masondixon's comments

Affirmative action is definitely racist and sexist. Without it, maybe it is in some cases.

Less women studied CS than men and less apply. The image used to be merit. Now its all fucked up.

Yeh, US is pretty intense for social justice. I'd love to see a timeline and some kind of justification as to why it became such a strong force. I remember not even knowing what "social justice" mean't.

Like all the people's time and energy invested in social justice today...what would these same people have been investing their energy in before 2010s?

What I see is that people love being outraged, purpose-driven, and procrastination. And with social justice, while you're procrastinating, you can be outraged, and you can join a movement and gain a purpose.

Social media is probably to blame.

> Lowering your hiring standards for women can give people like me the lingering self doubt that maybe I wasn’t good enough. Worse, it gives many techbros reasons to believe that his female colleagues aren’t as good as his, and act accordingly.

As a male, this has always been my main argument against affirmative action.

Too many SV white-knights feel they are helping simply because they are well intentioned. But good intentions do not always lead to the best outcomes.

And the costs are these "lingering self doubts", and teams being suspicious of "diversity hires".

Self-respect is very hard to quantify, but there is a distinct need for humans to be respected and authentically appreciated, and the extreme advocacy for females is sapping away this motivating force that is essential to work and life.

I've always wondered about this. People never really talk about it, but I see the "cool" factor as pivotal. Smart social people want to be bankers, lawyers, doctors, management consultants, not STEM.

With the internet everyone has had the ability to learn programming for ages, and it really hasn't dramatically changed much. People are just not interested in it at some point.

Very true. Its like bike-shedding.

> These people are americans now.

Wouldn't "our own" as used earlier also include "these people"?

I think you are injecting context which was never there in the first place.

Next you will tell me SV is a meritocracy...

And if someone you are interested in sleeping with does it to you (whilst holding power over you) - you are going to complain about that?

Shouldn't we help the ones already here first?

India and China have over 1bn people. Their countries are inferior to he US in so many ways. Of course they want to come here, and if there was no cap on the number, they would drive the wages down to rock bottom.

They will always be cheaper than US labor. And there are other advantages like employer loyalty because they cannot easily change job, which means employers can push them very hard and they won't quit - because its complicated to shift to another employer and they have to restart their green card.

I think behind all this is the feeling that the best opportunities are given to foreigners who then rise up the ranks, opportunities which could have been given to Americans.

Regarding immigration in general, the left continuously argues to keep low-paid foreign workers here to the benefit of large corporates. The justifications of "all of Silicon Valley companies support foreign immigration" makes perfect sense for these companies, but not for the nation. Silicon Valley is a bubble.

I think this is called hustle, is it not?

Is this not proof the media is losing touch with reality...

> This will totally make someone uncomfortable, especially when they're probably already sweating about the recruiting process.

But from a male perspective (in the hypothetical above), I don't see it at all. I only see it as positive, and I think most males would feel the same. If there were repeated advances, then it would get a bit frustrating. And if I didn't get the job after knocking back repeated advances, then I would definitely see who I could contact about it.

> objectively wrong

Where can I find a list of "objectively wrong" things, and is there some kind of formal process to challenge them?

If its your sister, if the police flirt with her, she will probably have an easier time in jail, maybe able to get preferential treatment. Good if you are the guilty criminal. So A.

If she is a suspect, then she would feel pressured to go along with the police's advances, because of the risk of retaliation for knocking back advances. So, B.

But for the victim of your sister's crime, she will want justice to be served, and will definitely go for B.

You know a large percentage of long-term relationships start in an office setting.

> During the recruiting process, Mr. McClure, a founder of 500 Startups and an investor, sent her a Facebook message that read in part, “I was getting confused figuring out whether to hire you or hit on you.”

Its interesting to think about what this would be like if the roles were reversed. The VC was female, and the applicant was male.

As a male in this situation I see this as completely neutral, even positive. If the founder likes me, then I have more chance of getting a highly sought after role which I might not have otherwise - as no company really hires solely on merit anyway. As a male, if there is a female HR contact, I would always welcome them flirting with me, as it only increases my chances of getting the job by giving me points when there are subjective evaluations required.

If I was single and interested in this female VC its a clear opening for a date. If I am attracted to her, I could have a date. If not, I could just laugh it off and say I'm already seeing someone. Life moves on.

Now if I push back an advance, they might get petty and decide to not hire me as some kind of revenge, or otherwise, they may be more likely to hire me because they want me around.

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Now, obviously this is not a 1-1 analogous situation because of the world as it is today. Some notable differences...

- There are more male VCs than females. - There are probably less female applicants for such positions. - Males are the physically stronger sex. - Males are more likely to make advances than females (is this true?).

So I am interested in which of these above variables must be inverted to change my reaction. I need to think more on it.

But an interesting aspect is that, perhaps males think like this, and therefore think its okay. I am guessing that its the other gender imbalance variables that make this not applicable vise-versa, which is harder for males to play out in their mind.

I really want to understand the internal monologue of these people. There is some culmination of factors that must result in this need to fight injustice. It just feels like they have some chip on their shoulder from adolescents. Being bullied at school. Having gone through a bad breakup. Something like that.

> 'every time'

...is clearly figuratively as the commenter mentioned.

But all the things you mentioned could easily happen to a non-Black. I've read tons of Medium posts about this stuff, and everything I read can equally apply to non-Blacks, and as a white I can relate to a lot of what is said. But its so sad that they blame it all on race - something that is 100% unchangeable. Its like as hard as you try - you will always fail. And if you succeed, you were lucky.

It is the most pessimistic and depressing narrative that is forced onto every minority these days.

And at some point its probably a vicious cycle - in that employers become afraid of minorities because they feel that everything will be construed as discrimination. And the minorities have huge power because they can easily play the discrimination card.

Do you see any merit in this?