d_e_solomon

I always want to like Perl, but I struggle to find use cases that aren't better served by Python or Go on the web side; or just straight bash on the sysadmin side.

We're long past the time when we need to be concerned about maximizing children output as a societal goal. I'm much more interested in ensuring people have lives with meaning and growth than trying to pop out as many children as possible. If that means a woman has a career, great. If that means a woman wants to be a stay at home mom, also great.

You poor oppressed baby. How mean those liberals/gays are to you that they ask you to call them by their preferred name and pronoun. You're so brave in resisting our hegemony!

Sure, there's process at most jobs for disciplining employees - but there are generally still consequences for speech that is racist, sexist, and so on. If a company doesn't enforce those standards, they will probably find their legal bills becoming very expensive. Ergo, there are consequences for speech in the workplace.

If an employee takes part in a KKK rally, should their employer turn a blind eye towards it if they find out? If a person advocates for killing gay people online, should their employer ignore it? If the employer ignores it, then there is a good chance that black people or gay people won't work for them. Why? Because gay people won't feel safe working next to someone who advocates their death.

> Cancelling means someone losing their financial safety and that of their family for expressing their opinion. If your response to this is "tough luck", I'd say you're showing a lot of privilege, and lack of empathy that'd get you cancelled if expressed about one of the hot button social issues.

Tell a racist joke at work, and there are good odds you'll get fired. Tell a sexist joke at work, and odds are good, you'll get fired. Are you going to argue that freedom of speech should prevent you from being fired for telling a racist or sexist jokes?

> by deign of grievance.

What you call a grievance is someone's life.

> You should absolutely be allowed to make terrible jokes about that, people are also allowed to tell you you're not funny.

And you might face consequences for telling jokes that aren't funny and are offensive. Tell a racist joke at work, and there are decent odds you'll lose your job.

> Respect is earned

Respect isn't earned in polite society at some base level. I say "Good Morning" to the people I meet on my run not because they saved five children from a burning building, but because they're people I ran into today. That's the right thing to do. Sure, I don't put the person that I said "Good Morning" on some bright pedestal and worship their feet, but I still treat them with respect.

To call someone by the name they prefer and the pronouns they prefer and not being a dick to them is pretty basic, and it's not dystopic to expect people to do so.

That's a lovely system. I would definitely put my hand through the spike accidentally!

Political beliefs aren't a federally protected class; and only protected in a handful of states. So yes, you can be fired over political beliefs.

MLK wrote: "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue"

The ironic part is that the state trying to impose consequences are usually part of the tension. The more aggressive that the state responds, the more tension is created. And that eventually leads to change.

What exact due process are we looking for here? If I donate to an extremist organization, and my boss finds out, is he required to still continue to employ me? Or can my boss only fire me if a government takes me to court?

Is my boss allowed to fire me because my job performance is poor? Or does he have to wait till the government puts me in jail for being a shitty sys admin?

I do find this idea that speech doesn't carry consequences really foreign and odd.

Irrelevant software chases pageclicks on HN by complaining about woke people. News at 11.

Political groups are not a protected class. https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-employers-discri...

This reads like a long winded version of calling people sheeple.

I liked this analysis. The one item that is glossed over is that if the Texas power grid was connected to the rest of the United States, then additional supply could be purchased from outside Texas. That would keep the lights on as energy usage doesn't spike across the entire United States all at once.

Since politicians in Texas chose to keep the electric grid separate, the wide spread outages are much more likely to happen. I thought the analysis on voters having wrong incentives was interesting, but also really lacked any type of solution.

So Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein shouldn't face consequences for molesting women because it's weird and orwellian to face consequences for one's actions?

Woah. That's a hot take. Got a source for it?

I'm not sure that newspapers have ever been perfectly competitive. Even in my midwest, midsized city, there has really only been one or two newspapers that achieve enough circulation.

Similarly, major television media has always locked out socialist and communist points of view in the United States.

This idea that only Google suddenly has a point of view in their editing what they allow on the platform seems really strange to me.

> We're talking about tech firms that have access to the entire internet and use it.

I think you're trying to say that a large enough dataset will be free of bias. I don't see how that follows. If I train a model on home mortgage decisions, I will replicate the bias on that currently exists on that dataset - https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2020/01/racial-discrim... - unless there are conscientious choices to reduce that bias.

Researchers in ethics in ML are specifically trying to enable tech companies to do a better job of not replicating bias and justifiably point out where that is occurring.

Third, I would argue that applying an ML model to do something faster if it replicates the bias of a previously human decision is even worse. The bias has taken the human element completely out and systematized the bias and made it possible with even less friction.

Sure, let's go throw everyone in prison. Because that worked well. /s

Instead we should be trying to get addicts into treatments, homeless into housing, and trying to improve the quality of life for citizens.

No, there's not. This is the point. The people driving these conspiracies are applying statistical techniques poorly and then parroting their claims on social media.

I preface my comment with, I have a math degree.

First, I'm not sure what politics versus math reading has to do with the topic at hand - namely, car headlights. Second, you're complaining about downvotes. Third, you're complaints sound like "kids get off my lawn". So yeah... that's why you're getting downvoted.

To more directly engage with your point, politics isn't just an exercise in group think. It has very real consequences for many people - consider the number of deaths per capita in Germany versus that of Sweeden. The difference in response is one partly of politics and resulted in unnecessary deaths.

How does this article apply to SSC's fanbase working up into a lather at the NYT?

At what point am I allowed to fight back? If someone advocates exterminating me, do I have your permission to suggest that their speech should have consequences? Or do I have to wait until I'm dead?

Who will think of the poor racist who can't make a living because they yelled racist rhetoric?

Ahh, so it's cool then that I advocate to employers that people who say racist things should be fired; and it's the employers responsibility to duly way that so as not be burdened or unburdened? "Cancel culture" is fine by your argument then.

You don't think that speech that condones, justifies, and glorifies slavery wasn't part of the reason why it continued to exist in the United States as long as it did? I find that a very odd argument.

I'm fighting against speech that dehumanizes Jews, LGBT, Blacks, and so on; and ensuring that people who engage in it face consequences for that speech. This gets back to Hannah Arendt's paradox of tolerance.

Your argument is that state sponsored violence for incorrect political opinions is the same as being fired by a private corporation for hate speech. Those aren't equivalent and one doesn't lead to the other.