Comment by fennecfoxen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fennecfoxen | Hacker News Reader

Google is substantially located in the Bay Area. Of course they hate ideological diversity, in practice if not in principle. It is an attitude common in their workforce.

This is a tendentious statement, so I will relate my own experience. Once upon a time I was working in California, at a tiny startup, and was reading some election results from "back home" in North Carolina, which had just passed Amendment One by about a 3:2 margin. Observing the results thoughtfully, my coworker casually remarked "wow, 60% of North Carolina is literally horrible, terrible people."

I just quietly sat back and thought "why, how nice of you, sir, to refer to some unknown fraction of my family and the friends I had growing up in such a lovely manner."

At one point my girlfriend (now an ex-girlfriend) attended a party that he was hosting. She had just left Missouri out of disgust for its Missouri-ness, and was very much in love with San Francisco and its people – yet left the party modestly offended – not for saying anyone in particular was bad this time, but just with all the best of intentions saying it was inevitable that they'd all come around to the modern views on things like gay marriage (and, in the process, utterly trivializing their religion, values, and world-views).

I do not seek to cast him as a bad person for this remark. This is a man who, if anything, is one of the nicest people I know, easily far above the average, and a quitessential San Franciscan (well above and beyond your typical tech hipster). But he is immersed in a culture which specifically and explicitly denies human dignity of people who are not alike and do not think alike.

This is very sad. You would think if there is one lesson we could take from the history of the US, religious tolerance in the colonies, slavery, the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, our wars with Native Americans, the likes of the Japanese Internment, women's suffrage, everything ... if there's one resounding strain here, it's that you don't un-people people.

(but it's okay to un-people these people, because they're bad people!)

In conclusion:

I sympathize with this guy who wrote this manifesto. It is also unfortunate that, from what I hear and understand of the matter, this guy is factually in error, probably sexist, and almost certainly undermining his cause.

you don't un-people people.

But without trying to devolve into the actual politics of it, a large portion of Americans (I'd wager it's the majority) believe that it's okay to exclude people for one reason or another. Americans have voted since Pres. GW Bush on protectionist principles, even President Obama was barely for extending rights until he was forced into it by VP Biden. America is in the middle of a massive demographic shift from the Baby Boomers who have ruined the economy, created massive public debt, destroyed worker protections, and shifted the political power from those in the middle to those at the very top. They did this by unpeopling people. This was an intentional thing done by the religious right starting in the late 70s and really gaining steam in the 80s. Their brand of us vs them found a receptive audience in America, because the Baby Boomers are afraid that what they've created will change, and for the moment there's more of them than other voting populations. Of course this is the natural outcome. Look at how many centrist politicians have left. So yes I personally disagree with what this guy said, but in a public sphere he has every right to say it. Inside of Google however they have the right to fire him for any reason, because there are no worker protections for free speech.

>from what I hear and understand of the matter, this guy is factually in error, probably sexist, and almost certainly undermining his cause.

That's my take too, having read the doc. Reminds me of The_Donald -- sometimes correctly identifies an issue, but misses the point entirely on so many levels and does more harm than good to whatever the author's goal was.

>you don't un-people people

And that's exactly how the doc started from the get-go. It decried anyone who dared disagree with it as shunning communication. That's really not the case -- people discussed it, and disagreed with it. It reminds me of those religious freedom laws, that guarantee people's freedom to discriminate to protect their own beliefs. The more layers you follow down, the more of a contradiction the laws become.

I'm not sure he's factually wrong. It looks like he's referring to the nordic studies which were covered by The Economist and Freakanomics.

Of course Bay Area people hate ideological diversity? As opposed to religious North Caroliners? Are you telling me that Bay Area culture should look to North Carolina to learn a little more about what diversity and tolerance look like?

What's your sense of scale here? What does ideological plurality mean to you? What does North Carolina secularism look like? Does North Carolina have a cultural embrace of secularism? Is the bathroom bill a good thermostat for what issues have play in North Carolina?

I would argue that the Bay Area is very fertile ground for diversity. The Bay Area Christians build enclaves of high quality here, bastions of middle-to-high SES wealth, aspirations, and sensibilities. They stand as quality in contrast to the community right outside their legally protected walls.

I would say that the Bay Area is a cutting-edge experiment of secularism and plurality that the world is watching.

He's saying two wrongs don't make a right. How hard is that to understand?

Where did OP say anything about looking to NC as a cultural role model? S/he was making a point that people in SF are intolerant, not that people in NC are tolerant.

If you say that someone is short, it goes to say that you have a comparison model, and that something is tall. Measuring SF as intolerant naturally invites a comparative measure, and here we are discussing how inviting SF is to North Carolina Christians.

I am discussing vice versa by asking mere questions.

It might enrich the discussion to say that it's still illegal for men to have sex with men in North Carolina, it's just unenforceable. North Carolina is also working to say that sodomy laws are not unconstitutional.

The Christians I know around the Bay Area are under no such threat. If anything, churches are enclaves of extreme quality in the Bay Area. It goes to show what a fertile ground this is for diversity.

> If you say that someone is short, it goes to say that you have a comparison model, and that something is tall.

Since you bring it up, I will observe that I found New York to be a lot more tolerant in practice. Statistically, the political leanings are pretty comparable, but somehow people are less strident in practice, even during my tenure at a company with an explicit institutional commitment to social justice causes.

Among other things, I suspect it may simply be that a lot of people come to New York from a lot of places for a lot more reasons than they do San Francisco. But at the end of the day, it's not even really that Bay Area culture is stridently anti-Christian per se. It's just strident about everything. San Francisco is the sort of place where people scrawl anti-parenting graffiti on the changing tables in the restrooms at Whole Foods to shame new parents for their crimes against the planet.

(My circle of acquaintances in London is still quite small, so I hesitate to generalise, but at least in the tech scene, everything is very international.)

> The Christians I know around the Bay Area are under no such threat. If anything, churches are enclaves of extreme quality in the Bay Area. It goes to show what a fertile ground this is for diversity.

1. There's something about describing religion merely in terms of "churches" and "enclaves" as if there's a box around the realm of acceptable religious activity. Telling people that they are permitted to meet in a consecrated building weekly is the start of religious tolerance, vaguely akin to not prosecuting people under sodomy laws.

2. If you don't know someone with a strong negative opinion of AB 569, you're not really in touch with that diversity.

1. Telling people are they permitted to meet... is the start of religious tolerance?

Was there a thought even slightly in your mind that this was even mildly in tension? Like there will be laws on the books striking people from meeting in a Christian church? Like a political momentum is coming?

That churches are allows to operate tax-free, that Churches often operate businesses flagrantly in view of the community but nobody cares (education), and that there isn't any political force close to bringing tension on this matter, shows that churches are not merely tolerated... they are politically privileged.

? Can you think of any other group with this much power?

And in the Bay Area, I think that's clearer. Churches are bastions of middle-to-high SES wealth, revenue, sensibilities, and aspirations. They are places where parents can aspire for their children to be lawyers, doctors, or engineers. Black churches in other areas work differently; worse. I wonder if a lot of Bay Area Christians never attend even one black church.

I cannot believe it when Christians talk about persecution in California inside their churches. It blows my mind. Will there be a Proposition 8 for Muslims? If you're talking about religious diversity, then I understand. I'm promoting secularism, not religion.

Try to think of any group that has this much political privilege, while simultaneously talking about religious oppression, as if they stand for churches as well as mosques.

2. Why are you talking about whether I'm in touch with diversity?

> Was there a thought even slightly in your mind that this was even mildly in tension?

Not in any practical sense, but that's a pretty low bar, isn't it? The point is that even your own comments are loaded with views about how

> Churches often operate businesses flagrantly in view of the community but nobody cares (education)

Look at the world-view implicit there. This is what I am pointing at. You seem to propose that a church doing things outside "be a place for crazy-people to gather" is something like fundamentally overstepping boundaries.

They have a parable for that. "You do not light a lamp, only to place it under a bushel basket."

> I cannot believe it when Christians talk about persecution in California inside their churches.

Imagine that you are working in California and hold what is an altogether-common Christian view: that "the legal vehicle of marriage should be offered only to man-woman couples with the general idea of founding a family."

Now imagine you donate, in secret, to a cause which supports that view (e.g. Proposition 8) — whilst being sensitive of the fact that many people would find this to imply that they are invalid as people, and so you make a point of not breathing a word of it, instead making it a special point in your daily life to treat any person who would be affected by this with respect. Suppose all of your colleagues and all those who interact with you will rush to your defence if you are accused of any impropriety in this regard.

There is a credible case that you should live in fear of being found out, being decried a hateful bigot in public forums, and losing your job. It has been amply demonstrated.

> Black churches in other areas work differently; worse... Will there be a Proposition 8 for Muslims?

The problems faced by black churches or Muslims may be more acutely serious in a variety of cases, and more serious overall as well, but of course this fails to justify any mistreatment of anyone.

Well said. It seems like it's human nature when your side gets the upper hand, you demonize and attack the other.

One of my friends is fairly liberal-oriented and she openly says that the "hateful" right doesn't deserve rights or free speech. Her and her friends motto is "tolerance of the intolerant is an oxymoron". For all her talk of love of humans, animals ( she's a vegan ), etc, she has a terrible anger inside her.

I don't know how we fight against our ugly impulses other than adhering to our principles of equality, free speech and individual rights.

It is a difficult and worrying time we live in because neither side is interested in dialogue and each side accuses the other of be hateful and sequesters themselves in their respective echo chambers which radicalizes them even further.

> "wow, 60% of North Carolina is literally horrible, terrible people."

The worst thing here is the suggestion that there was 100% turnout, instead it was closer to 30%, so only about 20% voted for it. The amendment was found unconstitutional a short time afterwards anyway, finding that marriage is a fundamental right for everyone.

Equality is a fundamental right. There is nothing stopping a state from eliminating marriage under the 10th amendment.

> The worst thing here

The worst thing?

Suppose there is a referendum in, I don't know, Venezuela or something; that's adequately hypothetical. Imagine they put a referendum banning gay marriage on the ballots in Venezuela, and it passes with similar levels of turnout and support. There's a guy in your office from Venezuela who's reading about it, a little bit troubled by the news, and you say, "wow, I guess 60% of Venezuelans are literally horrible terrible people."

Do you think that he is going to be most upset with the precision and accuracy present in the percentage you used, and not, say, the idea that you just casually pass judgement on what might easily be 60% of his family, extended family, friends, former co-workers, schoolmates, acquaintances, and the like? Not with the way you dismiss entirely their value as moral actors, without any further attempts to seek understanding of them as human beings, pre-emptively closing the door on learning about their culture and their values, not even pretending that you've an interest in understanding their lives as flawed, imperfect human beings, implicitly disclaiming all need to sympathize with their troubles? Not with the way that you, hailing from a background of substantial privilege in the San Francisco Bay Area, college-educated, and now happily earning six figures in a software job, feel that it's right and just to look down on these people, some of whom are fighting to live somewhere better than a shack in the woods?

30% is a statistically significant portion. It seems to me very likely that just as many hold the same views in the population.

It's not a statistically random selection though. See the 1936 Literary Digest presidential election poll. (They polled 1/4th of the total number of eligible voters, and of that number almost 1/4th responded. They were off by a 19% absolute polling error.)

https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/wk4/lecture/case1.h...

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