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Comment by benjohnson | Hacker News Reader

I have to admit that this whole episode had given a small doubt on if my company can have an inclusive environment.

I have very conservative religious and political views - but I recognize that people have good and amazing attributes regardless of my opinion on their personal lives.

I enjoy being working (and friendships) with diverse people who challenge my beliefs, and who I can help in meaningful ways despite our differences.

My pause comes from my wondering if the company develops a significant group of people who won't let my own personal beliefs remain separate from the work environment.

I'll hopefully forget this sad episode in a few short weeks, so I doubt anything will change in my heart for the worse.

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Having personal beliefs is fine. Taking away the freedom of others is not. You don't have to back proposition 8 to believe homosexuality is immoral, just like you don't have to outlaw pork in order to keep kosher.

Telling someone that they can hold views that differ from yours as long as they never show those views or act in support of them seems like one of the very arguments that the equal rights movements are fighting against.

Mr. Eich and others are completely free to act according their views on homosexuality, vis a vis their own sexual activities and the way they may choose to raise their families. Restricting the freedom of others is where their freedom to act ends.

That is pretty dramatically false. He has the same freedoms you have: to participate in the political process, to express his views, and to obey the laws. He didn't go out and beat up people who he dislikes, he donated money to a political cause that you and I disagree with.

Furthermore, while 95% of us on HN (including me) support gay marriage, the fact is that over half the population of California had the same opinion as Eich, back in 2008.

He supported a very mainstream position. Even if it is not mainstream on HN or in silicon valley or on tech news sites, it is mainstream when you look a little outside.

I oppose that position as I said above, but because it is held by about half of the population, we can't just refuse to work with anyone holding that position.

>over half the population of California had the same opinion as Eich, back in 2008.

Well, over half of the population that voted had the same opinion. Voter turnout was around 60%, iirc. Additionally, even if 60% of people held the same views, it's still possible to choose not to work for them.

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7201428:

I'm a trained nuclear physicist, and a biblical literalist.

You're probably a talented, hard-working, good person. I wish you no ill. In fact, all else equal, I'd prefer you to lead a happy, successful life.

But I'm as likely to hire you as I am to hire a believer in alien abductions. Such beliefs are evidence of a person's thought patterns and general mental stability. Even if otherwise competent, hiring would be risky. If ever "social fit" were an excuse not to hire, this would qualify.

I'm sorry if that sounds bigoted or close-minded, but beliefs affect behavior. This is true no matter how much one tries to keep quiet at work.

Edit: I realize this is religious discrimination, which is illegal in the US. Obviously I would never tell the person the true reason for not hiring. To those who think this is abhorrent: Would you hire a Scientologist? How about a member of the Westboro Baptist Church? We all draw a line somewhere.

I'm an atheist (like I assume you are), but what you just described is straightforward religious discrimination, which is illegal in the US and many other places, for good reason.

I'm honestly curious: What's the good reason? We discriminate based on beliefs all the time. Why exempt religious ones?

I'm fine with my own anti-religious views being cause for not hiring me. (In fact, it's perfectly legal for employers to do so today.)

> We discriminate based on beliefs all the time.

We do? I certainly hope we don't. Discrimination is wrong regardless of whether its on beliefs or attributes. Maybe you meant another word than "discrimination" here, or I am misunderstanding you somehow?

I'll give an example of what I mean by discrimination: If someone is a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, you probably don't want to hang out with them. You might avoid talking to them. If said conspiracy theorist ran a donut shop, maybe you'd go so far as to walk another block to buy donuts. That's the sort of discrimination I'm talking about: simply avoiding interaction with someone.

What if they're a 9/11 conspiracy theorist who doesn't ever mention their conspiracy theory unless you explicitly ask them what they think happened on 9/11?

You seem to think that people who have deeply held beliefs spend all their time trying to foist those beliefs on others around them. That's true in some cases, not in others.

If a person says they believe something but it never affects their actions, is it really a belief? It would probably be closer to a belief in belief (http://lesswrong.com/lw/i4/belief_in_belief/).

I'd probably buy donuts from your hypothetical closeted 9/11 conspiracy theorist. There's certainly a selection effect, but I think such people are extremely rare. I hardly ever ask people what their beliefs are, but they tell them to me anyway. Of course, I'm no different.

People are typically much more passionate about their unusual beliefs. Every young-earth creationist I know of, I've found out about their belief within an hour of meeting them. I've never had a friend, acquaintance, or coworker who I discovered to be a biblical literalist only after several months of interactions. These beliefs are so important to these people that they simply can't avoid expressing them.

Likewise, they have a hard time avoiding the secondary beliefs stemming from their conviction. It's eerie how similar their opinions are on gay marriage, women's rights, obscenity laws, circumcision, and teaching evolution in schools. I have no qualms avoiding interactions with these people.

A side note: I'm glad this article was buried. The replies to my comments have been quite civil and well-reasoned, but most of the other discussion in this thread has been unproductive to say the least.

I'm more interested in the case of people whose beliefs don't affect their actions in a professional capacity, as opposed to people whose beliefs never affect their actions. I agree people who have strong beliefs but are able to set them aside to some extent in part of their life are rare. They do exist, though.

As a case in point, from my personal interactions with Brendan, I can assure you that he is not the sort of person who will tell you all about his thoughts on gay marriage within an hour of meeting him. In fact, I don't know what those thoughts are (short of trying to guess based on the donation thing), and I've known him for years. Mitchell Baker has known him for even longer, and worked with him more closely, but see the next to last paragraph of https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2014/03/26/building-a-global...

Ok, that's not what I think is generally meant by "discrimination". "Discrimination" is usually taken to mean what you earlier said: that you wouldn't hire someone to work for you if they were a biblical literalist. That is illegal, and should be.

Employment has some amount of state regulation - you can't not hire someone because of their religion or the color of their skin. It isn't fair for people of a certain religion or ethnic group to not be hire-able, and beyond that it is also just impractical in a country like the US. If no one hired anyone but their own ethnic group and religion, the economy would be completely stagnant, because the US is so diverse.

You make it sound like people are born with a religion, which can never be changed. Discriminating based on immutable characteristics such as ethnicity, sexual preference, or gender is wrong and I'm glad many such forms of discrimination are prohibited.

But beliefs can and do change. Moreover, beliefs are the reasons why people do what they do. Choosing to avoid interacting with people who express certain beliefs seems totally fine.

I doubt the economy would suffer much if religious discrimination were allowed. First, it already happens (especially against atheists). Second, most people (including myself) are willing to overlook the vast majority of differences in beliefs. There's only a fringe who end up with slightly lower wages.

I knew my opinion was controversial, but I didn't expect this reaction from people. I guess I stumbled onto something you can't say.[1]

1. http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

I didn't say a person's religion can't change? Obviously people change religion all the time. But that is not the reason why discriminating based on religion is wrong.

Again, the first reason is moral. Imagine if catholic people were the majority in some area, and on average wealthy, and wouldn't hire muslims which in that area were a poorer minority. That's just not fair - why shouldn't all people in that region have the same employment opportunities?

The second reason is practicality. There are so many religions and ethnic groups in the US, everyone has to work with everyone else. Otherwise we are losing out on a huge amount of economic potential. Let the best people work at the best jobs, even if their religion doesn't happen to match their employer's. It's a job, not a place of worship.

Also, I never said you can't say what you said. Only that I and the law disagree with you, on this topic. But I wouldn't hold what you said against you - not employment-wise (I would still potentially hire you) and not in any other way actually (if we met in person, we'd probably get along just fine). Disagreement doesn't need to be the end of the world.

How is this argument different from the arguments of people who want to draw the line at hiring transgendered people or hiring women or hiring people who are over 6 feet tall? The only material legal difference, as far as I can tell (IANAL) is in whether you are discriminating against a protected class or not, and what constitutes a protected class seems to be largely a political decision. And religious affiliation is definitely explicitly protected.

These are, of course hard issues. It's _hard_ for all of us to not discriminate against people based on our prejudices. For you it seems to be hard to not discriminate against Scientologists. The right moral response is to realize your prejudices and fight them. The laws actually make that a bit easier in some ways (e.g. it's illegal for you to ask prospective job candidates whether they're Scientologists).

Whether it's a social fit problem depends on two things. The first is whether the person's private beliefs affect their workplace behavior. Obviously in some cases they do and in others they don't. People are pretty good at compartmentalizing.

The second social fit problem is whether the person's co-workers are so outraged by the fact of the beliefs existing (or the person's gender being "wrong" or their hair being red, or whatever these people happen to have personal hangups about) that it affects _their_ behavior. This is pretty common, obviously, and the fault in such cases lies in the co-workers not the hire. There may still not be a good "social fit" as a result, but this situation is cause to look long and hard at the "society" that's not being fit into...

I would like you to also consider a concrete example. You say you won't hire a believer in alien abductions. Would you hire a "tin-foil-hat" type who believes the NSA is spying on everyone? Would you have hired such a person two years ago, or would you have considered them paranoids whose "thought patterns and general mental stability" would preclude a good "social fit"? Clearly your priors have updated since 2 years ago, but it's always worth evaluating whether your priors might be wrong and whether a reasonable person might come up with different priors.

Some political views are unacceptable. If you think that the government should prevent people of different ethnicities from getting married, I don't want to work with you. If you don't think the matter at hand falls in the same bucket, I don't want to work with you.

We're not talking about disagreeing on tax policy here.

I accept that some some political views are unacceptable to you.

Do you do background checks on people you might work with to see whether they hold such views? Or do you just avoid working with people about whom you found out by accident that they hold such views?

That is, are you actively making sure that none of the people around you hold the views you find unacceptable, or is it more of a don't ask don't tell kind of policy, where you don't care if people have unacceptable views as long as they don't mention them in your hearing?

Are you saying you consider the political views of almost all Republicans "unacceptable", and you wouldn't work in the same place as them?

Because - sadly, because I agree with you that they are wrong - over half of California opposed gay marriage in 2008 (and while things have improved somewhat, they remain far from where they should be).

They are wrong, but their position is a mainstream one. I'm not sure refusing to work with them is practical. (It might be in a small company, especially in ideologically uniform regions like the bay area, but not in general.)

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