The behavior of JAMA Editor-in-Chief Howard Bauchner is appalling and frightening. If he's so unwilling to deal with fraud in his publishing, what is he letting people get away with in his position as Vice Chairman of Pediatrics at Boston University. He seems far too keen to sweep things under the rug.
I work in a completely different field and I can tell you, it's absolutely the same. I think the chance is quite high, that people in even higher positions know they can only keep their position stable by putting such kind of people in leadership positions underneath them, or this is a serious survival skill in leadership positions itself, which allows such people to stay in power and even raise the ranks, specifically because they are skilled at sweeping things under the rug. Both would be a rather disappointing realization about the world, but that's how it looks like.
There's actually something called "disparate impact" in Fair Housing that covers this. So if someone does something like that, especially intentionally, and it impacts a protected class, they can be sued and fined.
You don't need an insane amount of data. It's easy to figure out if any given criteria will have a disparate impact -- all criteria have a disparate impact.
Is your position that it should be illegal to use a criterion in ad targeting if the use of this criterion results in an ad being seen by one arm of a protected category more than another arm?
That's a consistent position, but it amounts to banning of ad targeting. Is that the world you want?
The law explicitly says you can’t discriminate housing ads against certain groups. Courts have held that Things that aren’t illegal on their face can be illegal if they have highly discriminatory effect in practice.
So I don’t see why any of that should be allowed here.
And it would only apply to things that have a heavy discriminatory effect. I don’t see why it would matter if you chose not to advertise your non-pet friendly apartment complex to people who have pets. Unless someone can show that’s a pretty direct proxy to a protected class it seems fine.
Again, this only applies to kinds of ads covered by this (or similar) laws. Housing and employment are the only two kinds I know of. I see no reason why you should be restricted in who you choose to advertise your new T-shirt to.
> I don’t see why it would matter if you chose not to advertise your non-pet friendly apartment complex to people who have pets. Unless someone can show that’s a pretty direct proxy to a protected class it seems fine.
As a matter of fact, pet ownership is a strong proxy for a protected class [1].
Is your position that an apartment building owner should have to advertise to pet owners and non pet owners equally even if the apartment complex doesn't allow pets?
Come to think of it, isn't having a no-pets policy itself discriminatory?
I didn’t know that. Well, if it meets whatever HUD/the courts’ threshold is for something that’s too discriminatory then maybe that’s off the list.
I know that pet friendly and non-pet friendly housing exists, so there must be some legal basis.
But if the current legal standard meant that it would be illegal to advertise to (or away from) pet owners then yes, I would expect that FB would have to remove those options for housing ads.
Guess that wasn’t the clear example I was hoping for.
Is a "no pets" policy illegal housing discrimination? Why or why not?
A "no pets" policy, on its face, would have a disparate impact on different arms of a protected group, and so, on its face, should be illegal. I know that "no pets" policies tolerated at this point.
What I want to know is how you or anyone else can justify a "no pets" policy considering the protected group issue I raised above. Is the "no pets" policy just an unprincipled exception [1]?
I see no explanation for allowing "no pets" policies other than "yeah, 'no pets' amounts to illegal discrimination, but everyone does it, so it's okay". That's not a good basis on which to organize a society. Why or why not shouldn't people make another unprincipled exception for ad targeting?
Again, I don’t know the actual reason, just that it’s clearly legal.
Many people are very allergic to pets or scared of them and won’t live in a building/complex if there are animals there. If you’re a landlord and you allow pets you also have to deal with any possible damage they may do to your property, even though you can make the renter reimburse you for that.
It may be that because of those factors courts have determined that it’s perfectly reasonable for landlords to choose not to allow pets no matter what effect that may have on the number of people of different races who apply to their properties.
ProPublica does some really good investigative reporting. They are the first ones on the scene with high quality reporting on a lot of current issues. I have donated to them in the past.
Here in the US negligence is the biggest factor in accountability. In most cases if the driver wasn't negligent but the pedestrian was (by illegally jaywalking), then there's no criminal or civil consequences.
This prompted me to look up US pedestrian deaths. Some interesting numbers:
"According to the GHSA report, 74 percent of pedestrian fatalities happen at night, and 72 percent of those killed were not crossing at intersections."
"The GHSA report indicated that 15 percent of pedestrians killed each year are hit by a drunk driver, while 34 percent of pedestrians killed are legally drunk themselves."
I'd say we should put in more crosswalks and add lights and reflectors, but I've almost been hit twice by cellphone-distracted drivers in one like that in my neighborhood.
Something I find interesting is that so many states that are heavily democrat have such high income inequality. I've always hoped that states like Massachusetts, California and New York would do more to help the poor considering that they seem to have enough voter support to do that.
Are you sure that they don't help the poor, or could it be that they just have more poor? Poor people are more likely to stay in (or gravitate toward) places where more aid is available. They're more likely to die in places where less aid is available due to "you deserved it" moralizing with an undercurrent of discrimination (somehow people who look just like the donors do get aid instead of blame). Also, disproportionately-poor immigrants tend to arrive in "blue" coastal cities and stay in them to be around people with whom they share language and culture.
So yes, there are a lot of poor people in "blue" areas not because of but despite greater efforts to reduce inequality. There are also more people pulling on the other end of the distribution because "blueness" tends to be highly correlated with growth especially in areas like tech and finance. The relative uniformity of "red" areas has a bit of a Harrison Bergeron quality to it, and that's not a good thing.
How is anything politically-related on this forum, supposedly for discussion of startups, not in some way inflammatory? What about the post itself? Not to mention that I and another user backed up my (yes, off-the-cuff) comment with references? I don't see how that 'perpetuates a flamewar'?
Vandalism is a rather strong word.
Feel free to ban this account. I can always make another if I decide there's any discussions worth participating in.
Also, even if you don't believe it, it's not a strawman because it wasn't being attributed to someone else. Please try to balance out the random general-purpose rhetorical tricks with some actual facts or insight of your own next time.
And speaking of rhetorical strategy, I don't know what it's called but the recent right wing way of speech as expressed by the person I was replying to is great:
>I've always hoped that states like Massachusetts, California and New York would do more to help the poor considering that they seem to have enough voter support to do that.
It's like getting their political agenda in there but trying to act as if they've always innocently been expressing concern and interest about this subject. So facetious and they think they're sly.
Thanks for the petty insults, it's sadly typical for HNers like you these days. However, I am in California and really wish the government would do more. It's not facetious. I don't expect much from states like Alabama, but blue states with lots of rich democrats need to do so much more. And as for being right-wing, I believe in socialized medicine, stronger environmental laws, higher taxes, and more strict regulation of corporations.
I've banned this account for trolling, including because of the trollish username. At a minimum, that is distracting. Would you please not do it again?
More importantly, please stop posting flamebait to HN threads.
And I think the California government and many of its supposedly liberal citizens could do more as well. "Screw you, I got mine" applies to both sides.
Even better, we as a nation should be implementing all those and not just leaving it up to wealthy states.
It was a shitty swipe of a comment, guaranteed to provoke a flamewar. I didn't react to it because I didn't see it. That's the likeliest explanation in general, when you see a post that should have been moderated but wasn't.
Dang, the individual you were replying to, is the lead moderator. (dang is his first name and his initial -- Dan G. The G is for Gackle) The moderators are routinely accused of censorship, of single-handedly suppressing articles that the broader membership flagged off the front page, etc.
It takes more than one flag to kill an item. I think there is a karma threshold for flagging, so -- iirc -- no, simply having an account doesn't allow someone to flag it.
It's amazing that a company that Paul Graham co-founded is getting into bed with an authoritarian government notorious for its human rights abuses. To succeed in China you can't go against the government. So is he going to be pushing as hard for political change in China as he is in the US, or will he remain silent as his company reaps the profits?
I would like to see a statement that YC China will not discriminate based on ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation and more importantly will not support startups which create technology which make doing so easier.
> I would like to see a statement that YC China will not discriminate based on ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation and more importantly will not support startups which create technology which make doing so easier.
I too would like to see this, but no such statement exists for YC at large (outside China) either.
There are a billion MORE people in China than in the US. There is enormous industry and innovation there. China's government is terrible but that is their issue to resolve. All we can do is speak out, but refusing to do business hurts Chinese and American people far more than it hurts the Chinese government. Our government kills many innocent people accidentally as part of the normal course of war, but we consider it an acceptable place to do business anyway.
I think it is essentially the opposite. Speaking out does nothing since we, nor the Chinese, have any power to change the situation. All it does is makes the speaker feel good about their own situation.
The power we do have is to make our own choices. The Chinese might certainly have, what they think are, good reasons for doing what they are doing, but that doesn't mean you have to participate if you think you have better reasons for not doing so.
Chinese companies are largely forced to align with the Chinese government. US companies disagreeable behavior, including aligning themselves with the US and Chinese governments, are largely their own choosing. The reality is that Silicon Valley's moral compass is buried at the bottom of their own Superfund sites.
Suppose I'm Tim Cook and refuse to participate in the Chinese market. No iPhones for you. Who is hurt? Mostly Chinese people. They get a crappier phone with less security and privacy protection. I'm also hurt financially. There are a lot of people in China. Real people are getting hurt, and the political situation stays the same. Political change will happen in China when it does. It feels somewhat inevitable to me but one thing we can't do is force democracy on them. They have a lot of "anti-imperial" ideas in their culture due to many invasions from Japan and other western nations and for the idea of democracy and free markets to really take hold it needs to come naturally from China itself -- not through economic pressure from US companies.
> China's government is terrible but that is their issue to resolve. All we can do is speak out, but refusing to do business hurts Chinese and American people far more than it hurts the Chinese government.
No. You can't do business with China and speak out because then the Chinese government will refuse to do business with you. You have to toe their line in the West in order to get access to their market. See the recent articles regarding airline's treatment of Taiwan on their websites [1].
I'm sure that some more fully articulated and sophisticated version of what you've said forms the basis of YC's decision to continue pragmatically pursuing its goal of being big and important (and incidentally making lots of money).
That is very unlikely. When you start or own businesses in China you largely give up the right to criticize the Chinese government. Not only because you have to deal with the Chinese government, but because you won't have any credibility left at home. You can't on the one hand argue that the Chinese government is oppressive and on the other that it is practical to change peoples minds.
One accidentally breaks an egg. One doesn't "accidentally" kill innocent people because they "accidentally" launched a missile to an area where civilians are.
If he wants goverment support he probably is stealing IP from the american side and YC is either naive or knows this very well but is willing to trade IP for cashflow.
Believing in his good morals, the underlying hope might be to achieve change through subversion: If YC becomes popular in in China, people might visit news.ycombinator.com and find very sane liberal thinking and many shocking truths about their country.
Much more likely that anything negative about China will be deemed political, like many other subjects have been in the past, and flagged off the site. That is largely how the Chinese Internet works anyways.
Reddit was blocked by the Chinese firewall this month. The suspected reason is discussion of the Uyghur concentration camps. Shocking truths don’t last on the Chinese internet.
When YC is invested in China they won’t last on this website either.
Companies exist to make money. I think the tech community's biggest mistake was assuming that tech companies are moral agents. Of course tech companies ( "do no evil" ) had a hand in misleading us. But tech companies are no different than oil companies, pharma companies or movie studios. They want market share and money.
Maybe we should stop putting tech companies and tech leaders on a pedestal.
I believe Paul Graham knows better than average American about China. I appraise him, not for his move as a venture capitalist who want to make money (Many people who share your belief think he is cynical and only thinking about making money, which might be part of the reason), but quite opposite , for his moral courage against prevailed belief of Mob which is the same evil as authoritarian region's.
Politics is often compared to religion but it's actually worse: many religion believer can keep their belief private but in politics most "belief oriented people" are not aware of they don't differentiate their opinions/beliefs from facts. This can radicalize many opposite side people knowing the truth. Eventually this cognitive defect of modern human being caused conflicts all over the world. Even here in HN, I've seen quite a few radicalized HNer's beaned by dang (the moderator of HN) due to their misbehave that were (mistakenly) considered to be caused by strong nationalist views.
I would suggest all HNer's keep political view private as much as possible if totally avoidance is not piratical.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WATER_TOWERS,_ANACAP...