Can you give some example Tweets to where you concluded that these (Gebru in this example) are some of the most toxic individuals you could imagine? All of my searches are of random topics.
https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1278565265135906816?t...
I just cannot imagine calling someone in your company out like that on a public platform, especially for the crime of not speaking. Both are seniors and that behavior seemed anything but, to me anyway.
Of course, two years is far too small a lag to do any real historical analysis of the situation. But it seems like the winds are blowing in a different direction now. I wonder where they will take us. Surely we live in exciting and interesting times.
And the callout was explicitly for (internally) claiming to want to be supportive, but failing to do so externally. It doesn't seem unreasonable in context.
1) Ultimatums in general are not a healthy way to interact with others because they intentionally try to skew power dynamics towards the giver (Do what I say or else...)
2) To then act (upon failure of the ultimatum) as though her employer acted inappropriately implies that she really didn't even give an ultimatum, so much as made a demand that she couched as an ultimatum.
You can agree or disagree about whether she was entitled to act this way (academia is a unique field where toxic behavior like this is often normalized), but I think most people agree that if given the option, they'd prefer to not work with someone who approaches conflict in this way.
[0]https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1334343577044979712?r...
No finer example of false dichotomy than this.
Hers is a textbook example of how not to negotiate. By textbook, I mean literally every textbook on negotiations that I've read.
Ultimatums are a tool of last resort, and they all caution their high failure rate. It also is typically a signal of a weak person.
Aside: can you recommend the best ones? Getting to Yes is all I've read, but it seems a little 'fluffy'. I want something more rigorous, perhaps with game theory and models.
I haven't read any of those. The thing is, those are great for longer term negotiations, but not for short term day to day ones - you don't have the luxury of evaluating things from a game theory/model perspective. Even Getting To Yes is a bit poor in that regard.
^that is certainly more 'toxic' than:
I disagree with your point. I think disagreements and negotiation with an employer are fine (to your point, one can even use the threat of quitting as part of said negotiation), but ultimatums just serve as an opportunity for the giver to imply that they have more power than the receiver, which is 'toxic' behavior
https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k77sxz/d_t...
To give a concrete example of what it is like to work with her I will describe something that has not come to light until now. When GPT-3 came out a discussion thread was started in the brain papers group. Timnit was one of the first to respond with some of her thoughts. Almost immediately a very high profile figure has also also responded with his thoughts. He is not Lecun or Dean but he is close. What followed for the rest of the thread was Timnit blasting privileged white men for ignoring the voice of a black woman. Nevermind that it was painfully clear they were writing their responses at the same time. Message after message she would blast both the high profile figure and anyone who so much as implied it could have been a misunderstanding. In the end everyone just bent over backwards apologizing to her and the thread was abandoned along with the whole brain papers group which was relatively active up to that point. She has effectively robbed thousands of colleagues of insights into their seniors thought process just because she didn't immediately get attention.
The thread is still up there so any googler can see it for themselves and verify I am telling the truth.
The thread in question has been leaked in full IIRC. You can judge for yourself if you do some digging.
> I do believe she actually thinks she is making the world a better place but in reality any interaction with her has been incredibly stressful having to carefully weigh every move made in her presence.
What if what some vocal minority advocates say is correct, and they have to carefully weigh every move they make, throughout their whole lives? If living that carefully is incredibly stressful, what percentage chance of it being the lived experience of minorities in tech justifies someone fighting aggressively to make things easier for minorities?
In this position, some people seem to find a third alternative: be fierce and yet unflinchingly kind. Make a lot of noise, but be charitable with your opponents so that their good side has the opportunity to come out. People change on their own time. We can't force it.
Truth be told, it takes considerable wisdom to pull this off, and it's unfair to expect that of most people. But the alternative is to become increasingly bitter and caustic. That ends up making you feel increasingly self-righteous, but also increasingly isolated (which then feeds the self-righteousness, in a vicious cycle). It doesn't actually help the cause.
She doesn't deserve contempt for falling into that trap. Like all of us, she deserves compassion. But it's okay to point out that her behavior is unhelpful. We, too, should not fall into the double bind of keeping quiet about it versus responding aggressively. We can be kind and firm.