Outreachy Announces Its Winter 2018 Interns To Work On The Linux Kernel, GNOME

[bregma]

bregma you keep strawmmaning the actual right we are referring to ( which as i have said in my previous comment , is apparently implemented in American and Californian law in such a way that it makes outreachy illegal )
For an exception to be reasonable , there should be ( among other things ) ample evidence that unfair discrimination exists , and enough insight to conclude that the problem can't be satisfiably solved more directly , not just

Hmm.

Can you explicitly state the right you are having abrogated? Keep in mind this program is not employment so employment equity regulations do not apply, and it is not an agency of a national, state, or local government so those relevant regulations do not apply either. You certainly do not have a right to demand someone give you money just because they're giving it to someone else. In fact, that is considered a crime to just demand money out of the blue under most circumstances, so that can't be it.

Can you reference the statute in US federal and California state legislation that makes it illegal for a private charitable organization to decide who they will disburse stipends to, or under what conditions they may disburse those stipends? I'd love to see how that can reconciled with other similar agencies who disburse money to identified groups, like say cancer associations who only help victims of cancer, or verteran's groups who only help those who have been members of the armed forces.

[bregma]

I take it you're not a huge fan of Charles Darwin then?

It is not an assumption about your motivation, I was pointing out the massive hole in your logic. Then you go on to insult my intelligence by implying method of choice to conduct a discussion is through straw men.

I dunno, "I take it" is usually a synonym for "I assume" and "you're not a huge fan" is usually interpreted as a statement about my emotional state in reference to a subject -- in short, my motivation.

You failed to point out any flaw in my logic, cosmic references notwithstanding. In fact, I went on to describe how Darwin's hypothesis of natural selection as mechanism used to explain the observation of the evolution of species nicely reinforces my argument rather than countering it.

It is not a strawman argument to address the exact statements you made. It's simply an argument. Your premise was that selective pressures push toward diversity. My counterargument was that selective pressures maintain a lack of diversity in this case (with provided examples) and that the Outreachy program was an effort to introduce selective counterpressure to shift the equilibrium. A strawman argument would introduce a new in extremis premise and then proceed to refute it instead of addressing the actual premise presented.

Allow me to repeat myself; what these "diversity" programs are doing is essentially trying to selectively breed humans to fit the ideals of the author. If you fail to grasp the meaning of these words then there's not much I can do to help you.

I understand the meaning of the words just fine, acknowledge your ad hominem and would like to point out I am doing just fine without your assistance so you can save your resources for the truly needy.

I disagree strongly that there is any evidence that the Outreachy program is a human breeding program. I would gladly change my mind if you could point to anything it has published that requires participation in reproductive activities in any form to qualify for receiving a disbursement.

It's also by far the easiest factor to manipulate for evil.

Oooh. Evil. Such a delicious word. Wonderfully ambiguous. Much has been justified throughout history in the name of rooting out evil. Carry on.
[quote]The fundamental principle of evolution is that in a population, the subset that achieves the most successful outcome will have the largest influence on the next generation of the population. Success is arbitrarily defined by the population itself, so the metric is not one clear constant you can easily quantify by a mathematical expression. But to state in absolute terms that the white man is the source of evil, as you do in the next paragraph, is not only racial discrimination based on social stereotypes but also contributing in a most horrifying way to a reduction in that particular subset.
[quote]
At the risk of quibbling, you're describing natural selection, not evolution. With the primitive state of primary and secondary science education in the USA many Americans understandably make that mistake. Let's move on.

I reread everything I wrote, and no where did I say anything about white men being the source of evil. You may feel free to quote the passage you're referencing in the case that I'm incorrect.

I definitely described some real life actual verifiable true documented factual witnessed situations that have exerted selective social pressure to keep women out of certain fields. If you wish to counter that argument, you will need to disprove this ever happens. I only have to provide a single piece of evidence it has happened. Such is the nature of quantificational logic.

One can not draw a universal conclusion that because some people who are white and male are sexist then all white men are sexist (and to argue I have written that is to engage in a devious logical fallacy). One can, however, draw the conclusion that because some people have met with negative experiences just because they are not white or not male they are likely to be discouraged. That is selective social pressure in action and how a lack of diversity evolves.

Postscript; for future reference it's "you're", not "you;re".

Yes, I have a problem with my right pinky finger and sometimes it doesn't stretch all the way over to the single quote key, pressing the semicolon key instead, and sometimes I 'm unaware it has happened. I am discomforted by the lack of clarity in my writing it causes. I am sure I am a better person for you having drawn it to my attention again.

With stereotypes like these making the rounds it's no mystery why the suicide rate of white men in the west is on the rise.

Maybe. It would be interesting to examine that in detail, but perhaps another time.

Precisely as I exclaimed then; free will punished under the banner of pleasant numbers, for the race of those pesky white men is tainted by success in the eyes of the beholder and should be abolished by the means of poverty.

I fail to see, and you have not described, how a private charitable organization disbursing stipends to individuals based on their membership in a recognized and documented disadvantaged group in any way punishes you. I'm using the definition of punishment as the infliction or imposition of a penalty as retribution for an offense. What penalty are you paying? Who has imposed or inflicted it?

But that's the problem you see, by circulating the notion that white men will seek to punish those who oppose them, you are just one more cog in the machinery to push stereotypes as a whole into the pool of criteria for success, as long as it's in the name of discrimination against a subset you deem to be inferior. I'll have you know men in the STEM field have been begging for more women to socialize with, but doing so through luring them in with false promises of outcome is outright repulsive. A facade of rewarding minor progress as major is far more condescending than being told upfront that we all have struggles achieving what we want. Those who seek a career in STEM fields should find comfort of being judged by merit rather than arbitrary factors beyond their control.

I have not circulated any notion that white men will seek to punish those who oppose them. You made that up out of whole cloth, and by seeking to refute the falsely attributed premise you are engaging the very definition of a strawman argument.

You may assert that those who seek a career in a STEM field should only progress on technical merit, and yes, that is the ideal. The reality is that many people are held back for non-technical reasons, and that is why program like Outreachy are created and continue to exist. This is the reality for many people, evidently people not like you. It's great that you're supportive of people just like yourself. There's no real reason for you not to be tolerant of people who are supportive of those who are different from yourself too.

Yes it is, it's substituting one subset for another on irrelevant parameters. How can you not perceive the punishment of exclusion?

Well, I just can't. You have not put forth any argument supporting the idea that if someone receives positive encouragement that in no way concerns you personally constitutes the infliction or imposition of a penalty as retribution for an offense.

To successfully argue that Outreachy punishes you, you would have to demonstrate that its existence or practice somehow results in you having less than you had before. An itemized list will do fine.

Well dress me in a suit and task me repel the crows, for I am the biggest straw man of them all. What nonsense you are spewing.

You wrote If that means men and women will tend to different areas of interest then so be it. I responded with you're arguing that those uppity folks should know their place and stay in it. The context was an discussion about how women select certain careers because they are subject to discrimination. It is not exactly a strawman to interpret your statement in support of streaming women into separate careers from men through the use of discriminatory practices as saying women should know their place and stay in it. Rather it's a colourful way of stating the obvious conclusion that you support the current discriminatory practices and state of the industry by drawing a parallel to the widely documented racial discrimination in the US south with its Jim Crow laws and "separate but unequal" practices. And hey, you bought right in to it. Yee haw.

[GunpowaderGuy]

bregma

. It is not exactly a strawman to interpret your statement in support of streaming women into separate careers from men through the use of discriminatory practices

that would not be strawmanning , but where has he made that statement

[Davidovitch]

bregma your eloquent rebuttal is appreciated to the degree I felt compelled sharing it here :-)

[ParticleBoard]

bregma are you a bot? The way you type and the idiotic views you have seem like someone trained an AI by scraping the geek feminist wiki and unleashed it on here to vomit out buzzword-laden pseudo-intellectual tripe. The way you are completely and utterly unable to grasp the most obvious points yet write epic length word soup seems odd to me.

Do I need to post an image with a 3d object randomly placed in it to see if it screws you up? Outreachy is openly racist bullshit. Full stop.

[DanL]

are you a bot? ... Outreachy is openly racist bullshit. Full stop.

I feel the same way about low-count posters like you that whine about Outreachy; like I could make a bot that waits for an Outreachy headline, and makes the first comment that Outreachy sucks and is racist/discriminatory, and gets 20 upvotes.

[ParticleBoard]

I feel the same way about low-count posters like you that whine about Outreachy; like I could make a bot that waits for an Outreachy headline, and makes the first comment that Outreachy sucks and is racist/discriminatory, and gets 20 upvotes.

What's it like supporting "trendy" racism? What's it like brainlessly parroting talking points held by an extremely vocal minority of "activists"? What's it like being a human cliche?

[DanL]

What's it like supporting "trendy" racism? What's it like brainlessly parroting talking points held by an extremely vocal minority of "activists"? What's it like being a human cliche?

I'm not doing any of that. Again, I feel the same about you and your ilk, and as I said earlier in this thread, I would rather stick to more fruitful conversation like the projects that Outreachy or other intern projects (like Google Summer of Code or X.org's internship program) could work on. That would be productive. Your comments and others like them are not.

[bregma]

bregma are you a bot? The way you type and the idiotic views you have seem like someone trained an AI by scraping the geek feminist wiki and unleashed it on here to vomit out buzzword-laden pseudo-intellectual tripe. The way you are completely and utterly unable to grasp the most obvious points yet write epic length word soup seems odd to me.

Thank you for enriching us with your sentiments.

I suppose next time I should limit what I say to simple sentences of five monosyllabic words or less so you can follow without tiring your lips too much as you read along silently.

[Djhg2000]

I dunno, "I take it" is usually a synonym for "I assume" and "you're not a huge fan" is usually interpreted as a statement about my emotional state in reference to a subject -- in short, my motivation.

Correct, sort of correct and wild but bravely arbitrary misinterpretation. It doesn't necessarily have to refer to your motivation, the expression can also mean that you disagree with whatever follows. In this case, you'd hypothetically disagree with Charles Darwin, and implicitly to the extent of refuting the theory of evolution for whatever reason.

You failed to point out any flaw in my logic, cosmic references notwithstanding. In fact, I went on to describe how Darwin's hypothesis of natural selection as mechanism used to explain the observation of the evolution of species nicely reinforces my argument rather than countering it.

That is your own misinterpretation. I pointed out the flaw where you simply assert that "diversity doesn't come naturally", which is false in an environment that allows for evolution. This is because random mutations are necessary in order for there to be divergence to have a selection from. Without that very divergence everyone would be identical as far down as the environment permits.

It is not a strawman argument to address the exact statements you made. It's simply an argument. Your premise was that selective pressures push toward diversity. My counterargument was that selective pressures maintain a lack of diversity in this case (with provided examples) and that the Outreachy program was an effort to introduce selective counterpressure to shift the equilibrium. A strawman argument would introduce a new in extremis premise and then proceed to refute it instead of addressing the actual premise presented.

My premise was quite the opposite in fact, artificial selection pushes away from diversity because it simply discards all subsets that do not fulfill the specified criteria. Therefore, other subsets which may have been better performing at the intended task were discarded solely because the specified criteria was ill defined. As such, the Outreachy program relies on a flawed methodology for optimizing the capability of individuals. But at least the resulting numbers look pretty to the intended audience.

I understand the meaning of the words just fine, acknowledge your ad hominem and would like to point out I am doing just fine without your assistance so you can save your resources for the truly needy.

I disagree strongly that there is any evidence that the Outreachy program is a human breeding program. I would gladly change my mind if you could point to anything it has published that requires participation in reproductive activities in any form to qualify for receiving a disbursement.

Literal interpretations tend to not make sense. I want you to take some time and figure out for yourself why this one doesn't.

Oooh. Evil. Such a delicious word. Wonderfully ambiguous. Much has been justified throughout history in the name of rooting out evil. Carry on.

Indeed. Perhaps malice would've been more appropriate. However, since you do seem to like literal interpretations, let me point out loud and clear that just because "social selection pressure" can be used for evil (as in malice) does not mean Outreachy is doing so.

At the risk of quibbling, you're describing natural selection, not evolution. With the primitive state of primary and secondary science education in the USA many Americans understandably make that mistake. Let's move on.

So let me get this straight; you would have wanted me to present a full set, but without one subset. As far as paradoxes go, that's not a very entertaining nor intellectually stimulating one. I'm not American by the way and you should know better than assuming so, particularly after scolding another thread participant about that very point just a few posts ago.

I reread everything I wrote, and no where did I say anything about white men being the source of evil. You may feel free to quote the passage you're referencing in the case that I'm incorrect.

You have correctly observed that the meaning of implied is different from the meaning of explicit. Yet failed to observe that you were not the subject. Moving on...

I definitely described some real life actual verifiable true documented factual witnessed situations that have exerted selective social pressure to keep women out of certain fields. If you wish to counter that argument, you will need to disprove this ever happens. I only have to provide a single piece of evidence it has happened. Such is the nature of quantificational logic.

That's an inconvenient word soup to interpret. It however has no bearing since I did not state, neither implicitly or explicitly, that women have not ever been mistreated. So you're asking me to prove something that not only cannot be proven but also something that I know to be false by proof. I hope you're done making straw men soon because they are getting ridiculous.

One can not draw a universal conclusion that because some people who are white and male are sexist then all white men are sexist (and to argue I have written that is to engage in a devious logical fallacy). One can, however, draw the conclusion that because some people have met with negative experiences just because they are not white or not male they are likely to be discouraged. That is selective social pressure in action and how a lack of diversity evolves.

You have no idea how many have tried to equate a bad subset with an entire parent subset. But speaking of past experience with one associated subset, English does have a word for it called "steretype". I'd say stereotypes have had quite the opposite effect on diversity; it has assisted people from different cultures with interacting with each other. They're not strictly negative you know. Or "evil", if you'd prefer.

Yes, I have a problem with my right pinky finger and sometimes it doesn't stretch all the way over to the single quote key, pressing the semicolon key instead, and sometimes I 'm unaware it has happened. I am discomforted by the lack of clarity in my writing it causes. I am sure I am a better person for you having drawn it to my attention again.

I have basically the same issue with my right pinky finger causing me to quite frequently hit the Ä-key instead of the '-key on most of my keyboards. In my case it becomes fairly obvious because the characters have a significantly different width. I suppose you could call it a quirk of evolution. Fortunately we can adapt by modifying our behavior.

Maybe. It would be interesting to examine that in detail, but perhaps another time.

Oddly enough that seems to be the general response to issues only affecting men. I know it's on our nature to consider men disposable relative to women, but it's still a little concerning.

I fail to see, and you have not described, how a private charitable organization disbursing stipends to individuals based on their membership in a recognized and documented disadvantaged group in any way punishes you. I'm using the definition of punishment as the infliction or imposition of a penalty as retribution for an offense. What penalty are you paying? Who has imposed or inflicted it?

Are you saying that since I am not directly affected, I have no right to point out that those who would benefit from Outreachy, without meeting their racist standards, do not benefit from Outreachy? By that logic then, in which way are you affected, to allow you to state that they are a documented disadvantaged group? At this point I hope you realize how little sense this line of reasoning makes.

I have not circulated any notion that white men will seek to punish those who oppose them. You made that up out of whole cloth, and by seeking to refute the falsely attributed premise you are engaging the very definition of a strawman argument.

Here's a quote of yours:

If someone would not choose to become a software developer because the white boys' eyes never go above her neck when she's trying to discuss the tradeoffs of various traversal algorithms and the manager that wore his red ballcap to the interview told her he doesn't hire people like her because they just quit to raise their babies, then maybe the reward few dollars to grow some internet-anonymous bona fides in the free software development arena might just help shift the balance so the positive feedback loops inherent i the selection system might become weaker.

You explain to me how that isn't an example of white men seeking to punish those who oppose them. Please don't do so by pointing out how you didn't use the literal word "punish", I'm done playing that game.

You may assert that those who seek a career in a STEM field should only progress on technical merit, and yes, that is the ideal. The reality is that many people are held back for non-technical reasons, and that is why program like Outreachy are created and continue to exist. This is the reality for many people, evidently people not like you. It's great that you're supportive of people just like yourself. There's no real reason for you not to be tolerant of people who are supportive of those who are different from yourself too.

Nature was finding its balance just fine before all these programs became the norm. Race and gender were a non-issue online because it had no meaning in the context of the vast majority of discussions. We could've been talking to dolphins for all we cared. Nowadays you can barely go to any popular forum without people disagreeing with each other and subsequently calling the other party a white male. But more to the point I don't recall ever not being supportive of the will to reach your personal goals. What I oppose is striving to fulfill the goals which have been dictated to you, for the sake of pleasing the dictator.

Well, I just can't. You have not put forth any argument supporting the idea that if someone receives positive encouragement that in no way concerns you personally constitutes the infliction or imposition of a penalty as retribution for an offense.

Again it does not affect me personally and whether or not it does has no relevance to the discussion. But to demonstrate the principle of punishment by exclusion I'll provide you with an example; suppose 4 people are climbing a mountain. Three of the fall and are hanging from the same ledge, but the remaining person can only help two of them for some arbitrary logical reason. One states he knows a safe way down, one states he has the food the the third states that he can get himself up (i.e. has no interest in being saved, because he does not need to be saved). If the person above the ledge saves the second and third person, the first person is stuck. The person above the ledge knows that the first person needs help, yet decides to not help. This is punishment by exclusion.

To successfully argue that Outreachy punishes you, you would have to demonstrate that its existence or practice somehow results in you having less than you had before. An itemized list will do fine.

No and no. As stated multiple times already it does not directly affect me, but even if it did, what you would need to show punishment by exclusion is both a positive difference between what you have and what you would have, and some sort of proof that it was an intentional decision to have you excluded.

You wrote If that means men and women will tend to different areas of interest then so be it. I responded with you're arguing that those uppity folks should know their place and stay in it. The context was an discussion about how women select certain careers because they are subject to discrimination. It is not exactly a strawman to interpret your statement in support of streaming women into separate careers from men through the use of discriminatory practices as saying women should know their place and stay in it. Rather it's a colourful way of stating the obvious conclusion that you support the current discriminatory practices and state of the industry by drawing a parallel to the widely documented racial discrimination in the US south with its Jim Crow laws and "separate but unequal" practices. And hey, you bought right in to it. Yee haw.

Once again ending strong with a massive straw man. How surprising. You know what, let me describe to you, just this once, how insane that paragraph sounds to me by transcribing it into an abridged (mis)interpretation:

You said "men and women will do their thing", I responded with "you're saying the dictator of stereotypes has spoken and shall forever be set in stone". It's not a straw man to say you said the 18th century gender distribution was perfect. It's obvious you'd marry the confederate flag if you could. *Stereotypical exclamation of southern American farmer*

Honestly, you missed the target by so much it's more funny than offensive.