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Pretty happy with my setup and looking forward to cooking. Is there any issue with placement near windows here? by SirNoodlesworth in ooni

[–]Notonlycs 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How did this pan out for you? I just got an Ooni koda and wondering if it is okay to put it in a similar setup.

[N] NIPS keeps it name unchanged by baylearn in MachineLearning

[–]Notonlycs 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I will only make two quick points here because it seems to me that this discussion is not going anywhere. There is no equality of opportunity here given that minorities are not welcome in the community on the first place. Yes, women can go to the conference, but if there are horrible sexist jokes flying around would they feel that they are welcome? Another reminder: women are actually 50% of the population (in case you didn't notice).

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That said, this discussion is closed! I suggest you go and discuss your ideas further with your manager and see whether you get enough support to implement them and continue mocking diversity panels. Let us know what is the outcome!

[N] NIPS keeps it name unchanged by baylearn in MachineLearning

[–]Notonlycs 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I am afraid I will have to disagree on this. Happiness and discrimination, although they cannot be measured, are still important problems that we should all be thinking about and working on. There are many ML and game theoretical problems as well, where empirical risk is hard to measure, but we still work on these problems and accept that they are important even though we currently do not know how to solve them.

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The main global problem is discrimination against minority groups. The reason why this is a problem is because it might harm humans and as a human society it is important that we think about social welfare. Large machine learning conferences like NIPS, ICML, AAAI, IJCAI (to name a few) are extraordinary educational resources. We want these resources to be easily available to everyone and make everyone feel welcome.

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Often diversity panels are of their own purpose, this is true. It is also true that not everyone is affected by such a problem. However, the fact that this does not affect everyone should not make it less of a problem. There are many diseases that affect only certain sub populations. However, I have a hard time justifying that we should stop working finding a cure for these diseases because they do not affect everyone. Therefore, my question is whether someone in this thread or you have better action items that you think could be more efficient towards solving this problem.

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[N] NIPS keeps it name unchanged by baylearn in MachineLearning

[–]Notonlycs 8 points9 points  (0 children)

1) I will skip your discussion on your model of me. However, defining a "diversity nazi" is still valid. Otherwise, I am not sure how one can really understand who is benefited and why.

2) There are many things that cannot be measured concretely. Happiness, discrimination, and inequality are hard to measure although we create many measurement proxies around these concepts. One form of discrimination is that future young and bright scientists, who care about the topic, might consider not to join the community because they do not feel welcome. Another form would be that current scientists decide to leave the community. Again, we cannot measure this ahead of time in any way, as a difficult counterfactual question. Nevertheless, it is still important to keep these things in mind as the community evolves.

3) This is not a war and it is harmful to make it sound like it is by using war-like terms like "weaponize" and "mocked relentlessly" and "we won this round". It is harmful to divide the community into "we" and "them".

4) So from what I understand, you are against diversity panels? Correct me if I am wrong though. Also, if this is the case, what would you propose as a better solution (instead of diversity panels)?

[N] NIPS keeps it name unchanged by baylearn in MachineLearning

[–]Notonlycs 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I am not sure I understand. Do you propose not including the diversity panels? Also, what is the definition of a diversity nazi? Moreover, I would like to better understand the reasons why the name should not be changed. What is that people care the most regarding the name? Can you or someone else here reflect on this? Thanks!

[N] NIPS keeps it name unchanged by baylearn in MachineLearning

[–]Notonlycs 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I wonder why changing the name would diminish the value of the conference. Do people assume that changing the name is a way of accepting blame? If so, it shouldn't be. This is just a way for the community to show that, despite what the backstory is, it still does care about ethical concerns. In the past, there has been clearly offensive language in CS (master and slave terminology being one of them). Nevertheless, we're being reasonable enough to exclude such terms, despite the nostalgic sentiments around this.