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Journal by The Mighty Buzzard
In case you haven't heard, FreeBSD has a new code of conduct that's seemingly pulled straight from the shit-spewing face of a blue-haired intersectional feminist.
Me, I refuse to contribute to any coding project with a code of conduct designed to protect people of one political ideology from those who disagree with them. They're of course welcome to do what they like but they'll be doing it without my help in any way.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Agnes' Law:
Almost everything in life is easier to get into than out of.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Thursday February 22 2018, @12:07PM (7 children)
I think you're begging the question here, Arik. If we consider an observed wage gap between genders, you are implying that you assume each gender already has an equal opportunity to earn the same wage for a given role (or an equal opportunity to successfully negotiate the same wage). Those that complain about the wage gap would disagree with you on that.
Forcibly adjusting people's pay to address the wage gap could be construed as equalizing outcome but only within the confines of a specific employment role.
You express a desire for equality of opportunity, but how does one go about creating that? It certainly cannot be achieved by doing nothing unless it already exists universally in society. Unfair discrimination certainly exists, so that's not the case.
A key example of inequality of opportunity is where some individuals are born into very wealthy, influential families, affording them great capital and business connections right from the start. There are millions of others who have none of that. How would you go about addressing that inequality? Is adjusting outcome completely off limits?
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Friday February 23 2018, @09:06AM (6 children)
I'm not implying that I assume anything at all. *sigh*
Let me spell it out for you.
If we apply "equality of opportunity not equality of outcome" to the "wage gap" as it's defined by those who promulgate the concept, the conclusion is not that it's right or wrong - it's that it's irrelevant, if we're talking about justice. It is entirely and explicitly a collective measure. Females earn less money in wages, per 10 million. Ok, so what?
You're measuring outcomes but outcomes are not the appropriate measure.
If I told you that blue-eyed people made more than green eyed people, in the same sort of aggregate measure, would you decide that green-eyed people were being underpaid on the basis of that evidence? Let's smash the evil blues and make them give the greens their fair share!
Ooops, I read that backwards, greens make MORE money, they're the evil oppressors, gas the blues!
This is all nonsense. You're measuring the wrong things.
Is there any sort of obstacle preventing the virtuous greens, err I mean the long-suffering blues, from competing on an equal playing field?
If yes, what, specifically? That would be very interesting. There's a tremendous amount of hand-waving but very rarely does anything solid get pointed to. You realize, I hope, that actual discrimination, hiring preferentially or paying more based on gender, is actually an offense that police and district attorneys and courts investigate and prosecute and can easily destroy anyone for, right? If you have any evidence for anyone doing that in any western nation you can literally shoot it off to a state lawyer and see careers if not the entire enterprise destroyed, that's no joke.
But if not, then yes, then we reach the point of "well, in that case, it seems likely that this is a result of different choices." And in fact there's plenty of scholarship documenting and detailing that, that's exactly what it is. Females, in that same meaningless aggregate sense, work less, make less money, live longer, spend more money. You want to talk about the wage gap, how about we talk about that spending gap huh?
But I say that only rhetorically, again, the real point is that we're measuring the wrong thing, both ways.
If you believe in individual justice, then a "wage gap" that appears only as an aggregate, statistical generalization based on a very narrow set of measures, and one that neatly disappears when you start to control for different people having different values and pursuing different goals, then you don't see it as a problem. If you cared more about money than I did and you pursued it with more vigor and energy and determination than I did and you got paid more of it... I don't see the problem. And I don't know or need to know your gender. That's just completely irrelevant.
But as I said earlier, "social justice" is not the same thing at all. So if you view everything with this lens of collectivism, it doesn't matter that no individual was harmed, it's intolerable that those greens, I mean blues, I mean males, got more than their fair share.
That's not a rational position, or one that's genuinely respectful of other individuals and their rights either.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday February 23 2018, @07:09PM (3 children)
Apologies and thank you for clarifying your position a little.
Ah, so prosecuting anyone that demonstrably introduces inequality of opportunity. Yes I suppose that's one way of attempting to create and maintain equal opportunities. What about the polite bigots though? The ones that keep their actual discrimination inside their heads and construct other excuses in parallel for why they won't hire someone of a demographic they dislike.
It's actually extremely hard to do anything to influence equality of opportunity one way or another. I'll be honest with you; I've been somewhat playing devil's advocate in this thread. Up to a point, I agree with you that these demographic classifications shouldn't be relevant. Still, they're relevant to the discriminating bigots because of aspects of the past culture they grew up in. It takes time for cultural preconceptions to change.
It's hard for leaders that preside over thousands or tens of millions of people to assess the well-being of that population without invoking some collective statistics. Yes, they often try to talk and listen to individuals too but when populations get that large statistics become a tool to make the problems knowable. And as we've already said there are plenty of bigots that do treat people of different statistical cohorts differently. Sometimes the discrimination even seems somewhat rational and is tolerated, for example risk assessments by insurance companies.
By the way, I'm curious at precisely what point you feel opportunity turns into outcome. Clearly pay would come under outcome. But my example of someone being born into a wealthy family, are they inheriting opportunities or outcomes? Does every opportunity arise from someone else's outcome (or a past outcome for the same person)?
If you introduce a little bit of inheritance tax, are you taxing unequal outcome or unequal opportunity?
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday February 24 2018, @12:19AM (2 children)
"Ah, so prosecuting anyone that demonstrably introduces inequality of opportunity. Yes I suppose that's one way of attempting to create and maintain equal opportunities. What about the polite bigots though? The ones that keep their actual discrimination inside their heads and construct other excuses in parallel for why they won't hire someone of a demographic they dislike."
I think the most succinct answer I can give to that is "don't let the best become the enemy of the good."
Let's suppose, for a moment, that it were possible, with sufficient expenditure of resources, to produce perfect equality of opportunity across society.
I'm afraid it is not, but let's assume for the moment it is. BUT, it's extremely expensive.
Just how much would you pay for it? Just how much is it worth?
Now I know the standard sort of politically correct reply has to be any amount, because money is never more important than equality, right?
But that's bullshit. That really is bullshit. Think that logic through. Increase the price till you don't have enough left over to feed everyone. But hey, everyone is equally starving? What? How can that sound like a good idea.
Which is why I keep insisting equality can't be placed alongside fundamental rights, not without a lot of qualification at least. Imagine two buttons, one makes everyone wealthy (but unevenly so) while the other one makes everyone absolutely equal, and desperately poor. Do you REALLY think that the second button is better?
So, back to your question, what do you do about those people? Absolutely nothing, as long as they don't fsck up at least. It's a small evil that must be tolerated to avoid the greater evil. Thoughtcrime. Thought police. An authoritarian distopia, no matter how well-intentioned.
Irrational discrimination solves itself, we just have to be more patient with it than we would like. Darwin can take generations to work.
"It's hard for leaders that preside over thousands or tens of millions of people to assess the well-being of that population without invoking some collective statistics."
One of many reasons the importance of such 'leaders' should not be exaggerated.
"Sometimes the discrimination even seems somewhat rational and is tolerated, for example risk assessments by insurance companies."
Yes, another point that should be made. It's not discrimination that's wrong, or bad. Discrimination is the natural function of the rational mind. It just means noticing differences. A person who cannot discriminate cannot function, which makes it ironic that it's got such a bad name. "A discriminating mind" is actually a good thing, unless something else has gone wrong.
It's irrational or unjust discrimination that we really mean when we talk about discrimination being bad. It's plain bad logic.
And there's no difference in logic between the white racist that hates blacks, and the black racist that hates whites. Nor is there any difference we need to take note of, at least in the context of justice, between the misogynist and the misandrist.
Social justice, as I have seen it expressed many times, directly contradicts that point. They define racism in such a way that it's impossible for a "non-white" to be racist, and impossible for a "white" to be non-racist, so that all men are rapists, and all women are victims. This is not just wrong it's obviously wrong, it's lazy, dishonest thinking.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday February 24 2018, @09:30PM (1 child)
Thank you. That's an excellent analysis of the problem. That's why I think the best solution is to strike a careful balance: a little bit of regulation to keep the peace and uphold basic morals, a little bit of social welfare to limit absolute suffering, and a lot of freedom and civil liberties. Compromises like this aren't in fashion though. Many politicians and their supporters seem to be spending much of their time instead arguing for and against extremes.
Oh, I couldn't agree more.
Of course but the trouble is everyone has their own idea of what forms of discrimination are, or are not unjust. Obviously some discriminators can be unquestionably wrong if they believe a fact about a demographic that is the inverse of a statistical truth about it. But the question of whether a discriminatory choice is unjust is harder. For example, I would argue that any decisions, that a motor insurance company make for a quote that are based upon the past behavior of other drivers that share attributes with the applicant, are unfair discrimination because they are not considering that person as an individual. Increasing or reducing their premium based on their own past behavior would be fair though.
Oh up until this bit you were starting to win me over, Arik. What you're describing sounds so extreme it almost seems like a hyperbolic caricature, if you'll excuse my language. What percentage of social justice proponents really believe exactly this? I don't doubt there will be some very stupid individuals (or intellectually lazy, as you note) that do, but there will always be bad apples in every school of thought. You are careful to qualify the observation by saying you have seen social justice expressed this way many times. I too have come across these ideas a number of times although strangely in my case it's almost invariably been opponents of so-called "SJWs" that have expressed them. Perhaps I just don't frequent the right echo chambers to observe this sort of thinking first hand. One thing that bothers me is that some "SJW" opponents fall into the very collectivist, discriminatory trap you've described (though you are careful to avoid it yourself) by automatically assuming that every "SJW" thinks in this same extreme, hypocritical, dishonest way.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday February 26 2018, @03:54PM
Did you follow the 'Mizzou' and 'Evergreen' protests at all?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Saturday February 24 2018, @12:45AM (1 child)
As a more practical matter, if employers could get away with paying $class less for the same work, they'd hire ONLY $class. The strongest realworld evidence that the 'wage gap' doesn't exist (once one controls for equal work) is that people other than $class still get hired.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday March 01 2018, @06:15AM
That's not true. People's prejudices come into it. Basically it is what the employers believe rather then the reality. If an employer believes that men are better at math, they're more likely to hire men for more pay, even in the face of evidence that women are at least the equal of men. There's other believes that come in, such and such a group is more likely to be thieves, so don't hire them for any wage, even though it is a huge generalization. For reasons such as these, employers are willing to pay more.
People, including employers, are often not rational actors.