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Comment by sshine | Hacker News Reader

> IN PARALLEL, THE PI HAS CONCRETE PLANS TO CONTINUE HER EXPOSITORY AND OUTREACH WORK WHICH INCLUDE A NEW BOOK (ELEMENTS OF INFINITY-CATEGORY THEORY, JOINT WITH VERITY), LECTURES DIRECTED AT THE GENERAL PUBLIC, SURVEY ARTICLES PREPARED FOR A VARIETY OF AUDIENCES, AND EFFORTS TO IMPROVE ACCESS TO ADVANCED MATHEMATICS, SUCH AS HER SERVICE ON THE EQUITY, DIVERSITY, AND INCLUSION ADVISORY BOARD AT THE BANFF INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH STATION.

Guilty by association.

The stunt is to censor these words, since even irrelevant mention of them will trigger a dumb filter.

It doesn't matter if the research is on the topic of DEI; if those words are mentioned, it's a slippery slope into wokedom, which is VERBOTEN.

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The fact that the title starts with "homo" probably doesn't help in the newly established Land of the Obtuse Bigots™.

This is an invitation to saturate the field with those words.

And to seek convoluted ways to describe actual work around words the trolls understand.

The "database" released by Ted Cruz is particularly egregious about it – you can toss a dart at any row, read the reward description, and bet on whether the topic is actually "DEI".

My favorite one is Award #2303483: "COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: USING A COMBINED BASIN ANALYSIS, ISOTOPIC, AND MODELING APPROACH TO RECONSTRUCT THE LGM THROUGH EARLY HOLOCENE HYDROCLIMATE FOR GLACIAL LAKE MOJAVE."

My second favourite is Award #2227091 "CAREER: VERSATILE WEARABLE ROBOTS FOR REHABILITATION OF CHILDREN WITH GAIT DISABILITIES". Think of the children!

https://www.commerce.senate.gov/index.cfm? a=files.serve&File_id=94060590-F32F-4944-8810-300E6766B1D6

Why didn’t she put something about working at a soup kitchen into her grant proposal? I guess because working at a soup kitchen doesn’t in any way qualify her for a grant. But she did put information about “services” at a DEI board, probably because that information can help get her a grant.

What would you think if most approved grants started with “I am a rich white man”? Surely that wouldn’t be the exact reason why the grant was given. But why would that even be in a grant proposal? What if many approved grants contained “I preside over a board of Aryan math”? Would that be totally fine and not slippery?

Ah, the mathematical field of false equivalence classes.

That’s called a comparison, an intuition pump, an invitation to entertain an opposite view. The parent comment said it was an “irrelevant mention”. I simply tried to articulate why it cannot be considered so.

Do you actually agree that DEI mention is immaterial to the grant proposal? If so, it can be easily removed, but some people, like the other person who replied to me, seem to think it’s actually a good thing and it’s not immaterial and grants should be distributed based on such criteria.

It’s the same old trite progression of “it doesn’t exist” -> “it doesn’t matter” -> “it’s actually a good thing”. Every. Single. Time.

Of course this helps her proposal, but not because the mere mention of DEI gets it a rubber stamp.

It’s part of her credentials to show that she’s taken an active role in expanding access to these advanced fields. It shows she’s part of the community and cares about the field she’s in.

Working in a soup kitchen and being a rich white man as counter examples don’t work to prove your point because duh they aren’t related to math.

> Of course this helps her proposal, but not because the mere mention of DEI gets it a rubber stamp.

Of course.

> It’s part of her credentials to show that she’s taken an active role in expanding access to these advanced fields. It shows she’s part of the community and cares about the field she’s in.

No, it is not. That is not related to category theory in any way. That’s really stretching any notion of “credential”. It seems really bad to distribute grants according to such qualifications. Community organising and politics aren’t math.

> Working in a soup kitchen and being a rich white man as counter examples don’t work to prove your point because duh they aren’t related to math.

A soup kitchen for poor math enthusiasts? A head of Arian math society? Very math related.

> A soup kitchen for poor math enthusiasts?

Far more lilely to encounter a Settlers of Catan ramen party for breadline math enthusiasts.

Honest to god, if a soup kitchen for poor math enthusiasts was a thing then it wouldn’t be a terrible idea to mention your involvement in your grant application.

That’s networking, that’s community, it couldn’t hurt to mention it.

Now the explicitly racist “Aryan Math Society”? Id leave that off the proposal.

Well, I guess there is simply fundamental disagreement. Some people dislike arbitrary discrimination. And others think that encouraging it is “networking” and discouraging it is literally Nazism.

So our disagreement is that you think DEI and soup kitchens are arbitrary discrimination?

Yeah, providing math grants based on community outreach is arbitrary discrimination.

1) in what way? 2) that’s not their only credential.

> being a rich white man [...] don’t work to prove your point because duh they aren’t related to math.

Historically, being a rich white man is related to math:

  - elite European men historically had better access to education
  - many famous mathematicians came from wealthy backgrounds
  - historical math societies were almost entirely composed of rich white men
  - math advanced in navigation, trade and military which were historically occupied by men
  - when circumstance didn't, rich white men historically excluded women and colored people

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