The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science • Hacker News Board

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#311

Post by zzalpha » Wed, Aug 09, 2017, 3:39 PM UTC

computerex wrote: post #301

zzalpha wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just gonna copy another comment I made elsewhere: The problem is that the gender differences cited cannot, in aggregate, explain the 70/30 bias toward men in the industry. There's a real similarity to the global warming debate, here. There are many factors that affect global mean temperature. For example, over the very long term, the sun will get brighter. But that can only account for an astonishingly tiny fract…

> But no serious psychologist or sociologist would claim that those differences can account for the dramatic real world bias in the industry. It simply doesn't follow. What's your evidence for this? Debrah Soh, the author supposedly has a PhD in sexual neuroscience so one would think she is qualified to make comments about this. And although I can't confirm this myself, the article does say that societies with greate…

Well, if we're going to just appeal to authority, I guess I'll do the same:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sexual-personalities/20...

The article points out that for most of the biases cited in the memo, the differences are on the order of a few percentage points, which cannot account for the real-world outcomes we see. To quote:

Still, I think it's important to keep in mind that most psychological sex differences are only small to moderate in size, and rather than grouping men and women into dichotomous groups, I think sex and sex differences are best thought of scientifically as multidimensional dials, anyway (see here).

To be honest, I'm not sure how Ms. Soh can seriously argue the merits of the memo, here. Yes, technically the memo is not itself inaccurate, in that there are gender biases that result in practical population-level effects. But how one can seriously use those facts to conclude that the 70/30 population split in the valley is a product of those differences, I really don't know, unless confirmation bias is at play. It just doesn't make any sense.

Heck, just looking historically it doesn't follow... it's not like the biases we see are inevitable. Our industry used to have a different composition. And other STEM fields have seen gender disparities even out. So neither facts nor history support the conclusion.

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#312

Post by tptacek » Wed, Aug 09, 2017, 3:40 PM UTC

renaudg wrote: post #310

tptacek wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the n-million+1th time: 1. The memo uses the word "preference" without ever establishing whether it's talking about free choice or choice after discouragement, and so is flagrantly begging the question. 2. It's simply false that the memo makes no connection between supposed preference and aptitude, as it builds to a section about the "harms of diversity" that includes a direct claim that women in Google's workfor…

> The memo uses the word "preference" without ever establishing whether it's talking about free choice or choice after discouragement, and so is flagrantly begging the question. Of course it's talking about free choice. Introducing "discouragement" in the equation is itself begging the question : it's an extra hypothesis which is unnecessary in presence of a simpler, more fundamental explanation (like this one https:…

All you've done in this reply is beg the same question.

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#313

Post by Smaug123 » Wed, Aug 09, 2017, 3:41 PM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #303

As with many defenses of the Damore memo (and more than a few attacks against it as well), this completely misses the point. Let's say for the sake of argument that there are differences in ability and/or preference between men and women. Let's even say that the magnitude of those differences is sufficient to explain a 4:1 ratio between male and female engineers at Google (which is clearly not true). My response is s…

To clarify: your point is that the question of whether or not he's right is irrelevant; he shouldn't have said what he said, because what he said is abhorrent and/or dangerous?

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#314

Post by Lon7 » Wed, Aug 09, 2017, 3:41 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #101

This defense of the "manifesto" is flawed just like the others. It picks out a small subset of the claims made in the document, discards the context and all the other claims, and then harangues us for having a problem with "science". I could argue "water is composed of two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule, so women are bad at software development", and my argument would just be a difference of degree worse…

Thank you for this great response. I think you've covered why the 'manifesto' cannot be supported on a scientific basis very well. There's another issue with the manifesto that I don't think is talked about as much. And that's the human element.

All the cited science in the manifesto is irrelevant in my opinion. As an engineer you work with other people. You probably spend 40 or 50 hours a week with them. They may or may not become your friends, but they will have a huge impact on your life, and you on theirs. Many of these people will be women. They are REAL people that you interact with everyday. What he did when he decided to share this manifesto at work is show that he thinks of these women as statistics, and that on average they are not as capable as he is. He has turned the women he works with everyday into a technical problem that he can solve with his intellect. That is incredibly insulting! He's shown an incredible lack of empathy and understanding towards the women he works with. He's turned them into numbers. He's shown he does not care about them as individuals. This is absolutely unforgivable.

If he had simply released this as a research project or something on the internet then it wouldn't be a problem. But he didn't do that. He didn't make a distinction between the general population and the women he works with. He shared it at work.

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#315

Post by throwaway15066 » Wed, Aug 09, 2017, 3:41 PM UTC

Mangalor wrote: post #253

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To invoke Goodwin's Law, perhaps we should be more sympathetic to the viewpoints of Nazis? How about white supremacists? There's a movie on Netflix at the moment, a German movie called "Er Ist Wieder Da" ("look who's back") about Hitler returning in modern-day Germany. It's part movie, part documentary - the actor playing Hitler travels around the country and talks to people about politics and the like, and finds t…

So...we should value the opinions of Nazis? Are we really at that level?

It depends what the opinion is about. The National Socialists boosted Germany's economy massively, so a discussion of their economic policy might be useful (this is a simplification, in actuality the economics of post-WW1 Germany was boosted by a multitude of factors and the Nazis were not the only major one, but my point stands -- they legitimately did a lot of good to Germany before WW2). A discussion of their opinions on racial purity is definitely not going to be useful to anyone involved.

If you found out that the barista at your favourite coffee shop was racist, would that change whether they make good coffee? Is the value of the coffee inextricably linked to their views? If someone has a disgusting view in one aspect of their life, their other views appear to be tainted even if they are entirely orthogonal.

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#316

Post by clavalle » Wed, Aug 09, 2017, 3:42 PM UTC

Jabanga wrote: post #188

chourobin wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"He used science to reason out a way to revert to a state of community where he stands to gain more." This is spot on right here and the main difference between the memo and this article. The memo might have cited real science but it arrived at grossly inappropriate conclusions.

This is toxic postmodernist/feminist dogma. It frames everything through a lens of identity power struggles. Therefore, whether an argument is scientific and factual is secondary to what identity group the person making it belongs to, and what their group stands to gain from it. This ideological lens is anti-science, anti-cooperation, extremely racist/sexist and ultimately focused on only one objective: reducing the…

The author of the memo framed his argument in exactly this way.

To quote the memo:

"As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy.”"

The author literally thinks 'Left' policies are part of a Communist power struggle.

If the above comment is toxic, then so is the original memo.

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#317

Post by ahh » Wed, Aug 09, 2017, 3:42 PM UTC

jpmattia wrote: post #251

josephg wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people-things orientation has an extremely large effect size for social science. The Su et al. meta-analysis from 2009 found an effect size of 0.86 with N > 500,000 participants. Lippa (N > 200,000) found an effect size of 1.40. http://sci-hub.cc/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x If you don't believe the research is solid, please post some convincing counter studies.

> If you don't believe the research is solid, please post some convincing counter studies. It sounds like you don't understand the reproducibility crisis: It's not up to me to produce counter studies, it's up to you to produce replications of the already published work, using the exact same methods and techniques. So far, the reproducibility in the psychological sciences has been pretty poor. Nature summarized the or…

I think you might not know what a meta-analysis is: it's actually a summary of replications and duplicate studies on some topic. Generally (I have not read this particular one!) they are specifically designed to detect potential publication bias and other effects that would imply non-reproducibility.

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#318

Post by humanrebar » Wed, Aug 09, 2017, 3:44 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #208

Ajedi32 wrote: post #20

Not much new here. This article is essentially just re-affirming all the scientific statements that were already made in the original memo, backed by links to scientific studies. Only difference being that the author of this article has a PhD in sexual neuroscience (so people might have a harder time accusing her of not knowing what she's talking about) and is female (so some people might have a harder time of accusi…

The issue with the original article was two-fold: 1. It used strawman arguments. Notably that the world is looking for a 50/50 split in gender ratios. Most reasonable people believe that even in ideal equilibrium state that this is not the expected outcome (although I'm sure there exist some people that push for 50/50 or greater). But that the current ratio is not the ideal equilibrium state. The author of the paper…

So with part of all that is something you'd fire someone over?

Before you say "hostile work environment", keep in mind that lots of people find firing someone for this to be hostile as well.

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#319

Post by 52-6F-62 » Wed, Aug 09, 2017, 3:44 PM UTC

jorgemf wrote: post #302

52-6F-62 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't disrespecting her work. In this discussion, though, her writing on the hard science being referenced is extremely valuable. Her giving a conclusive statement on the intent of the original author muddies the pool a little bit. I keep hearing "well the scientists say so!", but it's simply not enough. For instance, I am enamoured with the work of physicists and their unique ability to explain the beauty of the…

Sorry to disagree and with all my respects I find you attacked her when you under valuate her job in the topic compared with other professionals. It is exactly her topic of research and you throw her away.

I didn't attack her at all, nevermind on her work in Neurosexuality. Frankly, it's a subject I know nothing about and have no position to do so.

I did imply that it's no more her position to conclude the subject of the original essay than anybody else's, and cautioned against taking words of any number of scientists as canon on the understanding of both the original essay and any social implications it may or should have.

edit: Rereading my original statement, I could have certainly made my implication more clear. I'll concede that point.

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#320

Post by peoplewindow » Wed, Aug 09, 2017, 3:45 PM UTC

gribben wrote: post #228

peoplewindow wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very odd that you admit you didn't actually read the document. Does it cause you physical pain or something? You then judged it based on a bunch of re-tellings, believe it says something it doesn't and that this is somehow virtuous and worthy of proclamation. Kind of discouraging. It didn't say Google should stop encouraging women to apply. That's simply not true. It did say it should stop giving women specific…

Did you even read the memo? He explicitly asked to end the programs Google has set up to encourage more women and minority students to study Computer Science because they weren't a good use of resources. There is no lower bar or quota. All of the diversity programs he mentioned are to encourage more applications.

Yes, I have done.

He actually asked for something different - for programs and classes to remain but for the exclusions based on race and gender (i.e. no men allowed) to be eliminated. He also pointed out that even Google's resources are finite, and thus the costs and benefits of diversity programmes should be judged rationally, e.g. he suggests that mandatory 'unconscious bias' training doesn't seem to have made any difference. So is it worth requiring it? These are reasonable questions anyone can ask.