aninhumer

>The end result probably looks like us burning most of the modern world to the ground, literally, but that's where game theory is taking us.

Has it ever occurred to you that if people are willing to burn it to the ground, the "modern world" might not be quite as good for them as it is for you?

What we are seeing today are people who have long felt grievances talking to each other and discovering that they're not alone, and that the civil institutions which are supposed to address those grievances systematically do not do so.

And when people are given no other options to correct injustice, conflict is all that's left to them.

If you want to stop the world from burning, don't blame the people for fighting, blame the system for making it necessary.

Except the actual left has been complaining about centralised capitalist control of the media for decades. Indeed, it's precisely because of that control that you've apparently never heard anything other than liberal centrists talking about access to speech.

>This new political "anything goes" trend is going to be awful for anyone not already in the Fortune 500. But I guess that's the point, isn't it?

Yes of course. Welcome to Capitalism.

When the system starts to break down from the inevitable inequality it causes, capitalists turn to fascism to maintain control. It happened in the Weimar Republic, and it's happening again now. We're seeing business news outlets openly talking about the "investment opportunities" in Brazil as a result of the election of an overt fascist.

>And all for a petty, temporary victory over a fringe political group!

The left celebrates this, not because the control is good, but because the threat of fascism has become so overt that this is the best we can hope for right now.

Ah yes, you're correct, I got confused by the first-name/surname thing.

I would still question the validity of this approach, and more generally, I don't think you can meaningfully isolate class and race, since they're so inter-related in the US.

They acknowledge that the names may not be strong signals, but the very reason that's the case is that people are less likely to associate black people with high socioeconomic status in the first place.

I said power dynamics (i.e. power imbalances) should be opposed, not the abstract concept of power itself.

If they can choose not to help they're not "helping you to live", they're choosing not to kill you.

And if they choose whether to kill you based on whether you do what they want, that's violent coercion.

>If someone helps you live when otherwise you're going to die, you should tolerate more of his weirdness.

Yes, if someone has control over your life or death, you should probably do what they say.

That is what most people call "violent coercion".

>You either believe in capitalism and thus meritocracy as its twin, or neither.

Well, quite...

This only makes sense if you assume the organisation's interest is only to maximise productivity in the short term.

An open source organisation may explicitly be interested in attracting marginalised people into the tech sector, to improve equality in society as a whole.

Or even from a cynical perspective, a profit-led corporation may desire to increase their ability to hire competent but undervalued (and thus cheaper) employees in future.

So looking at their methodology, they chose the "high class" black names ("Anderson" and "Thompson") (EDIT: I misread, these aren't the black names) based on census proportions, but that doesn't necessarily mean those names are actually read as "black" by most people.

Moreover, using census results ignores exposure to foreigners with these names. My own strongest association for "Thompson" is the white police officers in Tintin, and more generally for white English people. (Although I'm British so that may not be representative.)

As long as "low class" black names are more readily associated with blackness than "high class" ones, this methodology isn't really isolating anything, just doing a slightly more intersectional analysis.

>Life creates a power dynamic which can be abused in this way.

And such dynamics should be acknowledged and opposed wherever they exist.

>Have some minimal set of rules

Except as I said, these rules are frequently ignored or applied less fairly in one way or another for those with "merit".

>I just always have trouble imagining the end game of that kind of thinking - even in Stalinism, people with higher abilities were selected for various more demanding tasks.

Rejecting meritocracy doesn't mean not acknowledging ability, it means not structuring power hierarchies around it.

Those most able should be chosen for tasks because those involved in the work agree collectively, without the coercion of power dynamics, that it's best to assign them that task.

>The simple fact is that people who have power tend to abuse that power, but that has nothing to do with meritocracy as a concept.

Except that by definition, meritocracy creates a power dynamic which can be abused in this way. Those with "merit" are trusted and respected more than those without. This means that complaints about their behaviour are more often ignored or dismissed. And even when bad behaviour is too blatant to ignore, the punishment is often lesser, for fear of chasing away their "merit".

In theory, one could define "merit" in a way that recognises behaviour alongside technical contributions, but in practice that is rarely how the term is interpreted by tech communities.

Humans have a sleep cycle driven by circadian rhythms, and most jobs in a country work similar clock hours in order to coordinate with other companies more easily.

So in fact, it's much easier to change what the clocks say than it is to change either of these.

There is no way to implement verifiable voting which is not vulnerable to voter coercion. If you can verify your vote, so can the person threatening you.

The way to ensure the ballot is secure is to have a fully publicly verifiable end-to-end process. You should be able to watch the ballot box from the moment you put your vote in, all the way to the count.