthax 4y ago
      The facial recognition software issue is not orthogonal: the biggest problem with it is that it's proprietary software being used to do law enforcement. We don't know how Clearview's software works and it is already generating false arrests and convictions. If this is an orthogonal issue, than software freedom is just a petty tech squabble between programmers with no bearing on the average user, and nobody should care about it. The way that you get the average user to care about software freedom is by drawing lines between it and seemingly unrelated issues. You don't say "proprietary software means you can't edit the code", you say "proprietary software means more surveillance tech everywhere". And the way that surveillance tech works is that it follows a very specific "shitty technology adoption curve"[0]. It will first be weaponized against socially acceptable targets such as criminals first, and then to social minorities that don't have the leverage to say 'no', and then to poor people at large, and so on and so forth up the chain of oppression. Of course, because of how this adoption curve works, a foundation staffed entirely with old white guys isn't going to be inherently aware of these sorts of problems. They are going to be fighting them by accident, and losing out on a way to do effective outreach about the problem they want to solve. [0] Thanks to Cory Doctorow for pointing this one out.
      - GoblinSlayer 4y ago
        All political campaigns against population work this way: censorship, privacy, four horsemen, gun control.
      - t-3 4y ago
        If the facial recognition software was open source, it would still be used to facially recognize people. There's no guarantee the algorithms would be better, but even if they were, that wouldn't stop them from being applied in a biased fashion. There are no technical solutions to human governance and society, we need human solutions for those.
        yarg 4y ago
        The algorithms are in trouble. Black people have darker faces with generally softer features, women paint themselves with makeup and frequently leave the house looking less like themselves than other people. The sorts of solutions that a prescribed - more diversity - do nothing to fix those issues. Multi-perspective and multi-frame processing can be used to reconstruct 3D models of a well-lit individual, which has the potential to get around makeup induced false contouring. Solving the issues of clowns and women - but how do you deal people who are genetically predisposed to being poorly lit? Infrared's probably your best option, and it's already common place in security.
      - yarg 4y ago
        The biggest problem is not that it's proprietary software - the biggest problem is that the software does not work as intended. There are multiple factors that lead to the software not working - and none of them stem from the fact that it's proprietary. (The Stallman notion that anything other than copyleft needs to be erased is fucking ridiculous - and I really don't think that you'll find traction with it on a site where almost everyone uses the profits from software to feed themselves and their families.) There is a related notion that would have granted you some traction - that tax payer funded software should be open source. This nicely parallels the issue of public access to publicly funded scientific research - which has gotten a lot of traction here, over time. As far as rising authoritarianism is concerned, you've chosen a weird hill to die on. The court is packed, and the already broken two party system is being gerrymandered into oblivion. You're focusing on the tools being used without regard for the intention and the users. Anyway, you didn't even get to the fun part of the conversation - that facial recognition struggles with black people and women. Which is a fun little conversation that people like to politicise and blame on the people who wrote the code.
- drewbug01 4y ago
  To be fair - the author didn't "start[s] out" with that statement. They started out with seven(ish) paragraphs explaining exactly why the FSF has become irrelevant and how the foundation cannot reach its goals. The author contends that Stallman (and through his leadership, the FSF) ends up repelling the very kind of interconnected community that could sustain the free software movement. Thus, their first suggestion (replace Stallman, and include different kinds of people in future leadership) is directly related to that specific issue. It's actually a rather nicely written piece, and they support their suggestions in the narrative pretty well. Perhaps you skipped ahead (or perhaps you just disagree, which is certainly your right), but they absolutely didn't "start out" with "orthogonal social issues". They made the case for why those issues matter and then connected them to their suggestions.
ghusto 4y ago
> Technical and socially competent leadership is compatible -- actually, well-aligned -- with diverse representation Reality begs to differ. If they're well aligned, where are these people? Have they been oppressed by not being given a chance? Let's see where we are in 20 years when that argument can finally be put to rest (when's the last time you saw a positive _male_ role model in films or other pop-culture, tech-related or otherwise?).
- Shared404 4y ago
  Justine Tunney, Mekka Okereke, Christine Lemmer-Webber. Three off the top of my head. I wonder why it is you wouldn't have run into any...
- ParetoOptimal 4y ago
  > when's the last time you saw a positive _male_ role model in films or other pop-culture, tech-related or otherwise? Do we live in the same reality?
- vrtx0 4y ago
  My perspective as an openly gay male with 20+ years of experience in software security, systems programming and distributed databases: Tech companies tend to be extremely supportive and welcoming of talent from diverse backgrounds. My proudest technical accomplishments have always been with a diverse group of peers, including straight white males who champion diversity. These people are heroes to me, but it’s not like they’re the type to gloat… I’m not the best person to ask about movies, but most example of protagonist “hackers” that comes to mind include white males. Counter examples that come to mind are “The Web” (female), and Sens8 (transgender lead, helped by straight white male)… That said, I may have misunderstood your point, but happy to correct it elaborate if I’m off base!
  - ghusto 4y ago
    Yes, you're way off base :D But it's a welcome miss, because I found your experience interesting anyway, and relevant. My first point was that if it were true that "technical and social leadership" indeed was compatible and even "well-aligned", then why is it we don't see that in people in leadership positions? Where are they? Then I pre-empted the tired argument that we don't see them because they've been oppressed for so long. I suggested that culture has been so "progressive" in recent years, that there are no longer any positive male role models (the over-compensating pendulum swing, in place of actual progress), so now that that's done, let's see what effect it has had on future society in 20 years, because we won't be able to blame "the patriarchy" or whatever any more. Now having said all that, I'm super happy to hear that you've had a positive experience in diverse workplaces :) I'm old, and remember when being openly gay wasn't fun.
michaelmrose 4y ago
Small groupings of people drawn from populations that are heavily weighted toward white male English speakers organically selected are unlikely to be more diverse than the population its drawn from and many groupings will end up distinctly unequal even without bias being involved. If you imagine dealing out people like cards into stacks chosen randomly and enumerating the demographics of each stack then large stacks would tend towards the population demographics but many smaller stacks would have all sorts of distributions. The only way to ensure a small group is diverse or a large group isn't is to select them for immutable characteristics instead of skill.

Technical and socially competent leadership is compatible -- actually, well-aligned -- with diverse representation.

by bo1024 4y ago

Technical and socially competent leadership is compatible -- actually, well-aligned -- with diverse representation.

yarg 4y ago

There's a difference between organic and forced diversity. When someone starts out with bullet-point one devoted to orthogonal social issues and not the actual goals of the foundation and how to reach them, it's fairly clear where they stand.

kmeisthax 4y ago
"Orthogonal social issues?" So are we just going to pretend that unauditable, proprietary facial recognition software isn't being actively weaponized against minorities? Like, cops using secret rules to determine guilt would be considered dystopian basically anywhere.
- yarg 4y ago
  Yes, the issues are completely orthogonal to the effective operation of an open source software foundation. If you want to have a talk about the also completely unrelated issue of facial recognition, we can do that too.
  - ParetoOptimal 4y ago
    > Yes, the issues are completely orthogonal to the effective operation of an open source software foundation. Only if you begin by presuming diversity isn't a benefit on it's own.
  - kmeisthax 4y ago
    The facial recognition software issue is not orthogonal: the biggest problem with it is that it's proprietary software being used to do law enforcement. We don't know how Clearview's software works and it is already generating false arrests and convictions. If this is an orthogonal issue, than software freedom is just a petty tech squabble between programmers with no bearing on the average user, and nobody should care about it. The way that you get the average user to care about software freedom is by drawing lines between it and seemingly unrelated issues. You don't say "proprietary software means you can't edit the code", you say "proprietary software means more surveillance tech everywhere". And the way that surveillance tech works is that it follows a very specific "shitty technology adoption curve"[0]. It will first be weaponized against socially acceptable targets such as criminals first, and then to social minorities that don't have the leverage to say 'no', and then to poor people at large, and so on and so forth up the chain of oppression. Of course, because of how this adoption curve works, a foundation staffed entirely with old white guys isn't going to be inherently aware of these sorts of problems. They are going to be fighting them by accident, and losing out on a way to do effective outreach about the problem they want to solve. [0] Thanks to Cory Doctorow for pointing this one out.
    - GoblinSlayer 4y ago
      All political campaigns against population work this way: censorship, privacy, four horsemen, gun control.
    - t-3 4y ago
      If the facial recognition software was open source, it would still be used to facially recognize people. There's no guarantee the algorithms would be better, but even if they were, that wouldn't stop them from being applied in a biased fashion. There are no technical solutions to human governance and society, we need human solutions for those.
      - yarg 4y ago
        The algorithms are in trouble. Black people have darker faces with generally softer features, women paint themselves with makeup and frequently leave the house looking less like themselves than other people. The sorts of solutions that a prescribed - more diversity - do nothing to fix those issues. Multi-perspective and multi-frame processing can be used to reconstruct 3D models of a well-lit individual, which has the potential to get around makeup induced false contouring. Solving the issues of clowns and women - but how do you deal people who are genetically predisposed to being poorly lit? Infrared's probably your best option, and it's already common place in security.
    - yarg 4y ago
      The biggest problem is not that it's proprietary software - the biggest problem is that the software does not work as intended. There are multiple factors that lead to the software not working - and none of them stem from the fact that it's proprietary. (The Stallman notion that anything other than copyleft needs to be erased is fucking ridiculous - and I really don't think that you'll find traction with it on a site where almost everyone uses the profits from software to feed themselves and their families.) There is a related notion that would have granted you some traction - that tax payer funded software should be open source. This nicely parallels the issue of public access to publicly funded scientific research - which has gotten a lot of traction here, over time. As far as rising authoritarianism is concerned, you've chosen a weird hill to die on. The court is packed, and the already broken two party system is being gerrymandered into oblivion. You're focusing on the tools being used without regard for the intention and the users. Anyway, you didn't even get to the fun part of the conversation - that facial recognition struggles with black people and women. Which is a fun little conversation that people like to politicise and blame on the people who wrote the code.
drewbug01 4y ago
To be fair - the author didn't "start[s] out" with that statement. They started out with seven(ish) paragraphs explaining exactly why the FSF has become irrelevant and how the foundation cannot reach its goals. The author contends that Stallman (and through his leadership, the FSF) ends up repelling the very kind of interconnected community that could sustain the free software movement. Thus, their first suggestion (replace Stallman, and include different kinds of people in future leadership) is directly related to that specific issue. It's actually a rather nicely written piece, and they support their suggestions in the narrative pretty well. Perhaps you skipped ahead (or perhaps you just disagree, which is certainly your right), but they absolutely didn't "start out" with "orthogonal social issues". They made the case for why those issues matter and then connected them to their suggestions.

ghusto 4y ago

> Technical and socially competent leadership is compatible -- actually, well-aligned -- with diverse representation Reality begs to differ. If they're well aligned, where are these people? Have they been oppressed by not being given a chance? Let's see where we are in 20 years when that argument can finally be put to rest (when's the last time you saw a positive _male_ role model in films or other pop-culture, tech-related or otherwise?).

Shared404 4y ago
Justine Tunney, Mekka Okereke, Christine Lemmer-Webber. Three off the top of my head. I wonder why it is you wouldn't have run into any...
ParetoOptimal 4y ago
> when's the last time you saw a positive _male_ role model in films or other pop-culture, tech-related or otherwise? Do we live in the same reality?
vrtx0 4y ago
My perspective as an openly gay male with 20+ years of experience in software security, systems programming and distributed databases: Tech companies tend to be extremely supportive and welcoming of talent from diverse backgrounds. My proudest technical accomplishments have always been with a diverse group of peers, including straight white males who champion diversity. These people are heroes to me, but it’s not like they’re the type to gloat… I’m not the best person to ask about movies, but most example of protagonist “hackers” that comes to mind include white males. Counter examples that come to mind are “The Web” (female), and Sens8 (transgender lead, helped by straight white male)… That said, I may have misunderstood your point, but happy to correct it elaborate if I’m off base!
- ghusto 4y ago
  Yes, you're way off base :D But it's a welcome miss, because I found your experience interesting anyway, and relevant. My first point was that if it were true that "technical and social leadership" indeed was compatible and even "well-aligned", then why is it we don't see that in people in leadership positions? Where are they? Then I pre-empted the tired argument that we don't see them because they've been oppressed for so long. I suggested that culture has been so "progressive" in recent years, that there are no longer any positive male role models (the over-compensating pendulum swing, in place of actual progress), so now that that's done, let's see what effect it has had on future society in 20 years, because we won't be able to blame "the patriarchy" or whatever any more. Now having said all that, I'm super happy to hear that you've had a positive experience in diverse workplaces :) I'm old, and remember when being openly gay wasn't fun.

michaelmrose 4y ago

Small groupings of people drawn from populations that are heavily weighted toward white male English speakers organically selected are unlikely to be more diverse than the population its drawn from and many groupings will end up distinctly unequal even without bias being involved. If you imagine dealing out people like cards into stacks chosen randomly and enumerating the demographics of each stack then large stacks would tend towards the population demographics but many smaller stacks would have all sorts of distributions. The only way to ensure a small group is diverse or a large group isn't is to select them for immutable characteristics instead of skill.