Rayvin

Holy fuck Be careful in the Scottish highlands, there isn't a lot of room on the roads in places and people overtake in crazy areas.

I've just re-skim read the whole thing looking for the section where he claims that. I can't find it. Can you please cite it specifically as this may be the thing I've missed in all of this. As far as I can see, nowhere does he make the case that women are inferior programmers. He makes the case that people who don't prioritise things that programmers need to do make for poor programmers, and that the reason Google struggles to hire women into these roles is because women in general seem less predisposed to do these things. As such, he makes the case that improving organisational diversity could be achieved by changing the culture and requirements of those who do programming (in order to make it more appealing for a larger proportion of women), rather than arbitrarily hiring inferior programmers just to pick up the numbers of women. Which is such a logically sound conclusion I'm struggling to see why this has even become a controversy. My partner started off as a 3D graphics animator and was a far, far better animator than most of the male contingent in her class. She got a job and tried to make it work, but wasn't prepared to sacrifice huge portions of her life to long hours and stressful working conditions. She left and pursued other forms of graphic design. The company didn't force her out, it wasn't hostile to her as a woman, she just wasn't prepared to do what many of the men were in order to work in that environment. This is obviously anecdotal, but it does actually seem as though this experience is mapped across multiple environments. As such, we're better off asking not why women won't take these roles, but why some men will.

I read the memo, yes. The guy has been backed up in his conclusions by academics in the field and more importantly his view to my eye was more that these differences exist, and we should cater for diversity by improving organisational culture to be more support of traits typically found in women, and that doing so would allow the fostering of a more genuine form of diversity. There is nothing wrong with making a statement like this. Whether biological or through socialization, he is right about general character trait differences between genders and goes to some lengths to explain that these are general traits rather than inevitable ones. So his argument is that we can either set quotas to arbitrarily hire women into roles they aren't necessarily well suited for, which clearly isn't working very well given the class action lawsuit Google is facing over a related issue, or you can change the culture and the way the workplace values the contributions of women. Google apparently allows it's employees to send out reports like this as part of an exchange of ideas. It looks strange to me but if they allow others to do it then there's a precedent. The guy isn't a sexist on any metric that makes sense. He's not having a dig at women, and he supports his arguments with scientific studies. It's developed into a shitstorm because the science flies in the face of what the ideologues are saying. The really sad thing here is that the right is going to use this as a stick to beat the left with for fucking years. This sort of nonsense makes us look like we're scared of debate and deniers of science. As for the YouTube video, I haven't actually watched it. There's plenty of non-alt right support for him though.

I dunno why he bothers. RTG has about 3 sentient beings on the whole message board, and the others are complete morons with overt envy concerning the relative stature of Newcastle to Sunderland in almost every sense. The level of inadequacy amongst the poster base there is repellant. I checked the thread Fish is posting in and its like the Wolfy thread if you had 50 Wolfys and...well, the Fish. They're like this because Sunderland is a city with the mentality of a small town.

Unfair dismissal, I would argue. They've sacked him, IMO, because they're in the middle of being sued by 60 women over gender pay discrepencies. Nothing to do with him, but they don't need this PR catastrophe. So they'll have worked out that a $10m settlement will cost them less in the long run. Having read the memo, I don't think they have any case whatsoever. The science has been supported by academics in related fields, and the opinion it offered was constructive. From the Guardian, defamation. They are outright lying about it man. I've never seen it this blatant before...

I suspect he's going to get a substantial amount when he sues them. If I was him, I'd then move on to the Guardian.

Saw this. The SJW contingent have truly shot themselves in the foot with this one. The level of misrepresentation going on in the Guardian is utterly galling. I read the damn memo. Its thoughtful, constructive, and sets out a positive vision for company diversity. The way the Guardian have tackled it absolutely confirms to me that 'facts are no longer sacred - ideology is'.

Well I'm being a bit dramatic there. I think you could convincingly argue that the US has a cultural empire though. But in plainer terms, the global hegemon is what I mean. The US empire has been relatively short lived compared to its predecessors (if indeed we're witnessing its decline as seems likely). I'm not convinced that the Chinese position of global domination would be any longer lasting.

Ok well I agree with all of that - I interviewed a number of Chinese people for one of my dissertations who would outright state that they felt China's position in the world should be as the global dominating force. Whether they get there or not isn't necessarily inevitable though.

I think China will eventually surpass the US, but the half life for empires seems to shrink as each one goes by. I wondered to myself if the US of Eurasia might be the one that knocks China down, if Europe becomes more pro-Russian over time. Equally, you could make a case that with China investing in Africa, it could be that we see the African continent take the reigns. Or South America (although they're rising at a similar time to China, so I think it's more likely they'll be enemies to the Chinese regime in the end).

I'm really not sure this is the case you know, and I'm not fan of US Imperialism. The Chinese in particular have to be extremely careful about what they do; if they say something they can't then do, the CCP will be overthrown in a heartbeat. They almost had a national crisis on their hands after the Belgrade embassy bombing and that was two decades ago. The CCP won't want to square up against the US. If they lose, they lose China.

Not sure. It would depend on how much the 'Kims are a gift from god' rhetoric is actually important for maintaining control. If (as I suspect) no North Koreans buy such nonsense, then it's likely the military will just seize control and run the place based on the same practical actions that have been used to ensure control up until now - in which case yes, a new supreme leader. However, that leader would be one who would likely have to take a different approach to Kim vis-a-vis the US.

Do you mean regional hegemony or global? I read your earlier comment as an assertion that the Chinese were on the cusp of world domination in place of the Americans, which I cannot support as a conclusion. They're miles away from the US ability to govern the world order, in particular because they lack the soft power initiatives that the US does that Parky mentioned earlier (but also because their military is vastly inferior). The biggest threat China poses to the US is actually cyber, IMO. Regionally yes, they're trying to assert control over the regional area in place of the US - but if push came to shove they'd end up in a confrontation with every other state in the region due to their aggressive expansionist policies. I'm not sure China are quite ready for that conflict, even if their aspirations may seem to align with it. I'm not uninformed on this myself by the way - while I agree with what you consider to be China's stated aims in a strategic sense, I disagree that they're currently in a position to realise any of that. They're about slow power creep, not direct confrontation.

Hey!

Fair enough, but where does that leave us now. We're not going to break down the NK regime in Kim's lifetime and possibly beyond, so we're looking at another 40-50 years of this. And they're going to become more and more able to project a nuclear threat as time goes on. Eventually, someone is going to have to do something.

I agree, that's been the American Imperialist weapon for the second half of the last century, but NK appear to be absolutely impervious to it so far.

But it's different now that they have the potential to cause significant destructive damage. It's not just the US who will be concerned about that, it's literally everyone in the surrounding region except China. If we do nothing, in 5-10 years Japan will have nuked up too. They've been talking about it for some time, and it's because of NK. Regional tensions will escalate and I'm not sure that the arena is big enough for that many power players. Having said that - if we did go carrot rather than stick, maybe we could encourage them into a greater state of global openness through trade... but I'm just not convinced it'll ever happen.

I think you're overconcerned about Chinese threat potential tbh but I can't say for certain that you're wrong - I think a lot depends on how informed the US is keeping China in all of this - despite the bluster, there are significant backchannels in place between the two. China isn't nearly as hostile to the US as they claim to be for their domestic audience. But I could be wrong. I don't think they're a significant military threat mind you... they've only just launched their first aircraft carrier and its a refurb. Decades away from matching the US and Europe.

No chance they're seriously considering that. Although this may be enough for Trump...

I dunno, I did a lot of reading on Chinese academic literature on North Korea and while there's an element of opportunity there, the Chinese government is constantly annoyed that NK acts as a destabilising force on their border. I think they'd prefer the question settled (obviously as favourably to China as possible). I think a non-nuclear covert strike might do it. It's hard to imagine that they have the military infrastructure to survive if the head was cut off the snake - but you never know I suppose. Agree that 10-15 years ago would have been better. But we are where we are, and do you think there's a non-military solution in the offing if we wait longer?

Yeah I'd say that's more or less the position I thought we were in. Nothing to worry about in the short term but further than that we'll just have to see how it goes.

That's how I see it. Better now than later. If war is going to happen one way or another, it's better now. The longer we leave it, the worse that war becomes. If there was another way of solving this, then fine - but after 30 odd years of this nonsense, I'm not convinced this is ever going to get better. Soft power doesn't penetrate NK. They're really fucking good at holding power domestically, the cultural brainwashing strategy that we use elsewhere in the world isn't working. I remain convinced that China doesn't want that regime there, but simply can't see an option for dealing with them without a heavy political cost to themselves. If NK goes under, they and SK get to split millions of impoverished, underskilled North Koreans. It's telling that China has mobilised its forces along the border - they've done this to resist an influx of refugees if war breaks out. Plus, as a humanitarian thing, we've left the North koreans to live a life of abject poverty and misery. When the regime finally falls, the stories we'll hear about life under the Kims will be chilling. The question is, can we save more people than we'd lose, by having this war now rather than later.

Which makes a US led pre-emptive strike a logical course of action if war is considered to be becoming inevitable.