"...(ignoring or being ashamed of its core business)..."
This deserves its own "manifesto".
In case of any misinterpretation, I interpret "core business" to mean the ever exciting business of selling online ads.
The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google
201–210 of 660 posts
Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is bad with the good. The suggestion that men and women ARE different is taboo. The premise that the differences between them are social as opposed to literal is a much easier way to force the same point (and IMO more correct but I respect I lack the science to be certain). This person lacks tact and the way they view the entire political sphere as just left/right is ultimately of concern. Way too simplistic ou…
> The suggestion that men and women ARE different is taboo. Is it taboo? Or is it just taboo in this context? The premise is also shared by some arguments for trangender rights -- that gender identity is involuntary and biological at least to some degree.
I think anything that tries to brush 50% with a hue that isn't literal biological fact is tenuous and gets people's backs up.
e.g.
> Men are more violent than women.
I mean that's somewhat factual (i.e. considering crime rates) but the very mention of the phrase is tinged with ulterior motive so it becomes taboo. Basically you're better off sticking to literal difference, avoiding sociologically and focusing on differences being social or cultural because then you won't piss off up to 50% of people and people are more likely listen to you.
e.g.
> The way we bring up men and the societal pressures placed upon them makes them more violent than women.
I think less people are gonna be mad about that and then you can use it as a stepping stone to make whatever point this was your platform for. Sure it might actually be less _correct_ then the other way of putting it (I don't know the science precisely enough to judge either way) but that's taboo for ya. Unless you're writing specific science about the biological differences between men and women it doesn't matter that you made the same point differently.
Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google
#203> I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.…
Some US sports are very non diverse, but it's ok because it's majority non white, and everyone agrees is mostly meritorious - Athletic performance is hard to fake (outside drugs).
Yet even suggesting that minds are subject to the same kinds of differences is considered heresy. It's almost dualistic - as if we're all born with a mind/soul of the same capability.
Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are no logical steps to miss. None are required. The concept of the "noble lie" originates in Plato's inexplicably popular power fantasy The Republic . Its purpose there is as I describe it here; I differ only in choosing terms rather less congratulatory than the old fraud used himself.
The world I live in is filled with various Noble lies and self deceptions and mass deceptions. It does seem necessary to me for the modern world that isn't constantly at war with itself to exist. There is so many that I do not know where to begin and I am not going to begin. This one seems on balance like one of the less harmful ones.
Are you sure the modern world isn't constantly at war with itself? I am not. Nor am I sure that a culture of constant deception - inward and outward, individual and en masse - is less, rather than more, likely than the converse to produce such a regrettable state of affairs.
Certainly I envy you this confidence! I have not seen it borne out in practice. But I doubt we inhabit very similar-seeming worlds.
Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seriously? If you think that men and women don't differ by more than their genitals, then you have to ignore all modern science.
read "myths of gender" or "delusions of gender" on this subject, which thoroughly debunk this essentialist nonsense about "biological" gender difference. anyone in any sociology or anthropology department will tell you how incredibly obviously false the biological essentialist position of gender is. it's literally only white men in tech or right-wing white male biologists writing outside their field of expertise who…
Nah.
> In her preface to the first edition, Halpern wrote: “At the time, it seemed clear to me that any between-sex differences in thinking abilities were due to socialization practices, artifacts and mistakes in the research, and bias and prejudice. ... After reviewing a pile of journal articles that stood several feet high and numerous books and book chapters that dwarfed the stack of journal articles … I changed my mind.”
> Why? There was too much data pointing to the biological basis of sex-based cognitive differences to ignore, Halpern says. For one thing, the animal-research findings resonated with sex-based differences ascribed to people. These findings continue to accrue. In a study of 34 rhesus monkeys, for example, males strongly preferred toys with wheels over plush toys, whereas females found plush toys likable. It would be tough to argue that the monkeys’ parents bought them sex-typed toys or that simian society encourages its male offspring to play more with trucks. A much more recent study established that boys and girls 9 to 17 months old — an age when children show few if any signs of recognizing either their own or other children’s sex — nonetheless show marked differences in their preference for stereotypically male versus stereotypically female toys
> Many of these cognitive differences appear quite early in life. “You see sex differences in spatial-visualization ability in 2- and 3-month-old infants,” Halpern says. Infant girls respond more readily to faces and begin talking earlier. Boys react earlier in infancy to experimentally induced perceptual discrepancies in their visual environment. In adulthood, women remain more oriented to faces, men to things.
https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-...
Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
I fail to understand the outrage but attribute that to the fact that few bothered to read Rather than assuming those who disagree with you are shallow and hysterical (a contentious word choice, given the subject), perhaps consider why others might be outraged, you could try some empathy (though I know the article warns us against empathy). The doc presents a point-of-view, grounded in reality. Furthermore it's not "a…
Women are slower and weaker then men, demanding separate sports rankings to be able to compete. Seems almost dualistic to think their minds would be 100% identical.
This comment isn't complete without the observation that society can survive a near-complete annihilation of men, but not women.
Equality is a meaningless term unless we specify what needs to be equal. In my worldview, men and women ought to be valued and respected equally because both are equally created in the image of God.
Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google
#207Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google
#208How is this not on the front page btw? It has almost 200 points an comments in 2 hours and it's placed 37 at the moment. This seems like a failure of the HN ranking algorithm. @dang (or someone else) could you explain what's up here?
Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except they aren't difficult to prove, and this is what really really bothers me. We've got hundreds of thousands of years of innate, biologically formed behaviors that we have because they were evolutionarily advantageous. I'm not saying we should use these differences to discriminate, what I'm saying is that it's pretty easy to observe that they inform behavior and career preference.
What you keep referring to as "biologically formed behaviors" others see as "formed by society".
Right, I know, and my response is that those people are wrong. Yes some behaviors are socially formed. Of course. But "Society" has existed for a trivial amount of time relative to human history. Again, this is weird to pretend behavior isn't informed by biology. I just don't understand it.
Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's perfectly all right to say that there are statistical differences between the average biological man and the average biological woman. The problem is to then assume a gigantic pile of facts not in evidence (that the differences observed are 100% biological with no cultural influence whatsoever, that they conclusively explain gender disparities in many fields, etc. etc.) and accuse anyone who disagrees with you o…
that the differences observed are 100% biological with no cultural influence whatsoever From what I've seen it's exactly the opposite; any suggestion that differences might be less than 100% cultural marks you as a hateful racist misogynist. See Charles Murray for example. Generally, this type of person lasts up until the moment blind interviews become widespread. It actually is possible that someone might have the i…
All available evidence strongly suggests that Charles Murray is in fact a racist†, so this isn't a good example. What you instead want to say is that there's limited tolerance for the "diversity viewpoint" that "whites" and Asians are intellectually superior to "blacks".
There's an intellectually coherent argument to be made that our society is intolerant towards inquiries supporting racism. (It's not a good argument, but it will hold together logically).
There are fewer good arguments that people are hyperventilating about what Charles Murray represents.
† You can quibble with the terminology; if you believe "being tarred as a racist is even worse than being oppressed because of your race", you're welcome to replace "racist" with "racial supremacist".