581–590 of 872 posts
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That was my first thought after reading a small portion of the memo.
any normally functioning person would realize the reaction that memo would cause. (not that the reaction is justified, just that hes in a super politicially correct area where making nuanced points isnt tolerated)
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>Mad at someone for saying you're genetically predisposed to be less capable of individual action? He never said that. Could you cite the portion where he literally says women are less capable?
Do the last two bullet points of his tl;dr count?: * Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. * Discrimination to reach equal representation is [...] bad for business. Which I read as, "woman aren't as good, that's why they don't already work here, if we hire more of them, they'll not be able to do the job as…
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I think you're underestimating the damage the DNC did when they screwed over Sanders. A lot of the traditional democrats I know simply refused to vote after that. Sanders also offered the change you're talking about.
I'm actually pretty sure Sanders would have won against Trump, provided he got the necessary funding. I think he was too unpalatable for the money men and that's why the DNC swatted him down.
People I know who were not normally political were volunteering for Sanders. He had the groundswell populism that could have gone against Trumps.
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> He didn't say it the fault of feminists, only that this was probably going to be the result. So what we all should do is forgive these men their outrageously outdated and somewhat dehumanizing viewpoints and calmly explain to them that currently they are benefitting from a system called patriarchy that has normalized male dominance. We should then calmly suggest that btw, people who are not visually and immediately…
The irony is that all the things you argue against him for, his small worldview, not willing to come to his senses, are what you are doing yourself. You are kicking and screaming against anything that upsets your viewpoint on this issue. And we actually agree on the most important facet (as do most people) that any discrimination based on age, gender, or race is absolutely not tolerated. But how to achieve this in th…
Interesting. So in this case I shouldn't debate anyone here. Because somehow that makes me wrong because... By not agreeing my worldview is small?
> that any discrimination based on age, gender, or race is absolutely not tolerated.
Honestly, I genuinely do not believe that many people here believe this. I think they find excuses for men at every turn or rationalize marginalizing women need (e.g., as I write this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14980201) That is part of _my_ larger point about how the natural response on HN is to say, "Well if you had handled this correctly we wouldn't be in a situation where it looks like sexual harassment."
> So can we argue on these specifics or am I just a bully and a bigot for holding a different opinion?
I want you to re-read this paragraph and ask yourself what the premise here is. This thread starts by saying, "We should debate." I point out how dismissive this often I'd on HN and your response is, "You're kicking and screaming and just as guilty as James. Now, agree with me in total OR call me names."
I don't know if you're a bigot, but this is a poor tactic to adopt when coupled with the ultimatum: "Or am I a bully?"
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>Mad at someone for saying you're genetically predisposed to be less capable of individual action? He never said that. Could you cite the portion where he literally says women are less capable?
Do the last two bullet points of his tl;dr count?: * Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. * Discrimination to reach equal representation is [...] bad for business. Which I read as, "woman aren't as good, that's why they don't already work here, if we hire more of them, they'll not be able to do the job as…
Would you agree that women are naturally physically weaker than men, and this makes for a convincing argument why you would expect more men doing physically demanding jobs? Is this a controversial statement to make?
A difference in traits does not even have to produce a difference in ability to produce a difference in representation. Some of the traits Damore listed allegedly lead women to value a better work/life balance, to focus more on family, etc, which naturally means they would have a lower representation in highly competitive, career-based environments. None of the traits Damore listed seem to discuss "engineering ability", but they do affect all the other skills you need to thrive in the environment.
(This is assuming that the science Damore laid out is sound, which I can't really vouch for, as I am a layman in those fields. However, most of the arguments against Damore seem to be focused on his logical conclusions, rather than the factual basis behind them - e.g. KirinDave seemed to focus on how unfair Damore's conclusions were, rather than how wrong his quoted research was).
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> This is an example of people taking exactly the wrong lesson from this situation. The guy wasn't fired for having a 'dissenting opinion'. He was fired because he basically said women are underrepresented in IT because they are biologically unsuited for it. He never said that women are "biologically unsuited" for IT. Here's what he sead in full: https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-james-damore-memo-uncenso... In shor…
> In short, he said that biological differences (with citations) can explain in the aggregate (not in the total absolute of the population) different preferences, job options, etc., and even suggested ways to change the working environment to alleviate those issues and make it welcome to more personality traits associated statistically with women (as described in citations and statistics he gave). He is extrapolating…
Well should everybody making an under-representing argument be fired then? Because that's almost everybody, everywhere. How careful should one be? Isn't this a pointer that it's more about the "no touch" subject than about him under-representing in his case?
>I think he tried hard to be even-handed but then there's things like, 'Women have higher neuroticism'
If that's supported by research, should he just push it under the rag because it's inconvenient? (E.g.: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/may/22/women-men-me... ).
>It's not that people can't talk about this stuff, it's that it is very easy to get it wrong. And a lot of people have trouble recognizing that it is easy to get it wrong.
Well, the ability to talk about something also includes the freedom to "get it wrong". They call you for it, give their arguments, and the conversation moves on. If you have to tiptoe on eggshells lest you be fired or beaten up or whatever, then it's just as if you can't talk about this stuff.
The idea about "freedom of speech" as only meaning freedom from persecution from the government is extremely limited, allowing for any powerful employee, media mogul, the dictatorship of the majority, vocal minorities, etc to bully anyone who says something they don't like. Speak should be met with counter-speak and opinions with counter-opinions. Not with firing people, beating them up, hate correspondence, threats and so on.
>B. If what I believe doesn't match the values of a company, I'm either not going to join that company or I'm going to refrain from publishing manifestos on the corporate intranet.
Well, there are people who want to be able to work in a company AND speak their minds. I don't find it inconceivable. And this climate affects both men and women in many aspects.
People are making way too big a deal of genetic predisposition. Yes, there are genetic predispositions, like how musical talent may run through some families, but what matters way more is how we are brought up, and how we choose to act. If someone is a musical virtuoso, they became that way not because of the talent they were born with, but because of the encouragement of their parents and environment and long hours…
"The diversity memo's failing is not the statistics it cites, it is that it furthers the notion that diversity is a set of statistics to control for. True diversity is about ignoring statistics and instead giving every single person the same chances, regardless of where they came from." Your point is the memo failed because it makes exactly your point - that people should be treated like individuals rather than their…
And people are trying to treat it as scientific, and some still want to pretend he wasn't shoe horning a political point in while masking it with feel good language. Despite the fact that he uses all of his data to separate populations by sex and treat them differently. My mind is being blown this morning.
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Any group like that is surely an HR honeypot, either by design or ex post facto.
It's fascinating to me that Google even has places to express opinions. When I was in my 20s and 30s, the workplace was just the place where you did work. There was no room for self-expression. You worked, you got paid, you went home. Seems like it opens the door for trouble - a false sense of individual rights when there are very few.
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I made the grave mistake of trying to express that point on Twitter. Twitter seems to be a poor vehicle for nuanced debate at the best of time, but it's a dumpster fire right now full of raging people who don't understand what you've just said. I was in SV last year for a couple of months during the election, and everyone I met were all paid up members of the church of political correctness up front, but when you spo…
> "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum" "What kind of freedom is there inside a corporation? They’re totalitarian institutions – you take orders from above and maybe give them to people below you. There’s about as much freedom as under Stalinism." Amen to that.
As to answer. Inside a corporation, there is as much freedom as the top allows. With the consequences of that emanating from all the levels, so it is wise to not make it entirely freedom-less.
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The population of Google technical employees is I think the equivalent to the population of Olympic athletes in my example. If the general population has a different distribution (again whether you agree or not with that assumption), then there should be a natural imbalance among the cream of the top that made it to Google. And as you said, those who made it are all "Olympic athletes" (in theory, they should have bee…
> but it will result in less female google employees than male employees. Well, again, the Google memo started by arguing Google's technical standard was being hurt so James doesn't seem to believe his colleagues all got the same interviews he did. I'd be more inclicned to this sort of argument for racial and gender diveristy if Google & others didn't have such abysmly skewed distributions towards white men. Go look…