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About This Googler's Manifesto

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Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems clear to me that the manifesto author "raises into question the fundamental capability of every woman he works with". Could you quote the part of the manifesto that says so / gave this impression. I totally understand the offensiveness and stupidity of such a belief -I just fail to see how the author argues for it given that he explicitly states the opposite > Many of these differences are small and there’…

>> It seems clear to me that the manifesto author "raises into question the fundamental capability of every woman he works with". > Could you quote the part of the manifesto that says so / gave this impression. I did. The parts in quotes above are directly from the manifesto. He lists differences between sexes and claims one gender has "lower stress tolerance". That's a gross generalization that doesn't account for a…

Thanks for clarifying. Is it fair to say that you disagree with the author on whether the biological differences exist (and if they do the size of their effect on representation), not with the logical merit of the argument (group aptitude and preference affect representation)?

I can understand that position and think we can call it a day as i don't feel qualified to argue the size of the effect. It could very well be just 1%, i.e. 49/51.

If not

> "raises into question the fundamental capability of every woman he works with"

> The author makes the claim that one sex's ineptitude in a modern role is, on average, rooted in biology. That's not supported by science.

This does not follow from your argument.

Your argument only supports that the author questions the ability of every women who fails to get a job in the field / that modern role.

If it is proven that biological differences do not significantly impact modern role preference and capability, you and the author agree that representation should be 50/50. He never specifies how much of an influence he believes biological differences to have, just that there could be some.

I also disagree with your assertion that the author questions any individual womens aptitude based on her gender. He is talking averages across the general population, not applicants after all.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#392
post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's literally no insult in my comment. But, I appreciate your desire to reduce polarization by legitimizing bigotry! Keep on keepin' on.

A swipe like "your bullshit" counts as incivility on HN. Such flamebait is what we're trying to avoid. Ideological battle is against the mandate of this site, and ideological venom is a regulated pollutant here, so would you please stop injecting it into your posts? We all know what online call-out and shaming culture has led to, and on HN the goal is not to go up in such flames. These rules apply regardless of which…

What is it like being a cunt dang?

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's literally no insult in my comment. But, I appreciate your desire to reduce polarization by legitimizing bigotry! Keep on keepin' on.

Um, no, just trying to encourage civility. (Calling others' words BS sounds insulting to me at least.)

But you are a faggot.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It seems clear to me that the manifesto author "raises into question the fundamental capability of every woman he works with". > Could you quote the part of the manifesto that says so / gave this impression. I did. The parts in quotes above are directly from the manifesto. He lists differences between sexes and claims one gender has "lower stress tolerance". That's a gross generalization that doesn't account for a…

Thanks for clarifying. Is it fair to say that you disagree with the author on whether the biological differences exist (and if they do the size of their effect on representation), not with the logical merit of the argument (group aptitude and preference affect representation)? I can understand that position and think we can call it a day as i don't feel qualified to argue the size of the effect. It could very well be…

> Is it fair to say that you disagree with the author on whether the biological differences exist (and if they do the size of their effect on representation), not with the logical merit of the argument (group aptitude and preference affect representation)?

I agree there are biological differences. But, one can't cite these as reasons why certain women don't land tech roles. That remains unstudied and is highly subjective from many angles. The process of determining "what is success" is, in part, having organizations that have different values, a free market, and separate countries ever since the Peace of Westphalia.

This subthread is about whether the manifesto "raises into question the fundamental capability of every woman he works with"

You wrote,

> Your argument only supports that the author questions the ability of every women who fails to get a job in the field / that modern role.

Are we simply disagreeing about to whom the author is referring? Like, are you saying that the author isn't talking about his current coworkers, but rather candidates for that field / role?

How would you feel if you were a woman working with this guy? If he criticized your work, would you not feel he is pre-judging you based on biological precepts? Wouldn't it be lousy to work with someone who thought you were biologically not able to do the job well?

> If it is proven that biological differences do not significantly impact modern role preference and capability,

Nobody needs to prove that biological differences don't impact modern role capability. It hasn't been proven.

I don't need to prove to you that flying spaghetti monsters don't exist. The burden of proof is on you to show that they do.

> you and the author agree that representation should be 50/50.

Not really. Men choosing to hire men over women is a factor. The author is still making a gross generalization even if his intention is to only criticize women who didn't land a tech role. And regardless of his intention, he has ostracized himself from working with many women. That is his burden, not women's.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#395
post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, what I was trying to say was that the document cannot be simultaneously non offensive and yet offend everyone reading it unless "everyone is stupid = has bad reading comprehension" I don't think everyone has bad reading comprehension, tbh. It is what parts of the document that you focus on - the ones that align with your existing world view - that cause you to agree with it or get offended by it. Some see i…

> Some see it as "just sharing an opinion" and others see it as "questioning my capability of doing the tech job" Could you point me to a quote taken in context that does that? I just reread the document and fail to see where the manifesto questions an individuals capacity of doing a tech job. I'm honestly trying but fail to see the offense. AFAIK the author questions whether the percentage of capable and willing ind…

The basic premise that we disagree on is do men and women have the same mental ability to do the same engineering task.

It sounds like you agree that there are differences in men and women that mean a non 50/50 split is understandable without being blamed of bias.

Have I understood you correctly?

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#396
post #325

Having read the full manifesto, I find myself agreeing with the author's thought process for a bunch of his points and clearly disagreeing with others. He presented them well, not offensive at all, and if I had a discussion with him I'm sure he seems open to change certain beliefs if presented with ample evidence. I would generally love talking to this guy. Instead everyone shames him, tells him his mostly very valid…

"That's how you create monsters". Reminds me of that guy in France, Dieudonné. He was a pretty famous comedian and he ended up making a joke about jewish people on TV. The jewish lobby got hard on him, got him banned from TV channels. Consequently he got banned from radios, cities started refusing him touring, etc... Now he became a huge antisemitic and he's friend with all the extreme-right people.

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/07/google-fires-viewpo...

He was contacted by breitbart the alt right extremist nationalist paper which is comprised of very xenophobic individuals, at least as of now, and he responded to their emails and not to others as far as I can tell. He's now clearly pissed and will speak out because he's ostracized completely by the left. MIT Harvard phd, damn it got another Dieudonne

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#397
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Well, presumably other people in the organization would have to work with them, and that is hardly fair to those other people.

Depends on those other people. I've worked with plenty of those people, and most of the time they can get along really well with other technical people, but not at all with all kinds of project managers, functional analysts, sales people, etc.

If you make sure they only need to interface with other technical people, they can work pretty well in such an environment. And the technical colleagues sometimes like working with geniuses where they can learn a lot from.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that much about McCarthyism but I think it's safe to guess that you know less. It was considered a witch hunt because nobody cared about facts or evidence, the spectacle was the point. Victims we're persecuted because they were juicy, suceptible targets, not because of anything they did or didn't do. The situation we're discussing here is pretty different.

> It was considered a witch hunt because nobody cared about facts or evidence, the spectacle was the point. Victims we're persecuted because they were juicy, suceptible targets, not because of anything they did or didn't do. You're right--you don't know a lot about McCarthyism. The "Hollywood Ten" screenwriters who were blacklisted by the film industry (private employers making employment decisions!) were, in fact, m…

The "Hollywood Ten" screenwriters who were blacklisted by the film industry (private employers making employment decisions!) were, in fact, members of the Communist Party USA...

Yes, but 1) that was just the tip of the iceberg labelled "McCarthyism," and 2) even at the time, the issue wasn't that they had joined a political party, the issue was what that party proposed to achieve.

In the case of the Google's manifesto, I don't see anyone upset that the author holds an unpopular opinion or that he publicized his unpopular opinion; it's the content of the opinion itself that's at issue.

Both McCarthy himself and the Googler in question here tried to harm other people's careers by spreading untruths in a self-aggrandizing way. That seems like the most natural parallel to me.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who would think that publishing a manifesto might have consequences?

Calling this a "manifesto" is mostly laziness. It is not actually a manifesto. It is a call to dialog. It is a memo that identifies and describes a perceived problem and thoughtfully follows through with some reasonable suggestions for what could be done about it. While one can tolerate people referring to it as a manifesto for the sake of clarity, since his name is not common knowledge and there is no other catchy t…

And here I was thinking that I was being all moderate by not calling it a "screed" or a "rant".

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, presumably other people in the organization would have to work with them, and that is hardly fair to those other people.

Depends on those other people. I've worked with plenty of those people, and most of the time they can get along really well with other technical people, but not at all with all kinds of project managers, functional analysts, sales people, etc. If you make sure they only need to interface with other technical people, they can work pretty well in such an environment. And the technical colleagues sometimes like working…

I guess there's a difference between being a socially awkward or kinda "crusty" software genius and being an actively anti-social and/or sociopathic software genius. Maybe I'm just thinking of the typical "high performing asshole" that Bob Sutton writes about.

Nobody, even other technical people, deserves to work with assholes. Period.

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