391–400 of 476 posts
He may be a wonderful person, but if he genuinely thinks being a straight white guy in the US is harder than being gay, he's not as clever as he thinks he is.
Let's say this is about the Google memo. And let's say, for the sake of argument, you're a person who thinks Damore had some good points and some bad points but you think the hysterically censorious response to him was way over the line. But you don't want to become a pariah yourself, so you stay quiet about it. The argument Damore was making was fiddly, kind of subtle and takes a long time to explain, it's not worth…
There is an equal and opposite danger to the one you're describing, which is that one cranks musings get vested with undue dignity just because the mainstream media does condemn him.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think anyone is disputing that there are biological differences between men and women (on the average) that result in unequal distributions of some outcomes. An easy example is "fastest marathon" or "number of babies". The dispute is that there are biological differences between men and women that are relevant to qualification to work at Google in software engineering .
That's the argument alt-right folk who actually deserve our hostility are trying to use Damore to make. Damore, however, is instead arguing that those biological differences make women less likely to pursue engineering as a field, not that those difference make them inferior.
He also explicitly mentions ability: "Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” 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."
(Also, let's be clear, someone who seeks out the support of Stefan Molyneux to advocate his viewpoint cannot be meaningfully distinguished from alt-right folks who supposedly want to distort his viewpoint.)
> if I don’t understand what is or isn’t hurtful, then I’ll defer to the leading intellectuals in my culture to tell me This essay was so promising, and then turned out to be a pledge of allegiance to the thought police.
I think you missed the point of that one. He doesn't want to hurt other people, but realizes he won't know all the ways he could do so accidentally. So, in the interest of not hurting people, if he is unsure whether something will or not, he'll defer to smarter people about what's appropriate behavior. If you don't care whether what you say hurts others, you need do nothing, need defer to no one any time, ever.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A problem with this kind of analysis of the situation is that everyone thinks they're in the "subtle and qualified" camp.
It should be obvious that anyone arguing against having a rational discussion is wrong about being in that camp.
Let's say this is about the Google memo. And let's say, for the sake of argument, you're a person who thinks Damore had some good points and some bad points but you think the hysterically censorious response to him was way over the line. But you don't want to become a pariah yourself, so you stay quiet about it. The argument Damore was making was fiddly, kind of subtle and takes a long time to explain, it's not worth…
I really am not sure myself.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Occupational preferences are not the subject of the document, though. The subject is occupational qualification. No, he talks about both: > 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. and > These two differences in part expla…
Sure, I agree that he consciously talks about both preference and ability. Why is he talking about preference? Does that have to do with his thesis? I think it's because he wants to write sentences like that one about "preferences and abilities" in an attempt to pretend that arguments about preferences translate to arguments about abilities. That is, I would have agreed with a claim that he has two distinct theses (p…
If preferences partially explain why psychology is dominated by women and why computer science is dominated by men, then preferences can partially explain part of why psychologists tend to be women and tech employees tend to be men.
And that's a big part of the memo: why is there a gender gap, what causes it, etc. So it's not surprising that one issue he focuses on is preferences. And he's not alone in doing so, that preferences are important in the tech gender gap discussion is something agreed upon by both sides:
* A lot of important diversity work done by progressives focuses on increasing interest in tech among young girls: girls' preferences matter.
* And on the other side, conservatives tend to say that preferences explain most of the tech gender gap and not discrimination.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He did link to and summarise research on the psychological differences between the sexes - but it seems that this was the cause of quite a bit of the blowback because people didn't understand that this is what he was doing e.g. when he was talking about Neuroticism in the technical sense as one of the big 5 personality traits, and many people incorrectly interpreted that as him calling women neurotic. Also the links…
I saw the links. No expert on the actual matter at hand (women participation in tech) would consider them relevant at all to the issue.
> No expert on the actual matter at hand (women participation in tech) would consider them relevant at all to the issue.
Your inability to maintain a frame of reference for your objections is disheartening. It's clear you're just entrenched in a win/lose mentality and have no interest in the topic at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apparently the idea that there are biological differences between men and women that could result in unequal outcomes is also controversial. Although, to your point, that doesn't really require critical thinking. It just requires impressive mental gymnastics to dispute.
I don't think anyone is disputing that there are biological differences between men and women (on the average) that result in unequal distributions of some outcomes. An easy example is "fastest marathon" or "number of babies". The dispute is that there are biological differences between men and women that are relevant to qualification to work at Google in software engineering .
There quite possibly are biological (and cultural) differences that ultimately affect the representation of women among Google software engineers that are not sexism. As a result, a diversity / hiring policy that assumes sexism is far and away the only relevant cause is not likely to work well.
Is this really that much of a stretch?