Thursday, November 8, 2018
Diversity
So Mason gave a introduction talk today. Basically changing the culture means changing the operations side of the lab. The question focused a lot on increasing diversity. (Why do we need to increase diversity? We should maximize equality of opportunity for everyone but not equality in outcome). Mason said sure diversity is ra ra we need it whatever but we cannot sacrifice quality just for the sake of diversity. I think some people did not like that response. Of course we can alway redefine what quality is and make it social construct or something.
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13 comments:
The dominate culture defines quality in such a way that it benefits itself and subverts others. Mason is saying that he advocates "quality" yet "quality" is a loaded word. Language is a weapon, words have meaning, and what you say has consequences. The culture that rules is the same culture that controls the language and hence yields the weapons. Incidentally, I should be careful what I say since I too am a slave to the language which was created to suppress any attempt to counter itself. The idea of who is best "qualified" over what increases diversity is problematic. Diversity in and unto itself is quality and once that is recognized than some progress can be made once action is taken. Something made in the sake of quality is made in in the sake of diversity, the two are the same and you cannot have quality without diversity. If you have quality without diversity than you have fallen into the linguist trap created to confuse you. Remember this... quality is diversity, diversity is quality, there is no qualification without diversity... how many fingers do you see?
Mason gave the wrong response. Diversity should be the priority, it is after all the most important issue of our time, this should be the NNSA mission.
Diversity should be the mission of the NNSA? And here I was thinking it was National Security with an emphasis on nuclear weapons.
Diversity should be the priority, it is after all the most important issue of our time, this should be the NNSA mission.
November 8, 2018 at 6:54 PM
The NNSA mission is, and always will be, ensuring that our stockpile of nuclear weapons of mass destruction will obliterate our adversaries if need be. I'm sure that they welcome a diverse workforce to accomplish this. Hiring diverse people who want a piece of this action at LANL at a rate of 1,000/year these days, I hear. How about LLNL?
Nice sarcasm. A little over the top, but I bet some people will still take it seriously.
As I have said, and has been deleted for reasons only Scooby knows, this is obviously sarcasm and irony. Apparently no one gets those things anymore. Also apparently, to say so is against the "rules."
"ensuring that our stockpile of nuclear weapons of mass destruction will obliterate our adversaries if need be. I'm sure that they welcome a diverse workforce to accomplish this."
Good point, so you are saying we can have both the mission and diversity.
Fair enough but it does bring up some odd contradictions. The current mantra of the PC push is that capitalism is bad in that it is built upon racism, suppression of women, is anti gay and only serves to inhale the power of cis white straight Christian males. A corollary to this is that the United States itself is founded on racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, intolerance ect and needs its large military including weapons of mass destruction to impose its hegemony over the world and preserve capitalism and even enforce capitalism on the rest of world.
If one buys the above argument than why would anyone want diversity at the labs since the labs themselves are part of the way that the United States can prolong its world agenda that is fundamentally against diversity and a more socially just world? In fact if you argue that diversity allows for a stronger workforce than the same PC culture should be specially against having such a workforce in the military and the labs since the stronger these are the longer the dominant white male paradigm can exist.
This is the same pitch as NTESS is giving Sandia...apparently NNSA is doubling down on SJW as a priority. Sandia also received training on how to refer to persons who have reassigned their gender (either surgically or just psychologically).
If the NWC goes PC, we are all in really big trouble. I guess it's all the Obama hold-overs in DOE/NNSA and the DoD who are behind this, fighting a final action to assure the US is defenseless and laughable.
8:00 PM claims that Capitalism is bad because it's homophobic, transphobic, etc. Not true at all. The CEO of the world's largest corporation by market capitalization is gay. The highest paid executive in the biopharmaceutical industry is trans. One of the most powerful studio owners in Hollywood is gay. All in Capitalist America. See if you can find the equivalent in any Socialist or Communist country.
In fact, 8:00 PM is only spouting discredited liberal identity politics. The fact is, all of the world's wealthiest countries are Capitalist because Capitalism works better than Socialism and Communism to create wealth, to raise the standard of living of ALL of their citizens, and to promote equality.
" If the NWC goes PC, we are all in really big trouble." In gernal I think this is the only way to correct the PC madness is with cold hard reality. Hopefully it will not be at the NWC level but it is coming. If you look at the military they already have had several issues. I think the the first real disaster will hit Europe.
If you want know if PC is actually worth while in the real world, just look at Israel, once things start to matter all this gets dropped like a rock. When something is taken for granted it is allowed to decay. The NWC complex was already in trouble with the privatization of the labs. That never would have happened during the cold war because it mattered, no so anymore.
All sorts of these issues are happening all the time. Something really bad has to happen for people to take global warming seriously, the national debt, education, disease, energy, ect. It is just human nature and has played out countless times in history. The over the top PC culture is just another example, in fact they are already starting to eat their own, the previous PC generation was not PC enough and now must be condemned and shamed, the same fate awaits the current crop, and so on with increasing ugliness and brutality. It always ends very very badly just like the French Revolution so it is only going to get worse and nothing can stop it now. If you do not believe me than why do we now have the first generation of people that are fighting to get rid of rights, and once you have that it accelerates rather rapidly since getting rid of rights is much easier than gaining rights. Just ask yourself why the 1st amendment is under attack, and once that is gone...all bets are off. In fact you better be real careful what you say right now since once this goes down they will retroactively go after you for anything you have ever said. Any student of history knows this.
"In fact, 8:00 PM is only spouting discredited liberal identity politics. The fact is, all of the world's wealthiest countries are Capitalist because Capitalism works better than Socialism and Communism to create wealth, to raise the standard of living of ALL of their citizens, and to promote equality.
November 14, 2018 at 10:14 AM"
Take it easy, I actually agree with you I was merely pointing out several of the contradictions of the PC world view. You have pointed out some additional contradictions that arise in terms of Capitalism. Oddly enough the new push on the PC side is how bad capitalism is and that we need socialism or even communism to bring true equality.
How this idea came back again is beyond because we have run this experiment before. I know people say look at Sweden! First of Sweden is not as socialist as people say. It is not nearly as vibrant as the US in terms of freedom but it is also not tolerant as you think, not to mention that it may be having some issues of its own. People also seem to forget that for the last 50 years there has been a huge exodus of people out of the Scandinavia precisely due to the lack of certain freedom and opportunities. People may have made fun of Trump for his comment about immigrants from Norway but the reality is that there has been lost of immigrants from Norway to the US especially in the sciences and technology sector due to the lack of opportunities.
Sweden is not only not as Socialist as some people say, Sweden isn't socialist at all. Sweden has lots of welfare, for sure, but it's all paid for by Capitalism. You can tell because private citizens have full ownership of the resources for production.
Politically, the Socialists are actually a very small party in Sweden. The largest party in the Swedish Parliament is the Social Democrats with 113 of the 349 seats but the Social Democrats aren't Socialist, the Socialist party is the "Left" party. The Lefts have only 21 of the 349 seats. In addition to the Social Democrats, four other parties have more seats than the Left Socialists, the Moderate Party, the Centre Party, Sweden Democrats, and the Green Party.
People who claim Sweden is Socialist are either ignorant or dishonest.
"People who claim Sweden is Socialist are either ignorant"
Ignorant.
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