Good point here. Creating a world of programming language to be inclusive as possible would be worth thinking of. Our worlds (physicist here, plus informaticians/mathematicians) in general suffers from a lack of diversity.
Ironically, when people talk about inclusivity, they immediately start creating rules for excluding people.
Please dont @ me in this discussion.
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I donât think I understand your point fully. If language that offends people is replaced who would be excluded by that?
Are you going to enforce and police peopleâs language and threaten to âexcludeâ them if they dont comply, in the name of inclusivity? Then yes, youâre threatening people with actual harm and exclusion ironically.
Thatâs all im gonna say on that. Dont @ me, i dont want to discuss it further.
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You are better off not trying to understand his points, @danielw2904, it will just derail the discussion.
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You are right. Iâm completely open to a general discussion on ethics of free speech and inclusivity but this is probably not the place. I also think that this issue rather relates to the second point of my original comment (community leadership) rather than code. My personal opinion is that in particular situation all parties involved should keep an open mind and try to empathise. Personally, I know I react defensively if its pointed out that I offend someone by something I do and I try to be mindful of it. I have not yet encountered such a situation that could not be resolved amicably or would have required policing.
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For physicists and mathematicians, it is generally useful to discern between fact, theories and hypotheses.
That e.g. men and some ethnic groups are over-represented in the field, with women and other ethnic groups being under-represented related to their percentage in the population, it is a fact.
That âour worlds suffer from itâ is a hypothesis at best: if you define what the word âsufferâ means, that is if you define the âobjective functionâ - which can be either the proportional representation, or some kind of the best productivity, or probably some combination of both. IMO trying to artificially âimproveâ the representation is going to result first, in having not the best people for the job, and, second, as a corollary, in oppressing the freedom of opinion.
Let me conclude with the famous citation: âI have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.â
As you see, ethics is a strongly divisive topic. E.g. in my culture it is considered to be rude to speak of a person in his/her presense without calling him/her by name. @DNF , is it different in your culture?
That person specifically asked not to be named.
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Donât take me too literal. But to be more specific: For me it was always some kind of disappointing (somehow) to be in a group of 85% male (or even more) and 90% somehow nerdy males. (I am male, maybe important here 
) If this was suffering for me, I donât know, propably not in the stringent meaning.
I am getting sad, when I talk to girls about phyics, math and programming, and they have their own prejudices about them self, that they canât learn it (not a teacher I am, but working with students sometimes).
I donât have a solution for this, and creating artificial quota, I agree with you, isnât the best, but I am nevertheless sure, that it is systemic. Not only about male and female, there are other underrepresented groups (no exact numbers checked, just a feeling).
As I said, I donât have a solution, but we can talk about how we talk about things and people. And this how-to-talk may be e.g. that sometimes, even in this forum, it is not always about stringent technical questions with formal correct answers (fact, hypthesis, objective functions,⌠), sometimes it is about people, who maybe have high pressure, come here need urgent help and donât find the correct words and get offended by us. (Donât get me wrong, all in all I think we do quite good here).
And we already have quite some offending posts even in this thread!
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The problem with trying to tie diversity initiatives to these kinds of outcomes is that we tend to use objective functions with local maxima. Finding âthe best person for the jobâ (whatever that even means) without any thoughts to growing a more diverse community may seem like the best direction now, but it will ultimately narrow our pool of people to draw from in the future, leading to something sub-optimal in the long term.
I donât just mean this with Julia. We are a small community embedded in a larger society. The important thing isnât finding things that benefit the (currently mostly white and male) Julia community, but things that benefit society as a whole. That should be where your objective function is drawn from. We donât need to philosophize over whether giving underrepresented people better access to the tech community is a good thing for society. Thatâs just obviously true.
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Females are actually the majority in most university departments, so calling them a minority or saying they donât have opportunity is incorrect. Itâs their choice if they wish to pursue math or not. It is indeed disappointing not to have more women interested in math, but thatâs their choice to not be interested. Women are in general the majority at universities and they can pursue anything they want, all doors are open to them with extra special scholarships and slots, not available to males. Yet they still donât choose pursuing math while being the majority.
Because we (most of us humans) arenât free in our choices. We are blocked, pushed, moved, forced by thousands of different things in our environment/systems. Being free is nearly impossible except for the outcasts.
The goal is to remove and build systems, to let everybody be as free as possible. We are currently very far away from this ideal in many aspects. My feeling is, we are currently regressing (not we, the Julia community, but we humans on earth).
How can we achieve this for the Julia community? Where do we have walls? Do we really need them?
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One of the reasons fewer women choose mathematics is that there are fewer women in mathematics. Itâs a vicious circle. In a somewhat similar way some people donât choose Julia because of the smaller user base. I donât use Julia professionally because my colleagues and customers donât use it. I use Matlab, even though I consider it inferior.
We saw that at my old university, when a âwomen in ITâ program was started it led to many women studying It and compsci, even though the large majority would have gotten in anyway.
Sometimes you just need to get the ball rolling and remove psychological or cultural barriers.
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Making admittance inclusion decisions based on whether someone is male or female, itâs actually the creation of a new pyschological and cultural barrier.
Placing a barrier where none existed before is the creation of new a new barrier. How about no barrier?
Please donât. Tesla autopilot already kills people, I really dislike this trend of using machine learning for common sense tasks a human can do on their own.
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Except the actual observed consequence was to remove barriers.
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Giving special priviledges to advance women in a specific industry is the creation of a new barrier, not the removal.
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If that is your gut feeling, you are welcome to it.
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If people know they are âon the side of the Goodâ, then naturally those who donât support their cause are âon the side of the Evilâ, they are their enemies.
Christianity started as being at itâs basics inclusive ("there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, nor male and femaleâ) and tolerant ( âLet anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at herâ). That didnât prevent them from suppressing the free opinion by burning (suspected) dissenteers alive.
Communism proclaimed freedom and equal chances for everyone. The well-known quote from Rosa Luxemburg says "âFreedom is always the freedom of the one who thinks differentlyâ. What directly followed: the communists created the most oppressive regimes and perpetrated the worst crimes against humanity the world knows.
Both was possible because they - many of them - were sure they were on the side of the good.
â which is not surprising at all. Those who know for sure what is good and what is bad, tend to be intolerant.
Now letâs think what can be practically done within the Julia community. Not that much.
The Julia language licence is a tried and tested one. Changing it in any however well-intended way is going to have mostly negative side effects for the language development.
The community is quite friendly and tolerant as it is, at least as long as the topic deals with Jula and not diversity. There are codified rules to follow and stewards, who, I suppose, mostly donât need to interfere. Any user is free to stay anonym and be as diverse as he/she/them like. Everyone of us should try to be as helpful and friendly as possible, but otherwise I donât see what can be improved here.
But some special stipends for women etc. could come into the question. Surely, not a great deal for the world as a whole, but something tangible. Unfortunately, as soon as you want tangible results, you need that damned money. So I suggest the supporters of diversity and inclusion put their own money where their mouth is, and create a foundation providing at least one person with at least limited support.
Or otherwise close the topic as being divisive and harmful.
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Well, what I put it into scientific terms, but what I meant concerns every reasoning: Be able to discriminate between what is known for certain and what is your guess, and be able to tell what you really want and how much are you ready to pay for it.
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