Well, TFA opens with "Blacklisting at work has been illegal in the UK since 2010", but I guess it'd be hard to argue that what's described is bona fide blacklisting.
For libel and slander, calling him stupid when he passed the exams set by the very examiner himself. Loss of earnings, etc.
Also against the universities for breach of the blacklisting prohibitions in the employment act. Their lack of checks and balances against this informal blacklist has left them wide open to be sued.
Exams are the formal yardstick here, and a serious institution should not subject itself to such a powerful and informal system that is completely unchallengeable and opaque as "your supervisor's secret opinion of you".
If "stupid people" are passing these exams, maybe these are not good exams either.
Finally, thinking in terms of "stupid people" also incorrectly frames intelligence as a scalar, is unhelpful and lacks descriptive power of how one's mental capacity falls short: Are they socially clueless? Are they forgetful? Are they not able to put in the mental work when it comes to answering questions?
That just gets you into a Catch-22... being seen suing previous employers and supervisors will make it even harder to get hired in that field, and possibly any other as well.
If the person in question is not really unpleasant (and I don't know that they are not, but let's take it as given for a moment), my suggestion would be doing some strong networking. If you interact with people at conferences and are clearly not a bad person, then it's easier to defend yourself against the accusations by pointing out their variance with actual experience. In a perfect world, yeah, that work should not be necessary, but nobody's accused the world of being perfect in a long time.
(Ironically, if you pull this off and manage to build a new reputation on your own, then you might actually be able to safely sue.)
To an extent, but the private sector in the UK learnt a long time ago to simply refuse to give a reference instead of detailing their actual (disprovable) bad opinion.
We're only hearing one side, but given his professional accomplishment of people using his textbook in Masters courses, this comes across as a personal vendetta. You don't say those sort of things about someone who clearly does have talent unless you want to cause harm.
I think there needs to be an act of publication for defamation law to be engaged though. It might be rather hard to argue that private emails reach that bar.
I'd note that the relevant definition of publish isn't the common-sense use (i.e. make available publicly), but merely "the communication of the defamatory matter to a third person" [0]. Indeed the first link in my prior post specifically calls out defamation via private methods of communication (texting) as something that may be actionable.
It seems like the reform act of 2013 might make these comments in-bounds:
Honest opinion: It is a defence for defamation, to show the statement complained of was a statement of opinion; that it indicated, in general or specific terms, the basis of the opinion; that an honest person could have held the opinion on any fact which existed when the statement was published, including any fact in a privileged statement that was pre-published. The defence is defeated if the claimant shows the defendant did not hold the opinion.
The author of the article would have to be able to show that the comments caused serious harm, that they were published, and that they were defamatory.
The respondent would then have to prove, on the balance of probabilities, that the comments were either true, or fair comment, or privileged.
Defamation cases are very expensive to bring and a good outcome is not at all certain.
The author mentions their Aspergers; which means the content of those emails, such as comments like 'stupid,' could be seen as coded discrimination. In nearly all of Europe, intellectual disabilities are a topic of non-discrimination legislation.
Ignoring the legal arm-chairing; universities and colleges retaining staff who discriminate students based on intellectual disabilities could face down some bad PR.
In France (Law n°2018-493 of June 20, 2018 ) you are not permitted to make any race/illness/political/jugdment statement inside any database system (paper or eletronic) be it public or private
I would hope not. How can one's demand for information supersede another persons right to privacy in their communications?
So will this come down to any email which passes through an officially recognized organization, be it government or corporation or educational, as open to inspection and possible litigation? Talk about an Orwellian nightmare
You have it backwards. If the government/public corporations keep everything secret, that's the Orwellian nightmare.
The person you are suggesting has the right to privacy is acting in an official capacity, paid for by public money. These are not personal emails.
Just that fact that one person is bringing a litigation, is not a valid reason to mark everything top secret.
If you make everything in the machinations of government secret, then these things (and much worse) will still happen, but there will be no transparency or recourse. That is the worst possible outcome.
I wouldn't go down that road ... You can fit a definition of "stupid" and have Asperger without the former being caused by the latter.
Is saying your black coworker under-performs a form a racism ? Your female coworker being stupid would be sexism (but only if you're a man of course) ?
At the risk of missing the big picture, I think comments on their intelligence correlates to discrimination due to intellectual disabilities in a way race and gender would not.
But what is the bar for blacklisting? If I don't like a colleague and someone asks me for my opinion on them, is it blacklisting for me to honestly share my opinion?
Sure, but now you have to support the idea that the person in the article was blacklisted. Getting a bad recommendation and getting blacklisted are not the same thing.
Yes, I’m interested in the legal status of the remarks made about the author. Nothing seems outright discriminatory or illegal; there’s no law against calling people stupid and unpleasant, presumably. And since your PhD supervisor and examiner aren’t your employers, what laws would apply even regarding obviously discriminatory stuff said about you? Do they actually have any legal obligations to bring disciplinary action against someone who is just “unpleasant” before openly calling them unpleasant?
The university would have obligations under the Equality Act 2010 - it's possible the Aspergers could be considered a disability.
The university wouldn't have an obligation to bring disciplinary proceedings against someone deemed "unpleasant" before calling them such - they would be required to follow their own internal process for raising a disciplinary case.
It sounds like the threshold for a disciplinary case wasn't met in this case. In any event, these sorts of remarks are a grey area and any action to take depends entirely on the specific content of the communications. It's not nice to be called "unpleasant", but it's probably not libellous.
Yes, they can sue – anyone can sue for anything, after all.
Would they win? Maybe, but the cost would probably not be worth it and of course there's the reputational damage caused by being seen as someone willing to litigate against their employer / university, etc.
At this point, they seem to be rather close to the bottom anyway. So their best option probably involves self-employment related to their field of study. A settlement can go a long way towards financing their endeavor.
>Where my personality was called into question perhaps my working-class background, my northern accent, and my Aspergers could be a reasonable explanation.
Easier to resort to such hypotheses than be self critical, I guess.
Do we really fall in the category where one student with apparently decent thesis results gets ostarcized by her advisor AND the examiners, where no one in the faculty or comittee would stand for her, even though successfull students do bring a lot of prestige to their team, lab and advisor ? Would it really be in their interest if they have no reason to ? She is doubtly their first tutored PhD ever, and I guess have they seen enough to give feedback that is relied on by other actors in the field ?
I mean, we're all old enough to have met people that despite competence are hard to work (or be) with and would rather not have to deal with.
And considering she did a smart and unconventional GDPR request, and she's legitimately pissed off about its results but goes as far as to publish in the press about it...
Doing this behind her back, and without recourse, refusing to talk about it to the person in question, basically the whole way this happened, does not shine a good light on the advisors here.
Plus, you may have noticed, she wrote under a non-identifiable name (outside maybe people already in the know) and didn't name the people in question, nor the institutions.
So yeah, she's pissed, IMHO rightfully so, especially since this is a career breaking thing and without recourse.
So personal recommandations should be disclosed ? That kinda goes against the point of trying to have an open discussion about a potential appliant. And what would the recourse be anyways ?
What good would a talk do, since admittedly it's a person and not a work problem ? Do any good come out of people explaining how they despise your attitude, especially with high stakes, where no response will ever bring closure ?
Yes, btw I hope the publisher has more insight than the reader and does a background check.
Edit : though I agree that the team should've hold a discussion, as sterile as it probably would've been, for it's own reputation.
Well, then your response could be summed up as "there's really nothing to do here."
In which case, since the lab holds all the other cards, and shows no sign of changing course, the only valid recourse would be for the candidate to make this issue as visible as possible to all potential employers, including names and everything. Assuming that there is no consensus to be reached between her and the lab, let the other parties come to a conclusion after learning both sides.
After all, not saying anything about this to a potential employer, knowing what they will hear from the lab, would be kind of self-defeating in the literal sense, no?
If she knew that her academic career prospects were being sabotaged by her advisor rather than having her mental health deteriorate while failing to pursue an academic career in her field, she could have pivoted to industry or a separate topic.
But I believe people have an unalienable right to tell their version of a story.
As far as these story go, this is one is very civil (and doesn't name the people that are accused of destroying a career and a life).
What I don't really understand is what this comment brings to the table. Why try to cast aspersions on an otherwise mild testimony, the truth of which is pretty much unknowable without further details?
Well, what's the point of the article in the first place anyways ? Yeah stuff like that happen, have and will, and sometime verbally so good luck fighting that. Self-improvement seems the most efficient way of fighting that for oneself.
I just wanted to remind that the other side of the story was way more probable. Because outcasting her for her accent, despite all the good it brings a team to sprout successful academics (we're talking a field full of educated people, so able to forecast consequences of their decisions, although pride and ego sometimes makes them do bad stuff), is really not the most plausible outcome. But now I feel like such explanations are becoming default ones.
> Yeah stuff like that happen, have and will, (...) good luck fighting that
Fatalism like the kind you suggest adds nothing to the discussion, and indeed to the academic community. It allows bad actors to keep acting badly. An article like this might motivate someone in power to examine whether this kind of conduct occurs in their institution. I don't know about you, but I see a positive expected value.
And I am not sure what you mean by the other side of the story. She has positive feedback from another supervisor, if the article is to be believed, so isn't the probable explanation a difference of personalities? And is there really any non-pride-or-ego-related reason to try and prevent someone not just from working with you, but in the wider community of which you are part? I can not interpret that behaviour in any way other than malice.
Well if you cut part of the sentence, of course it sounds fatalist, but that refered to the specific part where people talk and use phones to the same extend of giving honest, confidential feedback. And you'll eventually have no spur of those discussions. And bad students will still be spoken of, as luckily do bad advisors.
Please don't tweak sentences to make them fit to whatever discourse you want.
As for the second paragraph, between a freshly graduated PhD and advisors there is still a long way. I hardly see them competing for the same spots. Sure there are probably wicked minds that would try to evict geniuses, but said geniuses would be picked up by less egoistic people (that are luckily way more common).
Rivalry is a thing in academics of course, but from advisors towards their own phds ? There's no stake there for an advisor, but preventing a bad element trained in your team to cast a bad light on you.
Your entire first paragraph as written conveys that the situation can not be changed, and the victim must change themself. This, in my opinion, is fatalist.
Please clarify what you mean if you find you have been misunderstood instead of getting angry and assuming malice.
I know several people in my tiny part of academia alone, whose eminence is well established, and who would not much change this by telling colleagues a certain individual is impossible to work with. I agree that it would take a vindictive mind to do so, but I am asking you to explain the facts any other way:
> Firstly, my eminent and influential PhD supervisor had let it be widely known that they thought I was an unpleasant person, impossible to work with, fundamentally stupid, and that I definitely shouldn’t be doing a doctorate.
I know no decent people who would say this about someone in a professional setting, let alone write it down and send it to many people. Also, no honest assessment of someone's academic skills can include the words "fundamentally stupid" if they are able to get into a PhD program, right?
Who you recommend is a reflection on you. If the author is actually difficult to work with and a colleague asks you about the author, not giving an honest answer has negative consequences on your professional reputation.
It doesn't seem like malice to me, particularly since the author seems quite dislikeable based on their article.
> I mean, we're all old enough to have met people that despite competence are hard to work (or be) with and would rather not have to deal with.
I agree. It's not a black-and-white thing. Some people _might_ add value under some easy metric like "published works", but be impossible to work with under other metrics that are hard to measure but still important like agreeableness[1].
When someone is failing without a clear line on a workplace environment, more often than not it's because of that one specific trait (or lack thereof). I've certainly seen people that look great "on paper" and that never cross a line, but that still make me want to quit work just so I don't need to be around them.
Ok, but who do you treat well in this situation? The unpleasant student, or the person who is asking for information about them? If you remain silent about your honest opinion of the student, you are potentially foisting this unpleasantness on your colleague who might hire her.
For me, the takeaway here is to be honest and to not exaggerate, especially in matters of import. You can't always do the best thing for everyone, so when that's impossible, let the truth be your guide. The other thing is that the adviser should have brought these concerns to the student while she was still under his tutelage.
I don't understand how that's not being self critical. On finding that they're not well liked they thought up aspects of their personality others might not like.
It's a list of things that others might dislike, which are not under their own control. Thus shifting the blame onto others rather than considering that one's own actions may be the problem.
They can't control what others dislike or control the having of those traits; they certainly can control what they do going forward though and this information is useful in shaping that.
I also disagree heavily that things are either under your control or the fault of others.
Others have expressed thoughts I had as well, but to add:
I used to basically have your opinion, and then had two experiences that shifted my perspective.
The first was a colleague who was known for being overly frank, to put it mildly; for not having any internal controls on sharing what was on his mind. He was (and is) a brilliant individual who is every bit as competent as people much more accomplished than him. I watched him lose out on job prospect after prospect, and initially sort of thought "well, being able to work with someone easily is important." Eventually, though, I realized that what is far more insidious are all the narcissistic psychopaths who are socially skilled. This guy, while brash, actually was well-meaning and had a heart. I'd far rather work with him than many of the other horrible individuals I've worked with; he's at least as deserving of better employment, if not more.
The second was a case where we were hiring, and this brilliant individual applied. Everyone agreed he was heads above the best -- this being a faculty position at a research institution. Eventually everyone started complaining about how socially awkward he was, how his presentational style was difficult, and how he did these weird things in interviews. The thing was, he wasn't mean or cruel or anything like that, or even markedly eccentric, just a little weird. Someone objected to this, pointing out that it was bizarre for us to be dismissing someone who was described as a genius in letters, and that we agreed was such, because of socially unusual (but not difficult) behavior. The question this person on the hiring committee raised was "what are we actually wanting? What is our mission?" The applicant didn't get the job, and it always struck me as unfortunate.
I guess my point is that even if someone is unpleasant to work with, sometimes that's not the most important thing, and even when it is important, the way that they are unpleasant matters. This isn't even getting into how capricious and cruel people can be in their assessments of others' behaviors.
But for your first example obviously that specific way did rub a lot of people the wrong way. Because you don't mind it, and you had time to get to know him past that, doesn't have to be the majority.
And yes, socially weird people don't surprise me as not fitting in faculty position. You'll eventually have to defend your team, look for opportunities, teach, mentor... You can't give a bad vibe right off with such proeminent roles, because ultimately they're very much based on relationships.
Surely there must be some room for those brilliant but weird people, in small institutions that don't need that much PR or something. And sure some people get to be Paul Erdös and be so dramatically brilliant and querky that the rest is overlooked. That's not true for the average joe.
My friends think I have no empathy (as some people probably think reading my comments!), but in a professional setting (mine being veterinarian, clearly it's not really fitting) "being myself" would do more harm than good, so I'm just playing the expected role, and things are fine, and even enjoyable. Choosing one's battles. I'd rather feel good in my job even if unauthentic.
There are people who are persecuted because they are outsiders and for no other reason. A case in point is the story of Rosalind Franklin.
On the other side, some people are brilliant yet toxic. You can't have them work in a group because they will bring down the productivity of the group. You have to decide if they are so brilliant you will work with them anyway. I have had two experiences with this, one was successful and the other was unsuccessful.
In the successful case I sat the guy down and told him that I couldn't fire the entire team and just keep him because I needed more than what he could produce. He agreed. I paired him up with a woman that he respected and the team of two formed an awesome team. She handled all of the interactions with outside teams.
The second case was someone who was both brilliant and exceedingly insecure. No amount of counseling fixed his problem. No amount of telling him that he didn't need to insult people to get respect fixed his problem. Sigh. Sometimes you have to let people go.
At the end of the day - the telling part of the story is the cowardice of Dora's advisors. The fact that they did not take their jobs seriously enough to become her mentors leads me to believe that they did not do their jobs.
Anecdotally, I met someone who stopped updating their linkedin profile because he found out someone was making anonymous comments and allegations to his employers. He didn't know what they were or who it was because it came second hand from a colleague who told him that an exec had asked about him because of an anonymous message.
Also, whisper networks in tech are very much a thing and they are full of just the quality of people you would expect to find in them. When asked about people I truly can't stand, I say I am sympathetic to the barriers they faced to success and we didn't know each other well. It's not a code, it's the truth. I don't give much weight to the opinions of people who are cruel or have axes to grind either. This is a rare view.
Keep your public social networks well-pruned. Don't talk about plans, the future, or uncertain opportunities, and if you work for crappy people, get out as fast as you can before you give them an unlimited option on causing your reputation harm for the rest of your career.
The real world is crazy. The amount of bullying, stalking and attacks I've gotten after getting a series of promotions in a rotten workplace with a few bad apples is unbelievable.
If I knew better, I'd have paid attention to the above comment.
It's quite amazing how large the gap is between the way the world is described to us through various mediums, versus the clearly observable reality of it.
FTA:
> I approached the individuals and the institutions concerned about the content of my Subject Access Request. They all refused to discuss the matter with me, so I can only speculate as to what was going on.
Of course, these people were just "avoiding drama" they'd tell us. But then, is avoiding drama that what they were doing when they were trashing this person behind their back in emails?
I think people have a tendency to conceptualize a stark, "real" line between adolescence and adulthood, but the reality of the matter seems to be that many adults are little more than high school kids plus some added expertise in some narrow domains. The adult world, even at the highest levels of authority, largely consists of the same petty cliques, backstabbing, lying, and whatnot that you'd experience in high school.
>The adult world, even at the highest levels of authority, largely consists of the same petty cliques, backstabbing, lying, and whatnot that you'd experience in high school
I'm not a fan of claiming this type of behavior is childish and something we leave behind after high school. Before advances in mass transportation that made it feasible for people to uproot and move to a new community, most people were stuck in the same ingroup for most of their lives.
High school is just a cultural relic that mimics this previous social grouping. It's not necessarily something that kids do that we grow out of - it's the other way around - modern society has broken the existing communities we had in place, but in return gives us the freedom to find new ones anywhere we want.
My point was basically that people tend to have this idea in their mind that for the most part, adults "behave like adults", in that they grow out of the negative social behaviors that are easily observed in a school setting, whereas the reality seems to be that what's actually happening is that this behavior simply becomes more sophisticated and better hidden, or ignored as if it didn't exist.
After I had my traumatic experiences, I started thinking of it as more-like childish behavior, not even high school. Even at high school, a lot of people are the same childhood monsters with just a bit of persona, gravitas, connections and expertise. At least, that's what I thought. Some people grow out of it and become enlightened, but most don't and just become phonies.
On the other side of these experiences, when everything is going well it's easy to ignore all that's wrong with people.
Whisper networks just mean powerful people who talk among each other and do their research. That will always be the case. In politics isn’t that just the standard form of discourse?
Whisper networks are less-powerful people warning each other about more-powerful people. People with power don't need to hide their communications so much because they are less vulnerable.
Have we learned nothing from Wikileaks? Quite the contrary! People with power rely on private/secret communications. And, without power, what is there to communicate, for what you say likely has no value.
I am reminded of Napoleon's dictum: "the secret of war lies in the communications". Sun Tzu would disagree as well, having well documented the value of secrets and spies.
I actually believe the power networks that matter are made up of people who can afford honesty and magnanimity, and that gossips never make it above being minor gatekeepers.
Low stakes players sometimes get to sit at high stakes tables, and sometimes they take out a high stakes player from that round, but they go bust pretty fast.
Not a good example, Communism abrogates spirituality. It's intrinsically barren and illegitimate. The CCP, founded on a lie, can never afford the truth. And, indeed, we find them trying to maintain a fabricated history to maintain their power. (The "incident" in the Square, the name of Taiwan, and so on.)
Generally, there is a correlation between personal power and integrity.
Maybe it's worth stating that I consider myself pro-China. I'm anti-communist. If anything I'm a bit of a Sinophile. IMO the Tao Te Ching is one of the greatest books in the world, for example.
> I was able to ask my PhD college, and several other institutions, to see all emails in which my name appeared in either the subject line or the body of the email
Hmm, I don't think I like this, and I don't understand how the GDPR allows you to do this.
While I understand that stored emails that mention you are technically "data about you", I wouldn't consider them "your data".
Emails are a form of personal communication, and are only really accessible by the author and recipients. Furthermore, those emails would contain PI about other individuals - what of their rights, or indeed the rights of the email authors (regardless of the message content)?
I support the GDPR, but I don't think using it like this falls within it's intent.
The GDPR does say "the right to obtain a copy (...) shall not adversely affect the rights and freedoms of others", but it doesn't spell out what that means.
Still, your work email account can be monitored by your employer (though in the EU they have to provide notice of that monitoring), so you don't have the same protection as in a private account.
OTOH, it could be a violation of privacy / data-protection for the author of this piece to be divulging the contents of these emails, even if they have a right to a copy.
How does this infringe on freedom of speech? You can still make the speech, but it may get back to the person you're speaking about. Which, in an employment context, is kind of necessary for procedural fairness.
>though in the EU they have to provide notice of that monitoring
There is an interesting exception; if private usage of your work mail account is banned, it should not contain private data and therefore, it's free to be monitored. Same for internet usage. This is usually coded into your contract when you sign.
Work emails can easily contain private data too. I might send an email to my manager asking for time off for deeply personal reasons, or informing them about very personal circumstances (e.g. health). There are of course numerous less impactful examples.
An employer monitoring Internet usage is a very different case - in almost all cases it will be fully automated, and the logs only available to HR on request; not just any employee can request your logs.
Interestingly, all emails sent from my work email have an auto-added disclaimer at the bottom saying effectively that anything contained is my own views, and not necessarily those of my employer.
also, see the widely circulated 'GDPR letter from hell', which is a sort of worst-case access-to-data request that could be made under the legislation:
In particular, please tell me what you know about me in your information systems, whether or not contained in databases, and including e-mail, documents on your networks, or voice or other media that you may store.
Has it? I've done much reading on the GDPR, and it certainly wasn't clear to me. "Data", of course - but regardless of technicality, I see email/slack/IM messages more as "personal communication" than "data".
Emails that mention you are likely to count as personal data. However, your right to access that data must be balanced with the right to privacy of anyone else mentioned in the emails. The company would be entitled to redact the emails before sending them, and potentially to refuse the request entirely if that would require excessive effort.
This has been the case under the old data protection regime as well, and indeed I know someone else who used it against an educational institution who they suspected was blacklisting them - and also turned out to be right.
It's squarely within the spirit of data protection as well. Are those emails data? Yes. Do they relate to you? Yes. Are they being used to make decisions which affect your employment? Also yes.
Redacting the PII of others in the same emails is an extremely tricky problem though.
The lesson of this and other things like the LIBOR chatroom has to be "don't conspire against people on your employer's computer systems".
There is a flip side to blacklisting; one of the things that has emerged from the #metoo era is that many institutions had staff who were "missing stairs" - they were widely known to harass female staff, and the whisper networks propagated this, and even in some cases the male staff were aware that they shouldn't leave X alone with a female staff member, but no action was taken.
GRPR forces institutions to be open with their disciplinary processes. You can't "shadowban" staff, unless you're willing to do it entirely verbally without ever committing to email.
GRPR forces institutions to be open with their disciplinary processes.
But a problem with this is that by the nature of disciplinary processes, it may or may not be appropriate to fully disclose what is being investigated to the subject of the investigation in real time.
Much the same ethical and practical issues arise as when the police are investigating someone for suspected criminal behaviour. Indeed, in some cases, it may turn out that one becomes the other.
Much the same ethical and practical issues may also arise as when dealing with any sort of whistle-blowing, where there is a clear interest in protecting the privacy of the whistle-blower as long as the matter they raise and any evidence they personally contribute can be properly validated and, where appropriate, properly challenged.
GDPR allows you to stall people for at least a month, which is hardly "real time", and also to not disclose information which would affect the privacy of others.
In what kind of situation would a month of delay and complete redaction of any information given in confidence by other people?
Almost anything involving potentially criminal conduct where you need to collect robust evidence without tipping off the suspect might qualify, for example.
Or anything where the suspected misconduct happens regularly but at less frequent intervals, such as theft from a monthly or quarterly supply delivery.
Also, who says you get to completely redact other relevant information just because someone thought they gave it in confidence? There is no blanket protection under GDPR for such confidences, and each case will need evaluating individually, probably with guidance from a lawyer.
The GDPR requires you to balance the rights of all involved parties.
Which, like all the other aspects of the GDPR that impose ambiguous rules with no guidance on how to apply them in practice, is not particularly helpful.
And of course the GDPR is very far from the only relevant law if we're talking about disciplinary procedures.
I can't speak to European law, but in the US, work-related emails of government employees are subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. Sensitive information, like health or education data of individuals is redacted before it is released.
I usually think about this issue in relation to driving: Do we (society) have the right to your driving performance data? In other words, if your car knows you drive like a reckless idiot should it "narc" on you?
- - - -
It seems to me that this sort of request means that our mental models of email have to change. This is incumbent anyway: most people still think email is private, when in fact it's more like postcards, in that anyone who handles it can read it. The misbegotten idea that you have any digital privacy in the absence of proper encryption has to die. (I don't like it, and am not advocating for it, I'm just calling it like I see it.)
I'm not an expert here, and I'd have to go read the law in detail to know for sure, but my limited experience leads me to believe that it likely does apply to private companies in the course of business in some cases.
If the company is a federal contractor, for instance, there are a slew of federal regulations with which they must comply to remain eligible for contracts. Likewise, government grants come with strings attached as well.
Finally, if the behavior that you're investigating is illegal - such as discrimination against a "protected class" - there's always the possibility of suing them and acquiring the documents through discovery. All it takes is money.
While the example applies only for Washington state, I imagine other states have similar laws.
Edit: Appears you need to be logged in to view the message. Here's the message:
> In Washington, we have well-established case law that allows private entities to be considered the functional equivalent of an agency, based on a four-part test established by the court in the Telford case. There’s a lot of info online about it, but here’s a concise article: http://mrsc.org/Home/Stay-Informed/MRSC-Insight/January-2017.... The factors of the test are:
> 1. Whether the entity performs a governmental function;
> 2. The extent to which government funds the entity’s activities;
> 3. The extent of government involvement in the entity’s activities; and
> 4. Whether the entity was created by the government.
> It’s been applied to entire agencies, and to individual contracts being performed on behalf of public agencies. We’ve also seen individuals be deemed the functional equivalent of a government employee for purposes of PRA compliance.
In the US, many states have an Open Records act on the books. Typically this extends to the emails that acedemics at public universities send using their .edu addresses (among many other things). Though it varies from state to state, generally communications in and among anyone that recieves state funds in any way are considered part of the public record.
For instance, in CA the Sacremento Bee mantains a DB of all the public worker salaries, including university professor salaries, donations, grant funds, patent royalty payments, etc. It is very comprehensive and I know female acedemics that have used it to argue (suessfully) for better pay: https://www.sacbee.com/news/databases/state-pay/article22946...
In CO, there is the open records act. From what I hear, it is farily simple to obtain all emails that a professor sends out, including ones from a personal email account that happens to send out emails via a router that the state owns: https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/info_center/cora.html
> You can generally do the same thing in the US for emails to/from public university addresses with a FOIA request
No, you can't, because FOIA applies to federal agencies only. Some official communications of a public university might be subject to similar state sunshine laws, but not all email to and from public university email addresses (even some official communication would be protected by FERPA or other privacy laws, and therefore not disclosable under a state open records law.)
OK, you're correct that it's not the federal FOIA law that is the issue, but most states have similar state laws that have been used in the past for this sort of thing.
Which are addressed in the part of my post after the first sentence (which is entirely consistent with your link): they don't generally apply to all email from a public university address, or even (because of both express exceptions in the state laws and superceding federal law) all university employee communication using such addresses.
Definitely some variation from state to state.
And definitely some restrictions due to things like FERPA and other privacy laws.
But I think it's good for state university employees to know that this kind of thing can happen at all. I think that many of them would be surprised to learn that the general public can make any kind of request at all for copies of what they consider private emails.
I know that my wife, who does some work in areas that can be politically charged, was when she took a job at UNC and someone told her this.
I don't know if you're technically-and-therefore-the-best-kind-of correct about this, but something like FOIA broadly applies to local governments as well, which I know because my friend 'bpchaps has been applying it at scale to municipalities all across the US.
The world of high academics is a social network that operates on control and nepotism. People want to continue enriching these elitist crooks by ensuring the state pays for everyone's 'higher education.' We need to outlaw job and licensing degree requirements. It should suffice to pass an industry examination at this point.
> Where my personality was called into question perhaps my working-class background, my northern accent, and my Asperger's could be a reasonable explanation.
It's quite likely that ones background and developmental disorders shape one's personality. However, it's still their personality. So what if it has a reason?
This touches on the dark abyss of "free will". In some sense all we are is a cellular-automata chugging along according to the laws of physics. In that sense everything one does has a "reason". Yet we live our lives, and shape our societies, with the idea that sane adults have an ability to chart their own course, in some sense. (in contrast to children or "insane" people who are considered more reactive/automatic hence not responsible for their actions).
What part of my actions are my responsibility (and therefor have consequences) and what part is beyond my control (and should be forgiven, at least partially)?
“There but for the grace of God go I”, a sentiment even atheistic people should share. Maybe in dry scientific speak, “if it weren’t for the entirety of human culture, evolution, and the specific conditions of the Earth from prehistory until the present, I would not be here where I am today in my particular frame of mind. I didn’t even get to choose which ‘I’ I am, I could have been the person I hate or pity instead”
People that don't believe in the supernatural can still appreciate the usefulness of God as a metaphor and concept. Provided they don't take things too seriously :)
Free will is an illusion and simply it doesn't exist.
You cannot make either a choice or decision that's truly your own. Simply, you cannot without being effected by the system you're in.
People don't choose the life they're born into and why does anything that comes after birth be assumed differently. The answer cultural conditioning and from religious ideology that has rooted deeply into society. The belief that god gave humanity free will.
No part of your actions are truly the responsibility of you as a person but the fate of cause & effect and everything outside one's control. The system of society with genetics & environment being imperfect makes bad people. Otherwise we would just have 'people' in a system of perfect equality.
I agree with you 100%, but I think it's better to 'choose' to believe you can do better, despite knowing, factually, that you are just a product of your environment.
In other words, "I can improve myself" is a pragmatic outlook.
Of course, you can respond with "but you can't even choose that outlook", which I don't disagree with.
> but I think it's better to 'choose' to believe you can do better
I disagree, I theorize it's the same as when the majority of humanity wanted to believe the world is flat and or there is a God that judges us all. Society is the outcome of the majority consensus. So basically I assume many lives are being punished because the majority consensus doesn't understand cause & effect.
Oh whatever. I can walk the fuck out of my job and quit today if I so choose. Is that not free will? I didn't say there would not be consequences, only that it is 100% possible as I've done that very thing in the past.
One of my relatives majored in Philosophy and has his head up his own ass in all this stuff. I find him quite amusing. He reads too many books and has suffered 0.0 actual hardships in his life and yet he is somehow an expert and gleefully gives other people lots of shitty advice.
And I did choose my own life--given my early circumstances and what I was "born into" I eventually rejected 99% of it, moved away, and created my own more positive life. It's hard to break the mold, but certainly not impossible. Cultural conditioning and religion are bullshit traps, same as collectivism, which is another huge, unbelievable lie. I'm not saying it isn't difficult, but you can break free.
Let's suppose you're right and non-determinism doesn't exist. (Quantum physics apparently disagrees, but never mind that.)
It doesn't matter. Treating people as though they have agency is still necessary, because how we treat them would affect their deterministic state function.
If someone commits murder and we say it was only a product of their environment and they have no agency, therefore we shouldn't punish them, well, that's the sort of "choice" that, on a systemic level, causes more people to commit murder. Even if they have no "choice" in the matter -- especially then -- creating an environment in which murder has personal benefits outweighing the personal costs is societally maladaptive.
And so it is with everything else. If we want people to give to charity and go to college and not steal from others then we have to act as if they chose whether or not to do those things and reward or punish them accordingly.
Also, the paradox is that it doesn't matter one bit whether free will exists or not.
Because either it does and we are making conscious choices and everything that normally follows with that. Or it doesn't and everything we say, do, and think is predetermined.
However, if that's the case, then you are predetermined to be someone to be swayed by certain arguments. You are predetermined to either believe or not in free will. And you cannot change that. Because even if this convinces you one way or the other, I had no choice in typing it, and you had no choice in reading it. This was going to happen based on whatever determines things.
So free will not existing wouldn't change anything. Because some people are predetermined to believe that regardless of the reason, murderers should be punished.
Well, I'm proclaiming free will doesn't exist. Neuroscience exhibits supporting evidence that we don't have free will. There hasn't been anything exhibiting that we have free will.
Your rhetoric that nothing matters could have been used when people assumed the world was flat and others were challenging that popular assumption. Nonetheless, the world gets better overtime and when people have a realistic understanding of reality.
So change does happen but yes it's going to happen whether we like it to or not. That's a thrilling thing to observe and to be aware of that nature of reality is a good thing.
> murderers should be punished.
No, they should be rehabilitated and educated of the cause & effect for their actions. Otherwise humanity is failing the unfortunate that didn't have any real control.
If there's no free will, the people punishing murderers have no choice to rehabilitate instead. Choosing between punishing or rehabilitating requires free will.
I'm writing from a cause & effect mindset. So it definitely makes sense that rehabilitation is better than punishment.
To answer what you're trying to point out that has already been answered by me in another post..
Yes, everything is fated to happen. The majority consensus is how society is structured to be and yes the outcome is by fate. Everything may change in the future if fate allows enough people being educated of cause & effect and where the current majority consensus is overcome by understanding of cause & effect. I assume this will happen as technology creates the bridge of data from & to the brain.
My objection is with the word "should", because (and maybe I'm wrong) it implies choice. Nobody says a falling rock should avoid hitting a child - the lack of agency of the rock makes that statement meaningless.
Similarly, if you posit that we have no free will, saying that humanity should rehabilitate and not punish is meaningless.
I understand your objection. Should is just a word for human expression to be shared from me to you. Maybe, not the best word. Although, I thought as a whole the post answered your original point.
Yes, we're similar as the rock because of no agency that's truly our own. We assume typically the rock has no individual conscious and for all we know panpsychism exists contrary to our assumption. Basically, we cannot know what's right or wrong and if a rock should avoid hitting a child. It all factors into fate in the end. Might be favourable for being hit by the rock or not.
One could argue, except that's a rock & a human. I think (human & human) could be treated the same as (rock & a human) but we're dealing with equation of humanity and the emotions of deeper similarity shared. The majority consensus favour our deeper similarities for connection. So the majority consensus doesn't want (human & rock) treatment to be the same like throw the rock away like a piece of trash that's been used up.
Anyway, Fate will decide in the end if we should treat all other objects equally and even while knowing cause & effect. I think cause & effect and with our humanity connection thus favours the rehabilitation modal if the majority consensus ever updates by fate.
No, I think the point made above is that you can still choose punishment because even with no free will involved, the future decision calculations need to observe a strong penalty to deciding yes for murder. This doesn't require free will any more than an if-then I write in code requires it.
But your if-then exhibits no independent action. It just is. It can't "choose", it just takes input and gives a predetermined output based on that input.
If free will does not exist, you do not have a choice. It's disingenuous to both argue that free will does not exist and to proclaim that we should do anything. Or that we can make any sort of choice.
> It's disingenuous to both argue that free will does not exist and to proclaim that we should do anything.
Not at all.
Maybe you are a free-will-lacking if-then bot that takes whatever suggestions someone says we should do and executes them, and maybe I am a free will lacking robot that periodically burps out suggestions. No disenguity or "true choice" required.
But if free will does not exist and you believe that, then you would know that whomever you're making the suggestion to is incapable of changing whatever path they were going on in the first place.
By suggesting a course of action, you are implying there is an actor with agency out there.
Now, while the actor itself may not actually have agency, that does not absolve you. Any attempt to persuade is an implicit acknowledgement of free will.
> Any attempt to persuade is an implicit acknowledgement of free will.
> But your if-then exhibits no independent action.
Attempts at persuasion don't imply free will, they just change the input to the if-then in a downstream deterministic process.
If bash script A calls bash script B with a command line flag to make it follow an alternate behavior, nothing is implied about the free will of either bash script.
And then, if free will does not exist, you are predetermined to believe that murderers should be rehabilitated.
You took one snippet out of context. The point of the statement wasn't that "murderers should be punished".
The point of the post was to highlight that if free will does not exist, then agency is not something that exists. You don't get the choice. Morality does not exist because like someone else's rock example, you don't ascribe motive to the rock. So if our actions are entirely preprogrammed, and all of our reasoning is post-hoc rationalizations, then you can't really ascribe motive to us either. Because none of us have any real control.
We're either people who do A or people who don't do A. And no matter how much your belief that murderers can rehabilitated, there will be a segment who are just predetermined to not be swayed by such arguments.
You can't simultaneously say free will does not exist and say that we have any kind of control.
Yes, like I said fate decides. I'm not saying we have control and I wrote responses but they're dead. I think they're still good responses and even if fate decided.
The issue is that you're talking out of both sides of your mouth.
Free will's existence not mattering doesn't do anything for the "thrilling observations" or whatever. It says nothing to whether things get better or worse.
Not to mention, you have no choice whether you find it thrilling or not. So trying to convince someone else that it is thrilling is also implicitly figuring people have some sort of free will or discretion.
And you're assuming that you're right and that people need to get on board because "being aware of the nature of reality is a good thing". Well, the nature of reality is that whether free will exists is pointless.
You don't even address your cherry-picking of my other comment.
I don't think there is a disagreement here. I agree with your long post conveying it's all fate in the end. I can still write about what I think while observing everything and knowing fate has made my impression. I just like the discussion because who knows if today will be the day to read something thought provoking around it.
Anyways, I'm not trying to convince anyone something is thrilling. I just find it thrilling and even while knowing I don't have free will in any regard of my life.
I think nobody can be right in the traditional sense (traditionally assuming free will exists and one person can be right). My views are just of how I wish society functioned because I think I would prefer to live in a society that cared about the misfortunate by fate. Maybe that's how the multiverse would work for people moving (after death) to a universe more suited for how they turned out. Still wouldn't bring free will but would be cool.
Anyway I'm not trying to cherry pick. I just thought I would express myself best with what I pulled out to write more. Thanks very much for the discussion!
Free will exists or it doesn't. There's no middle ground. Someone is going to be right and someone is going to be wrong. But, like I said, it doesn't matter. The answer doesn't change anything. It's a purely academic question.
If you weren't trying to cherry pick, then why did you do it so blatantly?
> Let's suppose you're right and non-determinism doesn't exist. (Quantum physics apparently disagrees, but never mind that.)
Quantum physics doesn't "apparently disagrees" with what I wrote.
> It doesn't matter. Treating people as though they have agency is still necessary, because how we treat them would affect their deterministic state function.
If someone commits murder and we say it was only a product of their environment and they have no agency, therefore we shouldn't punish them, well, that's the sort of "choice" that, on a systemic level, causes more people to commit murder.
That's an arbitrary view because we haven't viewed a society that understands everything is cause & effect. I will assume a society of that nature would agree upon needing a rehabilitation modal of justice and not a punishment modal.
> Even if they have no "choice" in the matter -- especially then -- creating an environment in which murder has personal benefits outweighing the personal costs is societally maladaptive.
And so it is with everything else. If we want people to give to charity and go to college and not steal from others then we have to act as if they chose whether or not to do those things and reward or punish them accordingly.
Once again this is an arbitrary view and without being able to observe a society that understands cause & effect. Stealing is an outcome from inequality of society & genetics is factored into the problem. A society understanding cause & effect would restructure because inequality becomes understood as the real causes for why bad events happen. Charity, going to college, and not stealing can only be viewed within the current system we live in but would be vastly different in a society understanding cause & effect between all members.
> If someone commits murder and we say it was only a product of their environment and they have no agency, therefore we shouldn't punish them, well, that's the sort of "choice" that, on a systemic level, causes more people to commit murder.
I agree with the direction of your analysis, but I don't think this part is true. Recidivism is really high, especially in more 'punishment' oriented criminal justice systems. I think if you took your argument to its conclusion, you would probably look at systemic causes of murder, since agent-oriented approaches are so demonstrably ineffective.
I think this is a consequence of living in a society with a mostly effective justice system.
If you have a law against larceny which is vigoriously enforced with proportionate penalties, it's going to deter a lot of thefts. But none of the thieves it does deter can show in your recidivism stats, because none of those people commit any thefts.
It's only the people who are desperate or irrational who steal when it means going to jail for it. And if you put that set of people in jail for a while and let them back out into a situation where they're exactly as desperate or irrational as they were before, it's no surprise you see a high recidivism rate in that population, and the only way to prevent those thefts is to remove the desperation or address whatever e.g. mental illness or drug addiction is causing the irrationality.
This is also why disproportionate penalties don't really reduce crime. Because anyone doing the math even remotely accurately will be deterred by proportionate penalties, and anyone not doing the math at all won't be deterred by any penalties, and that doesn't leave a lot of people who can only be deterred by disproportionate penalties.
But that's a different thing than saying there shouldn't be a law against murder or theft at all because punishment is totally ineffective. It's only ineffective against the people it was ineffective against to begin with, who are only a small percentage of the population.
I like your argument, but I think it's specious. Unless you can show some evidence that in the absence of deterrence, ordinarily law-abiding citizens commit crimes massively more frequently (for instance, when it's very unlikely they get caught), then you're just chalking up every non-crime-committing citizen up to 'deterrence' without demonstrating any causal relationship.
I think the relevant data would be crimes that were at one point very common, and are now not. Some things, like forgery, became prohibitively technically difficult. Others, like corruption in public offices, are basically inversely related to pay and pensions for public servants. I could see how vigorous enforcement would make crime more unattractive, since it's a given crime is likely to work out, but I don't think this would always be more economical than simply providing stuff like pensions and benefits so people have social investment they don't want to lose.
That's going to depend a lot on what the offense is. If you pass a law against suicide, the impact that has on the suicide rate is likely to be negligible, because most people don't have any interest in suicide to begin with and the people who do are not likely to be deterred by the prospect of criminal penalties.
But you can certainly find a lot of instances of things that a lot of people did before there was a law against it (e.g. polluting rivers) which now far fewer people do precisely because there is now a law against it.
I think pollution is a bit of a strange case, since it isn't typically directed at individuals, but rather firms, and in cases where such laws are not enforced they're typically universally ignored. Firms are funny because they're both highly invested in society, generally very rational (in a narrow sense), and generally not particularly interested in ethics. I think that's pretty much the opposite profile to your typical criminal.
I'm not in any case saying that such causal relationships don't exist: just that they only exist in a subset of crimes, and probably aren't major drivers in the really interesting ones (theft, violent crime, organized crime, etc).
>Free will is an illusion and simply it doesn't exist.
I'll ante with Pascal's wager and say it does exist.
If I'm right, then I'm right.
If I'm wrong, then the whole notion of right and wrong aren't applicable to reality, no different than CH4 + 2O2 => CO2 + 2H2O just being and not having a right or wrong to it.
Unless there is an alternative to the options free will exists and free will does not exist, then this wager does not suffer the same flaw that the original does.
Pascal's wager (the original) has a flaw in it. One doesn't know and or can prove if God is evil. So I don't really know how else to respond to what you wrote.
Free will as a concept is much simpler than God as a concept, and thus the flaws in the original wager don't apply (as far as I can tell, if you can find one that does apply let me know).
> Free will as a concept is much simpler than God as a concept
How so? I assume the opposite when it comes to what's simpler. A person sees creation by God as cause & effect. The free will concept doesn't even make sense if thought about. Your actions are cause & effect from the summation of all events experienced.
For starters, generally the view is that free will either exists or doesn't exist with free will being the concept that we have some control over our actions.
Compare this to God, where you have plenty of religions, many with their own distinction God, some with many, some with concepts that may or may not quite count as God. Even with just Christianity, you have God, but then you have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit which makes up God. With some belief systems you have spirits which are kinda like a god but kinda not and with other systems you have demigods which are part human.
So with free will, you options are:
Option | Free Will
1 | N
2 | Y
With gods, you options are
Option | God | Trinity | Allah | Shiva | Zeus | Thor | ...
1 | N | N | N | N...
2 | Y | N | N | N...
3 | N | Y | N | N...
...
And that isn't even counting the difference within a given religion. It is like comparing the cardinality of boolean options with the cardinality of the reals.
It's impossible to actually know whether or not we have anything approaching free will.
We could be a simulation, there could be an omnipotent deity, we could be the product of a bunch of processes unique to ourselves.
None of it matters.
We can only act on the world as we perceive it.
If the world is controlled by some outside force that can manipulate it at will, including our perception and memory of events, there is nothing we can do about that. We are merely constructs under something else's control. If we were ever capable of "piercing the veil" so to speak, the controller could just roll us back to when we didn't know. If gravity was too much, they could change it. Etc.
However, we're going to do our best to understand the world as perceived. And that's the best we can do. We have to operate as if the universe is not being arbitrarily modified according to unknowable rules.
And it's not like any sort of record will prove that it's not. Because the capability of creating this universe also includes the capability of altering the past as well as the present and future.
Similar with free will. Like I explained elsewhere, if free will does not exist, then you can either be persuaded by an argument or not. For any position. Maybe you're predestined to like Joe Dirt. No matter what anyone says about it. You don't get the choice.
Same thing regarding the concept of free will. If it does not exist, you don't actually have a choice in whether you can accept that it doesn't. Either you're predestined to believe in it or not. Because all of your actions are the results of the forces that act upon you, all of which are also the results of actions, etc, etc, all the way to the initial big bang. That one moment essentially wrote it's own epitaph as everything goes back to that moment. Without free will, me writing this and you reading it isn't a chance or coincidence, it's just the result of the forces from the big bang.
So. If free will doesn't exist, it doesn't change anything. Because we cannot change the path we're on. We have no choice. Even if you say, "Yeah, well, I'm going to do X and save the world". Well. You were going to say that in response to this post. I didn't convince you anymore than any other object in motion "convinces" any other object it collides with to change direction. It's what always was going to happen.
>So. If free will doesn't exist, it doesn't change anything. Because we cannot change the path we're on. We have no choice.
Which is why if I say there is free will and I'm right, then I'm right, and if I'm wrong, then I never had a choice and so right and wrong doesn't apply.
But Pascal's wager is about risk vs. reward. Here, there is neither risk nor reward. The entire question of whether free will exists or not is pointless.
If it exists, nothing changes.
If it doesn't exist, nothing changes.
And regardless whether you believe it exists or not:
If you're right about whether it exists, nothing changes.
If you're wrong about whether it exists, nothing changes.
So no matter the truth, no matter the outcome, everything is exactly the same. That means the question itself is pointless.
And right and wrong would still apply, it's just that if free will does not exist, we couldn't morally fault you for choosing wrong, you had no choice. But then again, I wouldn't have the choice in whether or not to morally fault you.
I consider being wrong or right risk and reward within themselves. Most others act in such a way that seems to agree even if they don't conceptualize such a thought.
>That means the question itself is pointless.
How does one determine what does and doesn't have a point? If free will does exist then we can modify our government based on the notion it does exist if we think it does. If it does exist and we think it does not, then such modifications might be incorrect. That alone is enough for us to determine if there is a point to the question, even outside of any more abstract interest in the question.
Consider someone who crashes a car into a person because they didn't like how the other person looked at them and someone else who crashes a car into a person because of an epileptic seizure.
Should they be treated the same? If free will does exist, then the actions of the first are consider a bad choice while the actions of the second are deemed an illness beyond control, and while there needs to be actions to safeguard against either case from happening again the liability of the second individual is reduced (though not as much if they knew of the risk and choose to drive anyways).
But if free will doesn't exist, then why is the first guy any more responsible for the wreck than the second guy, and why should we even take action?
Can you articulate those risks and rewards? If you can't, then you don't really have risk or reward.
And it doesn't matter if you consider "being right or wrong" as risks and rewards themselves. It doesn't make it so.
> How does one determine what does and doesn't have a point?
A simple metric is the fact that regardless of the answer, the consequences are the same. And with the question of free will, the consequences are the same whether or not it exists. Nothing changes.
> If free will does exist then we can modify our government based on the notion it does exist if we think it does. If it does exist and we think it does not, then such modifications might be incorrect. That alone is enough for us to determine if there is a point to the question, even outside of any more abstract interest in the question.
You're ignoring the real fundamental point. If it doesn't exist, all that happens anyway. Because we would be fated to do so. If free will does not exist, we can't prevent ourselves from making the decisions we're making. We lose choice.
If we were to discover free will did not exist, there still could be people who are predetermined to not accept the result. They would still believe they had choice. And since free will does not exist, they can't choose to change.
Your crash example relies on free will existing in both cases. Because if free will doesn't exist, we cannot choose to not punish the first guy if we believe he should be punished because we don't get a choice in our beliefs.
This is a fascinating thing to think about. Some properties like missiong legs are thought of as disabilities and often compensated for by the state. But where is the line? Is depression (hindering ones ability to work or lead a happy life) a disability, or just being not intelligent enough to be a good programmer?
In the UK, depression can be considered a disability under the Equality Act 2010. Anyone with such a disability would be entitled to appropriate compensation from the state (social security benefits) and adjustments in the workplace, if necessary.
Depression can be a disability if it lasts long enough. Otherwise it's a simple illness and employers should deal with it in the same way as other illness.
WE ARE NOT cellular-automata chugging along according to the laws of physics. In any sense, degree, or verified theory. In my OPINION, cellular automata fascination is an obsessive disorder that geniuses are at risk for, ca. Fredkin, Feynman, Wolfram. The operant word is disorder.
There are new EU-wide data regulations, known as the GDPR, that were introduced in 2018. These regulations allow people to make a data request, called a Subject Access Request, to any institution that holds any data on them. The definition of data is pretty broad, and I was able to ask my PhD college, and several other institutions, to see all emails in which my name appeared in either the subject line or the body of the email.
While it may now be legal in the EU to request a copy of all emails that mention you by name, socially it would be a terrible betrayal of trust. Ironically, this seems like clear confirmatory evidence of the sort of red-flag behavior that would cause an advisor to send private emails strongly discouraging others from hiring you even if you were qualified on-paper for the position.
That doesn't seem fair since the emails were sent long before the writer made the requests. If she had never asked for the emails, the same things would be said about her.
Sure, I don't mean that it was evidence at the time, rather that suspicions held by the advisor seem to have been proved true. I presume that advisor felt justified in warning others that the author might be a problematic hire, and a scandal like this is evidence that the suspicion was correct.
I think the right question to ask is whether an advisor is obligated to give positive recommendations for an advisee if they come to regret having taken them on. My sense is that the advisor was correct to notice that socially something was "off" about the author, and correct that others might regret hiring her, just as he(?) had come to regret choosing her as a student. I don't know though whether it's legal under current EU law to act on these observations and experiences.
As a fellow Aspy, I started reading this thinking, I bet he's a bit of a difficult person. Maybe an Aspy.
> Where my personality was called into question perhaps my working-class background, my northern accent, and my Aspergers could be a reasonable explanation.
Ah! Yes, I can guess which one of those three is the reason people found you difficult.
I don't know anyone with Asperger personally but based on my limited research and foreknowledge of the the condition I found it rather odd that the author would be surprised by any of this. I don't have Asperger's and even I wouldn't be surprised by any of this if it were to happen to me.
I actually think I've been "blacklisted" at a government agency in my country, or at least someone with hiring power must be working there who specifically does not want to hire me.
Two reasons -
1. some years ago there was a job listing at the agency for a programmer with experience in a governmental specification that I was the technical guy in the working group that made the specification, for heavy experience in some technologies I am very good at, including some international standards in which I am thanked as one of the contributors to the standard and when I applied I got the standard reply some months later they went with someone more qualified which is their choice however I can say with 99.9% certainty there was only one other person in the country possibly more qualified than I am (given the technologies involved and the time) and he wasn't applying.
2. another time they put up a technical challenge and normally when I complete a technical challenge of the particular sort I did the potential employer likes to meet me (they put it online and said try to do this and see if you would be someone we might like to hire). And they said they decided to go with someone else but they did not have any comments on my technical challenge.
So what I'm saying I would really like to get all details from any communications regarding possibly hiring me from that ministry because it might be interesting, but then again I am also of the kind of personality that it just might infuriate me - and what good is that?
I don't know if your government is like my government, but a lot of the hiring decisions my government makes are often corrupt and based on X government leader owes Y person so this job will go to one of Y person's friends.
You could be right, but "more qualified" doesn't have to mean "technical expertise in this exact standard". They could easily be weighing factors such as previous leadership experience, team/group experience, stated career goals, stated interests, demeanor, or experience in other tangential technologies.
there was nothing stated about anything like any of that in the announcement, I mean it was such a close match to me that I was awfully tempted to send back an email "what do you mean more experienced, who is the more experienced person in the country for these things you say you want than I"
The only thing that makes me think I'm wrong is the consideration that maybe my CV at the time was too crowded, I later had someone improve my CV and after that it started getting more uptake, but even so it was too weird, to make an example here (and note to make the example mean anything I have to use someone famous enough that people will understand it, I am not making any equivalence between us), it would be equivalent to a job announcement saying:
You have a very strong background in Ruby on Rails, understanding of Instiki Wiki, and the Basecamp project management software. You have developed at least one open source project that is used by many people, and you should also have developed at least one project management software. Over that it would be nice if you know something about racing cars, and have won the "Hacker of the Year" award at least once.
And then when David Heinemeier Hansson applies waiting months to send a reply "we decided to go with someone more qualified" without even interviewing him.
Note: I hope I don't get any of those I you are really conceited to compare yourself to Hansson comments, since that is not what I'm doing.
"You are ostracised and isolated. You muddle through, teaching on fixed-term, part-time, zero-hours contracts, a low-paid disposable commodity, writing papers, chapters and articles in what little spare time you have, and believing what you’ve been told, that success is based on merit, that talent is the most important thing, and that if you work hard and hang in there you’ll get there in the end."
I know exactly how the system works in academia. Try being anything other than a Bolshevik and you quickly find out that the machine will identify you and terminate you via a subtle, imprecise but very effective means of shunning, avoidance, and other forms of covert hostility until you give up and go away. It is the same in the corporate world as well, just not fully activated there yet.
Screw the small-minded people doing this. No matter your academic qualifications, what does it say about you as a human being if you can't understand and accept that other people have different ideas and different opinions and that they can't just be ignored or swept away just because you hold onto a bunch of foregone conclusions that you simply accept as right? That's never been right, not ever.
Universities are supposed to be a marketplace of ideas but instead are conformity factories. I have this to say: That is an echo chamber and although people feel secure inside there and smug about it, all such echo chambers eventually end.
>I was able to ask my PhD college, and several other institutions, to see all emails in which my name appeared in either the subject line or the body of the email.
The scariest part is that this is apparently possible in countries under the jurisdiction of GDPR now (and possibly even outside of it). Your private emails talking about a third party might be exposed at the request of the said third party. Does no one else consider this extremely concerning?
There is certainly an ethical challenge in balancing privacy and data protection issues when there is more than one subject involved, as in this case with both the PhD graduate and those other parties whose emails referred to them.
It seems a terrible precedent if any communications service may in general be required to disclose the otherwise private communications of its users if they happen to mention any individual by name (or, presumably, any other identifying features, since this is the GDPR).
On the other hand, for matters of professional/business correspondence that relate to a specific individual, where the information being stored or shared around may be incorrect or misleading and the individual is being personally harmed as a result, isn't that exactly the sort of problem that data protection laws (and the anti-blacklisting laws, and defamation laws more generally, for that matter) are trying to fix?
It doesn't make any practical difference whether the questionable personal data happens to be stored in something structured like a formal employee record or in unstructured form through emails shared by other staff. It's the data, how it's being used and who is using it that matter the most.
Regulations that are stronger than they should are made to be broken and circumvented.
There's at least one likely future in which, following a couple multi-million lawsuit baseds on such requests, a kind of 'blind referencing' becomes the norm, taught and enforced by companies and organizations. "Never refer to individuals by name, use the Company Directory's Hash Function". Or something silly like that.
Just like companies delete employees emails in the second they are allowed to do so by law - can you imagine if the law was to keep them forever? We'd have extreme changes in email formats and technology every decade or so, to render it impossible to read old-enough emails from disgruntled ex-employees and etc.
You are the "data controller" for your own emails. Emails stored on your employer's system are under their remit as the "data controller" to whom the subject access requests will be made. Emails on your employer's system are "your" or "private" only in a very limited sense.
GDPR does not entitle random people to leaf through your gmail.
(Even without data protection law this kind of thing can still happen during the "discovery" process of a lawsuit, but that's a much higher bar.)
This issue still seems to be much more ambiguous than good law should be.
Here is an article from just over a year ago, in which an actual lawyer specialising in IT and privacy is quoted, explaining how something remarkably similar to the situation we're discussing today wasn't going to happen and it was all fear and misinterpretation:
> However, European case law clearly states that data such as emails your boss has sent about you is exempt from this.
> “The reason behind this exemption is that those internal messages contain the personal thoughts of your boss. The right of access does not extend to all the personal messages, thoughts and ideas people have about you. So, based on the GDPR, you will not be able to access them,” says Zadeh.
I'm pretty sure that this would only apply in the contexts of business dealings -- anything you produce from a business you work for should not be considered your private anything, it's work material you produced for that employer, and the actions became the employer's actions after executed.
Even in business context this can be weaponised. For example two executives in a company discuss some sort of business strategy and mention the competitor's CEO by name (also the competitor's company happens to be named after its CEO so it's impossible to discuss it without saying his or her name). The competitor's CEO GDPRs the emails and learns of the secret business plan as a result.
Indeed. Just imagine the fall-out if someone started a movement where everyone who got turned down for a job they applied for then submitted a SAR for all of the internal commentary and communications about them. Suddenly every business that hires staff has an extra overhead, even small businesses need industrial-scale HR/legal mechanics for the application process, and the number of lawsuits for every conceivable type of discrimination skyrockets.
This is already a concern (not the absence of hiring documentation, but extreme caution around what is captured into electronic long-term storage), pre-and-post GDPR. "Pick up the phone" is a very real piece of advice around hiring-related conversations and for good reasons. I think it's incredibly contorted to believe the world falls apart here (in fact, the world would have to be pretty broken in order for it to go down that way).
> Domestic purposes – personal data processed in the course of a purely personal or household activity, with no connection to a professional or commercial activity, is outside the GDPR’s scope. This means that if you only use personal data for such things as writing to friends and family or taking pictures for your own enjoyment, you are not subject to the GDPR.
"Your private emails" are therefore not covered by the GDPR.
Unless your definition of "your" private emails includes those you send in your work capacity?
"Your private emails" are therefore not covered by the GDPR.
But as soon as a commercial third party mail service is involved, as will very often be the case, the picture is not so clear, particularly if they are also processing the data for any other purpose.
i feel for this person. my mother got blacklisted in her teaching profession, this stress triggered in her dormant traumas from her childhood, and she's been on medication now for 20 years due to these people pushing her over the edge with such behaviours.
no matter how good you feel about yourself, give others a chance, even if they dont 'gel well with you'. don't feel 'threatened' by other people who are talented, feel graced by their wits and try to grow from them instead of kicking them down.
lack of respect and integrity at its worst, it's an epidemic in our society.
Victim of nasty blacklisting myself. My advise is to be way nicer and make far more friends in the industry than the blacklister. Especially if you are autistic spectrum, you need a good support network.
> "I was able to ask my PhD college, and several other institutions, to see all emails in which my name appeared ..."
How are different people with the same name distinguished in these cases?
Name might be (almost) unambiguous for some people, but lots of us have many, many namesakes. Is the institution required to reliably tell apart which of the messages were meaning the person making the information request, and which were talking about someone else? What are the penalties for leaking emails that were discussing someone else who has the same name?
First, we have only one side of the story. The claim is the advisor never spoke to her about the problems he had with her, and we shouldn't simply assume the claim is true. OTOH, I can easily believe it is, given my experience in grad school. While some professors were quite fussy about quality in the thesis, others accepted that most PhD's (in engineering) are not targeting scientific research after the degree, and lower the standards to allow them to graduate. But they absolutely will not support such people in getting a research position at a university or a government lab. Some are open about it: "If you're targeting research and want my recommendations for that endeavor, this is what you need to do. If not, then all you need is X, Y and Z." Unfortunately, not all advisors are as frank.
Also keep in mind that the person may well have been a very competent researcher, while simultaneously being hard to work with. It's quite fair to point it out when asked, and it's quite fair to disrecommend someone because of it.
I don't think the article presents any evidence of active blacklisting, where one is going out of their way to tell everyone (without solicitation) "Don't hire this person!"
Finally, the real issue: What role should references play in the hiring process? I personally would love a world where we never rely on letters of recommendation and references - I think they are the weakest link in the hiring process. However, if we do accept references/letters of recommendation, then everything in the article is fair game. If you ever asked someone what they thought of a candidate before hiring them, you are part of the same culture that this person's advisor is.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 261 ms ] threadAlso against the universities for breach of the blacklisting prohibitions in the employment act. Their lack of checks and balances against this informal blacklist has left them wide open to be sued.
I've met plenty of stupid people who can pass exams.
If "stupid people" are passing these exams, maybe these are not good exams either.
Finally, thinking in terms of "stupid people" also incorrectly frames intelligence as a scalar, is unhelpful and lacks descriptive power of how one's mental capacity falls short: Are they socially clueless? Are they forgetful? Are they not able to put in the mental work when it comes to answering questions?
If the person in question is not really unpleasant (and I don't know that they are not, but let's take it as given for a moment), my suggestion would be doing some strong networking. If you interact with people at conferences and are clearly not a bad person, then it's easier to defend yourself against the accusations by pointing out their variance with actual experience. In a perfect world, yeah, that work should not be necessary, but nobody's accused the world of being perfect in a long time.
(Ironically, if you pull this off and manage to build a new reputation on your own, then you might actually be able to safely sue.)
If you win enough in damages then you don't need to worry too much about earning in the future.
No idea how likely that is, particularly after paying attorneys' fees.
We're only hearing one side, but given his professional accomplishment of people using his textbook in Masters courses, this comes across as a personal vendetta. You don't say those sort of things about someone who clearly does have talent unless you want to cause harm.
https://www.burnetts.co.uk/publications/blogs/libel-and-slan...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law
In Austria it's still illegal to make true comments that offend religion sensibilities.
Wasn't justification a different name for a truth defence?
[0] http://www.hse.gov.uk/enforce/enforcementguide/court/reporti...
Honest opinion: It is a defence for defamation, to show the statement complained of was a statement of opinion; that it indicated, in general or specific terms, the basis of the opinion; that an honest person could have held the opinion on any fact which existed when the statement was published, including any fact in a privileged statement that was pre-published. The defence is defeated if the claimant shows the defendant did not hold the opinion.
The respondent would then have to prove, on the balance of probabilities, that the comments were either true, or fair comment, or privileged.
Defamation cases are very expensive to bring and a good outcome is not at all certain.
Ignoring the legal arm-chairing; universities and colleges retaining staff who discriminate students based on intellectual disabilities could face down some bad PR.
So will this come down to any email which passes through an officially recognized organization, be it government or corporation or educational, as open to inspection and possible litigation? Talk about an Orwellian nightmare
The person you are suggesting has the right to privacy is acting in an official capacity, paid for by public money. These are not personal emails.
Just that fact that one person is bringing a litigation, is not a valid reason to mark everything top secret.
If you make everything in the machinations of government secret, then these things (and much worse) will still happen, but there will be no transparency or recourse. That is the worst possible outcome.
Is saying your black coworker under-performs a form a racism ? Your female coworker being stupid would be sexism (but only if you're a man of course) ?
Blacklisting at work has been illegal in the UK since 2010
The university wouldn't have an obligation to bring disciplinary proceedings against someone deemed "unpleasant" before calling them such - they would be required to follow their own internal process for raising a disciplinary case.
It sounds like the threshold for a disciplinary case wasn't met in this case. In any event, these sorts of remarks are a grey area and any action to take depends entirely on the specific content of the communications. It's not nice to be called "unpleasant", but it's probably not libellous.
The OP has to show that the statements were published, they are defamatory, and that the OP suffered serious harm as a result.
It'd be for the publisher of the comments to prove (on the balance of probabilities) that the comments were either
Suing someone for defamation is expensive.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law
Would they win? Maybe, but the cost would probably not be worth it and of course there's the reputational damage caused by being seen as someone willing to litigate against their employer / university, etc.
Easier to resort to such hypotheses than be self critical, I guess.
Do we really fall in the category where one student with apparently decent thesis results gets ostarcized by her advisor AND the examiners, where no one in the faculty or comittee would stand for her, even though successfull students do bring a lot of prestige to their team, lab and advisor ? Would it really be in their interest if they have no reason to ? She is doubtly their first tutored PhD ever, and I guess have they seen enough to give feedback that is relied on by other actors in the field ?
I mean, we're all old enough to have met people that despite competence are hard to work (or be) with and would rather not have to deal with.
And considering she did a smart and unconventional GDPR request, and she's legitimately pissed off about its results but goes as far as to publish in the press about it...
Plus, you may have noticed, she wrote under a non-identifiable name (outside maybe people already in the know) and didn't name the people in question, nor the institutions. So yeah, she's pissed, IMHO rightfully so, especially since this is a career breaking thing and without recourse.
What good would a talk do, since admittedly it's a person and not a work problem ? Do any good come out of people explaining how they despise your attitude, especially with high stakes, where no response will ever bring closure ?
Yes, btw I hope the publisher has more insight than the reader and does a background check.
Edit : though I agree that the team should've hold a discussion, as sterile as it probably would've been, for it's own reputation.
But I believe people have an unalienable right to tell their version of a story.
As far as these story go, this is one is very civil (and doesn't name the people that are accused of destroying a career and a life).
What I don't really understand is what this comment brings to the table. Why try to cast aspersions on an otherwise mild testimony, the truth of which is pretty much unknowable without further details?
What if the person is 100% right?
I just wanted to remind that the other side of the story was way more probable. Because outcasting her for her accent, despite all the good it brings a team to sprout successful academics (we're talking a field full of educated people, so able to forecast consequences of their decisions, although pride and ego sometimes makes them do bad stuff), is really not the most plausible outcome. But now I feel like such explanations are becoming default ones.
Fatalism like the kind you suggest adds nothing to the discussion, and indeed to the academic community. It allows bad actors to keep acting badly. An article like this might motivate someone in power to examine whether this kind of conduct occurs in their institution. I don't know about you, but I see a positive expected value.
And I am not sure what you mean by the other side of the story. She has positive feedback from another supervisor, if the article is to be believed, so isn't the probable explanation a difference of personalities? And is there really any non-pride-or-ego-related reason to try and prevent someone not just from working with you, but in the wider community of which you are part? I can not interpret that behaviour in any way other than malice.
Please don't tweak sentences to make them fit to whatever discourse you want.
As for the second paragraph, between a freshly graduated PhD and advisors there is still a long way. I hardly see them competing for the same spots. Sure there are probably wicked minds that would try to evict geniuses, but said geniuses would be picked up by less egoistic people (that are luckily way more common).
Rivalry is a thing in academics of course, but from advisors towards their own phds ? There's no stake there for an advisor, but preventing a bad element trained in your team to cast a bad light on you.
Please clarify what you mean if you find you have been misunderstood instead of getting angry and assuming malice.
I know several people in my tiny part of academia alone, whose eminence is well established, and who would not much change this by telling colleagues a certain individual is impossible to work with. I agree that it would take a vindictive mind to do so, but I am asking you to explain the facts any other way:
> Firstly, my eminent and influential PhD supervisor had let it be widely known that they thought I was an unpleasant person, impossible to work with, fundamentally stupid, and that I definitely shouldn’t be doing a doctorate.
I know no decent people who would say this about someone in a professional setting, let alone write it down and send it to many people. Also, no honest assessment of someone's academic skills can include the words "fundamentally stupid" if they are able to get into a PhD program, right?
It doesn't seem like malice to me, particularly since the author seems quite dislikeable based on their article.
I agree. It's not a black-and-white thing. Some people _might_ add value under some easy metric like "published works", but be impossible to work with under other metrics that are hard to measure but still important like agreeableness[1].
When someone is failing without a clear line on a workplace environment, more often than not it's because of that one specific trait (or lack thereof). I've certainly seen people that look great "on paper" and that never cross a line, but that still make me want to quit work just so I don't need to be around them.
1: https://www.psychologistworld.com/personality/agreeableness-...
For me, the takeaway here is to be honest and to not exaggerate, especially in matters of import. You can't always do the best thing for everyone, so when that's impossible, let the truth be your guide. The other thing is that the adviser should have brought these concerns to the student while she was still under his tutelage.
I also disagree heavily that things are either under your control or the fault of others.
I used to basically have your opinion, and then had two experiences that shifted my perspective.
The first was a colleague who was known for being overly frank, to put it mildly; for not having any internal controls on sharing what was on his mind. He was (and is) a brilliant individual who is every bit as competent as people much more accomplished than him. I watched him lose out on job prospect after prospect, and initially sort of thought "well, being able to work with someone easily is important." Eventually, though, I realized that what is far more insidious are all the narcissistic psychopaths who are socially skilled. This guy, while brash, actually was well-meaning and had a heart. I'd far rather work with him than many of the other horrible individuals I've worked with; he's at least as deserving of better employment, if not more.
The second was a case where we were hiring, and this brilliant individual applied. Everyone agreed he was heads above the best -- this being a faculty position at a research institution. Eventually everyone started complaining about how socially awkward he was, how his presentational style was difficult, and how he did these weird things in interviews. The thing was, he wasn't mean or cruel or anything like that, or even markedly eccentric, just a little weird. Someone objected to this, pointing out that it was bizarre for us to be dismissing someone who was described as a genius in letters, and that we agreed was such, because of socially unusual (but not difficult) behavior. The question this person on the hiring committee raised was "what are we actually wanting? What is our mission?" The applicant didn't get the job, and it always struck me as unfortunate.
I guess my point is that even if someone is unpleasant to work with, sometimes that's not the most important thing, and even when it is important, the way that they are unpleasant matters. This isn't even getting into how capricious and cruel people can be in their assessments of others' behaviors.
But for your first example obviously that specific way did rub a lot of people the wrong way. Because you don't mind it, and you had time to get to know him past that, doesn't have to be the majority.
And yes, socially weird people don't surprise me as not fitting in faculty position. You'll eventually have to defend your team, look for opportunities, teach, mentor... You can't give a bad vibe right off with such proeminent roles, because ultimately they're very much based on relationships.
Surely there must be some room for those brilliant but weird people, in small institutions that don't need that much PR or something. And sure some people get to be Paul Erdös and be so dramatically brilliant and querky that the rest is overlooked. That's not true for the average joe.
My friends think I have no empathy (as some people probably think reading my comments!), but in a professional setting (mine being veterinarian, clearly it's not really fitting) "being myself" would do more harm than good, so I'm just playing the expected role, and things are fine, and even enjoyable. Choosing one's battles. I'd rather feel good in my job even if unauthentic.
There are people who are persecuted because they are outsiders and for no other reason. A case in point is the story of Rosalind Franklin.
On the other side, some people are brilliant yet toxic. You can't have them work in a group because they will bring down the productivity of the group. You have to decide if they are so brilliant you will work with them anyway. I have had two experiences with this, one was successful and the other was unsuccessful.
In the successful case I sat the guy down and told him that I couldn't fire the entire team and just keep him because I needed more than what he could produce. He agreed. I paired him up with a woman that he respected and the team of two formed an awesome team. She handled all of the interactions with outside teams.
The second case was someone who was both brilliant and exceedingly insecure. No amount of counseling fixed his problem. No amount of telling him that he didn't need to insult people to get respect fixed his problem. Sigh. Sometimes you have to let people go.
At the end of the day - the telling part of the story is the cowardice of Dora's advisors. The fact that they did not take their jobs seriously enough to become her mentors leads me to believe that they did not do their jobs.
Also, whisper networks in tech are very much a thing and they are full of just the quality of people you would expect to find in them. When asked about people I truly can't stand, I say I am sympathetic to the barriers they faced to success and we didn't know each other well. It's not a code, it's the truth. I don't give much weight to the opinions of people who are cruel or have axes to grind either. This is a rare view.
Keep your public social networks well-pruned. Don't talk about plans, the future, or uncertain opportunities, and if you work for crappy people, get out as fast as you can before you give them an unlimited option on causing your reputation harm for the rest of your career.
If I knew better, I'd have paid attention to the above comment.
It's quite amazing how large the gap is between the way the world is described to us through various mediums, versus the clearly observable reality of it.
FTA:
> I approached the individuals and the institutions concerned about the content of my Subject Access Request. They all refused to discuss the matter with me, so I can only speculate as to what was going on.
Of course, these people were just "avoiding drama" they'd tell us. But then, is avoiding drama that what they were doing when they were trashing this person behind their back in emails?
I think people have a tendency to conceptualize a stark, "real" line between adolescence and adulthood, but the reality of the matter seems to be that many adults are little more than high school kids plus some added expertise in some narrow domains. The adult world, even at the highest levels of authority, largely consists of the same petty cliques, backstabbing, lying, and whatnot that you'd experience in high school.
I'm not a fan of claiming this type of behavior is childish and something we leave behind after high school. Before advances in mass transportation that made it feasible for people to uproot and move to a new community, most people were stuck in the same ingroup for most of their lives.
High school is just a cultural relic that mimics this previous social grouping. It's not necessarily something that kids do that we grow out of - it's the other way around - modern society has broken the existing communities we had in place, but in return gives us the freedom to find new ones anywhere we want.
On the other side of these experiences, when everything is going well it's easy to ignore all that's wrong with people.
I am reminded of Napoleon's dictum: "the secret of war lies in the communications". Sun Tzu would disagree as well, having well documented the value of secrets and spies.
"(private) knowledge is power."
That's a dangerously naive way of thinking about communications.
He is a good man to know in the business, but just be careful around him.
With Weinstein’s prompting, one of the other women attempted to convince Skidmore to participate in sex acts
I told people on the boat. I told people at the dinner I was at. Everybody was like, ‘Oh, that’s just Harvey.’
I had a bad experience with Harvey Weinstein in my youth, and as a result, chose never to work with him again and warn others when they did
Weinstein Company employee Lauren O’Connor later detailed Weinstein’s alleged harassment of Nestor in an internal memo obtained by the Times.
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/10/harvey-weinstei...
I want you to know that of all the girls he does this to you are the one I really felt bad about. https://medium.com/bullies-assholes-i-have-known/harvey-wein...
Low stakes players sometimes get to sit at high stakes tables, and sometimes they take out a high stakes player from that round, but they go bust pretty fast.
Generally, there is a correlation between personal power and integrity.
Hmm, I don't think I like this, and I don't understand how the GDPR allows you to do this.
While I understand that stored emails that mention you are technically "data about you", I wouldn't consider them "your data".
Emails are a form of personal communication, and are only really accessible by the author and recipients. Furthermore, those emails would contain PI about other individuals - what of their rights, or indeed the rights of the email authors (regardless of the message content)?
I support the GDPR, but I don't think using it like this falls within it's intent.
Outside of that, what is your take on the fact that there must be administrators that have the ability to look through all a system's email?
Still, your work email account can be monitored by your employer (though in the EU they have to provide notice of that monitoring), so you don't have the same protection as in a private account.
OTOH, it could be a violation of privacy / data-protection for the author of this piece to be divulging the contents of these emails, even if they have a right to a copy.
Hmm, that's unfortunate it's not at least a little more specific, but at the least I'd expect the right to lawful freedom of speech.
I get that these are "work emails", but this just feels very wrong to me, and doesn't seem to fit with the intent of the GDPR.
There is an interesting exception; if private usage of your work mail account is banned, it should not contain private data and therefore, it's free to be monitored. Same for internet usage. This is usually coded into your contract when you sign.
An employer monitoring Internet usage is a very different case - in almost all cases it will be fully automated, and the logs only available to HR on request; not just any employee can request your logs.
Companies can have their cake and eat it too.
edit: Official GDPR site, page on email: https://gdpr.eu/email-encryption/
also, see the widely circulated 'GDPR letter from hell', which is a sort of worst-case access-to-data request that could be made under the legislation:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nightmare-letter-subject-acce...
In particular, please tell me what you know about me in your information systems, whether or not contained in databases, and including e-mail, documents on your networks, or voice or other media that you may store.
https://thenextweb.com/eu/2018/05/03/no-gdpr-wont-let-you-re...
Here's some discussion about it on the r/gdpr subreddit, the consensus seems to be emails probably are covered.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gdpr/comments/8lsgwm/can_you_reques...
One person sums it up as:
Emails that mention you are likely to count as personal data. However, your right to access that data must be balanced with the right to privacy of anyone else mentioned in the emails. The company would be entitled to redact the emails before sending them, and potentially to refuse the request entirely if that would require excessive effort.
It's squarely within the spirit of data protection as well. Are those emails data? Yes. Do they relate to you? Yes. Are they being used to make decisions which affect your employment? Also yes.
Redacting the PII of others in the same emails is an extremely tricky problem though.
The lesson of this and other things like the LIBOR chatroom has to be "don't conspire against people on your employer's computer systems".
There is a flip side to blacklisting; one of the things that has emerged from the #metoo era is that many institutions had staff who were "missing stairs" - they were widely known to harass female staff, and the whisper networks propagated this, and even in some cases the male staff were aware that they shouldn't leave X alone with a female staff member, but no action was taken.
GRPR forces institutions to be open with their disciplinary processes. You can't "shadowban" staff, unless you're willing to do it entirely verbally without ever committing to email.
But a problem with this is that by the nature of disciplinary processes, it may or may not be appropriate to fully disclose what is being investigated to the subject of the investigation in real time.
Much the same ethical and practical issues arise as when the police are investigating someone for suspected criminal behaviour. Indeed, in some cases, it may turn out that one becomes the other.
Much the same ethical and practical issues may also arise as when dealing with any sort of whistle-blowing, where there is a clear interest in protecting the privacy of the whistle-blower as long as the matter they raise and any evidence they personally contribute can be properly validated and, where appropriate, properly challenged.
The GDPR requires you to balance the rights of all involved parties.
Almost anything involving potentially criminal conduct where you need to collect robust evidence without tipping off the suspect might qualify, for example.
Or anything where the suspected misconduct happens regularly but at less frequent intervals, such as theft from a monthly or quarterly supply delivery.
Also, who says you get to completely redact other relevant information just because someone thought they gave it in confidence? There is no blanket protection under GDPR for such confidences, and each case will need evaluating individually, probably with guidance from a lawyer.
The GDPR requires you to balance the rights of all involved parties.
Which, like all the other aspects of the GDPR that impose ambiguous rules with no guidance on how to apply them in practice, is not particularly helpful.
And of course the GDPR is very far from the only relevant law if we're talking about disciplinary procedures.
- - - -
It seems to me that this sort of request means that our mental models of email have to change. This is incumbent anyway: most people still think email is private, when in fact it's more like postcards, in that anyone who handles it can read it. The misbegotten idea that you have any digital privacy in the absence of proper encryption has to die. (I don't like it, and am not advocating for it, I'm just calling it like I see it.)
This seems kind of wild to me, but apparently it works.
If the company is a federal contractor, for instance, there are a slew of federal regulations with which they must comply to remain eligible for contracts. Likewise, government grants come with strings attached as well.
Finally, if the behavior that you're investigating is illegal - such as discrimination against a "protected class" - there's always the possibility of suing them and acquiring the documents through discovery. All it takes is money.
While the example applies only for Washington state, I imagine other states have similar laws.
Edit: Appears you need to be logged in to view the message. Here's the message:
> In Washington, we have well-established case law that allows private entities to be considered the functional equivalent of an agency, based on a four-part test established by the court in the Telford case. There’s a lot of info online about it, but here’s a concise article: http://mrsc.org/Home/Stay-Informed/MRSC-Insight/January-2017.... The factors of the test are:
> 1. Whether the entity performs a governmental function;
> 2. The extent to which government funds the entity’s activities;
> 3. The extent of government involvement in the entity’s activities; and
> 4. Whether the entity was created by the government.
> It’s been applied to entire agencies, and to individual contracts being performed on behalf of public agencies. We’ve also seen individuals be deemed the functional equivalent of a government employee for purposes of PRA compliance.
For instance, in CA the Sacremento Bee mantains a DB of all the public worker salaries, including university professor salaries, donations, grant funds, patent royalty payments, etc. It is very comprehensive and I know female acedemics that have used it to argue (suessfully) for better pay: https://www.sacbee.com/news/databases/state-pay/article22946...
In CO, there is the open records act. From what I hear, it is farily simple to obtain all emails that a professor sends out, including ones from a personal email account that happens to send out emails via a router that the state owns: https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/info_center/cora.html
No, you can't, because FOIA applies to federal agencies only. Some official communications of a public university might be subject to similar state sunshine laws, but not all email to and from public university email addresses (even some official communication would be protected by FERPA or other privacy laws, and therefore not disclosable under a state open records law.)
See, for example: https://www.acenet.edu/the-presidency/columns-and-features/P...
Which are addressed in the part of my post after the first sentence (which is entirely consistent with your link): they don't generally apply to all email from a public university address, or even (because of both express exceptions in the state laws and superceding federal law) all university employee communication using such addresses.
Definitely some variation from state to state. And definitely some restrictions due to things like FERPA and other privacy laws.
But I think it's good for state university employees to know that this kind of thing can happen at all. I think that many of them would be surprised to learn that the general public can make any kind of request at all for copies of what they consider private emails.
I know that my wife, who does some work in areas that can be politically charged, was when she took a job at UNC and someone told her this.
The second of the two sentences in the grandparent comment addresses the similar state laws.
It's quite likely that ones background and developmental disorders shape one's personality. However, it's still their personality. So what if it has a reason?
This touches on the dark abyss of "free will". In some sense all we are is a cellular-automata chugging along according to the laws of physics. In that sense everything one does has a "reason". Yet we live our lives, and shape our societies, with the idea that sane adults have an ability to chart their own course, in some sense. (in contrast to children or "insane" people who are considered more reactive/automatic hence not responsible for their actions).
What part of my actions are my responsibility (and therefor have consequences) and what part is beyond my control (and should be forgiven, at least partially)?
You cannot make either a choice or decision that's truly your own. Simply, you cannot without being effected by the system you're in.
People don't choose the life they're born into and why does anything that comes after birth be assumed differently. The answer cultural conditioning and from religious ideology that has rooted deeply into society. The belief that god gave humanity free will.
No part of your actions are truly the responsibility of you as a person but the fate of cause & effect and everything outside one's control. The system of society with genetics & environment being imperfect makes bad people. Otherwise we would just have 'people' in a system of perfect equality.
In other words, "I can improve myself" is a pragmatic outlook.
Of course, you can respond with "but you can't even choose that outlook", which I don't disagree with.
I disagree, I theorize it's the same as when the majority of humanity wanted to believe the world is flat and or there is a God that judges us all. Society is the outcome of the majority consensus. So basically I assume many lives are being punished because the majority consensus doesn't understand cause & effect.
One of my relatives majored in Philosophy and has his head up his own ass in all this stuff. I find him quite amusing. He reads too many books and has suffered 0.0 actual hardships in his life and yet he is somehow an expert and gleefully gives other people lots of shitty advice.
And I did choose my own life--given my early circumstances and what I was "born into" I eventually rejected 99% of it, moved away, and created my own more positive life. It's hard to break the mold, but certainly not impossible. Cultural conditioning and religion are bullshit traps, same as collectivism, which is another huge, unbelievable lie. I'm not saying it isn't difficult, but you can break free.
As far as being a "difficult person" I own that!
It doesn't matter. Treating people as though they have agency is still necessary, because how we treat them would affect their deterministic state function.
If someone commits murder and we say it was only a product of their environment and they have no agency, therefore we shouldn't punish them, well, that's the sort of "choice" that, on a systemic level, causes more people to commit murder. Even if they have no "choice" in the matter -- especially then -- creating an environment in which murder has personal benefits outweighing the personal costs is societally maladaptive.
And so it is with everything else. If we want people to give to charity and go to college and not steal from others then we have to act as if they chose whether or not to do those things and reward or punish them accordingly.
Because either it does and we are making conscious choices and everything that normally follows with that. Or it doesn't and everything we say, do, and think is predetermined.
However, if that's the case, then you are predetermined to be someone to be swayed by certain arguments. You are predetermined to either believe or not in free will. And you cannot change that. Because even if this convinces you one way or the other, I had no choice in typing it, and you had no choice in reading it. This was going to happen based on whatever determines things.
So free will not existing wouldn't change anything. Because some people are predetermined to believe that regardless of the reason, murderers should be punished.
Your rhetoric that nothing matters could have been used when people assumed the world was flat and others were challenging that popular assumption. Nonetheless, the world gets better overtime and when people have a realistic understanding of reality.
So change does happen but yes it's going to happen whether we like it to or not. That's a thrilling thing to observe and to be aware of that nature of reality is a good thing.
> murderers should be punished.
No, they should be rehabilitated and educated of the cause & effect for their actions. Otherwise humanity is failing the unfortunate that didn't have any real control.
To answer what you're trying to point out that has already been answered by me in another post.. Yes, everything is fated to happen. The majority consensus is how society is structured to be and yes the outcome is by fate. Everything may change in the future if fate allows enough people being educated of cause & effect and where the current majority consensus is overcome by understanding of cause & effect. I assume this will happen as technology creates the bridge of data from & to the brain.
Similarly, if you posit that we have no free will, saying that humanity should rehabilitate and not punish is meaningless.
Yes, we're similar as the rock because of no agency that's truly our own. We assume typically the rock has no individual conscious and for all we know panpsychism exists contrary to our assumption. Basically, we cannot know what's right or wrong and if a rock should avoid hitting a child. It all factors into fate in the end. Might be favourable for being hit by the rock or not.
One could argue, except that's a rock & a human. I think (human & human) could be treated the same as (rock & a human) but we're dealing with equation of humanity and the emotions of deeper similarity shared. The majority consensus favour our deeper similarities for connection. So the majority consensus doesn't want (human & rock) treatment to be the same like throw the rock away like a piece of trash that's been used up.
Anyway, Fate will decide in the end if we should treat all other objects equally and even while knowing cause & effect. I think cause & effect and with our humanity connection thus favours the rehabilitation modal if the majority consensus ever updates by fate.
If free will does not exist, you do not have a choice. It's disingenuous to both argue that free will does not exist and to proclaim that we should do anything. Or that we can make any sort of choice.
Not at all.
Maybe you are a free-will-lacking if-then bot that takes whatever suggestions someone says we should do and executes them, and maybe I am a free will lacking robot that periodically burps out suggestions. No disenguity or "true choice" required.
By suggesting a course of action, you are implying there is an actor with agency out there.
Now, while the actor itself may not actually have agency, that does not absolve you. Any attempt to persuade is an implicit acknowledgement of free will.
> But your if-then exhibits no independent action.
Attempts at persuasion don't imply free will, they just change the input to the if-then in a downstream deterministic process.
If bash script A calls bash script B with a command line flag to make it follow an alternate behavior, nothing is implied about the free will of either bash script.
You took one snippet out of context. The point of the statement wasn't that "murderers should be punished".
The point of the post was to highlight that if free will does not exist, then agency is not something that exists. You don't get the choice. Morality does not exist because like someone else's rock example, you don't ascribe motive to the rock. So if our actions are entirely preprogrammed, and all of our reasoning is post-hoc rationalizations, then you can't really ascribe motive to us either. Because none of us have any real control.
We're either people who do A or people who don't do A. And no matter how much your belief that murderers can rehabilitated, there will be a segment who are just predetermined to not be swayed by such arguments.
You can't simultaneously say free will does not exist and say that we have any kind of control.
Free will's existence not mattering doesn't do anything for the "thrilling observations" or whatever. It says nothing to whether things get better or worse.
Not to mention, you have no choice whether you find it thrilling or not. So trying to convince someone else that it is thrilling is also implicitly figuring people have some sort of free will or discretion.
And you're assuming that you're right and that people need to get on board because "being aware of the nature of reality is a good thing". Well, the nature of reality is that whether free will exists is pointless.
You don't even address your cherry-picking of my other comment.
Anyways, I'm not trying to convince anyone something is thrilling. I just find it thrilling and even while knowing I don't have free will in any regard of my life.
I think nobody can be right in the traditional sense (traditionally assuming free will exists and one person can be right). My views are just of how I wish society functioned because I think I would prefer to live in a society that cared about the misfortunate by fate. Maybe that's how the multiverse would work for people moving (after death) to a universe more suited for how they turned out. Still wouldn't bring free will but would be cool.
Anyway I'm not trying to cherry pick. I just thought I would express myself best with what I pulled out to write more. Thanks very much for the discussion!
If you weren't trying to cherry pick, then why did you do it so blatantly?
Quantum physics doesn't "apparently disagrees" with what I wrote.
> It doesn't matter. Treating people as though they have agency is still necessary, because how we treat them would affect their deterministic state function. If someone commits murder and we say it was only a product of their environment and they have no agency, therefore we shouldn't punish them, well, that's the sort of "choice" that, on a systemic level, causes more people to commit murder.
That's an arbitrary view because we haven't viewed a society that understands everything is cause & effect. I will assume a society of that nature would agree upon needing a rehabilitation modal of justice and not a punishment modal.
> Even if they have no "choice" in the matter -- especially then -- creating an environment in which murder has personal benefits outweighing the personal costs is societally maladaptive. And so it is with everything else. If we want people to give to charity and go to college and not steal from others then we have to act as if they chose whether or not to do those things and reward or punish them accordingly.
Once again this is an arbitrary view and without being able to observe a society that understands cause & effect. Stealing is an outcome from inequality of society & genetics is factored into the problem. A society understanding cause & effect would restructure because inequality becomes understood as the real causes for why bad events happen. Charity, going to college, and not stealing can only be viewed within the current system we live in but would be vastly different in a society understanding cause & effect between all members.
I agree with the direction of your analysis, but I don't think this part is true. Recidivism is really high, especially in more 'punishment' oriented criminal justice systems. I think if you took your argument to its conclusion, you would probably look at systemic causes of murder, since agent-oriented approaches are so demonstrably ineffective.
If you have a law against larceny which is vigoriously enforced with proportionate penalties, it's going to deter a lot of thefts. But none of the thieves it does deter can show in your recidivism stats, because none of those people commit any thefts.
It's only the people who are desperate or irrational who steal when it means going to jail for it. And if you put that set of people in jail for a while and let them back out into a situation where they're exactly as desperate or irrational as they were before, it's no surprise you see a high recidivism rate in that population, and the only way to prevent those thefts is to remove the desperation or address whatever e.g. mental illness or drug addiction is causing the irrationality.
This is also why disproportionate penalties don't really reduce crime. Because anyone doing the math even remotely accurately will be deterred by proportionate penalties, and anyone not doing the math at all won't be deterred by any penalties, and that doesn't leave a lot of people who can only be deterred by disproportionate penalties.
But that's a different thing than saying there shouldn't be a law against murder or theft at all because punishment is totally ineffective. It's only ineffective against the people it was ineffective against to begin with, who are only a small percentage of the population.
I think the relevant data would be crimes that were at one point very common, and are now not. Some things, like forgery, became prohibitively technically difficult. Others, like corruption in public offices, are basically inversely related to pay and pensions for public servants. I could see how vigorous enforcement would make crime more unattractive, since it's a given crime is likely to work out, but I don't think this would always be more economical than simply providing stuff like pensions and benefits so people have social investment they don't want to lose.
But you can certainly find a lot of instances of things that a lot of people did before there was a law against it (e.g. polluting rivers) which now far fewer people do precisely because there is now a law against it.
I'm not in any case saying that such causal relationships don't exist: just that they only exist in a subset of crimes, and probably aren't major drivers in the really interesting ones (theft, violent crime, organized crime, etc).
I'll ante with Pascal's wager and say it does exist.
If I'm right, then I'm right.
If I'm wrong, then the whole notion of right and wrong aren't applicable to reality, no different than CH4 + 2O2 => CO2 + 2H2O just being and not having a right or wrong to it.
Unless there is an alternative to the options free will exists and free will does not exist, then this wager does not suffer the same flaw that the original does.
How so? I assume the opposite when it comes to what's simpler. A person sees creation by God as cause & effect. The free will concept doesn't even make sense if thought about. Your actions are cause & effect from the summation of all events experienced.
Compare this to God, where you have plenty of religions, many with their own distinction God, some with many, some with concepts that may or may not quite count as God. Even with just Christianity, you have God, but then you have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit which makes up God. With some belief systems you have spirits which are kinda like a god but kinda not and with other systems you have demigods which are part human.
So with free will, you options are:
With gods, you options are And that isn't even counting the difference within a given religion. It is like comparing the cardinality of boolean options with the cardinality of the reals.We could be a simulation, there could be an omnipotent deity, we could be the product of a bunch of processes unique to ourselves.
None of it matters.
We can only act on the world as we perceive it.
If the world is controlled by some outside force that can manipulate it at will, including our perception and memory of events, there is nothing we can do about that. We are merely constructs under something else's control. If we were ever capable of "piercing the veil" so to speak, the controller could just roll us back to when we didn't know. If gravity was too much, they could change it. Etc.
However, we're going to do our best to understand the world as perceived. And that's the best we can do. We have to operate as if the universe is not being arbitrarily modified according to unknowable rules.
And it's not like any sort of record will prove that it's not. Because the capability of creating this universe also includes the capability of altering the past as well as the present and future.
Similar with free will. Like I explained elsewhere, if free will does not exist, then you can either be persuaded by an argument or not. For any position. Maybe you're predestined to like Joe Dirt. No matter what anyone says about it. You don't get the choice.
Same thing regarding the concept of free will. If it does not exist, you don't actually have a choice in whether you can accept that it doesn't. Either you're predestined to believe in it or not. Because all of your actions are the results of the forces that act upon you, all of which are also the results of actions, etc, etc, all the way to the initial big bang. That one moment essentially wrote it's own epitaph as everything goes back to that moment. Without free will, me writing this and you reading it isn't a chance or coincidence, it's just the result of the forces from the big bang.
So. If free will doesn't exist, it doesn't change anything. Because we cannot change the path we're on. We have no choice. Even if you say, "Yeah, well, I'm going to do X and save the world". Well. You were going to say that in response to this post. I didn't convince you anymore than any other object in motion "convinces" any other object it collides with to change direction. It's what always was going to happen.
Which is why if I say there is free will and I'm right, then I'm right, and if I'm wrong, then I never had a choice and so right and wrong doesn't apply.
If it exists, nothing changes. If it doesn't exist, nothing changes. And regardless whether you believe it exists or not: If you're right about whether it exists, nothing changes. If you're wrong about whether it exists, nothing changes.
So no matter the truth, no matter the outcome, everything is exactly the same. That means the question itself is pointless.
And right and wrong would still apply, it's just that if free will does not exist, we couldn't morally fault you for choosing wrong, you had no choice. But then again, I wouldn't have the choice in whether or not to morally fault you.
I consider being wrong or right risk and reward within themselves. Most others act in such a way that seems to agree even if they don't conceptualize such a thought.
>That means the question itself is pointless.
How does one determine what does and doesn't have a point? If free will does exist then we can modify our government based on the notion it does exist if we think it does. If it does exist and we think it does not, then such modifications might be incorrect. That alone is enough for us to determine if there is a point to the question, even outside of any more abstract interest in the question.
Consider someone who crashes a car into a person because they didn't like how the other person looked at them and someone else who crashes a car into a person because of an epileptic seizure.
Should they be treated the same? If free will does exist, then the actions of the first are consider a bad choice while the actions of the second are deemed an illness beyond control, and while there needs to be actions to safeguard against either case from happening again the liability of the second individual is reduced (though not as much if they knew of the risk and choose to drive anyways).
But if free will doesn't exist, then why is the first guy any more responsible for the wreck than the second guy, and why should we even take action?
And it doesn't matter if you consider "being right or wrong" as risks and rewards themselves. It doesn't make it so.
> How does one determine what does and doesn't have a point?
A simple metric is the fact that regardless of the answer, the consequences are the same. And with the question of free will, the consequences are the same whether or not it exists. Nothing changes.
> If free will does exist then we can modify our government based on the notion it does exist if we think it does. If it does exist and we think it does not, then such modifications might be incorrect. That alone is enough for us to determine if there is a point to the question, even outside of any more abstract interest in the question.
You're ignoring the real fundamental point. If it doesn't exist, all that happens anyway. Because we would be fated to do so. If free will does not exist, we can't prevent ourselves from making the decisions we're making. We lose choice.
If we were to discover free will did not exist, there still could be people who are predetermined to not accept the result. They would still believe they had choice. And since free will does not exist, they can't choose to change.
Your crash example relies on free will existing in both cases. Because if free will doesn't exist, we cannot choose to not punish the first guy if we believe he should be punished because we don't get a choice in our beliefs.
Another is that an omnipotent being can be fooled by worship without belief.
Pascal's wager is essentially a long-winded "Yeah, but what if you're wrong?"
Depression can be a disability if it lasts long enough. Otherwise it's a simple illness and employers should deal with it in the same way as other illness.
While it may now be legal in the EU to request a copy of all emails that mention you by name, socially it would be a terrible betrayal of trust. Ironically, this seems like clear confirmatory evidence of the sort of red-flag behavior that would cause an advisor to send private emails strongly discouraging others from hiring you even if you were qualified on-paper for the position.
I think the right question to ask is whether an advisor is obligated to give positive recommendations for an advisee if they come to regret having taken them on. My sense is that the advisor was correct to notice that socially something was "off" about the author, and correct that others might regret hiring her, just as he(?) had come to regret choosing her as a student. I don't know though whether it's legal under current EU law to act on these observations and experiences.
> Where my personality was called into question perhaps my working-class background, my northern accent, and my Aspergers could be a reasonable explanation.
Ah! Yes, I can guess which one of those three is the reason people found you difficult.
Engaging differently socially, while difficult in some sense, isn't necessarily unpleasant.
Good that we both got there.
Two reasons -
1. some years ago there was a job listing at the agency for a programmer with experience in a governmental specification that I was the technical guy in the working group that made the specification, for heavy experience in some technologies I am very good at, including some international standards in which I am thanked as one of the contributors to the standard and when I applied I got the standard reply some months later they went with someone more qualified which is their choice however I can say with 99.9% certainty there was only one other person in the country possibly more qualified than I am (given the technologies involved and the time) and he wasn't applying.
2. another time they put up a technical challenge and normally when I complete a technical challenge of the particular sort I did the potential employer likes to meet me (they put it online and said try to do this and see if you would be someone we might like to hire). And they said they decided to go with someone else but they did not have any comments on my technical challenge.
So what I'm saying I would really like to get all details from any communications regarding possibly hiring me from that ministry because it might be interesting, but then again I am also of the kind of personality that it just might infuriate me - and what good is that?
You have a very strong background in Ruby on Rails, understanding of Instiki Wiki, and the Basecamp project management software. You have developed at least one open source project that is used by many people, and you should also have developed at least one project management software. Over that it would be nice if you know something about racing cars, and have won the "Hacker of the Year" award at least once.
And then when David Heinemeier Hansson applies waiting months to send a reply "we decided to go with someone more qualified" without even interviewing him.
Note: I hope I don't get any of those I you are really conceited to compare yourself to Hansson comments, since that is not what I'm doing.
I know exactly how the system works in academia. Try being anything other than a Bolshevik and you quickly find out that the machine will identify you and terminate you via a subtle, imprecise but very effective means of shunning, avoidance, and other forms of covert hostility until you give up and go away. It is the same in the corporate world as well, just not fully activated there yet.
Screw the small-minded people doing this. No matter your academic qualifications, what does it say about you as a human being if you can't understand and accept that other people have different ideas and different opinions and that they can't just be ignored or swept away just because you hold onto a bunch of foregone conclusions that you simply accept as right? That's never been right, not ever.
Universities are supposed to be a marketplace of ideas but instead are conformity factories. I have this to say: That is an echo chamber and although people feel secure inside there and smug about it, all such echo chambers eventually end.
The scariest part is that this is apparently possible in countries under the jurisdiction of GDPR now (and possibly even outside of it). Your private emails talking about a third party might be exposed at the request of the said third party. Does no one else consider this extremely concerning?
It seems a terrible precedent if any communications service may in general be required to disclose the otherwise private communications of its users if they happen to mention any individual by name (or, presumably, any other identifying features, since this is the GDPR).
On the other hand, for matters of professional/business correspondence that relate to a specific individual, where the information being stored or shared around may be incorrect or misleading and the individual is being personally harmed as a result, isn't that exactly the sort of problem that data protection laws (and the anti-blacklisting laws, and defamation laws more generally, for that matter) are trying to fix?
It doesn't make any practical difference whether the questionable personal data happens to be stored in something structured like a formal employee record or in unstructured form through emails shared by other staff. It's the data, how it's being used and who is using it that matter the most.
There's at least one likely future in which, following a couple multi-million lawsuit baseds on such requests, a kind of 'blind referencing' becomes the norm, taught and enforced by companies and organizations. "Never refer to individuals by name, use the Company Directory's Hash Function". Or something silly like that.
Just like companies delete employees emails in the second they are allowed to do so by law - can you imagine if the law was to keep them forever? We'd have extreme changes in email formats and technology every decade or so, to render it impossible to read old-enough emails from disgruntled ex-employees and etc.
GDPR does not entitle random people to leaf through your gmail.
(Even without data protection law this kind of thing can still happen during the "discovery" process of a lawsuit, but that's a much higher bar.)
Here is an article from just over a year ago, in which an actual lawyer specialising in IT and privacy is quoted, explaining how something remarkably similar to the situation we're discussing today wasn't going to happen and it was all fear and misinterpretation:
https://thenextweb.com/eu/2018/05/03/no-gdpr-wont-let-you-re...
> “The reason behind this exemption is that those internal messages contain the personal thoughts of your boss. The right of access does not extend to all the personal messages, thoughts and ideas people have about you. So, based on the GDPR, you will not be able to access them,” says Zadeh.
Oops.
Indeed. Just imagine the fall-out if someone started a movement where everyone who got turned down for a job they applied for then submitted a SAR for all of the internal commentary and communications about them. Suddenly every business that hires staff has an extra overhead, even small businesses need industrial-scale HR/legal mechanics for the application process, and the number of lawsuits for every conceivable type of discrimination skyrockets.
> Domestic purposes – personal data processed in the course of a purely personal or household activity, with no connection to a professional or commercial activity, is outside the GDPR’s scope. This means that if you only use personal data for such things as writing to friends and family or taking pictures for your own enjoyment, you are not subject to the GDPR.
"Your private emails" are therefore not covered by the GDPR.
Unless your definition of "your" private emails includes those you send in your work capacity?
But as soon as a commercial third party mail service is involved, as will very often be the case, the picture is not so clear, particularly if they are also processing the data for any other purpose.
no matter how good you feel about yourself, give others a chance, even if they dont 'gel well with you'. don't feel 'threatened' by other people who are talented, feel graced by their wits and try to grow from them instead of kicking them down.
lack of respect and integrity at its worst, it's an epidemic in our society.
How are different people with the same name distinguished in these cases?
Name might be (almost) unambiguous for some people, but lots of us have many, many namesakes. Is the institution required to reliably tell apart which of the messages were meaning the person making the information request, and which were talking about someone else? What are the penalties for leaking emails that were discussing someone else who has the same name?
First, we have only one side of the story. The claim is the advisor never spoke to her about the problems he had with her, and we shouldn't simply assume the claim is true. OTOH, I can easily believe it is, given my experience in grad school. While some professors were quite fussy about quality in the thesis, others accepted that most PhD's (in engineering) are not targeting scientific research after the degree, and lower the standards to allow them to graduate. But they absolutely will not support such people in getting a research position at a university or a government lab. Some are open about it: "If you're targeting research and want my recommendations for that endeavor, this is what you need to do. If not, then all you need is X, Y and Z." Unfortunately, not all advisors are as frank.
Also keep in mind that the person may well have been a very competent researcher, while simultaneously being hard to work with. It's quite fair to point it out when asked, and it's quite fair to disrecommend someone because of it.
I don't think the article presents any evidence of active blacklisting, where one is going out of their way to tell everyone (without solicitation) "Don't hire this person!"
Finally, the real issue: What role should references play in the hiring process? I personally would love a world where we never rely on letters of recommendation and references - I think they are the weakest link in the hiring process. However, if we do accept references/letters of recommendation, then everything in the article is fair game. If you ever asked someone what they thought of a candidate before hiring them, you are part of the same culture that this person's advisor is.