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Google’s War Over the Sexes

nytimes.com

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Re: Google’s War Over the Sexes

#61

Post by zhengyi13 »

mpweiher wrote: post #15
freeone3000 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's calling for a reintegration of the sexes through marriage and children. While I wouldn't put words in his mouth as to "stay at home", he is for sure calling on women to raise babies. His repeated references to women as childbearers in the following paragraph don't help. The author appears to be stating that the solution to sexism is to have women marry the sexists and have their babies.

> His repeated references to women as childbearers Pardon me, but this is in(s)ane. WHO ELSE BUT WOMEN BEARS CHILDREN? Apologies, but I had to get that out of my system.

I think there's a significant difference between identifying a person's unique capability:

"Women are the only part of the human species capable of bearing children"

versus defining them by that role:

"Women are childbearers"

... where the latter construction has a strong connotation that that's all or even primarily what they are. I think that's problematic.

I'm not sure, but I think GP might have perceived that in the writing they're referring to.

Re: Google’s War Over the Sexes

#63

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

mpweiher wrote: post #38
Barrin92 wrote: post #8

The most troubling thing about this whole issue for me is the weird fetish about "biology" on both sides of the debate. As Mr. Hume told us a few hundred years ago, nature simply is , and doesn't tell us what ought to be . As such I have trouble understanding why we are approaching the issue from this angle. Instead of obsessing about biology, we should care about how we want our workplaces to look. And I would welco…

Let me quote someone who has said it much better than I can: "But it is crucial to distinguish the moral proposition that people should not be discriminated against on account of their sex — which I take to be the core of feminism — and the empirical claim that males and females are biologically indistinguishable. They are not the same thing. Indeed, distinguishing them is essential to protecting the core of feminism…

Have you read Adam Grant's piece on linkedin? I think you'd like it. Basically the argument is that biological differences exist but are small or mostly isolated to a few (mostly physical) domains. And that those domains have little to do with computer science, the reason google has less women than men is mostly a cultural problem.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/differences-between-men-women...

Re: Google’s War Over the Sexes

#64

Post by gozur88 »

willvarfar wrote: post #35
panzer_wyrm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percentage of Sayeret Matkal are women?

Norway has female special forces members ("Jegertroppen"). Gaddafi famously had female bodyguards, but perhaps for very different reasons. Many muslim countries have female special forces (again prehaps fro very different reasons)

Countries who have troops in the ME (including the US) tend to have women in (or attached to) commando units because the locals get very shooty when male soldiers search their women. But those SF women tend to not get involved in pure combat missions due to lack of physical strength.

Re: Google’s War Over the Sexes

#65

Post by mpweiher »

Barrin92 wrote: post #60
mpweiher wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me quote someone who has said it much better than I can: "But it is crucial to distinguish the moral proposition that people should not be discriminated against on account of their sex — which I take to be the core of feminism — and the empirical claim that males and females are biologically indistinguishable. They are not the same thing. Indeed, distinguishing them is essential to protecting the core of feminism…

>The nature and source of sex differences are also of practical importance. Most of us agree that there are aspects of the world, including gender disparities, that we want to change. But if we want to change the world we must first understand it, and that includes understanding the sources of sex differences. " completely agree with Pinker's sentiment but it is very important to note that for him understanding natur…

Except that the author of the memo used it exactly in the Pinker sense:

"We want more diversity. I want more diversity"

"What we're doing, it's not working"

"Maybe we're doing it wrong. Maybe we're missing something"

"Here are things [well-supported by the science] that we might be missing"

"Here's how we might use this knowledge to make things better"

Re: Google’s War Over the Sexes

#66

Post by mpweiher »

magic_beans wrote: post #55
ddebernardy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As Mr. Hume told us a few hundred years ago, nature simply is, and doesn't tell us what ought to be It unfortunately isn't that simple. About a century ago, one of the fathers of social psychology, no less, and an opinion leader at the time, offered the following quote: > In the most intelligent races, as among the Parisians, there are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas tha…

How on earth did educated men ever come to this sort of conclusion? Did they simply not come into contact with any women other than, say, a scullery maid or their sassy teenage daughter? I just can't understand it. Did these men have no respect for their wives?

The same way "educated" men came to the conclusion that the earth is flat, that the sun revolves around the earth, that orbits are perfect circles...plus epicycles, that breaking the sound barrier was impossible, that bacteria cannot possibly have anything to do with disease and washing hands in hospitals is a waste of time, etc. etc.

Re: Google’s War Over the Sexes

#67

Post by negativez »

Barrin92 wrote: post #8

The most troubling thing about this whole issue for me is the weird fetish about "biology" on both sides of the debate. As Mr. Hume told us a few hundred years ago, nature simply is , and doesn't tell us what ought to be . As such I have trouble understanding why we are approaching the issue from this angle. Instead of obsessing about biology, we should care about how we want our workplaces to look. And I would welco…

Not to defend the manifesto or it's content:

1) It's all to common for people to reinterpret a claim of the form "biology has significant effects on the behavior of humans in the aggregate" into "we can assume biology is a limiting factor on individuals". Since the latter is an indefensible position this technique is used to preemptively invalidate any argument that actually only claims the former. This is what you've just done here, intentionally or not and it's an unacceptable intellectual dishonesty.

2) You're also dramatically misattributing the attempt to determine "what ought to be" to only one side of the argument. One of the article's key points is that the pro-diversity advocates take it for granted that "what ought to be" in the world of tech employment is a 50/50 split between the genders based on the biological basis of sex-at-birth ratios. The truth is that the natural, not unjustly-influenced equilibrium is not known to anyone on any side. Choosing any specific ratio (even 50/50) necessarily implies defining what the genders are or should be. (Including how many genders there are and which ones you accept!) For example, saying that the ratio should be 50/50 is to say that in this respect women should not differ from men, even by their own choices.

Re: Google’s War Over the Sexes

#68

Post by mpweiher »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #56
honestoHeminway wrote: post #32

Never heard of feminists pushing for quotas for dangerous or dirty jobs.

Have you ever looked? Here's what NOW's president said about women and selective service registration back in 1981: by excluding women even from registration, the government held that “every man, regardless of any disability, must register, but that all women, regardless of competency, cannot,” a distinction which created the “myth that all men are more competent than all women.” That's the biggest (as far as I know)…

"NOW had previously opposed the draft, and its apparent about-face infuriated its members at the grassroots level, according to Cynthia Enloe, a research professor of political science and women's studies at Clark University in Worcester, Mass.

Enloe, who has written extensively on women and the military, said she was just starting her research at the time, but as she recalls, "The local chapters were really angry. They were full of women activists who disagreed, who saw the draft as something to oppose."

So why the switch? Enloe thinks it had more to do with NOW's then-recent defeat in getting the Equal Rights Amendment passed than it did zeal for military service. The amendment, which pacifist Alice Paul originally penned in 1923, simply states, "Equality under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." After Congress passed it in 1972, NOW led the unsuccessful fight for its ratification at the state level during the 1970s and early 1980s.

Speaking in defense of the NOW brief back in 1981, Smeal told The New York Times that wherever she lobbied for the Equal Rights Amendment, male legislators frequently said to her, "When you women fight in a war, then we'll talk about equal rights." "

https://www.ncronline.org/news/politics/feminists-weigh-draf...

Re: Google’s War Over the Sexes

#69

Post by [deleted] »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #63
mpweiher wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me quote someone who has said it much better than I can: "But it is crucial to distinguish the moral proposition that people should not be discriminated against on account of their sex — which I take to be the core of feminism — and the empirical claim that males and females are biologically indistinguishable. They are not the same thing. Indeed, distinguishing them is essential to protecting the core of feminism…

Have you read Adam Grant's piece on linkedin? I think you'd like it. Basically the argument is that biological differences exist but are small or mostly isolated to a few (mostly physical) domains. And that those domains have little to do with computer science, the reason google has less women than men is mostly a cultural problem. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/differences-between-men-women...

[deleted]

Re: Google’s War Over the Sexes

#70

Post by jxramos »

yters wrote: post #52
Barrin92 wrote: post #8

The most troubling thing about this whole issue for me is the weird fetish about "biology" on both sides of the debate. As Mr. Hume told us a few hundred years ago, nature simply is , and doesn't tell us what ought to be . As such I have trouble understanding why we are approaching the issue from this angle. Instead of obsessing about biology, we should care about how we want our workplaces to look. And I would welco…

While is does not imply ought, is limits the possible. I want to be a billionaire, but no matter my wish the fact of the matter is otherwise.

I think even preceding ultimate limitations of population level inequalities is the cost one assumes by not optimizing subpopulations to what they're good at or enhancing or integrating their natural traits to the task at hand. We can brush aside natural scientific realities but I'd imagine it would come at some degree of peril. Maybe that cost can be absorbed by tuning things correctly. At the least we should continue to explore sex based biological differences and see what the contours of reality present for us around all the varied human activities the sexes can find themselves in.
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