sachel1sta

Your text is nearly white within 19 minutes of being posted.

It's obvious HackerNews is not safe--from certain people.

Rather than just "believing," can you please provide evidence that "white, male and safe" people do not detect and put their energy into treating the kinds of problems you're alluding to? (In fact I must have missed the specific untreated problems that you and the author mention).

I fail to see how skin color, gender and "safeness," whatever the hell that is, implies someone has a "reduced" ability to detect and solve important problems. If you actually look for it, you will find many examples of people with the superficial characteristics you describe, and find that not only are they an extremely "diverse" group of people -- in the characteristics that truly matter -- but that they are doing precisely the kind of work that I think you speak of.

Why stop at people in "our field"? What about all of the people who possess the superficial characteristics you mention, but who also share an extraordinary amount of "diversity" and have had extraordinary success in treating important problems -- outside of "our field"? Doctors, scientists, engineers ... all over the world ... truly seek to make the world a better place.

Frankly I'm sick of the notion that "white, male and safe" implies a lack of diversity and a lack of ability or desire to detect ... whatever problems you have.

Responding to the point you're trying to make: How big of a problem are police killings--really?

We all understand the act of (unjustified) police killings is a bad one, but how much of a _problem_ is it? Look at the evidence.

Then look at all of the other problems that we all face, not just in the states, but worldwide. I can name a great problem that almost all of us should be focusing on: global warming. Why don't we spend our energy on a significant and catastrophic problem?

We need to prioritize. Anyone who tries to up or downplay something as a problem to you might have their own agenda, or have bought into someone else's agenda. Don't just believe me. Look for the evidence.

The future is not set in stone. You cannot predict the future. You cannot even tell what happens in the next 5 minutes.

Privacy is a significant concern for many. Not just individuals, but organizations work to ensure privacy is respected, and more (e.g. through policy). Active research occurs, and technology is developed specifically to create privacy-respecting systems and augment the ones that don't already do so.

"A decrease in institutional privilege"? What are you people smoking?

The choices you make affect real _people_--not institutions; hiring someone over someone else based on some relatively arbitrary superficial trait--thinking that you know that person and what they've lived through--has serious effects on that individual--not an institution. But you choose to make those choices, because you perpetually believe you know things that you do not.

I think that any kind of discrimination produces more discrimination. When you create and attempt to sustain an environment that might be considered engaging in "'positive' discrimination" (a term that seems kind of like a joke to me), over time, it generates further--both "positive" and "negative"--discrimination.

We sometimes hear from people who try to rationalize //why it is// that such things arise, but who don't consider the full effects that these environments create in a society where we wish to view all people as equals.