Clanan

Facebook sure was political, though. From Davidsen:

> They came to office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.

> “Does free speech mean literally anyone can say anything at any time?” Tidwell continued. “Or is it actually more conducive to the free exchange of ideas if we create a platform where women and people of color can say what they want without thousands of people screaming, ‘Fuck you, light yourself on fire, I know where you live’?

This comment, by Reddit's General Counsel, says a lot about their approach. They believe that minorities/women will be subjected to nonstop violent comments unless Reddit pursues proactive and forceful moderation, free speech be damned. I think (hope) that's a very cynical view. The author of the piece does a great job juxtaposing this quote with the results of r/Place, however, in pointing out that it did not devolve into swastikas and "toxic" content when left to its own devices.

But reddit moderation is not just about quality content. I think many commenters here miss this. Moderation of a hugely successful website is not just about the technical issues or the logistics. Huffman, the CEO, is quoted as saying he believes Reddit can sway elections. So now moderation is about power. Imagine the temptation: you're one click away from destroying the popular, impactful subreddit of a political candidate you detest. One click to sway an election, maybe.

Edit: spelling

From the philosophical side, one of the reasons we attach such abstractions to "life" is to avoid reducing it to a basic functional definition. i.e. we should not equate ant life with human life. Especially in the sciences, it's an important moral/ethical consideration.

If someone had enough money, could they conduct this independently of the government parties?

FYI: Ladar Levison founded Lavabit. Key quotes:

> Out of more than 39,000 applications presented to the FISC through the end of 2016, only 51 have been rejected, with the majority, 34, of those rejections coming in 2016.

> While most FISC warrants remain classified, the few which have emerged through leaks, or been forced into the public domain by First Amendment lawsuits, paint a rather bleak picture. These warrants tell us the FISC has issued “mass” warrants which permit government surveillance based on statistical “selectors.”

> the FISC routinely includes authorization in their warrants for the government to surveil people in contact with their target, and people in contact with the contact; in a scheme referred to as “chaining,” these authorizations will include 2 or 3 “hops.”

I recall hearing James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence under Obama, say that FISC was no rubber stamp and was an important safeguard. Their 0.13% rejection rate suggests otherwise.

The political/philosophical diversity of awardees will illuminate just how genuine this effort is.

Interestingly, these social media companies which are engaging in censorship are now being reminded that if they decide to censor by politics, they may be held liable for everything posted to their platform.

> Estimates of the economic returns to higher education tend to assume that all students will graduate. In practice, around 30% of students in Europe and 40% of students in America will drop out before earning their degrees.

This leads to a dangerous debt situation. I saw this up close in New Mexico. The state gave everyone a "bridge" scholarship which covered the first semester of college. Students who had no business going to college would go anyway and get a loan to cover the second semester. They would fail out and be stuck with a nasty loan for no good reason.

Do other transportation jobs count transportation expenses against the wage? If not, then that is an excellent point. I would assume taxiing, food delivery, etc. would count them.

As a white Irish guy from New Mexico, this attitude irks me as well. No, I'm not the same as every other white guy out there. (I have far more interesting "gringo" stories than a white guy from Connecticut.)

No one should be judged or labeled by their skin color or ethnicity.

It could be because we're in a thread discussing a court case about possible discrimination at Google...

Good point, but even getting this far is better than dismissing it out of hand because of a sponsors list. I do agree that the lack of actual paper does not instill confidence.

Ask any politician - there is power in appearing to be above the frailty of bias, apathy, etc. Hypothetically, if twitter wanted to purge it's platform of one side of the political spectrum, it would be far easier to do it for the sake of "collective health, openness, and civility", than for the real reason of "we don't like you".

Every patron of every piece of research is hoping to benefit from it. I certainly agree that a reader should consider the goals of the authors and backers, and I would hope the authors would make both clear. I just get piqued when intellectual laziness steps in and says "don't read this, it's funded by biased sponsors (i.e. humans)!"

Nothing you said refutes my claim. All research requires some sort of funding. Humans have biases which can affect their judgment/work. If you think potential conflicts should automatically make a paper worthless, then you're basically excluding the vast majority of scientific work. Read the paper and decide whether its methodology and results are valid and correct. Don't just look at a list of sponsors and walk away - that's just intellectual laziness.

> Drivers earn a median of 59 cents per mile while incurring a median cost of 30 cents per mile, the report said, adding that for nearly a third of drivers, the costs are ultimately higher than the revenue.

> The paper reported the average driver profit to be $661 per month.

The posted $3.37 number is before taxes!

Instead of giving in to a gut reaction, you should read the paper. All research must get funding in one way or another. If you exclude research due to funding sources and potential conflicts of interest, you wouldn't be left with much.

> studies and research in general has shown this to not be the case

Not really. It can still be true that this white/asian discrimination is happening in tech, whereas the listed papers appear to test non-technical job fields. Ideally, racial profiling shouldn't happen anywhere! But be careful in applying those specific findings to the entire field of hiring/jobs.

Or, instead of giving in, these companies could actually use their impressive power and reach to halt such practices and not let their brand be so affected. (Hello marketing budgets.) Big_Co is not a victim here, and portraying them as such is vastly unfair to the actual people being adversely affecting by discriminatory hiring practices. These companies can and should do better than "well everyone else is doing it!"

Are you coming from a top school? You're applying to R1 schools so I'm wondering if your anecdote, as an ideal candidate, falls outside the "normal" range of actual job search difficulty.

That's an excellent (unintended?) consequence. I would certainly be more amenable to a longer commute if I could work remotely from the car and count it as work time.

I'm not just advocating for everyone to give money away on the street. Some of the worst poverty in the U.S. is in places with huge amounts of brain power (like SF). I'm sure those big brains could come up with better solutions than handouts. Like the countless charities out there that are far more efficient than government.

Do you think the problem is, or can be, competently handled by government? I think government can get results by brute-forcing with massive amounts of money, but history shows that it's still terrible at it (hello War on Poverty). Now, I don't mean to say government should have no role/do nothing. I'm saying that it should not be the -default- entity to take care of things because it allows the citizenry to absolve themselves of all responsibility. Government isn't some wise entity - it's just people. And oftentimes those people are thousands of miles away, working with incentive structures poorly aligned with the issue at hand.

One benefit of transforming this issue into a matter of personal responsibility is that the incentives are much stronger - if it's MY money being used, I'm far more likely to strive for efficiency. If your charity gobbles up my donation with admin costs, I'm "shopping elsewhere". A somewhat-related example of this strategy was a method used in Africa to combat elephant poaching. I can't find the reference now, but basically the government decided to "give" land areas to citizens, who would be responsible for poaching issues. It ended up working much better than when the government sought to directly reduce poaching.

> We live in a society though that thinks someone else is going to take care of the problems.

It's worse than this. Now society thinks that government is going to take care of the problems. The past fifty years and the War on Poverty have shown us how well that works. I wish that, instead of spending more untold billions on new programs and bureaucracies, government would switch to facilitating citizens to create, man, and implement the help that is so sorely needed by the poor and helpless. Encourage the citizenry to take personal responsibility for helping others, instead of offering an easy out to do nothing.

This response unintentionally demonstrates what I think is a huge part of this puzzle: that government is the default "fixer" of this problem. That's an easy assumption to make, because it removes all personal responsibility while assuaging one's conscience. The Bystander effect in full force. What if we instead start assuming it is -our- responsibility to help the helpless?

Many comments in this thread mention the disparity between the Haves and Have-nots in San Francisco. Imagine the impact if all those Haves decided to use their own time and money to aid the homeless/hungry/needy/destitute? Instead, we fall back to blaming the other side's politicians and policies and we hope that someday Big Brother will take care of everything.

Can you share ballpark percentages on the customer type? Railroad hobbyists, wargamers, etc.

A similar thing happened to me, although unintentionally. At a previous job I discovered that I was given an interview because they thought I was black (based on my name). They would have otherwise passed on my resume.

In your company, how much better merit-wise must a white/asian/male applicant be to get hired? Fifty percent better? My gut-feeling is that these well-intentioned policies don't weed out the upper echelons of the "over-represented" groups anyway - they'll just use position/elite network to get in the door. Instead, the policy weeds out the "working class" applicants who must rely on merit, but who have the wrong skin color.

> The Charging Party’s use of stereotypes based on purported biological differences between women and men should not be treated differently than the types of conduct the Board found unprotected in these cases.

This Advice Memo establishes the precedent that discussing biological differences between men and women constitutes sexual harassment, even if those differences are supported by scientific research.

Soros regularly uses his wealth to pursue political aims throughout the world. He often does this through "philanthropic" groups. For example, UK news stories have been popping up about him spending £700,000 on anti-Brexit movements. The Koch brothers might be a similar comparison?

I think that they become bogeymen because their wealth provides substantial power and they're involved with controversial things. On the other hand, people like the Gates focus more on "dry" issues. (Edit: or maybe they have better PR!)

That's why I said "within the law" - to ensure that it isn't the job of the business to determine what is political and/or allowed. What you describe would be illegal, would it not?

The emboldening was caused not by Trump, but by the media itself. For example with Charlottesville, Trump's initial response was:

> We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.

This addressed the extreme-right/neo-nazi violence, as well as the increasing violence perpetrated by extreme-left/antifa agitators (which you conveniently ignored). I would hope my president would condemn all political violence equally.

The media took his statement and ran with it, arguing that it somehow supported extreme-right violence. Alt-right people believed them and became emboldened. If the media had focused on the actual political violence and emphasized that all such acts should be condemned, maybe the agitators would have crawled back to their basements.