'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts

[Ed.Kloonk]

If I were a rich man (as the song goes), I would put together a team of smart, aggressive lawyers to go after media BS with various defamation lawsuits, to the point where it would get truly painful for the media moguls involved.  (Yes, I know, this is basically taking over what ought to be a government function of some kind.  But as government is no longer functional...)

Fa la la.

This is actually what is already happening. You'd only be fighting with other rich bastards.

[magic]

it really would be nice if there was a reputable news outlet that would really strive to just present the dry facts and not try to spin it one way or the other

Live in a conflicted country, win conflicted prizes. It looks like most people don't watch news for information but to convince themselves they are the good guys and for ideological ammunition. Daily reminder that EEVblog audience doesn't constitute majority of people

conservatives
liberals

[bd139]

If I were a rich man (as the song goes), I would put together a team of smart, aggressive lawyers to go after media BS with various defamation lawsuits, to the point where it would get truly painful for the media moguls involved.  (Yes, I know, this is basically taking over what ought to be a government function of some kind.  But as government is no longer functional...)

Fa la la.

This is actually what is already happening. You'd only be fighting with other rich bastards.

We have something sensible here in the U.K.

https://fullfact.org/

This is my favourite one so far: https://fullfact.org/online/5g-coronavirus-20-note/

[magic]

I honestly suggest and hope, for us all, across the globe, that you get rid of that man before he completes his goal to become "King" with full 100% authority over the whole USA, before he refuses to leave office or denies the election as fake news if he is voted out.  In case you haven't noticed he has already deployed the troops and is already eroding your democracy in front of your eyes.

Why so much obsession with America? Turn off your TV and CiAPhone and ask yourself why is your life so dependent on a bunch of weirdos across the pond who elected a TV celebrity because he personally fondled supermodels that they mere mortals could only dream about? Do you want the world to be that way? What can be changed? What can be changed without expecting crazies to change?
Maybe Orange Cheeto is right that Americans are doing all the hard work while Europe is just leeching off of them, how can a self-respecting European be so dependent on outcomes of American drama?

The more I learn about human genetics, the more foolish groups which focus on dividing people into different races becomes. There's great genetic diversity in human populations across the world, but the lines between one human race and another are very blurred.

It's no secret that most so-called African-Americans are part European, due to the rape of slaves in the colonial era, but many Americans who consider themselves to be of entirely European decent have signifiant DNA from Africa. It's interesting to see how some white Americans react when they found out they're partly black!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/they-considered-themselves-white-but-dna-tests-told-a-more-complex-story/2018/02/06/16215d1a-e181-11e7-8679-a9728984779c_story.html

Let's stop putting people into groups: black, white, Hispanic etc. It would help to combat lots of the problems in our society.

Come on, you are making the same mistake as dr Mengele trying to pin down everything on genetics, while
a) it's an elephant in the room that genetics aren't everything
b) it's an elephant in the room that nobody really knows jack shit about genetics

To elaborate on b) consider that when James Watson was fired for claiming that Africa is doomed because of genetics, they didn't fire him for making "untrue" statements but for making "scientifically unsubstantiated" and "horrible" statements. I hope you see the difference. Yes, you and a few other posters have made statements to the contrary of Watson's, and many journalists and lots of other wishful thinking people, but that's not evidence of anything.

To elaborate on a) consider that you can greatly reduce your chances of having your house burglarized, or being mugged or raped in many places in the world, exactly by pigeon-holing people into groups you outlined, or similar. That helps many people combat their problems in their societies, as it happens.

[PlainName]

We have something sensible here in the U.K.

https://fullfact.org/

Problem is, what makes that more reputable than any other random website? Take that and, say, MailOnine and why is one beyond reproach whilst the other is, er, not that? AFAICS, you read a few articles and they either confirm or not your view of the site, and if you want one to be truthful then that's what you'll see unless there are clearly things that are made up according to your experience.

You might say that one site publishes its sources of info, but in many contemporaneous cases there are no pre-existing sources. Which happens to be where newspapers are located in temporal space. Sure, later (and often much later) some 'investigation' may take place but often these are whitewashes and disputed. And the original piece has long ago hit the fish'n'chips transport scheme.

[coppice]

We have something sensible here in the U.K.

https://fullfact.org/

Problem is, what makes that more reputable than any other random website? Take that and, say, MailOnine and why is one beyond reproach whilst the other is, er, not that? AFAICS, you read a few articles and they either confirm or not your view of the site, and if you want one to be truthful then that's what you'll see unless there are clearly things that are made up according to your experience.

You might say that one site publishes its sources of info, but in many contemporaneous cases there are no pre-existing sources. Which happens to be where newspapers are located in temporal space. Sure, later (and often much later) some 'investigation' may take place but often these are whitewashes and disputed. And the original piece has long ago hit the fish'n'chips transport scheme.

The US has several fact checker sites, some of which seemed to start out pretty neutral. Now, they've all been taken over by partisans, often spouting obvious garbage. Usually obvious because it lacks self consistency.

[paulca]

Moderately related.  The company I am contracting with sent an email asking people to "self identify", so the company can track their inclusive workplace policies.

They want to know your race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, health, military service and a host of other extremely personal information.

We are to understand that this information will be collected, stored, transferred, sold for their uses, including but not limited to creating an inclusive work place.  It is not anonymised and open to access by anyone in HR.... or whomever they choose to transfer it to.

I laughed so hard and nearly wet myself.  My answer would "Fuck the right off!"

This is for real..  Honestly!

EDIT:  I just forwarded it to the phishing/cyber security report email address.  That will create a bit of a shit storm.

[coppice]

Moderately related.  The company I am contracting with sent an email asking people to "self identify", so the company can track their inclusive workplace policies.

They want to know your race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, health, military service and a host of other extremely personal information.

We are to understand that this information will be collected, stored, transferred, sold for their uses, including but not limited to creating an inclusive work place.  It is not anonymised and open to access by anyone in HR.... or whomever they choose to transfer it to.

I laughed so hard and nearly wet myself.  My answer would "Fuck the right off!"

This is for real..  Honestly!

EDIT:  I just forwarded it to the phishing/cyber security report email address.  That will create a bit of a shit storm.

At the other end of the scale I recently went for a screening test at an NHS clinic. They wanted to know my racial mix to assist with studies about which types of people get the relevant condition, but were only allowed to ask if minded telling them.

[paulca]

I dug into this a bit more.
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/sites/default/files/do_ask_do_tell_guide_2016.pdf

It's been growing momentum through VERY large american corporations and they are pushing it hard to the UK as well.

That document basically comes down to saying, it might legally be controversial or prohibitive to ask people or store this informaton on people, but companies should strive to bypass these legalities.

Not sure if it's in that article or not, but I seen it mentions that "If an employee chooses not to self identify that HR may collect the information visual or by implication".

No shit folks, this is racial, gender, background and sexual orientation profiling.

As it is implied that this data can also be used when screening candiates for jobs, it could genuinely come down to getting or not getting a job because you are/are not straight/gay/<insert denomination of choice>

As to why I'm opposed to this.  It's simple.
Employer:  What is your sexual orientation.
Me:  None of your god damn business.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Tell them you are a masculine-presenting, transgendered lesbian.

It's the cheat code for corporate God mode.

[coppice]

Tell them you are a masculine-presenting, transgendered lesbian.

It's the cheat code for corporate God mode.

I thought the cheat code for a man was "I am the daughter of my grandfather's son".

[themadhippy]

They want to know your race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, health, military service and a host of other extremely personal information.

All of us in the uk will be legally required to pass on that  and more  to the goverment (via there chosen contractor) next year.

Employer:  What is your sexual orientation.

Me: mainly on top,sometimes sideways  and occasionally up against the fridge

[SilverSolder]

[...]
Employer:  What is your sexual orientation.
Me:  None of your god damn business.

Wonder if humans are the only mammals that have such big problems with being mammals?

[Nominal Animal]

[...]
Employer:  What is your sexual orientation.
Me:  None of your god damn business.

Wonder if humans are the only mammals that have such big problems with being mammals?

What's your credit card number and pin code, then?

[SilverSolder]

[...]
Employer:  What is your sexual orientation.
Me:  None of your god damn business.

Wonder if humans are the only mammals that have such big problems with being mammals?

What's your credit card number and pin code, then?

None of your god damn business! 

My comment was meant in the sense that sexual orientation is a natural consequence of being a mammal - like eye color - so why are we making such a big deal out of it?

[paulca]

My comment was meant in the sense that sexual orientation is a natural consequence of being a mammal - like eye color - so why are we making such a big deal out of it?

They want to make the boxes smaller.

[PlainName]

so why are we making such a big deal out of it?

So we get more of a buzz from having a shag than, say, searching for something to eat or having a kip or whatever.

[SilverSolder]

so why are we making such a big deal out of it?

So we get more of a buzz from having a shag than, say, searching for something to eat or having a kip or whatever.

That's the basics of it.  Then, jealousies, ethics, and the rest of it enters into the picture and makes something conceptually simple unbearably complicated! 

[Nominal Animal]

[...]
Employer:  What is your sexual orientation.
Me:  None of your god damn business.

Wonder if humans are the only mammals that have such big problems with being mammals?

What's your credit card number and pin code, then?

None of your god damn business! 

My comment was meant in the sense that sexual orientation is a natural consequence of being a mammal - like eye color - so why are we making such a big deal out of it?

I fully agree – and my point was that an employer should not need that kind of information for anything (except for some really sensitive jobs where you'd have a background search and so on).

There is very little an employer can do with that information that is not actively against the interests of the employee, so employers really have no place asking such stuff.  Just like I have absolutely no place asking anyone for their credit card details: I, too, would just misuse the information.

(Well, I wouldn't, because long ago I decided I'd rather drop dead than exploit others, but you know what I mean.)

To pre-empt the question, "well, how could such innocuous information be used against anyone, then?", my answer is "as a tool for social manipulation".
There are a lot of people, especially in middle-managerial roles, who love to find out whatever tidbits they can exploit to squeeze some extra out of their slaves workers.  Perhaps you'all have never met those, but I have.  A typical scheme is to start rumours, using misunderstandings with a tiny bit of truth in them to pit people against each other, and revel in the chaos they sow.  You know, anything from the psycopath/sociopath handbook, really.  In my experience, this kind of discord is surprisingly often used as a smokescreen to hide the managers utter lack of ability and skill, and as an inexhaustible source for scapegoats when things go wrong.

[SilverSolder]

[...]
Employer:  What is your sexual orientation.
Me:  None of your god damn business.

Wonder if humans are the only mammals that have such big problems with being mammals?

What's your credit card number and pin code, then?

None of your god damn business! 

My comment was meant in the sense that sexual orientation is a natural consequence of being a mammal - like eye color - so why are we making such a big deal out of it?

I fully agree – and my point was that an employer should not need that kind of information for anything (except for some really sensitive jobs where you'd have a background search and so on).

There is very little an employer can do with that information that is not actively against the interests of the employee, so employers really have no place asking such stuff.  Just like I have absolutely no place asking anyone for their credit card details: I, too, would just misuse the information.

(Well, I wouldn't, because long ago I decided I'd rather drop dead than exploit others, but you know what I mean.)

To pre-empt the question, "well, how could such innocuous information be used against anyone, then?", my answer is "as a tool for social manipulation".
There are a lot of people, especially in middle-managerial roles, who love to find out whatever tidbits they can exploit to squeeze some extra out of their slaves workers.  Perhaps you'all have never met those, but I have.  A typical scheme is to start rumours, using misunderstandings with a tiny bit of truth in them to pit people against each other, and revel in the chaos they sow.  You know, anything from the psycopath/sociopath handbook, really.  In my experience, this kind of discord is surprisingly often used as a smokescreen to hide the managers utter lack of ability and skill, and as an inexhaustible source for scapegoats when things go wrong.

It is the micro-economic version of what we are seeing at the political level in certain countries at the moment...

[Zero999]

The more I learn about human genetics, the more foolish groups which focus on dividing people into different races becomes. There's great genetic diversity in human populations across the world, but the lines between one human race and another are very blurred.

It's no secret that most so-called African-Americans are part European, due to the rape of slaves in the colonial era, but many Americans who consider themselves to be of entirely European decent have signifiant DNA from Africa. It's interesting to see how some white Americans react when they found out they're partly black!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/they-considered-themselves-white-but-dna-tests-told-a-more-complex-story/2018/02/06/16215d1a-e181-11e7-8679-a9728984779c_story.html

Let's stop putting people into groups: black, white, Hispanic etc. It would help to combat lots of the problems in our society.

Come on, you are making the same mistake as dr Mengele trying to pin down everything on genetics, while
a) it's an elephant in the room that genetics aren't everything
b) it's an elephant in the room that nobody really knows jack shit about genetics

To elaborate on b) consider that when James Watson was fired for claiming that Africa is doomed because of genetics, they didn't fire him for making "untrue" statements but for making "scientifically unsubstantiated" and "horrible" statements. I hope you see the difference. Yes, you and a few other posters have made statements to the contrary of Watson's, and many journalists and lots of other wishful thinking people, but that's not evidence of anything.

No, quite the reverse, I'm not pinning any aspects of human behaviour on genetics. I agree, not enough is known about genetics to make that kind of link about large groups of people yet. At the moment, evidence points towards culture and experience, shaping the behaviour of a group of people.

My point was, we enough is know about genetics, to know that the current racial groups are arbitrary and are purely cultural. Take Africa for example, being the cradle of humanity, it has the greatest genetic diversity vs area, compared to anywhere else, so putting everyone there into one group termed as "black", is nonsensical from a scientific perspective. The next time I fill out a form with a race field, I'll leave it blank, because it's a silly question.

To elaborate on a) consider that you can greatly reduce your chances of having your house burglarized, or being mugged or raped in many places in the world, exactly by pigeon-holing people into groups you outlined, or similar. That helps many people combat their problems in their societies, as it happens.

No, that's completely wrong. Violence amongst groups of people from other cultures, who've moved to a new place, with a different culture, is exacerbated by pigeon-holing people into groups. It promotes division, tribalism and discrimination against the newcomers, making them feel marginalised. These sorts of problems can be alleviated by peaceful, cultural assimilation. Immigrants who mix with the locals, learn their language, befriend and marry them, are much less likely to commit crimes and are more likely to achieve income parity with the locals. Note that I'm not talking about wiping out their culture entirely, as was the case with Native Americans, but allowing it to mix with the predominate culture. We've seen some cultural assimilation in this UK, where curry, is one of the nations favourite dishes. Unfortunately we need more of this and some of the recent government policies of multiculturalism haven't helped.

The history with slavery and segregation in the US is why people of African descent have had more of a hard time integrating with the rest of society, than other immigrants. Unfortunately the current black lives matter movement isn't helping. The name promotes division and many of them discourage good things such as: mixed marriage and parents forbidding their children from befriending whites.

[magic]

Writing in "human race" or "race doesn't exist" might be an effective way of trolling them, but only if you follow it up with a lawsuit when they inevitably correct it based on empirical assessment by HR droids. If you think it will give them second thoughts or some cognitive dissonance, think again - they wouldn't be SJWs in the first place if they were capable of rational thought.

People are so conditioned to desire to appear "rational" that they will accept literally anything that is provided to them with some semblance of "rational" justification, truth and consistency be damned. Doublethink is the name of the game and Orwell was neither an instruction manual nor a warning, but simply an honest assessment of 20th century political reality.

"Trans butch lesbian" is definitely the optimal troll sexual orientation for men, after all it obliges one to exactly nothing controversial - you're just a straight guy who wants to hang out in ladies bathrooms for reasons that are none of anyone's business Even if one day the fascists might end up taking over and getting their hands on your file, you will still stand a chance of weaseling out of the gulag if you keep your calm and explain the situation

No, that's completely wrong. Violence amongst groups of people from other cultures, who've moved to a new place, with a different culture, is exacerbated by pigeon-holing people into groups.

These sorts of problems can be alleviated by peaceful, cultural assimilation.

Unfortunately we need more of this and some of the recent government policies of multiculturalism haven't helped.

But look, I'm not talking about violence among minorities, but violence against my own egoistical ass. This one is most easily avoided by staying far away from ethnic minorities and keeping minorities far away from me. Works for us in Poland, we are a rare example of an EU country which hasn't had any terrorists attacks yet.

Plenty of people on this forum brag about their own "tip of the iceberg activism" such as hiring an odd woman or some actually educated Indian for an engineering job, but you probably don't live in the "no go zones" to support assimilation of immigrants. That's exactly why the left says that "wypypo are inherently racist" and try to force their way by diversity quotas in employment or even housing (rumor has it that Biden will revive some "anti-gentrification" policies planned by Obama). People have been hearing that "assimilation" talk for decades and yet a whole generation of "radicalized, disenfranchised youth" has somehow materialized out of those non-European immigrants right under your noses, and it seems that faith in the concept of spontaneous voluntary assimilation is collapsing pretty fast. And for good reason, because it simply isn't in anyone's personal interest.

Radical anti-racism is nothing new. Back in the day it would have been considered unthinkable to just allow anyone from anywhere to cross a national border on a whim without even identification, but for a while it has been widely permitted. Forced integration is nothing new - everybody talks about the nonwhite side of white flight ("we are left alone, nobody loves us") but nobody talks about the white side ("we abandoned our homes because the foreigners moved in"). So really, race quotas are the natural next step. You are worried about a backlash because it pisses you off, but the EDL has been pissed off for years now. It really is nothing new.

It's abundantly clear that diversity for diversity's sake has been a goal in itself for the West for a pretty long while now. These are just a few further steps taken in the same general direction of basically telling the majority to suck it up and sacrifice for the ever growing minorities. It just hit a bunch of EEs this time around and that's why this forum suddenly cares.

[EEVblog]

@GeorgeOfTheJungle I have removed your post twice now. Do not post off-topic Youtube video.
If this thread does not attempt to stay on topic I'm going to lock it.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

@GeorgeOfTheJungle I have removed your post twice now. Do not post off-topic Youtube video.
If this thread does not attempt to stay on topic I'm going to lock it.

Ok, sorry, I was asking you exactly that right now in a PM.

[wilfred]

@GeorgeOfTheJungle I have removed your post twice now. Do not post off-topic Youtube video.
If this thread does not attempt to stay on topic I'm going to lock it.

Please don't let one member spoil it for at least 10 others. I appeal to you not to lock this thread. I'm confident it serves a useful function for the Forum community generally.