Blue hair:Tick. Rant against JKR: Tick

[Amrapaali]

Bonus for quirky glasses. I mean it really is like a weird bingo.

Punching down FFS

www.theguardian.com/science/2022/apr/09/cathy-oneil-big-tech-makes-use-of-shame-to-profit-from-our-interactions?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

@JennyPourQuoi

She completely misses the fact that most shame is internal; we feel ashamed when we know we are doing something wrong. Someone else cannot make me feel ashamed of something that I genuinely think is acceptable. If a jewish or muslim person tried to shame me for eating bacon, I would just laugh. It's their rules, not mine, so I don't feel anything.

Also the way that she says that shame is a tool used to try and make people "behave well" with respect to a social norm, but then also says that this is generally inappropriate to do. Because whenever I challenge social norms it's good, necessary in fact, but when JKR supports the idea that only women should be in the women's changing room, thats bad.

This is all just special pleading to validate her own desire to shame others, while rejecting shame for anything she disagrees with. In short, she loves shame she just hates that she can't make up her own rules and apply it solely to benefit herself.

Imagine being so incoherent that even a Guardian journalist can see it...

Yep to what JennyPourQuoi said.

I talked to teachers who had been evaluated by a secret scoring system. And they were sometimes getting fired or denied tenure. When I asked if somebody had explained the formula to them, they said they were told it was math and they wouldn’t understand. That silenced them. It was shame as a systematic mechanism.

Err no.
They are teachers.
Their whole job is to learn and subsequently pass on the knowledge they learn. Every teacher started off from a point of not understanding what they now teach.
They examine the teaching/learning ratio using a maths based marking system.
If the individual was too proud to say break it down for me like I am a 5 year old that is pride not shame stopping the teacher from asking the question.
The ones doing the evaluation are using humiliation to prevent questions. All the teacher has to say is teach me.

I did change quite a few names of people in the book, just to prevent a little bit of that extra shame falling on them.

So picking and naming people is an active choice.
Basic evaluation to attempt to impose her value system. A decison on who is good, who is bad, and therefore who is fair game to be a target for humiliation.

She wanted a hook to sell her book.

@KimikosNightmare

that shame is a tool used to try and make people "behave well"

Well why not in certain cases- I don't have a problem with shaming drunk drivers or that appalling football player who made a video of himself kicking his cat.

Agree that anyone happy with using the term "Karen" can probably be ignored.

Well exactly! The only way to have rules be (generally) enforced without constant surveillance is for people to police themselves; for people to literally think "No I shouldn't, that's bad". And yes, that involves them feeling bad too. But so what?

It's very modern to question social norms, and some amount of that is healthy. It's ok to challenge the norm that beating your wife is acceptable. But if you challenge and destroy every single norm you encounter then we end up destroying useful and meaningful rules that help us all live together.

By all means oppose shaming women for how they dress. But let's not oppose all shame and all rules.

@EatSleepRantRepeat

I wish they'd have mentioned Graham Linehan and asked her about that. What has happened to him is pure censorship - including the Father Ted musical, eagerly awaited by fans and nothing to do with his personal views, no longer being picked up by production companies because they don't want his name on it as the creator. Father Ted is still one of channel 4s highest rated programmes over 20 years on.

All this for pointing out individuals on twitter and elsewhere who are actively trying to do women harm, including issuing death threats. Its the new form of Fatwa.

Even his own wife kicked him off the TV show he created (Motherland).

Well yes, they have split up. Couples often do. Relevance to anything?

If the individual was too proud to say break it down for me like I am a 5 year old that is pride not shame stopping the teacher from asking the question.

Interesting angle! I think how much you perceive yourself as being in a position of power here plays a lot.
If it was me, i'd be outraged at being told that and more determined to find the answer. But it's not hard to imagine that someone less self-confident being told this by someone higher up in the power structure would feel they had stepped out of line.

Again, I think class issues and workplace culture are so vastly different between us and the U.S. - I've seen intelligent female teachers being treated in precisely this way over there.

Her previous book was largely about how formulae that literally affect your life - health insurance premiums, credit rating, etc - are intentionally hidden, so it seems like a similar theme.

@donquixotedelamancha

Interestingly, the interviewer really pushed her on the JKR point and then moved on to cancel culture

Yes, I thought that was a surprisingly robust interview for the Guardian.

The fact that the author is complaining about shame being used against people and then targeting individuals is blissfully ironic.

I couldn't make sense of most of what she said

I think her main thesis is that personal responsibility is bad and we shouldn't ever try to hold people accountable for their choices (unless they are thought criminals, obvs).

The writer Andrew Anthony is one of the old-time Observer types, still sane. I think I have seen his very good review of Carole Hooven's Testerone but not in the Guardian.

www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/sex-lies-and-stereotypes-testosterone-the-most-misunderstood-hormone/CU7OWYRXP5NUXASLIWDNY7JCDE/

"First of all, I didn’t know that JK Rowling had death threats. So I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that she would ever get shot, if that’s what you’re asking."

I call BULLSHIT. The world knows JKR has had death threats. Is Blue Hair here living under a rock?

In the context of gender ideology, 'punching down' should really be used for groups as well as individuals. As a group, the trans activists today are politically powerful in the US and the UK (I am not informed about most other countries), gender critical feminists not so much. The former have gotten quite a few in the latter group fired, for instance, and many more are harassed nonstop.

That JK Rowling actually is best known (outside her professional work) for charitable giving suggests that she isn't a person who punches down as an individual. She went into the ring to box for the side which wasn't allowed to have a voice.

@PrelateChuckles

If the individual was too proud to say break it down for me like I am a 5 year old that is pride not shame stopping the teacher from asking the question.

Interesting angle! I think how much you perceive yourself as being in a position of power here plays a lot.
If it was me, i'd be outraged at being told that and more determined to find the answer. But it's not hard to imagine that someone less self-confident being told this by someone higher up in the power structure would feel they had stepped out of line.

Again, I think class issues and workplace culture are so vastly different between us and the U.S. - I've seen intelligent female teachers being treated in precisely this way over there.

Her previous book was largely about how formulae that literally affect your life - health insurance premiums, credit rating, etc - are intentionally hidden, so it seems like a similar theme.

I think how much you perceive yourself as being in a position of power here plays a lot. It can actually work better if you have less power as you are asking someone with more power for help. Refusing to help diminishes the power and authority. Mentoring, being seen to be a team player, etc have leverage value when the request is timed in a public setting in front of their peers.

It can also be a quick attitude test to find out if higher management are trustworthy or not.

Understanding that in most HR systems there is bias and the glass/class ceiling exists. In recruitment and redundancy smart management decide who they want and then by accident or deliberate design end up with the system to produce their desired outcome. Culture comes down from the top because they appoint HR staff.
The culture divide would play a large part too, European countries have been enforcing laws to make systems (more) transparent and therefore (more) fair. Most women (and men) have the support of anti-discrimination legislation to prevent the its maths brushoff being sucessful.
But i guess if the US organisation is employing someone and costing healthcare insurance; costs for female birthing 1.5 children v male birthing 0.0 children; ending up with a different policy payment matters.
If women get legislated as people indirect discrimimation becomes easier to hide and harder to prove.

I’m surprised that Cathy O’Neill has criticised JKR in her new book. Weapons of Math Destruction was a much needed look at the discrimination baked into most (all?) algorithms and algorithmic decision making that have already taken over credit decisions, parole and sentencing decisions, police resource decisions, HR decisions, health care etc etc etc. Granted this is more in the US than UK but rapidly expanding here.

I can’t agree that it’s the fault/responsibility of the teachers themselves for not asking to have the algorithms or data points used to build the algorithms explained to them. This is, IMO, an unfair evaluation for a few reasons, but if the algorithm is machine learning, then no one can explain the numbers, not even the software developer.

There’s an ongoing legal case in the UK where 3 women were chosen by dismissal by an algorithm and management could not explain to them why they were chosen because they did not know themselves. The computer simply said ‘no’. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of data points now being used to build the ML algorithm. Yes EU law says a human must be involved in such important decisions but this is harder to enact in pratice.

Anyhow, I’ll read the book as I think Cathy O’Neill has interesting things to say and go from there. It’s terribly judgemental of me, but maybe the JKR insult arises from her affiliation or support of LGBTQ+ community? Granted as an academic you really would expect her to do some research but going by many instances of UK academics happy to silence the debate it perhaps is less of a surprise.

It's relevant to the post by eatsleep that charlie brown quoted, it's pretty rotten that his wife pushed him out of a show that would never have existed had it not been for Graham.

@flipandflop

It's relevant to the post by eatsleep that charlie brown quoted, it's pretty rotten that his wife pushed him out of a show that would never have existed had it not been for Graham.

I agree, I can understand that his activities on women's rights affected her and her family as well, but surely the professional thing is to keep your work and personal life separate?

I agree, I can understand that his activities on women's rights affected her and her family as well, but surely the professional thing is to keep your work and personal life separate?

She's obviously more interested in cash than women's rights.

DrBlackbird

I can’t agree that it’s the fault/responsibility of the teachers themselves for not asking to have the algorithms or data points used to build the algorithms explained to them.

How do you prove that something is fair or unfair without attempting to examine the process?

Once the question is asked the response dictates what happens next but the question has to be asked first.

The decision making process should be clearly defined, the process has to be documentable, reputable and reliably so as to produce the same output in the real world as in the test enviroment.
If management use it they need to be able to explain it. They can not evade their management responsibilty by claiming that the computer made the decision not them.

That is different from management wanting to employ/sack employee A and building the process to ensure they set A up to win/fail.

This is, IMO, an unfair evaluation for a few reasons, but if the algorithm is machine learning, then no one can explain the numbers, not even the software developer

Machine learning is inherently unfair for HR decision making. Applied learning continues to make changes to the criteria and methods, so given identical inputs over time the process results in different outputs.

management could not explain to them why they were chosen because they did not know themselves

This is kind of my point.
Management are being paid to mange. If they dont understand the tool they cant use it as they cant prove that its not breaching protected characteristic.
If the staff member said teach me and gets told "its maths but we cant teach you because we don't understand it ourselves" that's a win. imo that is management saying they don't know if the outcome is fair or not. The courts have to look at the power inbalance in the relationship. The women lost their means of survival (access to money = food and shelter) and management can't prove the selection was fair.

It’s terribly judgemental of me, but maybe the JKR insult arises from her affiliation or support of LGBTQ+ community?

She is imo being dishonest in the interview about the book.
She claims to have made active choice in her name dropping so that punching would continue to be acceptable.
She picked JKR for a reason or multiple reasons. She is justifying her choice to name JKR. She decided to she gets to trade on JKR's public profile. She gets to be superior by being able to decide on what JKR thinks. She gets to deny violence while speculating on JKR's "public redemption and repentance" would be possible as a failed murder resulted in a bloke recognising humanity. She is like the old fashioned hell and damnation preacher, she gets to hold JKR up to a target while trying to be seen to keep her hands clean.

what if the machine learning selects females under 50 to be fired, because the statistics show they take more time off work and work less hours then the males?

the machine doesnt understand rights or whys, it has no idea about children and the bias ways of our society, all it knows is the data sets that it has been given.