Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 161 posts

Re: The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo

#71

Post by wcummings »

Chardok wrote: post #6

Regardless on your opinions of the memo, this article nails it right on the head; Gizmodo and other major news outlets handled this very irresponsibly, posting their version that had no citations, and leading the reader, even at the very beginning, into forming the opinion that this was simply a guy being "anti-diversity". Whatever your thoughts on the subject are, it needs to be pointed out that this type of journal…

This article doesn't say anything about citations, unless I'm missing something. I've read the memo, "citations" (some of them hardly qualify) and all. "Anti-diversity" might be a little hyperbolic, but it's hard to argue it is anything else in good faith.

The author feels comfortable making the claim women are biologically more neurotic, in a professional setting, no less. His "citation" for this fact is Wikipedia. This is unimaginative sexist bullshit that everyone has heard before. That people feel the impulse to defend this is disgusting.

Whatever innate differences there are between men and women are small and nowhere near as big a factor in the gender-ratio as say, arrogant weirdos sending credos to their entire company declaring women unfit to work in their industry.

Re: The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo

#72

Post by josteink »

quxbar wrote: post #66

> To me, the Google memo is an outlier—I cannot remember the last time so many outlets and observers mischaracterized so many aspects of a text everyone possessed. How about every article or video about cryptocurrency, PRISM, AI, 'Data Science' and a litany of other topics in tech? I have seen almost no 'tech' journalism of any merit, so I'm not surprised to see sloppy coverage of another complex issue. But that shou…

> Not only is he wrong

That's merely your opinion, which clearly can be seen from the comments here, has disagreement.

> he made an extended case for the wrong argument and did it in a way that inflict maximum company damage.

How did he inflict damage on the company?

Whoever leaked this internal memo did the damage, but I haven't seen any witch hunt or firing in that regard.

Strange, eh?

Re: The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo

#74

Post by matchu »

It's important to distinguish between what the memo's author says, and what effect his words actually have. It is an anti-diversity memo, even if it isn't intended as one.

The author makes shaky statements about gender, reinforcing sexist stereotypes. The author applies rationalist disclaimers, which enables already-sexist readers to feel that their sexism is rational. And, most distressingly, the author asserts that Google made a mistake hiring many of the women who work there. Actively making your minority coworkers feel unwelcome is an anti-diversity behavior, and it was an obvious and predictable consequence of how he chose to communicate.

I don't claim to know the author's intent, or how he truly feels about the women he works with. But, regardless of whether he's actually opposed to diversity, we judge words by their consequences. These words are thoroughly anti-diversity in consequence, and judging them in a vacuum is dangerously naive.

Re: The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo

#75

Post by sidlls »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #42
sidlls wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The context of this discussion, diversity in gender and race, already contains a lot of implicit meaning in the form of the historical development of the culture of discrimination. It's not at all harmful to acknowledge the long, deep history of the use of dog whistle language and malicious intent disguised as thoughtful rhetoric, especially by those who are in the position of power (men, whites, and especially white…

No. This is precisely why we're stuck where we are in the first place. If you allow people to call "dog whistle language" and attribute "malicious intent disguised as thoughtful rethoric", you give everyone a fully general counterargument against anything. I could accuse you right now of using "dog whistle language" and there's literally nothing you can do to prove me wrong. Those ideas are conversational equivalent…

No, that's not at all how dog whistle rhetoric applies. Please see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics and particularly the section on the US.

What you're doing is, ironically, actually an attempt to shut down discussion. You're basically saying that an entire 50+ year historical record of politics in America isn't appropriate to bring up because, you claim, it might be used inappropriately to simply shut down debate.

Re: The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo

#76

Post by davehtaylor »

jabv wrote: post #56
davehtaylor wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author took the "I'm not sexist, but..." approach to this. But sadly, because of that, people seem to think he's some kind of objective observer. If you have to make that kind of declaration, then everything you say afterward contradicts it.

So there's no need to evaluate the argument, only to parse for key signals in the rhetoric? Thanks for saving me time in my future critical reading!

I evaluated it. I read the manifesto in its entirety.

He starts off by saying he's not against diversity, but then spends the rest of the paper demonstrating the exact opposite, and then justifies it by claiming that men and women are biologically different, and that a lack of diversity is ok because of that, or that any perceived discrimination is ok, because it's not really discrimination.

And he uses the issue of "dialog" as a smokescreen. It's the same kind of tactic used by creationists wanting to "teach the controversy." They don't really want to honestly debate the merits of each position.

This isn't dialog, nor does he want dialog. It's simply him trying to justify his prejudice, and railing at "PC culture" for not letting him do so.

Re: The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo

#78

Post by MountainManMe »

wcummings wrote: post #71
Chardok wrote: post #6

Regardless on your opinions of the memo, this article nails it right on the head; Gizmodo and other major news outlets handled this very irresponsibly, posting their version that had no citations, and leading the reader, even at the very beginning, into forming the opinion that this was simply a guy being "anti-diversity". Whatever your thoughts on the subject are, it needs to be pointed out that this type of journal…

This article doesn't say anything about citations, unless I'm missing something. I've read the memo, "citations" (some of them hardly qualify) and all. "Anti-diversity" might be a little hyperbolic, but it's hard to argue it is anything else in good faith . The author feels comfortable making the claim women are biologically more neurotic , in a professional setting , no less. His "citation" for this fact is Wikipedi…

> The author feels comfortable making the claim women are biologically more neurotic, in a professional setting, no less. His "citation" for this fact is Wikipedia. This is unimaginative sexist bullshit that everyone has heard before. That people feel the impulse to defend this is disgusting.

Wikipedia might not be the most credible source, but the differences in big 5 personality traits between men and women are well documented.

[Here's a study that finds the same, looking at > 17,000 people from 55 different countries.](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anu_Realo/publication/2...). There's plenty more on google scholar.

Re: The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo

#79

Post by novembermike »

mpweiher wrote: post #36
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same. When I first read the censored Gizmodo version, I thought to myself, "Whoah, this guy is making up too many assumptions without any references!" Later, when I found the original version with references, I felt a bit stupid for judging him.

For me it was the other way around. I was aware of the references, so I just nodded and moved on, not realizing how incendiary some of these things sound when you don't have the context. For example, "neuroticism" being just a technical term for a normally varying personality trait, not "mental illness".

Yeah, I was surprised to see that Neuroticism was a technical term for a phenomenon with a well studied gender gap. If you don't know that it sounds pretty mean.

Re: The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo

#80

Post by lizardskull »

wcummings wrote: post #71
Chardok wrote: post #6

Regardless on your opinions of the memo, this article nails it right on the head; Gizmodo and other major news outlets handled this very irresponsibly, posting their version that had no citations, and leading the reader, even at the very beginning, into forming the opinion that this was simply a guy being "anti-diversity". Whatever your thoughts on the subject are, it needs to be pointed out that this type of journal…

This article doesn't say anything about citations, unless I'm missing something. I've read the memo, "citations" (some of them hardly qualify) and all. "Anti-diversity" might be a little hyperbolic, but it's hard to argue it is anything else in good faith . The author feels comfortable making the claim women are biologically more neurotic , in a professional setting , no less. His "citation" for this fact is Wikipedi…

what adjectives would you find for the following comment....

'The study findings of increased prefrontal cortex blood flow in women compared to men may explain why women tend to exhibit greater strengths in the areas of empathy, intuition, collaboration, self-control, and appropriate concern. The study also found increased blood flow in limbic areas of the brains of women, which may also partially explain why women are more vulnerable to anxiety, depression, insomnia, and eating disorders.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-08/ip-whm080717...

Post reply on HN