Outrage over Google memo goes too far | Hacker News Reader

Outrage over Google memo goes too far

edition.cnn.com

46 pointsvalentinebm17 comments

"To me, if you read it and are completely outraged or uniformly in favor, then you are part of the problem. If you can read anyone's opinion, spread out over 10 pages, and find nothing with which you agree, then you're almost certainly not thinking. Similarly, if you can read this guy's entire memo and find yourself blindly nodding, then you probably aren't using your brain either."

This.

Come on, that's a "we have something for everyone" demagogue trick that is despicable on its own due to its false premise.

(Ah right, a Barnum statement.)

I guess there is no perfect framework anyway. But some are better than others.

It's funny, reading this column, I can't help thinking of this as a new form of McCarthyism, where if you were seen to be a communist sympathiser, you would be fired and prevented from finding another job in the industry.

Yes, the article makes that exact comparison.

The irony being that the persecutors (liberals) today were the very victims then.

The true irony is that there is no actual persecution.

Yeah, this guy who lost his job has already gotten new offers. This is even considering that this whole incident brought to light the fact that he lied about getting a PhD from Harvard, which is itself grounds for firing the guy.

Funny how history keeps repeating itself.

Took me about two minutes to find out who might be manufacturing this outrage: https://twitter.com/CNN/status/894973242984759297

That's funny although news outlets can have writers and reporters with different opinions

People being fine with news outlets reporting opinions makes me sad.

Don't be sad, just learn how the news works.

Two populations can have the same median and average score on fit for a criterion. However, if they have a different distribution, let's say population A has a 'normal' distribution while population B has a U-Shaped distribution, then after the application of a high pass filter with a cutout above the shared median, you will be left with proportionally higher residue of population B than of population A and unbiased sampling of the result will reflect this. Applying a high-pass filter below the median will show an inverse result. A high-pass filter with cut-off at the median will result in a 50/50 result between A and B remainders. As always, statistics do not say anything about any individual in any of the populations. Statistics does also not address the potential underlying causes of the distribution differences. Using statistical arguments to judge individuals is usually referred to as prejudice or discrimination. Many countries have adopted laws and regulations to curb some select forms of discrimination, while permitting others. In the scenario where a high-pass filter far above the median is applied, while at the same time a 50/50 distribution of the outcome is targeted, the observation that, regardless of the mechanisms employed, members of B are actively discriminated against would be correct. Whether that discrimination is desirable or not is debatable. How distributions are realy shaped to a criterion is measurable in theory, but in reality prone to biases especially in highly 'politicized' environments.

meta - can we avoid linking through to sites with autoplay video?

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