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Comment by fixermark | Hacker News Reader

I'm underwhelmed. In this specific example, the individual in question could've gotten out ahead of the press cycle and explained herself. That she didn't means the beliefs she holds as reported probably are her beliefs, and yeah---that's unacceptable for this role. This isn't thoughtless litmus-testing; this is "Google has a track record of errors regarding its trans userbase and is a company that specifically wants to do better there." If she doesn't see trans people as valid, she's the wrong fit for the role.

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>If she doesn't see trans people as valid, she's the wrong fit for the role.

Surely you can see how that generalises to 'if <decision maker> doesn't hold <my view> then they're not fit to make decisions' and that you're basically demonstrating exactly what's being discussed?

No, because not all ethical view points are equivalent or interchangeable. And we're not talking about any old ethics board, we're talking about an ethics board at Google, which goes out of its way to be trans inclusive.

Thank you for your candid answer.

Can we then sum up your stance in two statements:

1: not all ethics viewpoints are equal, and yours are superior

2: in this instance, you believe that the above opposed viewpoint does not deserve any representation at an ethics board, even if it is represents a significant population of the US and the world?

Is that correct? This is your stance?

I think you're confusing my personal viewpoint with my observation on what Google appears to have done in this specific context.

But for what it's worth, in the specific question of trans individuals, my personal view point is that majorities have been wrong before, and there's no reason to believe they wouldn't be wrong again. This is one of those times. Trans exclusionism doesn't pass the "Do not ban that which is not harmful to others" sniff test for freedom-oriented society.

But again, my personal viewpoint doesn't rule the Google corporation's decisions. However, we shouldn't be surprised when a company that has positioned itself to be clearly trans-inclusive doesn't find somebody who denies the dignity of trans people acceptable on their ethics board.

You are missing the forest for the trees. The commenters above are trying to articulate that ultimately, you are okay with a group of people shutting down a discussion if the views of the participants involved don't align with their own. You seem to have strong opinions regarding how this can apply to discussions about trans issues, which is fine, but you are still saying that if someone doesn't hold an opinion you agree with, then it's perfectly okay to prevent them from participating.

What's the point of a discussion if the only people that are allowed to participate all agree on everything?

I think the trees are really significant here because the other commenters are trying to generalize an instance that can't be generalized without discarding significant details. To give a concrete example of how that over-generalization is incorrect: Kay Cole James hasn't even been shut down. She's welcome to participate in the public discussion of AI and ethics. On her own platform. Over there. Which is what James has done in the past and is welcome to continue to do, without the implicit imprimatur of having her views taken seriously by an ethics board for one of the largest software engineering companies in the world.

Being barred from speaking is entirely different from being denied a seat at someone's table. Or are we also upset that The Heritage Foundation doesn't have Miss Major Griffin-Gracy on their experts panel?

> that's unacceptable for this role

Do we really need to play facts <-> opinion?

In a discussion about ethics you include as many viewpoints possible or it become dishonest immediately.

You are not a priest or something like that. It has taken too long to accept premised authority.

my opinion on this topic is irrelevant. But Google's opinion on who is on Google's AI ethics board matters very much, and it appears some things are settled questions for Google. Such as the humanity and dignity of trans individuals.

humanity? people use this word for PC virtue points. all people already have the same rights. trans people are not denied anything.

I don't accept people who advocate suppressing the rights of trans people as members of society. I'm fine if you judge me for that or think I'm moralizing, because I am. I can live with that.

In almost all political disagreement there is underlying fear or concern being unaddressed. Simply shutting people out only amply it further.

For example, a very common topic in practically all discussion around trans right in the US is the issue around toilets. An obvious solution to it is unisex toilets, but the right never accepted it and the left abandoned it so it is now a centrism political view. When it comes to both the left and the right, it seems to exist a fear that unisex bathroom are more likely to cause crime, through there is no data to actually support it. Thus rather than settle the issue, they fight over it.

If we could convince both side, maybe by using data from countries which overwhelming use unisex bathrooms, we could settle those fears.

You see, this is the difference between us: I do accept you in my society despite my believing that anyone who believes they have the right to determine whether someone should belong or not in their society based solely on their own beliefs is not worthy of the air they breathe.

I do consider myself morally and intellectually superior but I do fight for you to have the same rights as me and everyone else despite that and I welcome your dissent.

trans people are people. they already have rights as people. nothing is being suppressed.

> that's unacceptable for this role.

As determined by who? You?

Being transphobic (or racist or vegetarian or religious or egalitarian or...) is something that people are allowed to be, no matter how much someone else dislikes that.

Right, but it's not appropriate for Google's AI ethics board. It runs counter to the corporate ethos, and that ethos of course has weight on the counsel they retain.

What does it even mean to "see trans people as valid"? What does it mean to see X group of people as valid or invalid? Honestly, I don't understand this statement.

I'm speaking loosely, but by "valid" here I just mean "a full person with human dignity and value." James' Heritage Foundation has come out strongly in favor of the Trump administration's attempts to ban transgender people from military service, which is somewhat incompatible with the view that transgender people are valid.

Why do you care only about transgender people? There are hundreds of larger groups which face far more severe marginalisation in society. Trans people have a net positive social status where they are actively sought by employers. Isn't it time to move on to helping other minorities?

Looking at your comments here, it's starting to look like you have a singular agenda will just support whatever larger movement best aligns to it without considering the moral or fairness implications. Nothing wrong with that I guess, but that is the antithesis of inclusiveness or ethics.

People who identify as Jewish make up only 1.4% of the US population.

Why should 'helping other minorities' be exclusionary. Who is this 'other'? Trans people are NOT actively sought by employers - I've personally witness the exact opposite.

Maybe the issue is that people - including those who use religion as a form of control - have forgotten the Golden Rule.

> There are hundreds of larger groups which face far more severe marginalisation in society. Trans people have a net positive social status where they are actively sought by employers. Isn't it time to move on to helping other minorities?

This sounds like you think we need to serialize helping marginalized groups. Was that the intent?

I'd like to understand the priority order I guess? By all metrics the homeless population is in far more need of attention than the trans community for example.

I'm totally okay with that particular poster continuing to focus on the trans community because of their own personal agenda, but pretending that they represent inclusion or fairness is an outright lie at that point.

"Whataboutism" is a common way to derail a topic and, carried to its limit, suggests that all action is equally futile because there's always some more worthy cause.

I have transgender, transsexual, and transvestite friends who I care deeply about. That's absolutely true. I want the world to be more welcoming to them, because I see the disapproval society heaps upon them as sitting at one of those particular intersections of unfair and unnecessary. If you have groups you also care deeply about, feel free to share.

>In this specific example, the individual in question could've gotten out ahead of the press cycle and explained herself. That she didn't means the beliefs she holds as reported probably are her beliefs,

I call this the "I can't understand why X behaves like this, so the reason must be..." In other words, from complete uncertainty arises certainty.

The reason could be simpler. It could be that she doesn't believe she has to justify every aspect of her existence for a role where it likely doesn't matter. I sure as hell wouldn't discuss my views on classes of people or climate change for a position that requires a stretch of the imagination to be tied to these topics.

These topics matter for a Google AI board. Google uses machine learning for information classification and filtering, and they've had issues in the past with over-broad or misapplication.

"Why Has 'Transgender' Become a Trigger Word For YouTube?" [https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-has-transgender-become-a-t...]

Having someone on the board that is starting from a premise of "That outcome is fine" runs counter to Google's existing stance on the topic.

To put the point user redwood made differently. There is a trend that certain questions have a "right answer" and if you don't believe the "right answer" it is okay to bar you from any and all discourse.

While you might think "Trans rights are worth the sacrifice" the general trend in tech is that there is a "right answer" to same-sex marriage (Brendan Eich), biological differences between gender (James Damore), politics (all the flake Peter Thiel got for supporting Trump) and now trans rights. This trend is worrying because it shuts down discussion.

It is also alienating because if you disagree with one of the "right answers" you can get fired for it, which seems kind of counter to the narrative of diversity and inclusion. This is why you sometimes hear people voice the criticism of "diversity in everything but thought"

I'd personally be really cautious about making the mistake of conflating Damore with other topics. Damore, in particular, was fired legally because there are, in fact, some topics not up for discussion (https://www.wired.com/story/labor-board-rules-google-firing-...). Companies aren't legally free to entertain the question "Maybe women can't be as good at computer engineering as men" without running very quickly into established law that prevents acting as if that hypothesis were true.

(Damore's also a bad example for supporting the hypothesis that holding wrong opinions bans you from discourse, because it appears he's been pretty vocal about his opinions since Google let him go).

If a person were concerned about being fired for expressing a politically-charged viewpoint, I'd personally counsel them to consider whether that viewpoint is worth the price of the job, and if it isn't? Be silent. Silence is free. Making the decision that one's viewpoint is more important than the job is always a decision one is free to make.

I don't know why this thought is so scary to some people. I hypothesize that they're too accustom to operating in a pseudonymous consequence-free world where you can say whatever you want without social censure or personal ramifications, but that's not how most of the world works, and the advent of the Internet didn't change that fact.

I would agree that Damore is not a Shining White Knight of Truth. His actions since being fired are questionable. That said, in most of the Damore discussion I got a sense that there was a "right answer" to most of the questions he posed.

>If a person were concerned about being fired for expressing a politically-charged viewpoint, I'd personally counsel them to consider whether that viewpoint is worth the price of the job, and if it isn't? Be silent. Silence is free. Making the decision that one's viewpoint is more important than the job is always a decision one is free to make.

While this is a valid stance to have, I don't think the left as a whole follows this standard consistently. When there is talk of diversity and inclusion, its normally shown as a higher ideal that the left is ascribing to. So, if it really is I higher ideal, we can change the subject of your idea and see if it still works.

Would you support me giving the below advice to a gay coworker?

f a person were concerned about being fired for expressing a LGBT viewpoint, I'd personally counsel them to consider whether that viewpoint is worth the price of the job, and if it isn't? Be silent. Silence is free. Making the decision that one's ability to be out of the closet is more important than the job is always a decision one is free to make.

To be honest, I am sad to say I have yet to meet a gay person for whom that advice would be necessary or helpful, as they already know; the tradeoff between fitting in and expressing one's inner life openly is something those I've met are depressingly familiar with. :( It's other people (who I hypothesize without evidence perhaps thought the 4chan "rules of the road" applied to the rest of the world) who are finding things work counter to their expectations.

That's not what Damore actually said but he was fired under "creating a hostile workplace" which is up to interpretation of a private company.

What people have a problem with is that you can have people fired for holding political viewpoints in the first place. You seem to be saying that's ok to do.

In most of the US, political affiliation isn't a protected class. There are good reasons this is true; as a country, we generally (a) recognize a difference between private social or economic pressure and censure and legal sanctions or punishment and (b) reserve the right to apply private pressure to, say, hamstring the KKK. The notion that you could find out an employee was a Klansman and be barred from firing them is somewhat abhorrent. Going too far down the road that it's unacceptable to apply private pressure for political beliefs would lead to some fascinating pathologies, such as making strikes or boycotts illegal.

(The civil service is generally a noteworthy and fascinating exception to this rule, as it was learned early in America's history that there was little value gained in gutting the bureaucracy every time executive leadership changed hands. So, for example, the President's cabinet and some top positions are appointed and tend to rotate out upon change of Presidency, but most hired positions in the federal bureaucracy are protected from politically-motivated hiring or firing. But that protection is not extended to the private sector, with some state-specific exceptions. California is a notable exception to the rule, and whether Damore was fired for being conservative has come up. The possibility didn't sway the NLRB's ruling, apparently.

Whether one political point of view or another could make someone likelier to take actions that are in violation of federal employment law is left as an exercise for the reader ;) ).

Those "good reasons" all breaks down when we consider that religion is a protected class.

For example, a person is perfectly free to believe that all unbelievers are less worth as people, but they have no right to believe that people of a specific race are less worth.

There is really no distinction between a religious opinion or a political opinion, but under US law one is protected and the other is not. In Swedish law they are often regarded as identical, which mean that political views do hold some protection against discrimination.

When an opinion---any opinion, including religious---crosses the line into political action, it becomes an action that can have impact on other people. At that point, the people very much have a say regarding the consequences.

The intersection between freedom of religion and the laws of society is one of the hardest interfaces for American law to adjudicate, and yet it does.

It is not that people are concerned about being fired for expressing a politically-charged viewpoint, but rather expressing the wrong side of a politically-charged viewpoint.

That's the thing though---given the interface of the law to the question, there are right and wrong things to say and do if one wishes to keep one's job. Paul Graham wrote an essay about "What you can't say" related to this topic (http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html); he doesn't say anywhere in the essay that people who say the things you can't say don't suffer consequences. And the NLRB has made pretty clear that in Damore's case, he crossed a line.

We have an entire world of academia to debate issues that the private sector can't touch.

>Companies aren't legally free to entertain the question "Maybe women can't be as good at computer engineering as men" without running very quickly into established law that prevents acting as if that hypothesis were true.

It's a good thing that that's not what he said though. Good job on misrepresenting his view point. I find this misrepresentation particularly funny, because he was trying to help, because clearly the way things have been done so far haven't worked. He tried to explain why and that we need a different approach.

>(Damore's also a bad example for supporting the hypothesis that holding wrong opinions bans you from discourse, because it appears he's been pretty vocal about his opinions since Google let him go).

Because most people can simply lose their jobs as though it's nothing? This would effectively create censorship for the vast majority of the population, because they are unable to risk losing their job.

You are literally advocating for censorship here. Imagine if people had held this opinion about homosexuality or transgender in the past? They were not accepted. Imagine if simply advocating or agreeing that people should be allowed to be homosexual would get you fired. I don't think that would've been good for society.

>I don't know why this thought is so scary to some people.

It's scary to people because we understand that we don't have all the answers. There are things we are wrong about and to challenge those ideas we need people to be open to speak their mind. The second reason is that a world built on censorship is a world of fear and fear breeds mistrust.

A world built on completely unrestrained speech, surprisingly, is also a world built on fear. Counter-intuitive, but hypothetically: if a workplace has the freedom to openly declare that while they must act to comply with the law, they never voluntarily hire women because they believe women can't do the job as well as men? We have enough research to know the kind of hostile work environment that creates.

Absolutism in either direction is unacceptable; the particulars are debatable.

(... also: are you really equating the notion "homosexuals or transgendered people don't have fundamental differences that make them worse employees" with "women do have fundamental differences that make them worse employees?" I'm calling foul on your false equivalence.)

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