I think Github could create a good nucleating community for federated networking. They could host a giant pod of Github users (could be the next venue following slashdot>kuro5hin>reddit>hn), and they could also create 1 click tooling for Github users to create pod for their own project communities.
Would be a good kickstarter for generating sufficient network effect value to use in the first place, evolving the platform software through real world tire kicking, and getting it out to the wider world.
Poverty is one factor, race and gender are others. A middle class black girl is definitely at a disadvantage compared to a middle class white guy. All impact equality of opportunity separately and it would be perverse to address one and not the other
Lol at you fumbling for anecdota about MM when you hear a fact you don't like. Yes, I'm pointing out that women-owned tech companies financially outperform male-owned tech companies. Data, nothing to do with beliefs. (Men do have terrible academic drop out records by comparison with women and need affirmative remediation themselves in that area, all things being equal.)
On the contrary, growing up white and middle class stacks the odds in your favour in the same way. Many well-off Asian families possibly even more so for the reasons you point out (I spend a lot of time in Asia and know it well). If you are a white middle class male you have better options in education and you are brought up for success, less likely to get arrested and so on - so yes of course you will be more likely to get into a good college and be able to cover costs, and you will be with more people who look and talk like you and that network will be important in getting jobs down the line (or partners and investors for your business). And no, it's still not easy.
But merit is just a table stake and never goes far on its own. Nobody is supposing that companies are occupied by a bunch of white cabbages (although the fact that googleboy got any support really does make me wonder as he was so intellectually vacuous). And it's ingrained into our culture that white men take the top jobs right through business, culture and arts, science, and politics - so the danger is we see it as 'how things are' and assume it's evolved for the best.
But it's completely optional and man-made, and ultimately a political choice, 1. not to have a level playing field when it comes to equality of opportunity and 2. to stack it in that direction. The reality is that tech companies led by women do better and the biggest indicator of ending up poor is having the misfortune to be born poor, so society at large isn't going to fall in by redressing the balance.
And no, fixing a racist and sexist system isn't racism or sexism. The issue many people have here is that they don't recognise it as institutionally racist and sexist in the first place. That's because they are the beneficiaries of the system and cannot see it (I know how hard it is to see past that as I'm one too, and this is why I mention the Blub paradox). You are absolutely right to look at the the figures and point out the number of Asians. We need to check the figures because we can't be objective by just going off our feels (we are a great bunch of guys and love and respect women and don't have a racist bone in our bodies etc). It's a systemic issue, very rarely a personal one (although of course it's personal to all those who are disadvantaged by it).
Well this is the thing, you can't really discriminate against somebody with privilege, simply by definition. You have to actively promote those who don't in order to come anywhere near a remotely fair and efficient system that gives opportunities to those who qualify on merit.
> Have you ever considered the option that your black friends was wrong?
Yes of course, it was the first thing I thought and I held onto that. If both parties were on equal ground you would be quite right and there would be equivalence so you could just flip the roles, but they aren't. Middle class white men have greater opportunities in society. Racism and sexism are oppressive by definition, and redressing inequality of opportunity isn't oppression.
And btw talking about institutional racism is the opposite of an emotive argument. It's a more precise way to highlight that the issue is systemic and not the result of individuals being deliberately racist.
The argument is that there is already a discriminatory quota in favour of white men (as any casual inspection of the figures will demonstrate and would require wilful blindness to refute). But none of them are complaining about this of course. They are on the contrary complicit in blissful ignorance of the fact because it is so entrenched it has become institutionalised.
If you come from a disadvantaged position, you have to be better to succeed, not equal. White men don't have it easy but they have it less hard.
Yeah that's what I thought until a black friend very kindly and patiently spelt it out and it still took me a while. It's counterintuitive and nominally smart people don't get it - and are much more adept at finding justifications as to why their thoughts are right, and taking down anything which challenges that. 'Honky' doesn't carry the offence of 'nigger' and there's a good reason for that. (I'm white and I don't really care what people call me.)
I didn't suffer some gun nuts gladly, what can I say. I think I may have committed the offence of calling them aspergic after they were repeatedly and passively aggressively obtuse lol
> Actually, it was a term first popularized by the socialists, to attack the communists.
I'm talking about it becoming popularised in contemporary politics. We can all google that it was rebirthed in 87. The reason I know this though is that I remember seeing it coming into common currency after it was repeatedly being used as a hot button term by the GH Bush election campaign team in 88. This was talked about in the broadsheets at the time.
> people tend to choose more to their liking and "follow their passion"
Not to have a go at you personally but this is revealing of a highly middle class bubble that a lot of people are trying to reason from within (including that silly kid at google). It's like a moral and socio-political version of the Blub paradox. It's the same reason that it isn't possible to be racist against whites (in the West) or sexist against men, and why that is hard to understand if you are white or a man (you don't know you are in the privilege bubble and it seems inequitable).
The irony of this post when you will get reported and hellbanned for questioning libertarianism on HN. As for "political correctness" it was a term that was first popularised by the right to attack college activism and shut down people challenging the status quo.
I'd wager good money I'm a lot closer to that Conrad character than the author will ever be and from where I'm sitting it's pretty clear that tech culture has started becoming completely toxic. The article reads as if written by a psychopath (and one begins to wonder whether Evgeny Morozov has a point about SV's movers and shakers). Putting aside the shallow and barely informed notions about fashion and art themselves, dismissing morality as no more than a seasonal fad or craze is itself an unwitting confession of a deep-seated amorality.
Would be a good kickstarter for generating sufficient network effect value to use in the first place, evolving the platform software through real world tire kicking, and getting it out to the wider world.