Damore's thesis was really more around difference in personality between populations as the likely cause of differences in the same population's distributions in STEM Fields/Leadership. It's about the aggregate interests of a population and not a comment on ability. The people turning it into the latter need to re-read the memo. The gender gaps in STEM/Leadership are likely a combination of both biological and social factors but moderate centrist viewpoints are boring and don't get you views/clicks.
Outraged about the Google diversity memo?
811–820 of 872 posts
Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?
#812Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My point was moreso about how prevalent the phenomenon of ignoring obvious objective reality is when certain topics are involved, the key ones off the top of my head being: race, gender, sexuality. Fair. I just wanted to add that it's not terribly applicable to the specifics of the memo and article. People are upset about systemic total representation and undervaluation rather than a lack of singular genius. But I…
> I just wanted to add that it's not terribly applicable to the specifics of the memo and article. People are upset about systemic total representation and undervaluation rather than a lack of singular genius. It's applicable in that (in my opinion) the majority of the people aren't - rather they are interested in a fantasy version of the situation that exists only in their imagination. This is why even on forums lik…
> The older I get, and the longer I see the very same arguments over and over again over decades, the more I am coming around to the idea that a massive portion of the human population possibly can't even see reality. Maybe I am one of them!
All we can do is dedicate ourselves to following the evidence where we can and avoiding judgement when possible.
Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?
#813Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an unreasonable reading. If you read past the tl;dr you see that none of the differences in traits he talks about are about ability, just interest, so interpreting it as "women aren't as good" is wrong.
Can you explain why hiring women who are just as good as, if not better than, men at the job, but who would prefer (on average) to work elsewhere, perhaps somewhere with more women employees, would make the business do worse? And can we note that I replied to someone saying "he didn't say that", suggested a place where he did and got replies from different people saying "yes he did say that, and he's correct" and rep…
>Can you explain why hiring women who are just as good as, if not better than, men at the job, but who would prefer (on average) to work elsewhere, perhaps somewhere with more women employees, would make the business do worse?
The issue is in the act of finding them. This is where statistics and discrimination comes into play. Lets say that ratio of women vs men that are interested in working at google (and capable of being hired) is 20% to 80%. Then if your goal is to reach gender parity, you must do one of three things: (1) test significantly more women vs men to find those 20% at a higher rate (which involves active discrimination against men), (2) lower the standards specifically for women so that the pass rate for women is higher, or (3) active intervention along gender lines to increase the percentage of women that are interested and capable of passing a google screening. It should be obvious that 1&2 leads to worse outcomes for Google. (3) doesn't directly lead to worse outcomes, but it could be seen as divisive to discriminate against men in these outreach programs, which could indirectly lead to worse outcomes for Google. Now, one could argue that these gender-based outreach programs are just to counter cultural sexism that have kept women from being more interested in engineering jobs at Google. But if the stats in the memo are accurate, at least some portion of the disparity is not due to external factors but individual choices based on inherent (dis)interest. If this is true then such outreach will largely be unsuccessful for the cost in money and resentment.
Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?
#814Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who is Jordan Peterson and whom did he interview?
Jordan Peterson is great. He's a thoughtful, honest person who is delightfully transparent in his efforts to make sense of the universe. He publicly spoke up in support of free speech, and therefore become a target to be intimidated and harassed by - well, the usual suspects. When he refused to back down, he became a minor celebrity among those who value free speech and who are concerned by the recent rise of totalit…
Which totalitarian ideology is on the rise, on the left?
Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?
#815> 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…
Thanks, I actually did read the memo and did also follow up on the sources.
Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?
#816Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
> But I notice that most discussions on sexism in technology companies focus on the outcomes; gender ratios and pay gaps.
It's a specific instance of the more general manage-by-metrics disease. The thing you actually want is hard to measure, but it correlates with something that is easy to measure. So instead of doing the hard work to understand what is actually happening in detail, they measure the easy thing and optimize for that instead. Even though doing that frequently breaks the original correlation.
The result is the bureaucracy edition of a paperclip maximizer. You get what you measure instead of what you really want. Or bang your head against the wall, if the thing you measured is actually stickier than the real problem.
> t 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.
To some extent this is just the same disease. Is sexism supposed to be alright if it turns out there are equally large amounts in both places? Should we be satisfied that it's the root of the problem if there is very little at Google but even less somewhere else?
Stop trying to measure things against other things and just consider them in their own right. Sexism is bad regardless of how common it is. You don't fight it because there is more of it over here than over there, you fight it everywhere because it exists when it shouldn't exist.
Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?
#817Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then perhaps google should not solicit opinions on the matter, as they did in this case?
They didn't solicit opinions on the matter, don't be dishonest.
Yes they did. The post was on an internal board which, if I understand right, was in response to a question by Google management about their diversity practices.
Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?
#818Earlier quoted context omitted.
> he cannot possibly implicitly mean "but clearly that does not apply to every woman currently employed at Google, who were all hired because they are the best in the world at their jobs" He clearly can , were it not for affirmative actions - if you assume perfect recruitment based on merit, you can expect everyone accepted to be suitable for the role. But in this case you'll also find, as the memo author explained q…
I think that the media and Google itself did a horrible disservice to the memo author in mis-representing his words, and I'm fairly certain they did so on purpose and will continue to do so. However, to be charitable to googlers offended by the memo: If the author asserted in the memo that Google practices discriminatory hiring practices (" Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidat…
ROC curves always increase monotonically I think, so yes saying that lowering the bar to reduce the false negative rate for a minority group does imply that you are increasing the false positive rate. i.e. He is indirectly stating that members of these groups are more likely to be false positives. Bad hires.. who don't belong there.
So yeah, I can see why people in those groups might get upset about that. As you've identified, that one line is the most dangerous part of the memo to say out loud.
Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?
#819Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There's a penalty in society and your career for being an asshole. Partially true, Gawker staff thrived on being assholes until they got the Hogan Leg Drop. Are you implying that Damore was an asshole, though? How so? > That makes for a distraction, not to mention the obvious legal risk if the engineer ever interacts with a woman or minority at Google again. What about the legal risk of institutionalized discrimina…
You sure got me, I said I would be upset if a document like this started circulating at my workplace because of what it would indicate about the author's priorities, and because it would be grossly inappropriate. So, you sent me a link! Like a toddler, you saw the words "I would be livid if I got a link to a doc like this," and you finger painted that daggone wall. That one smarts, and you are a force to be reckoned…
Jimmies rustling gently
down the amber path.
Unheard whispers.
Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?
#820Earlier quoted context omitted.
"While males are 4 times more likely than females to die by suicide, females attempt suicide 3 times as often as males." So a suicide attempt by a man is 12x more likely to succeed than one by a woman.
That is sexist! Are you suggesting that women are less skilled than men ??!!?? (/s, obviously. Sorry I have to point it out.)
I get /s :) And maybe they're more skilled. In that they get the message across without actually dying.