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Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

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Re: Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

#91

Post by laughinghan »

_0ffh wrote: post #74
ryderm wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it such a huge deal that most women are not interested in technology? If this is because they have been systematically discriminated against in tech and primed at a young age with BS like "cars are for boys and dolls are for girls" then yes, absolutely this is a huge deal. If it just so happened that they were not interested because they don't have the "technology gene" then this would not be a big deal, but tha…

>all the evidence points to the former That is patently false, and you should not make factual claims under these circumstances. These claims add to the noise, not the signal. The scientific evidence for innate psychological differences between girls and boys is overwhelming. There is a clear scientific consensus on this. I cannot fathom how this can still be controversial. Specifically about your "cars vs dolls" exa…

You are correct that narrowly speaking, it is false to say that "all evidence" points in any one direction.

However, your claim that there is a "overwhelming", "clear scientific consensus" is lacking in citations, your one broken link to what I assume was supposed a scientific study and one link to a pop science blogpost (which links only to other posts on the same blog and not any actual scientific papers) notwithstanding.

In fact the overwhelming scientific consensus is that the opposite is true. Check out this blogpost with working links to 22 different peer-reviewed scientific papers on how social priming can differentially affect how men and women, or white students and black students, etc perform at various academic and cognitive tasks (there are actually 27 links to such papers but 5 are broken; there are also links to 9 more scientific papers besides, just to flesh out the argument): http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a-s...

I challenge you to find working links to 22 different peer-reviewed scientific papers arguing that women's underrepresentation in STEM is not due to systemic discrimination but is explained wholly by other factors such as innate psychological differences.

In fact, I'll give you a head start. The blogpost I linked to already links to 6 such papers, so if you can find 16 more, I'll concede that maybe there isn't the scientific consensus I thought there was.

Re: Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

#92

Post by laughinghan »

laughinghan wrote: post #91
_0ffh wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>all the evidence points to the former That is patently false, and you should not make factual claims under these circumstances. These claims add to the noise, not the signal. The scientific evidence for innate psychological differences between girls and boys is overwhelming. There is a clear scientific consensus on this. I cannot fathom how this can still be controversial. Specifically about your "cars vs dolls" exa…

You are correct that narrowly speaking, it is false to say that "all evidence" points in any one direction. However, your claim that there is a "overwhelming", "clear scientific consensus" is lacking in citations, your one broken link to what I assume was supposed a scientific study and one link to a pop science blogpost (which links only to other posts on the same blog and not any actual scientific papers) notwithst…

As noted by the other reply to GP, even if your links worked and were to actual, peer-reviewed scientific papers, they do little to support the argument that women's underrepresentation in STEM is not due to systemic discrimination. I think it would be an uphill battle for you to argue that they count towards the 16 in my challenge.

Re: Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

#93

Post by michaelmrose »

DougBTX wrote: post #35
fennecfoxen wrote: post #14

Google is substantially located in the Bay Area. Of course they hate ideological diversity, in practice if not in principle. It is an attitude common in their workforce. This is a tendentious statement, so I will relate my own experience. Once upon a time I was working in California, at a tiny startup, and was reading some election results from "back home" in North Carolina, which had just passed Amendment One by abo…

> "wow, 60% of North Carolina is literally horrible, terrible people." The worst thing here is the suggestion that there was 100% turnout, instead it was closer to 30%, so only about 20% voted for it. The amendment was found unconstitutional a short time afterwards anyway, finding that marriage is a fundamental right for everyone.

30% is a statistically significant portion. It seems to me very likely that just as many hold the same views in the population.

Re: Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

#94

Post by grey-area »

usmeteora wrote: post #77
koonsolo wrote: post #19

Why does US have these diversity problems? Is it such a huge deal that most women are not interested in technology? Is it such a huge deal that you have to work with a few women? Is it such a huge deal that as a technical woman, you have to work mostly with men? I can tell you, in Belgium, in my experience and what I hear, this is not an issue whatsoever. Most women I worked with actually preferred working in teams o…

This is interesting. I'm a female Electrical Engineer in the United States. Females are obviously a minority in the Engineering teams, but interestingly enough, there are a few older female Engineers I know who came from Eastern Europe after spending 10-15 years doing Engineering there, and said they never had an issue with sexism until they came to the U.S. I'm not sure whether an elaboration by them would indicate…

One of the best comments here. I wish this was a top level comment so it could end up at the head of the page where it belongs.

Re: Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

#95

Post by ryderm »

anon12345690 wrote: post #89
ryderm wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it such a huge deal that most women are not interested in technology? If this is because they have been systematically discriminated against in tech and primed at a young age with BS like "cars are for boys and dolls are for girls" then yes, absolutely this is a huge deal. If it just so happened that they were not interested because they don't have the "technology gene" then this would not be a big deal, but tha…

This has been proven false several times. Men and women are also biologically different. This doesnt mean they're limited in capability but that they have slight natural biases. Why is this such a hard reality to accept?

Obviously they are biologically different! That is not the question. The question is: Do these differences make women less interested in tech, or are there less women in tech because experiences they have had since birth make them feel unwelcome or unable.

Re: Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

#96

Post by laughinghan »

gspetr wrote: post #49

> "If HR does nothing in this case, I will consider leaving this company for real for the first time in five years," she wrote in a threaded tweet. Maybe I'm missing something but since when did HR become the Thought Police? Do people actually believe that if you intimidate someone into silence they will stop having these thoughts? Last I checked the psychological research in this area suggested that people rebelled…

I'm not sure why you're interpreting that tweet as a threat to try to force HR to intimidate someone into stop having thoughts.

Maybe she's saying she doesn't want to work somewhere her teammates think she's biologically inferior, but she's hoping that HR will ensure that person doesn't stay on the team?

Re: Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

#97

Post by ryderm »

_0ffh wrote: post #74
ryderm wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it such a huge deal that most women are not interested in technology? If this is because they have been systematically discriminated against in tech and primed at a young age with BS like "cars are for boys and dolls are for girls" then yes, absolutely this is a huge deal. If it just so happened that they were not interested because they don't have the "technology gene" then this would not be a big deal, but tha…

>all the evidence points to the former That is patently false, and you should not make factual claims under these circumstances. These claims add to the noise, not the signal. The scientific evidence for innate psychological differences between girls and boys is overwhelming. There is a clear scientific consensus on this. I cannot fathom how this can still be controversial. Specifically about your "cars vs dolls" exa…

Sure, clearly that was hyperbole. All the evidence never points anywhere. This means the vast majority of actual peer reviewed science.

Re: Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

#98

Post by vcjohnson »

usmeteora wrote: post #81
_0ffh wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>all the evidence points to the former That is patently false, and you should not make factual claims under these circumstances. These claims add to the noise, not the signal. The scientific evidence for innate psychological differences between girls and boys is overwhelming. There is a clear scientific consensus on this. I cannot fathom how this can still be controversial. Specifically about your "cars vs dolls" exa…

This is true and I read a book based off of this study. However, how does this prove that a female is less capable of being a good software engineer?

I don't think it makes that claim? Clearly women can be capable and competent software engineers. I think the study was showing there is an inherent preference for different interests among large population of the sexes and then people who are concerned about the gender gap take this study to argue that the differences (and others) may manifest later in life as choices in career path.

Re: Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

#99

Post by pandaman »

throwaway2812 wrote: post #65

I've read the doc. At first skim, I thought it was going to be a reasonable "stop the echochamber" style doc, that points out issues with over-loving diversity without thinking about the impact of it, and that decries the strong-left culture at Google that can be alienating to right-leaning employees. But in reality, dude went full /r/TheRedPill and The_Donald on this. I think the best description I heard of the doc…

Having observed the fall of the USSR it's nothing unusual to me.

When people are not comfortable with an oppressive regime they keep their moderate opinions to themselves. Voicing any opinion contrary to the Party line is dangerous no matter how extreme or moderate it is. So all dissenting opinions you are going to hear in public will be coming from extremists (e.g. "Have a Nuremberg-type tribunal for the Party's chiefs, lustrate the rest and their progeny for 7 generations!") because only the people who hold these opinions will be fed up enough to disregard consequences of their dissent. And there won't be many of them, since it's the definition of extremism to be in small minority.

However, for every single dissident there were tens or hundreds of thousands of silent supporters who would openly express their disgust and outrage over such horrific person but, when talking with their buddies in private, repeat and spread these ideas thus radicalizing themselves. Eventually everybody but a minority of "true believers" shifted from "well, life kinda sucks right now but at least there is no war" to "burn it down and salt the earth!". When this happened the whole mighty Communist empire collapsed within a year.

tl;dr When you see steam breaking through the seals you are about to experience the whole boiler's explosion. The steam that gets out first is weak but it's the sign of mounting pressure inside.

Re: Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

#100

Post by thinkingemote »

usmeteora wrote: post #77
koonsolo wrote: post #19

Why does US have these diversity problems? Is it such a huge deal that most women are not interested in technology? Is it such a huge deal that you have to work with a few women? Is it such a huge deal that as a technical woman, you have to work mostly with men? I can tell you, in Belgium, in my experience and what I hear, this is not an issue whatsoever. Most women I worked with actually preferred working in teams o…

This is interesting. I'm a female Electrical Engineer in the United States. Females are obviously a minority in the Engineering teams, but interestingly enough, there are a few older female Engineers I know who came from Eastern Europe after spending 10-15 years doing Engineering there, and said they never had an issue with sexism until they came to the U.S. I'm not sure whether an elaboration by them would indicate…

A great comment. I'm wondering have you access to the document and have read it? It seems as if there's no copies around for us to look at and see what it's actually saying, compared to what it's reported as saying. I'd agree with most here in saying that it sounds really bad, bad enough to elicit strong responses but I'd like to make my own mind up if possible.
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