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I think such a change generates awareness. A lot of problems linger in the tech sector I'm not really aware of. The write up of the article author sheds light again on biased recruitment in the tech sector. Something that appears to be a fundamental problem with the education sector in the US being broken.


But it is good awarness? The major awarness people get from this cases is not about actual problems, but about very questionable wording-problems and behaviour of certain people. Not sure whether this at the end not creates more hate&blind eyes than important awarness.


True, it generated awareness - but also hate, possibly much more than not.


It doesn't generate hate. The hate was already there. It just reveals it.


The hate I've seen generated by ham-handed thought-and-speech policing is hate against the people doing the policing and hate against people standing up against the policing, not hate against the people the policing is ostensibly protecting.

So no, it's not revealing existing hate. It's actively generating new hate.


The hate against the people "doing the policing" and the hate against the "people standing up to the policy" were already there. Hate doesn't spring parthenogenically from the void, it has to be seeded and nurtured and cultivated and be vomited out only when the time is right.

Voicing a disagreement does not require or beget hate.


> were already there

I really don't think so. Most obviously because those two groups did not even exist as entities most people were conscious of until recently.

> Hate doesn't spring parthenogenically from the void

Of course not. But it sure can be seeded and nurtured, as you note, by actions people take. And far too many people have been taking various actions that look to me as if they are designed, intentionally or not, to seed and nurture hate. And fear, for that matter. Which are not unrelated things: hate and fear are deeply intertwined and beget each other.

> Voicing a disagreement does not require or beget hate.

That is most certainly true. At the same time, a disagreement _can_ be voiced in a way that begets hate, and all too often is (e.g. via attacking the person, not the idea). And suppressing disagreement can absolutely beget hate. I feel like both are on the rise, unfortunately.


If someone decided they don't care about bias in the tech sector because the default git branch name was changed, they weren't going to and didn't care to start with.


This feels like a strawman - the issue isn't people deciding they don't care about bias because of this change, but rather that if tech companies are bending over so much as to make such an insignificant change to avoid seeming biased against minorities then how could bias in the tech industry exist at all?


Also, this kind of change might increase cynicism.


I'm confused by this question, aren't you essentially asking, "how can a problem exist if some people are presently taking actions that try to mitigate that problem?"


No, they're asking "what even is the problem if the solution is this?"


I wonder how many friends that attitude will win you.




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