
No free lunch (at Google) for thought criminals - joe_bleau
http://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2018/01/09/no-free-lunch-at-google-for-thought-criminals/
======
natecavanaugh
Okay, I'm saying this as a republican, but the calling of people visiting a
campus as "immigration" is stupid on its face.

I see the reductionist attempt to equate the two, and sure they have in common
the fact that it involves people moving their bodies to a new location, but
that's where it ends.

Not a single person I know, not even the most liberal, border-erasing people
would advocate for the complete eradication of property rights, nor for the
removal of a property owner's choice of who to allow on said property.

As a conservative, I was sickened by the filing, because if even half of it
was true and not taken out of context, it indicates that Google does have an
institutional bias against certain ideas being tolerated.

I'm not saying people should be allowed to harass others, but some of these
reactions would constitute harassment.

FWIW, I think this is really an issue of many people at polarized edges of an
ideology aren't able to have a constructive discussion without it devolving
into shows of force to silence the other.

------
ng12
I think people in the Valley are so far removed from anyone who's politically
misaligned that they are desperate for something to lash out against. I
remember reading an article about people protesting Palantir on the grounds
that they might someday receive a contract for a theoretical deportation
database that Trump might someday want to build.

------
danjoc
Upvoted for the implication that gender can't be considered a protected class
if gender is fluid. Isn't the whole point of protected classes based on being
something you can't change about yourself?

~~~
optimuspaul
nope. religion, age, and veteran status are all protected classes and not
static.

~~~
sheepdestroyer
Age and veteran status are pretty much static? Like sex and gender.

On the contrary, opinions like religion and politic affiliation are the exact
opposite (and that you find those conflated in things like CoC troubles me).

~~~
dragonwriter
> Age and veteran status are pretty much static?

No, age and veteran status change over time. It's true that in the direction
they are legally protected, they are mostly one-way gates into protected
status (you can become a veteran or a person over 40, but you don't normally
exit either status; it's theoretically possible with veterans status, but
extremely rare.)

Physical and mental disability, citizenship status, are also protected and
non-static.

In California law, marital status, medical conditions, HIV/AIDS status, and
status as a domestic violence or stalking victim are also non-static and
protected.

~~~
sheepdestroyer
You did not get what static means in the context (or maybe why it was a bad
choice of word) : the interesting particularity of a "static" trait is that it
is not possible to will yourself out of it even if you really want to.

Of course your age change, and a veteran once was not ; but try to get younger
if you want? nope. Un-AIDS yourself by the force of will? nope

If you have no control over it, that is very static, even if next year you'll
be one year older.

But one can decide not to be a nazi anymore, or a cult believer, at anytime.
That's where the fundamental difference resides. And these different things
should be treated differently.

A real problem for me is to have mere opinions protected from critics on the
ground of fighting discrimination. It should always be possible to say to
someone that what they believe is wrong or simply absurd.

~~~
eesmith
"Static" is definitely the wrong word. I think you are looking for
"immutable", which is mentioned on
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspect_classification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspect_classification)
. However, note that "the [Supreme] Court has not declared that any particular
set of criteria are either necessary or sufficient to qualify" as a suspect
classification.

In any case, the idea of a "protected class" is not "based on being something
you can't change about yourself".

That you may want it to be something else is irrelevant. What you believe is
wrong and absurd (using your terms), based on the decades of established law
and court cases on the topic.

You wrote: "mere opinions protected from critics on the ground of fighting
discrimination. It should always be possible to say to someone that what they
believe is wrong or simply absurd"

It is (almost) always possible. The question is, should that expression of an
opinion be free from negative consequences? The answer is, for the most part,
"no".

Furthermore, having "mere opinions" is one thing, while expressing those
opinions are another. You might be of the opinion that women are incompetent
and should not be hired, and if a women is hired you might express that
general opinion to her.

However, as
[https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sex.cfm](https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sex.cfm)
points out, in the workplace "it is illegal to harass a woman by making
offensive comments about women in general."

(Note: "Unless the conduct is quite severe, a single incident or isolated
incidents of offensive sexual conduct or remarks generally do not create an
abusive environment. As the Court noted in Vinson, "mere utterance of an
ethnic or racial epithet which engenders offensive feelings in an employee
would not affect the conditions of employment to a sufficiently significant
degree to violate Title VII." ... A "hostile environment" claim generally
requires a showing of a pattern of offensive conduct".
[https://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/currentissues.html](https://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/currentissues.html)
)

There's plenty of examples in the EEOC guidelines to help understand when
something goes beyond "mere opinions" and into the realm where the courts may
decide that a given workplace environment is "hostile or offensive".

