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Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

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Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#621

Post by marrs »

GVIrish wrote: post #429
jlouis wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term "neuroticism" stems from the five factor model of psychological traits. The memo author doesn't really mention this too much, but if you know about the model, he uses the other factors throughout his work, which means he has read and understood the model. There have been several studies showing that women scores higher in the agreeableness and neuroticism factors, on average (and with a quite large variance…

The thing about pointing at the 5 factor psych model then applying it to something like gender disparity in tech, is that it's a pretty big leap to take scores from research studies to then draw conclusions about gender disparities in a given profession. Especially because at the core, it's very difficult to disentangle gender differences in psychological traits from learned social behaviors. You bring up a lot of qu…

It's no greater than the leap required to attribute gender disparity to internalised misogyny.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#622

Post by rtx »

rtx wrote: post #355
michaelchisari wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now, we have two indicators: The way the swings on the special elections are going, which are all violently swinging away from the Republicans, even if Republicans end up winning, it's barely by single digits in double digit districts. And the polling, which in aggregate, across all demographics, has been continually moving more and more negative each passing month. Even polls like Rasmussen, which have a tradi…

Here is something that will explain what happened. Though it may disappoint you. Ossoff got 125,517 votes Handel got 134,799 votes. Compare Dem - 124,917 Rep - 201,088 As you see there was no swing in Dem's favour.

The second stat is from 2016 elections.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#623

Post by Frondo »

dandare wrote: post #216

Disagreeing with Damore’s arguments is perfectly ok. Not liking the style of his memo is perfectly ok. Calling Damore young and clueless is useless ad hominem. Chances are he is smarter than you and me and the memo is actually well sourced. Calling him a WHITE MAN is an essentialism that reveals the author's bias.

I'd happily agree he's a better engineer than me. That doesn't make him smarter, and his engineering acumen certainly doesn't give him any specific ability to do any kind of psychology or neuroscience lit review.

Know how we get up in arms when someone with expertise one field starts going on about some totally unrelated field and makes a lot of leaps of reasoning?

Expertise in one field doesn't make you an expert in everything. Nothing tells me this guy can write authoritatively on this subject matter, or that the memo is well-sourced, just cause he's smarter at writing software than me.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#624

Post by timgrahamtech »

alexknvl wrote: post #363
timgrahamtech wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not pretend he didn't know what he was doing. There are textbook examples about people who blast off a rant to the entire company and then are somehow surprised when it becomes public ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1... ).

It wasn't even meant for the entire company. He gave it to a small community of people within Google who later distributed it across the company AFAIU from his interview with Jordan Peterson ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEDuVF7kiPU ).

It's just my opinion that you shouldn't post anything to Facebook that you want to keep private. Likewise I think he should have figured that anyone in the company could gain access to that board and that what he posted could be circulated. I think he knew that he was taking the role of Martin Luther and nailing his complaints to the door. But that's just my opinion.

So why all the downvotes? Aren't the people downvoting me the sames ones that say this guy should be free to express his opinion?

It seems that if someone disagrees on this forum, the response is to shutdown the conversation with downvotes. Are people so afraid of an actual discussion with dissenting opinions that they'll commit the same actions they're criticizing in others?

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#625

Post by ggdG »

whistlerbrk wrote: post #428

> Women indeed are, on the average, more neurotic than men. It’s not an insult, it’s a common term in psychology. Women are also, on the average, more interested in people than in things. They do, on the average, value work-life balance more, react differently to stress, compete by other rules. And so on. Here's the problem. These studies model the status quo, not the way things would be if women weren't subjected to…

>Imagine a world where women weren't told they are naturally good/bad at things, now project that forward 50 years and redo the study.

I doubt you have read James Damore's memo ( https://diversitymemo.com/ ) because he addresses your very question explicitly by citing a scientific paper:

http://www.bradley.edu/dotAsset/165918.pdf

And guess what? Less constraints on gender roles lead to more sexual dimorphism.

Here's another study, resulting in the same conclusion:

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

>This is my chief problem with the memo, and the fact that he launches into IQ, the talking point of the prejudiced everywhere.

Damore doesn't "launch into IQ" at all. The memo mentions "IQ" only 2 times and touches the subject very fleetingly. It appears to refer to an opinion piece that is more elaborate on it: https://www.city-journal.org/html/real-war-science-14782.htm... . As it turns out, research on IQ has been defunded in the past for being "racist". You can call Damore "prejudiced", but then you will have a lot of work disproving the body of scientific research cited here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

Damore's memo is on solid ground regarding the scientific consensus on gender differences in the statistical distribution of psychological traits. It's an honest and fair attempt at describing biological reality. When reality doesn't turn out to be as you want it to be doesn't mean that the author is "prejudiced".

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#626

Post by Sacho »

KirinDave wrote: post #606
Sacho wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That can be a reasonable reading, but I don't see what's so controversial about it. 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.…

> 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? There is a big difference between agreeing that some differences might exist and arguing that any token gestures for the women who DO qualify under the identical standard are unfair. That's where this a…

I don't disagree with what you're saying. I want to point out you are employing a classic motte-and-bailey tactic. In your initial post, you said:

> In this memo's case, perhaps you're mad at someone for saying you're genetically predisposed to be less capable of individual action

Getting mad at the memo seems like an unreasonable reaction to me, especially for the stated reason. Now you've moved to:

> There is a big difference between agreeing that some differences might exist and arguing that any token gestures for the women who DO qualify under the identical standard are unfair.

This seems wholly agreeable. I don't know what Google's policies are and I don't think Damore really managed to explain them well, to describe the negative effects of them, and to adequately argument why his propositions were better. I don't see why this is a fireable offense, but I can also support the argument that once the outrage broke out, Google's decision was logical and reasonable. But notice we've moved away from being outraged at his assertions, to just finding his conclusions questionable. Is this worth getting mad over? We are in the motte, in agreement that you should not just take what he said as gospel, throw your hands up and say "well let's dismantle all of Google's efforts", that's the essence of discussion! You can present a reasonable counter-argument to what he said, and I can certainly find many points to agree on it!

What I'm worried about though, is that once we stop talking, you will charge down to the bailey, and decry Damore as a sexist who should never have opened his mouth, because he caused people to get mad. That the science he quoted is "broscience observations" and thus he is stupid(and dangerous!) to even believe it. That somehow him making an argument precluded others from challenging him, from finding his argument unpersuasive, or presenting a counter-argument that may sway him, or others who feel like him. The discussion is already poisoned by this tactic. I believe that's what the author in this thread was trying to get at.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#627

Post by halfnibble »

rpiguy wrote: post #550
coldtea wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It's worse. They don't care for what you've said, and they don't particularly care about the issues they talk about either. Some (media people, etc.) use the issues to have…

Extreme leftism is literally a religion, so much so that you can't even present scientific evidence that is contrary to their decided narrative. Born Again/Woke Transgression/Microagression Heresy/Dissent Sinner/(Racist, Misogynist, Bigot, Sexist) EDIT: Original Sin/(Privilege, Unconscious Bias) They even follow the same behavior pattern. First they declare you a Sinner. If you've done research they question the moti…

This is quite humorous. Can I use this?

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#628

Post by OscarCunningham »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #477
OscarCunningham wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we correct for the bias if we don't know what the unbiased state would look like?

> How do we correct for the bias if we don't know what the unbiased state would look like? The goal isn't to choose some specific gender balance and then take whatever steps necessary to produce it, it's to eliminate unfair bias. The way to do that is to find it, not indirectly by looking at ratios, but directly by actually finding it . High school teachers who say things like "women are no good at computers" to youn…

I agree. But I notice that most discussions on sexism in technology companies focus on the outcomes; gender ratios and pay gaps. It would be interesting to try to measure the bias directly. Hide a bunch of microphones in offices and see if the number of sexist comments is larger at Google than it is at a law firm or a hospital.

Perhaps somebody has already done this. What would be the correct search terms?

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#629

Post by Frondo »

humanrebar wrote: post #493
d--b wrote: post #438

I am sorry if I come across as a liberal who gets offended, but I completely support the decision of Google to fire him. In fact, I think that Google had no other choice than to fire him, and that's mostly because the engineer shot himself in the foot. Memos are not meant to express debatable personal arguments, memos are meant to express a company position. By widely spreading a personal view, the author impersonate…

> The problem is that you can use unprovable statements to justify anything. This is exactly why we can't shut down conversations the way Google did. Saying line employees are unqualified but Google executives are qualified to judge truth is very stifling to rational thinking and, yes, diversity that actually means something. But nobody really believe that Google leadership is the best arbiter of diversity. Otherwise…

Do we want the Google execs to sit there and make line-by-line technical decisions? Would you want the head of HR to tell this guy what kind of sort algorithm he should be using, or get into arguments about Go's lack of generics? Or do we expect them to defer to the smart engineers they hire?

This guy is probably a very smart software writing dude, but why would that make us want to listen to what he has to say on any other subject, whether it's biology, evolutionary psychology, running a business, or hiring practices?

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#630

Post by halfnibble »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #474
atilaneves wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "normally rational person" is a person that is emotional at least 50% of the time but convinces themselves otherwise. Facts that seem to go against a person's beliefs provoke cognitive dissonance - it doesn't matter how technical they are or how logical they need to be to do their jobs.

It goes beyond that, Sabine Hossenfelder is better than a "normally rational person", she is seriously very smart it is in her bones to make a decent rational case for whatever she is saying. And here I am talking about her blog posts, not her job -- I have never read any of her papers. But in this case though, she is does repeat some interweb fallacies about the memo, even though she has certainly read it herself an…

Is that what the PC police told you to put at the bottom of all your online posts? ;)
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