News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:James Damore and three others end Google suit by shadowgovt on Wednesday May 13, 2020 @07:04PM (#23172900)
> Bumps on people's heads have nothing to do with violence. This is a non sequitur.

I submit to you it's exactly as irrelevant as skin color. I submit to you if you take the population that you have described, change only the category from "African American" to another category and nothing else, and kept the same population of people with no other parameters changed, you would not see a change in the violence rate.

Believing that measurable correlation implies causation is one of the major failings that I see often encouraged in the computer science space. It underpins some of the greatest failings of machine learning.

You made claims about population and then claims about interventions that suggest that the population membership is causal. What if the causal issue is poverty? Poverty in the United States is so deeply correlated with being a member of a racial category that it is extremely hard to disambiguate effects that show up in race from effects that show up in income and asset levels. This is what I mean when I say lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Because if the cause is poverty and not "African American culture," then violence interventions for African Americans are like "get your energy level up" interventions for people who are starving. You'll waste good money treating the wrong problem. You'll also miss people that also have the same problem but don't get any intervention because they don't fit the poorly-defined template.

[dead]
Re:James Damore and three others end Google suit by shadowgovt on Wednesday May 13, 2020 @08:49PM (#23173809)
The reasoning presented in this thread is pretty representative of the thought processes Damore laid out in his memo.

Which is pretty indicative of why he was fired.

Re:James Damore and three others end Google suit by TA0x0 on Thursday May 14, 2020 @12:00AM (#23175122)
>The reasoning presented in this thread is pretty representative of the thought processes Damore laid out in his memo.

Logical, rational, built from facts. The thought process used by a Harvard grad, MIT research scientist.

>Which is pretty indicative of why he was fired.

"They hated him because he told the truth."

Re:James Damore and three others end Google suit by shadowgovt on Thursday May 14, 2020 @12:17AM (#23175223)
"Told the truth." LOL. Yep, the kind of truth that got him fired with cause so hard the NLRB wouldn't go to bat for him.

Apparently, being a Harvard grad, MIT research scientist doesn't guarantee an understanding of how not to get fired. Oh well. Google can always replace him with another Harvard grad, MIT research scientist with a better ability to play well with others. That's the perk of being Google; you don't have to tolerate the semi-productive smart kid who alienates his co-workers with "facts" he thinks he understands but doesn't. :-p

Re:James Damore and three others end Google suit by dang on Saturday May 16, 2020 @01:50PM (#23205585)
Would you please not feed flamewars on this site by replying? What a train wreck.

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

Re:James Damore and three others end Google suit by Gibbon1 on Thursday May 14, 2020 @12:36AM (#23175351)
That's been my general thought. Legally a company can fire you for any reason except the ones they aren't allowed too. Trying to undermine a companies diversity policies on a company owned channel when said company already has public problem with diversity, good way to get 86'd.
[dead]
Re:James Damore and three others end Google suit by dang on Saturday May 16, 2020 @01:46PM (#23205542)
You've been breaking the site guidelines by using HN for flamewar and ideological battle, and even personal attack. We ban accounts that do that—it's not what HN is for, and it destroys the curious conversation that HN is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

p.s. I've banned https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=TA0X2. It's not ok to use multiple accounts to get around rate limits and whatnot, so please don't do that.