Brief thoughts on the “Google memo” • Hacker News Board

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#151

Post by luckydude » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 3:03 PM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #77

maehwasu wrote: post #12

> However, his overall claim that there exist personality differences between genders that differentially affect men’s and women’s interest in and aptitude for tech jobs, is what people are mostly getting mad at. And that’s a claim that seems plausibly true. Not obviously true, but also not a claim you would be justified in emphatically dismissing as false, as many people have, including Google, who called them “inco…

I don't get this obsession with negating biology, rather than celebrating it. That men and women are biologically different is a 100% fact. Why do we have to try and make them equal? The equality doctrines I learned growing up in India always came down to this: celebrate people as individuals. Give them freedom to do what they want and love. Am I wrong in holding this belief to still be true?

If you are wrong then so am I because I feel the same way.

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#152

Post by scruple » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 3:18 PM UTC

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #147

santoshalper wrote: post #53

I find the idealism present in this thread both sweet and optimistic, and simultaneously incredibly naive. In a way, it's SV/startup culture in a nutshell. "Anything is possible if we work together and use our brains!".... "Move fast and break things!"... "What could possibly go wrong?" The reality is that we are only a generation from a time when not hiring black people or women for jobs requiring intelligence or co…

I think part of the issue is that the pendulum may be swinging too far. Sexist sentiment against men and racist sentiment against whites is growing massively at a time when whites are soon to be a minority in the country. You say "we are... a generation from a time when not hiring black people or women for jobs... was [standard]..." If this is the case and we truly aren't in a time when this isn't standard anymore, t…

> whites are soon to be a minority in the country

What is this meme that whites will be a minority in the United States?

The Wikipedia article [0] on the demographics of the United States, Race and Ethnicity section, states the following breakdown for US populations: Whites are 63% of the population, Hispanics are 16.3%, African-Americans are 12.2%, Asians are 4.7%, other racial and ethnic groups fall under 1% of the population.

Am I missing something here that lends itself to this conclusion that 63% of the population, nearly 200 million people, will "soon become a minority group in the country?"

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_State...

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#153

Post by tinalumfoil » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 3:19 PM UTC

santoshalper wrote: post #53

I find the idealism present in this thread both sweet and optimistic, and simultaneously incredibly naive. In a way, it's SV/startup culture in a nutshell. "Anything is possible if we work together and use our brains!".... "Move fast and break things!"... "What could possibly go wrong?" The reality is that we are only a generation from a time when not hiring black people or women for jobs requiring intelligence or co…

I think this cuts to the heart of a changing landscape regarding what people consider a "good person".

Your father believes he's a good person because he made a sacrifice for what he believed in. He sacrificed his relationship with someone he loved, and likely felt a lot of pushback which greatly hurt him in many ways. Following the battle of Gettysburg Lincoln consummated the ground to all the soldiers that lost their lives fighting for what they believed in: those fighting for slaves and those fighting for slavery. Both sides were important in shaping the fabric of the US (in his view).

Today good and evil fall along party lines. There are no more martyrs, chastising others counts as being good and even small sacrifices for good are considered exceptional acts. Today change is expected to flow freely while speech is expected to be canned and regulated, a reversal of Lincoln's time.

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#154

Post by my_first_acct » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 3:34 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #93

my_first_acct wrote: post #4

Recycling (and slightly modifying) a previous comment [0]: Certain topics, that otherwise might be interesting to discuss, are surrounded by minefields. One such topic is the distribution of intellectual ability within subgroups of the population. This minefield was not put in place by a repressive government. Nor was it secretly put in place overnight by a fanatic band of social-justice zealots. My observation, whic…

> Recycling (and slightly modifying) a previous comment Please don't. There's too much repetition on HN already without copy-pasting previous comments.

I agree in general, but made an exception in this case:

1) The original comment appeared on a thread that fell off the front page soon afterwards, so not many people saw it; 2) I thought it offered an original point of view; 3) It received some upvotes, which I interpreted as meaning that it put into words something that others had been thinking, but hadn't quite figured out how to say.

Anyway, it has now had a chance to be viewed by an appropriately large audience, so I will happily retire it.

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#155

Post by needlessly2 » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 3:37 PM UTC

freetime2 wrote: post #81

_pmf_ wrote: post #60

Note that Sundar Pichai is very clearly in category 2, i.e. he does not dismiss the memo as untruthful or expressly voices disagreement. What irks me is that the discussion in the main stream media ignores the fact that someone was fired for writing relevant information in a forum explicitely introduced by the employer to anonymously voicing workplace opinions (a "safe space"), not by "circulating a memo". Maybe disc…

What irks me is that the discussion in the main stream media ignores the fact that someone was fired for writing relevant information in a forum explicitely introduced by the employer to anonymously voicing workplace opinions (a "safe space"), not by "circulating a memo". Citation on this point? I have been following the news on this story pretty closely and have not been able to find out much about how the "memo" wa…

as far as i know, the forum part is not true. It was emailed internally to a bunch of people

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#156

Post by MattRix » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 3:56 PM UTC

jamesrcole wrote: post #59

MattRix wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there still are strong systemic biases at work. Once we get that fixed, maybe we can move on to the nitty gritty statistics of exactly what is nature/nurture etc. At this moment it's pointless. It reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7ihNLEDiuM

There's an underlying assumption in this: more freely discussing those topics would hinder progress in overcoming those strong systemic biases. I'm deeply sceptical of that assumption.

What about things like Stereotype Threat? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat

If someone knows that people who are similar to them are less likely to have an aptitude for something, they may assume that they also aren't going to be good at that thing. It doesn't matter if the stereotype is true or not.

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#157

Post by MattRix » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 3:57 PM UTC

maehwasu wrote: post #24

MattRix wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These "facts" are used in harmful ways against individuals. Stereotypes are harmful. Unless a stereotype applies to literally 100 percent of a population then they ARE going to hurt those people who do not fit it.

This is a great example of only examining costs of a hypothesis without examining the benefits. Literally ANY opinion/fact/belief set looks like pure evil if you only examine costs.

I didn't mention the benefits because I don't think there are any of significance, and definitely not any that offset the cost.

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#158

Post by lordCarbonFiber » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 4:02 PM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #77

maehwasu wrote: post #12

> However, his overall claim that there exist personality differences between genders that differentially affect men’s and women’s interest in and aptitude for tech jobs, is what people are mostly getting mad at. And that’s a claim that seems plausibly true. Not obviously true, but also not a claim you would be justified in emphatically dismissing as false, as many people have, including Google, who called them “inco…

I don't get this obsession with negating biology, rather than celebrating it. That men and women are biologically different is a 100% fact. Why do we have to try and make them equal? The equality doctrines I learned growing up in India always came down to this: celebrate people as individuals. Give them freedom to do what they want and love. Am I wrong in holding this belief to still be true?

I love how you can talk about "celebrating individuals" while pointing to statistics that only talk about the population as a whole.

Unfortunately for you, no company I can think of does their hiring by uniform random sampling. If you're seeing unevenness the success of self-selected populations you're probably not dealing with issues of biology (since, if that was true those individuals never would have gone into, and succeeded in, CS in the first place).

Also, literally everything humans do is a celebration in negating biology. We fly, we go to space, we communicate at the speed of light through fibers buried deep under the ocean, we extend our lives through medicine and our cities through technology. If biology were "king" in human development we'd still be living in the jungle eating bugs.

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#159

Post by lordCarbonFiber » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 4:05 PM UTC

tajen wrote: post #102

someguydave wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's intellectually stifling, and I'm no longer interested in enabling people who use that kind of rhetoric. Not only is it stifling, it is tearing our society apart. If a person believes one of these "forbidden hypotheses" they sudden find themselves to be the target of irrational hatred and hostile actions. Everyone must understand that demonizing people creates demons who may one day seek violent revenge.

> violent revenge If not violent, we're creating the next generation of bigots. The current people identifying with James Damore (=men who were promised they would be selected on skills) are as young as 15 years old. Do we expect them to be inclusive during the remaining 45 years before their retirement? I don't even understand how I should adapt my expectations for career. If competence isn't the criteria anymore, w…

Competence was never the criteria for success in tech. At least as long as I've been around, so maybe we'll say certainly not in the 21st century. It's all about being male, preferably white, with a piece of paper from a good school that knows the right words to beat the culture fit.

So far in my career the only people I've see wax poetic about competence are the incompetent ones desperately stroking their own egos.

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#160

Post by jamesrcole » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 4:19 PM UTC

MattRix wrote: post #156

jamesrcole wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an underlying assumption in this: more freely discussing those topics would hinder progress in overcoming those strong systemic biases. I'm deeply sceptical of that assumption.

What about things like Stereotype Threat? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat If someone knows that people who are similar to them are less likely to have an aptitude for something, they may assume that they also aren't going to be good at that thing. It doesn't matter if the stereotype is true or not.

How do you think that relates to the issue of the strong systemic biases that my comment concerned? I don't see any particular connection.

I suppose you might say that freely discussing certain topics might bring this effect into play. That would be a downside. But as with everything there are certain positives and certain negatives. The question is what is the balance of these for a given option (suppress/not-suppress).

In my comment I was saying that I'm deeply sceptical that the balance of suppressing certain talk brings you out on top. Pointing out a single benefit (avoiding that effect) doesn't really tell us anything concerning the answer to that larger question.