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Comment by AinderS | Hacker News Reader

Simple. Workplace complaints and management priorities have changed, and Dilbert followed.

When Dilbert started, the government wasn't yet training employees how to "interrupt whiteness" [1], or Coca-Cola how to "be less white" [2], or Cigna simply forbidding hiring whites [3], nor did academia require mandatory diversity pledges for new hires and promotions [4]. Dilbert is doing what we are told art is supposed to do - hold a mirror to society. Do you like what you see?

[1] https://www.city-journal.org/seattle-interrupting-whiteness-...

[2] https://www.newsweek.com/coca-cola-facing-backlash-says-less... (Note that in all the "debunkings" of this story, Coca-Cola never claims the presentation wasn't shown by their hired diversity experts as part of its diversity training. Merely that Coca-Cola the company didn't require those specific slides. But the slides are completely in-line with rhetoric championed by diversity experts routinely hired to train employees.)

[3] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/cigna-critical-race-...

[4] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-universitys-new-loyalty-oat...

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It really makes me wonder what the common experience is for others not just in tech but Corporate America in general. I myself have run into anti-white and anti-male phenomena, unconscious bias pseudoscience training, diversity pledges, and so on, as have now others in my peer group. Dilbert's commentary has so far been entirely appropriate based on my experience, hence it's puzzling to me when people think there's something particularly conservative about being concerned or critical about these societal changes. Are said changes overblown? Do these people merely think that employees or companies taking positions on "whiteness" see it as totally normal and as something no one would have an issue with? It's just odd to me.

As a consultant who sees a lot of different big company cultures, and even done some work specifically on diversity stuff: They’re overblown.

I’ve yet to see anything noteworthy. I’m convinced the stupid stuff is more or less confined to California. I’m sure people will be eager to show their anecdotes otherwise but I’m not really interested in that.

>I’ve yet to see anything noteworthy. I’m convinced the stupid stuff is more or less confined to California

That's cold comfort to people living in california, like scott adams.

Scott Adams has lost his marbles. He’s got bigger problems. But sure, I think leaving California is a good idea for many people.

The man hasn't worked a corporate job since the 90s by his own account. His perception of the current corporate culture seems to be based on media reports and grievance anecdotes.

It is VERY clear that he spends most of his time at home making content. This isn't a dig, this is an observation about the amount of time he spends live-streaming from his home.

> His perception of the current corporate culture seems to be based on media reports and grievance anecdotes.

There is zero doubt in my mind that he has a full inbox of anecdotes every day.

As a consultant you wouldn't see it. As an employee experiencing the day to day it usually comes in sporadic waves from HR depending on whatever cause they are pushing. I'm speaking from experience working for companies on the East coast, Midwest, and West coast.

Not a consultant but my experience mirrors yours. Among my friends, several of whom work typical corporate jobs, nobody has experienced anything beyond basic diversity training that would be tame by the standards of the 90s. The only real new thing is just respecting people's pronouns but that strikes me as basic decency and professional conduct.

Another anecdote: I have seem women be more confident in asking about leadership, internal promotions, and putting management pressure on ensuring that they are represented in leadership. Once a startup I worked at got to a certain size where we had 5+ teams or 2+ managers-of-managers, women started to ask why there are 0 women leads. And honestly when you get to multiple teams and multiple levels of management thats probably a pretty solid question to at least ask, even if the answer is a totally normal "it just hasn't worked out that way for now".

Here's an active job opening from a University in Canada, seeking a Research Chair in Experimental Physics. This stuff is everywhere. Even in science.

"Candidates must be from one or more of the following equity-seeking groups to apply: women, persons with disabilities, Indigenous peoples, and racialized groups"

https://www.universityaffairs.ca/search-job/?job_id=58317

Why don't they target income? Or wealth.

Would just seem fair that candidate must have less than median wage or net wealth in past let's say 3 years.

Socioeconomic diversity is almost certainly the best way to improve societal outcomes. But it’s hard to track and is less outwardly visible.

Ok? Some diversity hiring efforts are hardly an outrage.

> Dilbert's commentary has so far been entirely appropriate based on my experience, hence it's puzzling to me when people think there's something particularly conservative about being concerned or critical about these societal changes

Isn't it pretty much by definition (social) conservative?

> Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional social institutions and practices

> In political science, a reactionary or a reactionist is a person who holds political views that favour a return to the status quo ante, the previous political state of society, which that person believes possessed positive characteristics absent from contemporary society

> Progressivism is a way of thinking that holds that it is possible through political action for human societies to improve over time. As a political movement, progressivism purports to advance the human condition through social reform based on advancements in science, technology, economic development and social organization

You might disagree with the changes being made, but (social) progressives believe they're making them for the betterment of humans. (Social) conservatives want to stop them, (social) reactionaries want to go back to "the good old times" where the woman kept the house etc.

It's pretty much textbook definitions.

Under which definition does the belief that you should be able to criticize and push back against changes you believe will be detrimental but still believe that other changes will improve human societies over time belong?

You can do anything if you control the definitions:

Ethno-nationalists want to progress into a world where conflict is avoided by clear borders between naturally antagonistic groups, while globalists want to revert to a time before clear nations and borders, to plunge the world into perpetual ethnic conflict, such as what happened in India and Africa after colonialists drew borders without regard for which groups lived where.

Anti-immigrationists want to progress to strict enforcement of the US border, while pro-immigrationists want to maintain the status quo of loose enforcement and origin-agnostic immigration policy that has been in place since 1965.

Ukraine wants to maintain the nationalist, separatist status quo of an independent country, while Russia wants to progress towards a larger, unified, multicultural whole.

See? Easy.

This sleight of hand would work, if only it weren't for the constantly backward-looking statements on the part of the "progressors" in your examples.

The definitions are not the only thing that matter: how those who propose particular social transformation (or lack thereof) talk about those changes (particularly w.r.t. history or an imagined future) is just as important.

I see. So for example, India's government revoking Kashmir's independence and imposing demographic change on it [1] is progressive, and resisting it is conservative. Likewise, unifying China is progressive, while ethno-religious resistance by the Uyghur's is conservative. The Republicans efforts to advance from a country of immigrants, to a country of natives, is progressive, while Democrats wishing the US remains a country of immigrants is conservative.

But these are just a handful of counter-examples, sorry, exceptions, sorry, sleight-of-hand. Add more epicycles to your theory of how your ideological opponents are just irrationally evil and want to bring back all the worst parts of the past, and all these exceptions will be explained away, and we shall see that the Earth stands still.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/08/08/kashmirs-new...

If my ideological opponents say "We want to bring back the past", I generally take them at their word.

If they say "We think this is a better way to move forward" and somehow manage to avoid giving the impression that they really just want to try to recreate some imagined version of the past, I generally give them the benefit of the doubt.

"We want to bring back the past regarding ecosystem integrity. We want to move forward with unsustainable fishing and oil drilling."

Because they don't say "bring back the past wholesale" - you are twisting their words. What they say is "bring back the past in these specific cases, and not others". But a motivated listener can always find ways to misunderstand.

> But a motivated listener can always find ways to misunderstand.

No more questions, your honor.

In a reductionist sense, sure, to be critical of particular de novo political views is conservative. Yet no one would call progressives conservative or reactionary for opposing the overturning of Roe v Wade. Are progressives being conservative when they oppose nuclear energy? But somehow it's commonly recognized as being conservative to be critical of policies that single out particular groups (the original intent notwithstanding).

That is what I find peculiar. At least in the United States, being "conservative" or "progressive" and their various synonyms aren't really defined strictly by Miriam-Webster but by the zeitgeist.

> You might disagree with the changes being made, but (social) progressives believe they're making them for the betterment of humans.

Most people believe this of their own policies, not just progressives. That's a very unhelpful way of describing these two poles, as is relying on the dictionary.

We have a cultural problem in the West that is underpinning all of this. The emperor has no clothes and the sane rational ones are too afraid to talk about it because of the costs.

oh no the portentious "other problem" everyone is too scared to address

I don't know what you are referring to.

> We have a cultural problem in the West that is underpinning all of this.

And what is that, pray tell?

....being worried about societal change is definitionally conservatism, did you mean something else by that?

How is being worried about society objectively changing for the worst - like excluding you for your gender or the color of your skin - conservatism?

Wanting to be truly equal is progressive.

Because the definition of the word conservatism is "commitment to traditional values and ideas with opposition to change".

If you're worried about society changing, there is no definition of the word "progressive" you fulfill unless it's your tax bracket. Words have meaning, even in the mouths of sophists.

So it was conservative to worry about the rise of Trump and the Alt Right?

It's conservative to wish Roe had remained on the books?

> Words have meaning, even in the mouths of sophists.

Indeed.

> So it was conservative to worry about the rise of Trump and the Alt Right?

No, because as we saw in the 1930 and 40s this strain of virulent fascism is not new, but sadly quite traditional - this was the conservatism bubbling through in reaction to modern liberalism.

> It's conservative to wish Roe had remained on the books?

If Roe had been an office worker they wouldn't have even qualified for early retirement, that's how briefly those rights existed - then reactionary conservatism struck to return us to the good old days.

If to make a "point" about history you have to limit your discussion to things that changed only in the last 30-50 years, you might have an alternate agenda.

> this strain of virulent fascism is not new

To the world? No. To recent American politics? Yes, very much so.

There is no problem with taking the long perspective in your definitions, so long as you are consistent about it, but:

> If you're worried about society changing, there is no definition of the word "progressive"

> To recent American politics? Yes, very much so.

It really isn't. George Wallace ran in 1968. David Duke ran in 1988.

American home-grown fascism is a historical fact.

> If you're worried about society changing, there is no definition of the word "progressive" you fulfill unless it's your tax bracket.

If you saw the "progressive" movement take a turn toward something you consider immoral, like say, eugenics, would you consider yourself non-progressive for opposing it?

Or does "progressive" include some kind of moral judgement, which leads to a "no true Scotsman" situation, where "only social changes which I personally consider morally good can be considered progressive, anything else is conservative or regressive"?

Determining something as progressive requires a more historical perspective - for an alarmingly high percentage of our history as social creatures, eugenics were accepted as science (or divine judgment). It's only in the last century that we have started to unpick those ideas as repugnant, and it's not a universal opinion.

If a progressive movement started advocating eugenics, they would be advocating a return to previous social mores - that's conservatism in a nutshell. Just because that movement also happens to hold "woke" ideas doesn't change the direction they want to carry progress.

This isn't a moral gotcha for anyone who has more historical memory than a goldfish - the problem is that most people don't seem to care to, so they come up with contrived examples like yours bc they can't keep the thread of human history for longer than a generation.

> eugenics were accepted as science

This is exactly my point.

By your definition, the “progressive” view is the one that doesn’t try to keep society the same. At some point, eugenics came around, and the world now thought this was a good way to progress. Opposing this adoption at the time, according to your definitions, would make someone a conservative.

My point is that opposing certain directions that society may be moving toward doesn’t need to be viewed as “conservative” or “anti progress.” There are certain things, like eugenics, that we can preemptively say, or should have potentially said are not a good idea. We don’t need change for its own sake.

I think that's why you and the person you replied to are disagreeing. You're using "conservative" as the definition of the word itself, i.e. inclined against changing the status quo for better or worse, while the person you replied to is using "conservative" to refer to the meaning that the word has taken on with regard to American politics.

To your example about them therefore not being "progressive", I think they are saying, "I wish society would not change in that direction, I wish it to change in this direction instead." Which would be progressive.

> Because the definition of the word conservatism is "commitment to traditional values and ideas with opposition to change".

The word conservatism is a descendant from the latin root conservare which means to preserve. What should be preserved is not necessarily defined. And preserving the functioning of a society or the value of truth[1] is something everybody interested in a modern and essentially free livestyle should be interested in. Conservatism as a word does not imply opposition to every kind of change, but that is often claimed, as my the previous poster did. Although for some self-proclaimed conservatives, that is certainly true.

A progressive movement that is in favor of race-based, age-based, sex-based or ideology-based hiring instead of merit-based hiring is repeating some of the errors of early communist countries. And they too will learn, like so many generations before, that it is far simpler to destroy a society than to create a better one.

On the other hand to preserve the western achievements, the western societies have to change, e.g. because of the climate or because of growing dangers from the outside. And they have to change because younger generations want to change some things. That is nothing new. New, is only the magnitude of the loudness of the wish for change.

[1]: And the importance of truth and honesty is under attack from the political left as much as from the political right.

Let's say that some country didn't have the Sharia in their tradition, and that a new social movement proposed to adopt it. By your definition, those opposing that proposed change should be defined "conservatives", even if, for example, they were opposing it to conserve women's rights in the country.

The United States used to have a strong union culture in various industries, which has been worn down tremendously over the past century. Throughout that time many people in various places on the left end of the political spectrum have expressed their concern about that change. Is that conservatism?

No, they only call it that when it's an opinion they don't like.

> Is that conservatism?

No, because it doesn't rest on the fundamental assumption that the past was right, nor the corresponding political will to return to "the way things were."

History is a record of advances and regressions. Referencing history does not fundamentally result in a conservative political outlook; what makes an outlook conservative is the one-dimensional (and frequently reactionary) analysis that things must go back to how they were, or as closely as possible.

My comment addressed gingerrr's assertion that "being worried about societal change" is the defining point of conservatism. I provided a counterexample; of course adherents of any ideology would be concerned about changes that indicate increasing currency of a competing ideology.

> what makes an outlook conservative is the one-dimensional (and frequently reactionary) analysis that things must go back to how they were, or as closely as possible

I'm wary of any attempt to sum up an ideology in a one-liner, since they tend to be lossy and dismissive. Your definition lines up more neatly with anarcho-primitivism than conservatism (at least modern American conservatism, with which I'm most familiar).

In general people live their lives based on what they are convinced is ethically right, they aren't brainless automatons following a simple algorithm of "old good, new bad" or "new good, old bad"

> Your definition lines up more neatly with anarcho-primitivism than conservatism (at least modern American conservatism, with which I'm most familiar).

Anarcho-primitivism is a discrete variant of the overarching conservative phenomenon: when an-prims go say "go back" they mean a specific and particularly reactionary set of social transformations. This doesn't mean that ordinary conservatives don't desire social regression; it just makes them not as openly reactionary as the most reactionary social conservatives.

You're right, of course: any short and pithy summary of an ideology is going to have gaps. American conservatism is "funny" in the sense that it admits of additional gaps: there is a significant (although continually diminishing) population of "purely fiscal" conservatives who have dominated American intellectual conservatism, for example. And this is true for progressive movements as well, particular in the context of labor.

This is an interesting take on conservatism. I suppose it must be a fairly common take among people who consider themselves progressive, and helps makes sense of some things I've observed recently.

I consider myself generally conservative but would sum up my outlook more along the lines of "change isn't necessarily/automatically good" than "the past was right". Chesterton's Fence etc.

Nobody thinks that change is inherently good. Change is a product of time, not a moral dimension.

I don't consider myself a progressive per se, but I think their framing would be something like this: change, if not good in itself, frequently begets opportunities to make things better.

Similarly I would doubt that anyone actually thinks that the past was good simply because it came before the present. The desire to return to "the way things were" is born of a critique of specific aspects of "the way things are", combined with a sense that tradition is likely to embody hard-earned wisdom that may not be immediately apparent or perfectly defensible by abstract argument.

I disagree. I have a good friend who is conservative about application of government (a 'fiscal conservative'), and very socially progressive. She is a registered Republican, and considers herself a "conservative".

While she is actively dedicated to social progress, (supports gay marriage, believes in the right to abortion, etc.), she feels we will be most successful at achieving this goal with leadership who prioritize fiscal conservativism.

I suspect that many Republicans are in this camp.

That is, quite frankly, an insane position.

How do you come to that conclusion? The field of politics has to find answers for many different question: e.g. fiscal conservatism vs. more debt-based spending, gay-marriage vs. no gay-marriage. Why do you consider it insane to agree with one party on one topic and with another party on another topic? Requiring full commitment to one true party line seems to be the insane position to me.

Two reasons.

First, supporting the Republican party for fiscal reasons necessarily means that you're supporting their social positions as well. To paraphrase the old line, what do you call someone who only voted for the Nazis because they supported their economic policies? A Nazi.

In other words, the social policies of a party, especially insofar as they affect the repression of minority groups, a permanent and undeniable stain upon any degree of economic progress that they may also create through their policies.

To put it yet another, more personal way: If you were in a group that the Republicans have targeted with hateful rhetoric or legislation in the last 20 years (gay, trans, Muslim, Latino, etc.), would you forgive me for voting for them if I rationalized it by saying "Well, I think their policies are better for the economy. Sorry that you can't get married / are facing discrimination in your daily life. Thoughts and prayers!"

Second, the data does not support the theory that Republicans are better for the economy. Under Republicans, GDP on average does far worse, recessions are more likely, employment goes down, debt and deficit go up... by just about any metric, they are simply not very good at governing the economy.

So if someone says they vote for Republicans for economic reasons, it's because they like the Republican lines on 'lower taxes' and 'personal responsibility' at a dogmatic level, not because they've done any kind of thoughtful analysis.

American political terminology is often weird because of the two-party system. It's better to consider the conservative – progressive, (economic) left – right, and collectivist – liberal (or libertarian) three independent axes. The position you describe would then be progressive right liberal.

What is her position on the Trump tax cuts? Bush's wall Street bailout / TARP? The trillions of COVID-19 aid passed by Trump?

Anyone who is actually a fiscal conservative knows that the concept is completely dead today.

If I have it right, she feels a great deal of frustration and betrayal. But apparently not enough to give up hope that her idea is the best course to achieve progress for society.

But all the true fiscal conservatives have basically been kicked out of the Republican party.

Liz Cheney for speaking out against Trump. Paul Ryan for compromising too much. Jon Huntsman for having adopted Chinese kids.

I too am a fiscal conservative who largely identifies as Republican. Alas, it's very hard for me to say that today's Republicans represent me. No one actually tries to balance the budget and it's all about incredible social wars that kind of doesn't matter. (Like complaining about the number of lesbians in modern cartoons or whatever).

The fiscal conservatives that speak up fail the Republican purity test and are consistently kicked out. Literally all of them.

The few remaining fiscal conservatives have converted into cult of Trump, like Graham, to keep their voters placated.

Wouldn't Rand Paul count as a fiscal conservatives who hasn't been kicked out? And how is Liz Cheney a fiscal conservative? Granted that I don't know enough about US politics to be sure - but isn't Dick Cheney super corrupt. I'm not sure if fiscal conservativism counts if the government is saving money on social programs so they could send it to Halliburton instead.

It's impossible to ask one side to balance the budget without punishing the other side for not balancing the budget. The voters just don't care. The connection between poor policies and their consequences are so drawn out that they've practically been severed.

> Wouldn't Rand Paul count as a fiscal conservatives who hasn't been kicked out?

Rand Paul happily soaks up district money while performatively voting against things that help other people and in 2021 signed onto a deal to hand Israel a bunch of money for Iron Dome. If he's a "fiscal conservative", I am the Queen of France.

Rand certainly isn't Ron, but, like the rest of the country, he's in a situation where voters have to choose between 2+2=4.75 and 2+2=purple.

If you listen to him talk, he's the purple guy.

> Wouldn't Rand Paul count as a fiscal conservatives who hasn't been kicked out?

Rand Paul is more of an isolationist libertarian. America First was really his slogans, before Trump made it cool. Alas, its becoming more obvious that he's a stooge for the Russians these days.

> It's impossible to ask one side to balance the budget without punishing the other side for not balancing the budget.

Name one time under Republican rule that the budget became more balanced. It literally has never happened in our lifetimes.

Regan cut taxes and raised the deficit. Bush cut taxes and raised the deficit. Trump cut taxes and raised the deficit. They're the party of tax cuts, not of fiscal responsibility.

Fiscal Conservatism is just a talking point for Republicans. Actually, it ain't even a talking point anymore. There's nothing fiscally conservative about "build a wall and make Mexico pay for it", complaining about gay people on TV, or anything going on with Dilbert (bringing us back to topic).

Dilbert, the comic strip, is simply a reflection of today's conservative sphere. Republicans want a culture war, that's their #1 focus.

I just thought your list of fiscal conservatives to be quite odd. And isolationist would be more fiscally conservative when compared to the expense of running a world empire.

I'm not here defending Republicans, I consider both parties to be controlled by big businesses.

My point is the electorate isn't going to vote for proper fiscal conservatives so it's a bit ridiculous to expect politicians to be fiscal conservatives. Maybe if the US dollar loses the reserve status and the connection between policy and consequence tightens then maybe after an economic disaster the public may want fiscal conservatism.

> My point is the electorate isn't going to vote for proper fiscal conservatives

My point is that fiscal conservatives don't exist. You have one side just cutting taxes, and the other side ballooning the budget. But at least the other side raises taxes and kinda sorta gets closer to balance.

Have they ever really existed in relevant numbers? Is fiscal conservatism more of a guiding concept than a flag?

It is a guiding principle for conservatives - humans who, like everyone, also have other guiding principle which often conflict and force compromise.

The Right thinks it is focused on the less moderate Left, which makes for a less moderate Right, which makes for a less moderate Left, while the moderate Left thinks it is focused on the less moderate Right, which makes for a less moderate Left, which makes for a less moderate Right, which makes some want to shake it all about.

Yes, and do you see how roughly the same thing can be said about the Democrat party, in that most people have a hard time identifying with either party? At the end of the day, people flip to 1 or 0.

Would it be far from the truth to say that we've just been through two election cycles in which Republicans who voted for Trump probably didn't "support" Trump, and Democrats who voted for Clinton or Biden probably didn't "support" either?

How's that working out for her? If she has a functioning uterus than I hope she has backup plan for what to do when the government dictates her gynecological care.

> I suspect that many Republicans are in this camp.

They are delusional. At this point thinking that "fiscal conservativism" is coming anytime soon is about as rational as believing that the rapture is right around the corner. They should open their eyes and see what is actually happening in their country right now, not keep praying in front of the photo of Ronald Reagan in their personal shrine.

Plain old racism/xenophobia and sexism was very common and still is to some extent, though it is not as socially acceptable as it used to be. So I find it odd to only consider anti-white bias you encountered while ignoring any discrimination in the other direction. I strongly doubt it does not exist.

There is certainly stuff under the diversity banner, especially when done primarily with PR/image concerns that reasonable people can object to. But there are also real issues with discrimination, and efforts to address that are a good idea in my opinion.

To highlight an inconsistency in a system isn't ignoring the system's other problems. If anything, it compliments a broader perspective rather than a narrow one. I don't think a lot of people here are suggesting that there aren't other forms of racism and sexism taking place.

Calling these concerns “conservative” is a brilliant tactical play by progressives to use Trump-era polarization as a weapon against moderate liberals. Because nobody left of center wants to be associated with Trump, moderates will fold in the face of such criticism instead of push back.

I've taken unconscious bias training. I thought it was very good. I remember catching myself in some meeting talking over a quiet woman who had probably been wanting to talk for quite a while. My brain remembered the training, I shut up, and let her participate in the meeting as an equal. Without the training, I would probably be silently making people miserable. Now I don't do that, as much.

You use the word "pseudoscience" to describe the training, so it's unlikely that you're receptive to this anecdote, but just wanted to share my perspective. Being cognizant of your flaws is the first step in fixing them. I really don't think some training along the lines of "hey, you might be doing this without noticing" is the worst thing in the world. At worst, you waste 45 minutes you were probably going to spend arguing with people on HN. At best, you might make yourself more enjoyable to work with. To me, it's worth the gamble!

> You use the word "pseudoscience" to describe the training, so it's unlikely that you're receptive to this anecdote

Not the poster you replied to but it's possible that the quality of training was different

It was considerate of you to do that, on the other hand adults also need to learn to be assertive to succeed in social aspects of work. If you were cutting her off or not paying attention to a raised hand, sure try to change that. But otherwise you are not doing her any favors for her long term career growth, where she will have to participate in meetings with confident, knowledgeable and busy people focused on work rather than psychology.

“Other people in the world are inconsiderate assholes, therefore I should be an inconsiderate asshole to help my coworkers prepare for the inevitable. And if they can’t handle it, too bad.”

By the same token do you cheat at every game with your children to teach them the cold truth about society?

This is a very uncharitable and needlessly aggressive take.

The recommendation of «you shouldn’t let your quieter coworkers speak unless they interrupt their way into the conversation in meetings because that will set them up for failure when their future coworkers talk right over them» is a pretty uncharitable and needlessly aggressive attitude toward those quieter coworkers.

Raising one's hand to speak is generally taught in kindergarten and future coworkers will likewise expect that everyone mastered this basic skill. These days there are raise hand buttons in video conference software. When raising hand is not applicable, a quick "excuse me" is not considered a big imposition on either current speaker or person who wishes to speak next.

I used to be too shy to talk on the phone, coming to US from a country where I only had phone conversations with relatives by coming to a communication center at time prearranged via a telegram. I got over that and if someone accommodated me instead, they wouldn't have done me any favors, because things like this are generally expected and accommodations will not always be available.

I certainly don't give children participation awards for losing games played by the rules. There are rules for speaking in meetings, and they don't include passive-aggressive silence with no indication that you would like to speak. If you gave an indication through words or gestures, then yes you should be given a chance in a reasonable time.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Listening to the loudest voice in the room is often not the heuristic that finds the most valuable contributions.

And that is undoubtedly part of why "brainstorming" has been found not to be the best way to share ideas.

That's a non-sequitur, there should be only once voice in a room at a time and everyone should know how to request to speak next, for example by raising a hand. If people are choosing to not make contributions when they can, it's on them.

Why is it not also an option to change the way the workplace works? As another commenter already posted, assertiveness doesn't equal knowledge or importance. If our society tends to prioritize things like assertiveness in men and tends to see these characteristics as negative in women, AND if we see these things as necessary and good in the workplace, how doesn't this disadvantage women? Why do women have to change for the workplace, why can't we change workplaces to be better suited to people of different characters?

Because in a meeting of 20 people, it's not practical to constantly worry about people who want to speak but give zero indication that this is the case. Approximately nobody prefers passive-aggressive women to assertive women. If men get away with being pushy and rude more than women, that's a valid problem to address, but assertiveness has nothing to do with these things. Nobody is put off by a raised hand or a quick "excuse me".

Yep that can be good. Sometimes.

I can't agree with you that this kind of training is very good, however. It is often very political and propagandist.

But I value taking good things from everywhere. E.g. I am not a Christian but I know there are some good things in their teachings as well

> It is often very political and propagandist

I don't get the "political" angle - what's political about getting people to think about others? maybe it's a bit heavy-handed in a corporate-do-goody-virtue-signaling way, but "political"? it's not like you're doing workshops arguing what the upper marginal tax rate should be

It’s entirely possible that all of the following are true:

0 - Many groups have historically and currently been victims of bias.

1 - Good anti-bias training makes us better managers and colleagues.

2 - Psychology research is on much weaker footing (replicability) than most of us would like.

3 - One of the quickest ways to limit your career at a company is to point out when they are going overboard on Diversity and Inclusion initiatives and policies.

This. I believe in bias busting, but when I created a random account to anonymously share cases of blatant illegal discrimination (not accepting resumes based on gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation) but because it was against the minority I was downvoted

"Unconscious bias" is a really strange thing to call pseudoscience. What would it even mean for unconscious bias to be pseudoscience? That believing oneself to be unbiased is absolute proof of being unbiased?

There's unconscious bias, which is real (that really is a job of the human brain, actually), and then there's unconscious bias testing and training. Like I mentioned elsewhere, I've got ~ 9 minutes until an interview I'll have to attend for multiple hours so I can't adequately respond, but my perspective on unconscious bias is one of skepticism that said bias can be reliably tested for and whether the training is free of negative side effects.

What would it even mean for a human to be completely unbiased? We're big bags of heuristics with a thin skin of pseudo-rationality on top. We can remind ourselves to check our reasoning and maybe we'll make a habit of it but we can't unpick a lifetime of happenstance learning mixed with eons of evolved neural circuitry. We'd be better off just reminding everyone to try to be kind, have empathy and make a point of using good manners.

> You use the word "pseudoscience" to describe the training, so it's unlikely that you're receptive to this anecdote

Au contraire... I wish I had time to rebut this but I've got some interviews slated for the next 3 hours. I appreciate your perspective, though.

I guess the only argument I can come up with of at the short moment I have left is that similar arguments are made about religion in general, even ones that the mainstream would consider to be "cults." This doesn't actually debate the point you made about my pseudoscience claim, but what I'm saying is that I might agree with you in that sense you were describing regardless of whether unconscious bias training is scientifically valid or not. (although I think there are other problems with it even if some good can come of it)

Some people also have insights from their astrological readings.

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and again. Doesn't mean it's less blind.

> I remember catching myself in some meeting talking over a quiet woman who had probably been wanting to talk for quite a while.

As a man who used to be very quiet/timid, and get talked over constantly, I'm fairly unsympathetic to this specific anecdote as having anything at all to do with bias.

Quiet people get talked over. Period.

If they only started noticing quiet women, but not quiet men, it sounds like the "unconscious bias training" just trained into them a new unconscious bias!

I work at FANG.

My manager had director level approval to hold out job openings to women only. They same manager complained that they were sick of “men and Asian women” making up the team. They asked me for resumes but said they only wanted non-male, non-white or LGBTQ resumes. They were recognized as a diversity champion in the company.

If this is in the U.S., surely this is a violation of federal law. And if you complied you are an accomplice. I would document everything and report it to the feds promptly, to cover your ass.

I feared retaliation, but I documented at least part of it. When I went to report it seems the statute of limitations expired. And yes, this is USA.

You acted wisely. I’m glad the statute of limitations expired without any consequesnces.

I guess the situation is probably not “overblown” in general. Here is a job advertisement for the University of Guelph in Ontario that was posted a couple of days ago. It’s for a position in experimental physics. It explicitly says that no white people need apply:

https://www.universityaffairs.ca/search-job/?job_id=58317

Perhaps this is legal in Canada; surely not in the U.S.?

Two projects I was trying to start at a FANG company were cancelled during inception because they were unlikely to meet diversity quotas. Not enough women, hispanics and african americans. My sub-field is so dominated by men that it would have been impossible to meet the quota without drastically lowering standards to the point the project wouldn't be viable anyway. It was a no-win situation and one of the main reasons I had to leave the FANG company and start my own small company.

Fortunately for me my competition are multi-nationals and they all went through the same diversity quota overhaul. I think their management just wanted more compliant cheaper devs. Big companies have a lot of inertia but they got so inefficient that they're now taking forever to come out with new tech. I'm slowly stealing their customers.

I kind of agree with this view. The problem I see Dilbert running into is the comic previously was aimed at corporate culture and specific jobs and stereotypes. In a way, it was punching up at more powerful, impersonal forces.

Now, he appears to be punching down at people less powerful than him (individually) who have been fighting to get recognized.

Despite these rather nasty policies governments and companies have implemented, it hasn't fixed much and just polarized the issue.

And now Dilbert come in targeting harmful and ineffective policies and hitting a lot of innocent people in the crossfire.

I would say the fact that companies have so over-rotated on this stuff means he is still punching up. It’s no longer a marginalized position when corporations are now codifying culture war issues as part of their ideology.

I said he is trying to punch up, but he's missing the mark and coming off as punching down. :)

There's definitely a perception that people forcing diversity training, pronoun protocols, etc. are in positions of power over regular employees.

Perhaps attacking people in previously marginalized groups is punching down, but attacking HR DEI enforcers is definitely punching up.

This is my take.

Personally - I think Scott Adams is more than a little bit batshit insane, but I certainly don't think he's punching down in the strips presented here.

In the strips shown in the article it's easy to see who he's punching at. If it was up at corporate HR policy, we would see Catbert. Instead we see Dilbert's peers.

Dilbert works by personifying roles. It doesn't do much in the way of role subtext.

I disagree - it's very clearly trying to mock the policies that allow this kind of behavior.

Those policies aren't coming from the peers.

Dilbert's very clear on its role personification. That's what makes the comic work.

It's how Dilbert is every engineer, PHB is every clueless boss, and Wally is every elder peer, Asok is every junior peer. That's what makes the comic relatable. It also, as the article points out, what provides constraints to these characters as well.

If it was mocking HR policy, then it would be signified with Catbert. It's not. It's very simple.

The issues themselves aren't punching down, but the way he's using the characters is. Imagine Alice deciding to falsely accuse the PHB of sexual harassment to get rid of him. Or Asok becoming a manager and only promoting members of his caste. I feel like this is like that.

I transitioned at work, and I've tried really hard not to be this character. I asked people to use my new name and pronouns but never complained to HR if they didn't. I made an effort to be as friendly and hardworking as possible, so that my conservative coworkers wouldn't see me through the lens of the "culture wars" like this that they're fed. This kind of comic was the stereotype I faced.

It worked for me. I changed peoples' minds, got respect for being reliable no matter my looks, and eventually started passing so nobody remembers I'm trans anymore.

> eventually started passing so nobody remembers I'm trans anymore.

Exactly, so by presenting in a particular way, you were able to get people to use the pronouns you wanted. I think this is the key to why people find pronoun declaration so meaningless — pronouns are meant as a shortcut chosen by the speaker to refer to another person based on who that person appears to be. Making pronouns into a declaration breaks a fundamental piece of language functionality for very little gain.

What happens to non-passing trans people then?

That doesn't track.

When people who are and have been marginalized, after centuries of fighting, finally get some of the establishment on their side, it doesn't suddenly become "punching up" to mock and satirize the efforts to get them the recognition, opportunity, and equity they deserve, even if said punches are, on the surface, aimed at individuals with positions of power.

I think you have an interesting point.

I think to explore this further we'd need a clearer definition of "punching up".

To me, at least, the difference between what Scott Adams is doing and a good-faith definition of "punching up" is that he's trivializing genuine issues faced by marginalized people, and trying to make it all about him (the way most things have been about well-off white men for so much of Western history).

I think that if you really wanted to make a workplace comic that skewers HR departments' often hamfisted attempts to promote diversity (which is often because they themselves don't really care about it, and have just been given a mandate), you need to center the people with the real issues, rather than the ones who are being mildly inconvenienced by it.

Have a trans employee complaining that HR is happy to jump down people's throats for accidental misgendering, but still hasn't actually processed their name change paperwork and informed IT, so the intranet is still deadnaming them.

Have an employee of color upset that they've plastered black, Hispanic, and Asian people all over the company's website, but he's just gotten passed up for promotion for the third time to a white guy who worked there less than a year and who does nothing but kibitz all day.

Have a Jewish employee angry that the company has branded kippahs that they give out alongside their other swag, but won't give the Jewish High Holidays off as paid holidays.

In general, play up the empty tokenism, while emphasizing what's really important. (Making it also funny is left as an exercise for the reader; I don't claim to be a comic.)

How do you target harmful and ineffective policies without hitting a lot of innocent people though?

Affirmative action is a harmful and ineffective policy, but if you speak out against it, you are racist. I'm not here to argue whether you agree with that or not, just using it as an example of something you simply can't criticize without offending innocent people.

More to the task at hand though- I question if he's even really punching down anymore(or even if this is possible- societal status shouldn't shield you from criticism, and there is a difference between critique and baseless insults).

Anecdotally, one of my friends was interviewing a candidate- and the other person conducting the interview asked a thinly veiled political question. The candidate was rejected because of their stance, or lack thereof on this question. This was acknowledged internally, and embraced, and several meetings ensued until HR got involved and had to tell engineers that no- they couldn't discriminate on the basis of political beliefs. And that being sneaky about it by bringing up controversial tech figures in the community and gauging reactions was not actually legal.

In the U.S. it is not generally illegal to discriminate on the basis of political beliefs.

HR policies and management jargon are up, not down from the average employee.

The entire punching up/punching down dichotomy is just a theoretical justification for "rules for thee but not for me". It's all well and good when the PHB is at the other end of the cartoonist's pen, but when they come for my sacred cows, well that's different.

> Now, he appears to be punching down at people less powerful than him (individually) who have been fighting to get recognized.

I don't feel like this is true.

The comic where one character identified as "white" isn't punching down at black people. There are no people of color who identify as white. He is punching up at insane corporate rules that make the color of a person's skin important when it comes to hiring: an inherently racist thing.

The comic where a character identifies as a "birthing human" isn't punching down at trans people. It's punching up at corporation rules which need a specific reason on why an employee can go home or not. It shouldn't matter why you're feeling unwell, go home if you're sick.

Corporate policies on its employees should be as broad as possible and not target individual minorities and their intricacies.

> The comic where a character identifies as a "birthing human" isn't punching down at trans people.

Yes it is. It's literally The One Joke™, with a thin veneer of corporate policy wrapped around it as plausible deniability.

The issue isn't so much with Dilbert as the context Dilbert is in.

Let me try to explain this.

The sarcastic "I am X identifying as Y" joke is a good example. The structure of the joke is Y is something no one will seriously identify as. This means "X = Black, Y = White" pattern matches.

For the LGBT "context", the common usage of sarcastic "I am X identifying as Y" translates to "I don't think transgender identities are valid". The Non-LGBT context doesn't assign a specific meaning to the phrase.

This sets up a scenario where one group has a rule saying "X -> Y" and another has "X -> ?".

And here's where the problem comes in. Comic strips have limited bandwidth and they rely on context to be understood.

So when Dilbert says "I am Black identifying as White", the LGBT context immediately translates this to Y, wherewas the Non-LGBT context does a page fault and looks elsewhere for what it could mean.

In isolation, this looks like LGBT people are being overly sensitive, but every human is "overly sensitive" in some way. We all operate in our own context based on what we've experienced.

>>The problem I see Dilbert running into is the comic previously was aimed at corporate culture

This is the corporate culture now. Or at least a caricatured view of it (as it always was).

Indeed, I can't help but notice that in the first 4 comics cited in the article, the pointy-haired-boss is the protagonist and the employee the antagonist. Definitely seems like a reversal from what I knew Dilbert to represent in the past.

The demographic most likely to claim to be the opposite sex, and use that to try to hold control over other people, are straight white men. I mean just look at how many there are in tech companies - and typically comfortably wealthy too. He's punching up no matter how you look at it.

Ah yes, diversity statments are the real problem in academia.

Not, say, 10:1 PhD student to position ratio. Or exploitation. Or the visa slavery (accept all the crap, or get kicked out of the country you've been toiling for over the course of 10 years). Or $50K/yr being acceptable research professor's salary. Or the disgusting proportion of adjunct positions used as full-time. Or (gasp) actual lack of diversity.

Nooo, it's the statements, which were invented as a non-solution that requires nobody to sacrifice anything, changes nothing, but can be a great taking point.

Same with the industry. Wage stagnation, treating workers as disposable, job conditions — no, it's the diversity efforts that are the problem.

Never mind that diversity is profitable [1], and is pushed by managements for that reason if they have the brains to understand it.

Which Scott Addams, sadly, does not.

If Dilbert is a mirror, it's one that's been covered with poop its maker piled up on it.

No, I don't like what I see. Or smell.

[1]https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inc...

> Nooo, it's the statements, which were invented as a non-solution that requires nobody to sacrifice anything, changes nothing, but can be a great taking point.

They require candidates to show a track record promoting diversity. Merely saying it is not enough, so they do in fact require sacrifices - even if you don't count being forced to profess beliefs you don't hold as a sacrifice. But then forced conversion is also no big deal.

This is required by one fifth of academic jobs, as of 2021: https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2021/11/11/study-diversity-...

> being forced to profess beliefs you don't hold

I don't understand what beliefs you're referring to? I thought they were asking people to promote diversity, what "belief" is there in that?

"Belief" that there's something wrong with the fact that you might spend your entire career in academia and never see a Black mathematics professor who was born and educated in the US.

It's a very radical concept for many people, including Scott Adams.

You should update your assumptions. This is the current composition of the Ivy League: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30339041

You can take a guess how good your chances of passing the diversity filter are, if your main contribution is trying to reduce the discrimination against non-Jewish whites, by which they are 12-times less likely to be admitted to the Ivy League than their Jewish counterparts.

that's just basic human decency, no? are we now to respect someone who believes it's completely normal not to see any black professors in a country that's 15% balck?

Yes, it's decent human decency.

And yet, most commentors here would want you to respect such a person.

Welcome to HN.

Who the hell said that was the real problem in academia, as if it was the only problem there? Are we not allowed to talk about a problem if some greater problem also exists?

complaining about something that makes little or no difference compared to real problems makes one look petty and weak-minded even after we steel-man your less-wrong opinions

Interestingly, this very comment is self-applicable because the "whiny comments on HN" make little or no difference compared to real problems.

Why? Obviously GP does not particularly care about the success of academia, it was only brought up as an indicator of a larger trend. Why derail the conversation and bring up all this other stuff about academia that's not related to the original point?

You could just as well be describing "micro-aggressions" which are literally small and/or petty transgressions. Would you agree no one should talk about those too?

> Are we not allowed to talk about a problem if some greater problem also exists?

Being facetious, are we?

Talking about petty nuisances related to trying to solve the greater problem while not even mentioning what the greater problem is usually an indicator that you don't see the greater problem as a problem.

The greater problems being racism and transphobia in the context of this discussion.

Would you please stop taking HN threads further into flamewar? We've had to ask you this several times before, and even in a thread where many commenters are disregarding the site guidelines, your posts are standing out as aggressive. Please make your substantive points without that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Any diversity efforts that go beyond explicitly stating that minorities are treated well (read: sorting out inherent attributes in people you don't want) are definitely a real problem.

>Never mind that diversity is profitable [1]

Mckinsey admits it's just a correlation. I don't think it's correct to say diversity is causally linked to increased profit.

Yes, diversity is often considered profitable by corporate executives, but usually for reasons that are not exactly positive, like with Amazon whose analysis was that diversity decreased the chance the employees would unionize.

>Whole Foods' heat map says lower rates of racial diversity increase unionization risks

https://archive.ph/1khJw

>Not...., Not...., etc

Dilbert comics have lampooned pretty much all of those things.

> are the real problem

This sounds a lot like whataboutism or "Fallacy of relative privation":

  dismissing an argument or complaint due to what are perceived to be more important problems.

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies#Red_herring_...

Also, Your characterisation of diversity statements as changing nothing could itself be a problem if there divert from meaningful change; It seems like DEI is very well funded compared to the other issues you raise, if they are funded at all (where are the anti-visa-slavery corporate initiatives?).

> Never mind that diversity is profitable

That's another conversation altogether, but one corrupted by the fact that any other conclusion would be considered heresy e.g. rather than argue that it's true, you assume it's true and imply anyone who disagree is stupid..

I want to call out your sources. City Journal is a propaganda outlet (George Soros conspiracy takes should not lead your top stories if you want credibility), The Washington Examiner is also openly biased and prints bullshit, and the story you mentioned has two unproven, unattributed, anecdotes. Newsweek... is Newsweek. The WSJ opinion section is a bad place to look for unbiased facts, as would be the NYT opinion section. Opinion sections aren't reporting, they are explicitly trying to prove something.

Dilbert became famous for holding a mirror to corporate culture, and ringing true. Now it is holding a mirror to how the right perceives culture to be. My complaint is that it is 1. Overly concentrating on issues that aren't issues for a large part of the population (I don't list my pronouns, but I don't care a single bit if someone else does, and I will respect their preferences in the same way I will respect that Margaret goes by Lisa since she doesn't like the name she was given).

2. Highlighting issues that just aren't real, i.e. diversity hiring (I have done plenty of hiring at multiple companies in multiple countries, we actively try to get expand the diversity of our APPLICANT pool. Evaluation and job offers are done on the merits. Never seen a diversity quota) What I haven't seen is people being passed over for not being diverse enough on a first hand basis. The people that claim it happened to them, are generally better at complaining than they are at their job.

To put it simply, people think Dilbert has gone off the rails, because they don't recognize the situations being represented as anything close to realistic.

Adams has been off the rails for a long time now, and it has made its way into his comics before. The Dunning-Kruger on him is palpable.

Here is more information on the City Journal story, which is attributed to public record requests: https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/07/seattle-trains-white-e...

They shared these public record documents with Fox News, which I'm sure you dislike, but they nonetheless count as independent confirmation: https://www.foxnews.com/us/seattle-chop-segregated-training-...

News sources you like seem simply unmotivated to check this story.

The Coca-Cola story was confirmed by Snopes (read Coca-Cola's statements carefully - they never claim the slides were not shown as part of training, though they make every effort to imply it): https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/coca-cola-training-less-wh...

I cannot find a good secondary source on the Cigna story, though the alleged facts are an entirely predictable result of diversity hiring goals.

The WSJ Opinion story is confirmed by Berkeley's own report (https://ofew.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/life_sciences_...). The opinion story itself was written by Professor Abigail Thompson, an American Mathematical Society vice-president, and in her open letter (https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201911/rnoti-p1778.pdf) she links directly to the requirements on Berkeley's own website: https://ofew.berkeley.edu/recruitment/contributions-diversit...

But isn't it convenient how no "trustworthy" media bothered to report any of these stories, or even any similar stories? Shall we also call them out for giving us such a slanted view of the world?

I would recommend taking a moment to read the actual articles instead of dismissing the sources offhand. The City Journal article has links to the actual documents in question. The Washington Examiner has screenshots of the actual training. The WSJ has links to the actual politically biased and ideologically narrow hiring criteria being used. You can complain about the bias of these sources (just like other people do CNN, MSNBC, NYTimes, etc.), but take a look at the actual documents here.

If you'd like more reliable sources, here you go: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1418878112 Experimental evidence for favoring hiring women over men in academia https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21565503.2018.14... Strong evidence for preference for hiring minority candidates in academia https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2019/12/31/life-science-jobs-... (with links to actual documents included revealing clear use of DEI statements to cull huge swaths of applications) https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/minority-professor-deni... How DEI statements are used to discriminate against researchers on grants https://www.thefire.org/fire-calls-on-uc-santa-cruz-to-drop-... More schools using DEI as a first cut in hiring

Maybe this is different in some companies, but from what I understand it seems to be happening at the same pace as well.

I did read the articles.

As far as checking sources, one of yours is a political advocacy organization that explicitly acts and lobbies against DEI.

As a former newsroom employee, I am well aware that there is no such thing as an unbiased news department.

I had never heard of City Journal, but the article was so clearly written from a biased perspective that I clicked through to the main page and was hit with the Soros lead story.

Same with the Washington Examiner, never heard of it, but the "top stories" sidebar shows a VERY clear bias.

Personally, I am happy to accept that there are specific instances and anecdotes where DEI and progressive policies have been overzealous or enforced in a way that disadvantages white men and others who explicitly and loudly reject it.

I'm also willing to acknowledge that there is overwhelming, and far more plentiful, data that support the arguments of systemic racism. I believe DEI as a concept is a good thing that occasionally goes wrong, much like literally any system applied on a large scale. Patents are good, patent trolls are bad. The ADA is good, ADA trolls are bad. DEI is good, using it as a political hiring filter is bad.

> What I haven't seen is people being passed over for not being diverse enough on a first hand basis. The people that claim it happened to them, are generally better at complaining than they are at their job.

How do you have that information? Do you know of multiple people saying they were passed over for not being diverse enough and you have personal knowledge that those people are bad at their jobs?

If that's not the case, then stop offending people you disagree with.

I've run into some real-world examples of this workplace weirdness, including a clumsily architected hiring plan that required certain roles to be filled by people meeting certain demographics (quickly shut down by legal once they caught on).

But at the same time, I don't find Dilbert's take on these issues to be funny, nor do I really think that it's an appropriate place to combat these nuanced issues. 3-panel comic strips are too small to address these topics even in a properly satiric manner.

I wish the comic strip had stuck to its original formula that thrived on simple workplace dysfunctions. Trying to stretch the formula to cover complex political issues feels like it's just attacking strawmen and dismissing actual issues that can (and do) exist in workplaces.

> 3-panel comic strips are too small to address these topics even in a properly satiric manner.

And yet single-panel political cartoons have been doing it well for centuries. Of course they can't encompass all the nuance, 1000-word essays can't either. Cartoons (and essays) provoke discourse and critical thinking.

Or they used to, anyways.

I worked at a place in the '90s with a call center where legal caught wind of the desired demographic being young attractive females. It was said people got fired over it.

Also, I like "Trying to stretch the formula to cover complex political issues feels like it's just attacking strawmen". So many discussions and debates involve building strawmen and "destroying" them to make one think that "owned" the other.

The demographic simply changed. I could see these comic strips doing quite well on Facebook for the 50 and up crowd in many areas of the country.

I don't agree with the point. But a lot of people do - and it's created a sort of conservative counter-culture that is irresistible to many people.

You can cherry-pick examples of bad communication and bad policies all you want. But the fact remains that women and minorities are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to just about all aspects of life. The 'woke' problem pales in comparison to the actual problem. Complaining about things going too far isn't a good look when there are real, systemic issues remaining.

> But the fact remains that women and minorities are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to just about all aspects of life

Yes, but overcorrecting but trying to implement equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity is bad as well.

Both can be true.

> But the fact remains that women and minorities are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to just about all aspects of life

Erasing women increases this

> But the fact remains that women and minorities are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to just about all aspects of life

How does that square with the fact that the homeless and prison populations are mostly men? And men do the most dangerous jobs? And most social programs are aimed at women? And divorce favors women? And men die younger? And women outnumber men in college?

Nice dodge of 'minorities', some of whom are men, and are incarcerated at a higher rate (as much as 5x higher).

Minorities aren't a monolith either. For example, Asians are incarcerated at a lower rate than whites and you can figure out why this is by examining crime statistics.

Plus the highest suicide rate in the US by far comes from white men: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7108a7.htm

And women not only outnumber men in college, but that divide is increasing rapidly and now includes most higher degrees as well: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/23/business/dealbook/women-c...

> But the fact remains that women and minorities are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to just about all aspects of life.

- 90% of homicide victims are male.

- 80% of homeless people are male.

- 90% of people in prison are male.

- 80% of suicide victims are male.

And there are many, many more issues that men face. But I won't even touch on them because you are clearly against discussing them.

And doing a devastatingly good job - we see an example in the article that one of the comics was colour swapped (a black character to a white one). There are a lot of layers to that when we ask what the person who did that might have been thinking.

Perhaps it was just an honest mistake? Comic strips aren't colored the same in different newspapers (imagine this discovery as a kid on vacation), I remember reading an article about how Franklin (the black character in Peanuts) appeared white in a number of distribution channels for a while.

I mean, assuming that Adams doesn't do his own coloring, I bet it's just that whoever colors the comics forgot the character was Black. As the article notes, it's literally the first Black character in the strip, and they had been absent for a bit, so it's likely an easy thing to forget.

I think, as an extension of what you pointed out... The problem I have discussing your linked articles with friends is that they don't believe it, and end up thinking I'm the crazy one.

That Coca-cola would tell employees to "be less white" is so ridiculous and far fetched, that it simply can't be happening.

Or, if it is happening, it's just some overzealous person whose hot take about "whiteness" just got bad press -- it's isolated to that one event, and certainly not happening across the country.

The effect is that you (and I) begin to look like the crazy ones. And the more we see it happening, the more frenzied we become in trying to warn people, the less they believe us, and the crazier we look.

I tend to agree. It sounds likely to be out of context. The only thing that comes to mind for me was we got some marketing material that featured only white people, n every image. That was genuinely “too white”. It is bad to suggest that normal business culture is just white people. I assume the context of these quotes was similar.

Yep. I was once advised by HR to "try not to offend anyone." I asked the HR woman, "How do I know what offends any particular person?"

She looked genuinely stumped.

If this is going to work you need to tell us what prompted this conversation so we can see how plausible it is to pretend you didn't know it was offensive.

I have had the exact same conversation with HR. Someone takes offense at something and they use it as leverage to suppress any further potential offenses, despite the fact that trying to avoid offending others is completely futile. Because once you accept that kind of policy, you become a target of abuse from others willing to claim offense at just about anything.

Dumb idea... what if you play the game yourself? They can't proof you are just pretending to be offended.

It's the first mover's advantage. When someone reports you everyone becomes suspicious and if you try to use the same tactics you get scoffed at and ignored.

So what did you say though??

I can't even remember. Certainly, nothing intended to cause offense. And that's where things go off the rails. Intent matters. This is how comedians can get away with saying things that a normal person cannot, because a "performance" puts things in a different context. And this gets to my point: it is easy to take offense at most anything people say, if you twist it out of context and put your own spin on it.

As mentioned in another comment, the "first mover advantage" matters when it comes to these matters. The person that initially frames the issue will be given more credence in most cases, because we as a culture have pretty much taken a shit upon the whole notion of "innocent until proven guilty".

> The person that initially frames the issue will be given more credence in most cases, because we as a culture have pretty much taken a shit upon the whole notion of "innocent until proven guilty".

That's a legal precept, not a cultural one.

We've culturally never adhered to it as a nation, nor really pretended to.

We've really not done that great a job of it even in the legal realm, at the level of policing. The courts are a better story.

This is yet another hurdle for folks with any kind of social handicap or phobia. If you were already awkward or shy around people, now you have to be even more conscious about what you do, say, and your body language.

I've absolutely had my introversion be interpreted as low key racism before. It was not a fun experience.

I figured out how to offend a manager at work: express concerns about Elon Musk. I was reprimanded for being "inconsiderate".

EDIT: No, I do not work somewhere that has Elon Musk in a direct or indirect supervisory position, including the board. The manager (whom I don't even report to in the chain) just didn't care for the lack of unconditional praise for Elon Musk in a slack thread.

do you work at Tesla?

Nope. Just another average tech company.

Hmm... sounds like you got the short end of the stick. Off-topic conversations at work can be tricky, can't they.

I have the feeling "express concerns" here is a much softened description of what actually happened? Could it be that whatever you said would be inconsiderate regardless of the target?

What I said was actually just linking to his "pedophile diver" twitter comment, and a NPR article about his ongoing spat with the SEC. Definitely not the smoothest presentation, but I figured it'd be best to let more neutral sources speak than express an opinion in my own words.

And sure, if a person unconditionally worship someone, that person would probably consider anything that tarnishes the image of that someone as inconsiderate.

HR is always going to say "don't make waves". They don't care about the source of the waves, and never have. If you worked in Saudi Arabia, they would say eating pork and uncovering female faces was unprofessional. If you worked in the Vatican in 1850, they'd say eating flesh on Fridays was unprofessional. So if you work for an American corporation today, don't be surprised when HR expects you to drink the unwritten Kool-Aid about what is or is not sacred.

You know, from all the companies I've worked at, I've never seen a man working in HR.

I have seen a man working in HR.

Yes, trying not to offend people is fundamentally important to working together.

"How do I know what offends a particular person?" Basic cultural competency will dictate that there are words or stereotypes that are considered offensive to certain people. Outside of that, yes, you will probably make mistakes and aggrieve people from time to time. Again, making an occasional social blunder is a basic part of human relationships. When that happens, listen to why the person is offended. Often they will have real, good reasons that center on them feeling disrespected, and having that disrespect hurt their career or life. Then, apologize sincerely. Then, don't continue making the same mistake, that would be extremely disrespectful. If you wholesale disagree and think the offended person is being trivial or absurd, just don't bring it up or find a new place to work.

> Do you like what you see?

I see a bunch of material misrepresentations, relying on people to react emotionally to phrases like "anti-white" instead of actually peeking under the covers.

I do not see a reflection of society, except one that's been badly warped by individual and petty grievances.

So you're saying he's taking a reasonable stance in reaction to these totally real pressures?

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