Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 507 posts

Re: Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O

#381

Post by clavalle »

humanrebar wrote: post #306
clavalle wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, the author of this article is David Brooks -- a well known, very conservative, commentator. So, it might be fair and balanced in a Fox News sense of the phrase but not fair and balanced as most people would understand the phrase. And for the general population skew in interests/preferences to make any difference whatsoever to the makeup of Google's technical and leadership staff the argument would have to be t…

So "conservative" is the same as "unfair and/or unbalanced"? The New York Times (not exactly conservative) has considered him worth printing for quite some time now. Isn't this attitude more or less what Damore was concerned about in his memo?

No, but he has an agenda that he's promoting with this opinion piece, which, as someone who disagrees with him, has some pretty obvious holes which I point out.

Re: Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O

#382

Post by dahart »

humanrebar wrote: post #322
dahart wrote: post #267

> When it comes to the genetic differences between male and female brains, I’d say the mainstream view is that male and female abilities are the same across the vast majority of domains — I.Q., the ability to do math, etc. It's weird that Brooks paints the memo as largely factually correct, but clearly doesn't believe what is the main thrust of the memo. The problem with the memo is not with any claims that are state…

> ...the problem is the FUD he's spreading... He seems earnest to me. If he's earnestly voicing ideas that result in fear, uncertainty, or doubt, is it his fault? What is the appropriate way to broach the subject publicly? Or are certain thoughts inherently unspeakable? If Damore bears significant blame, what is an appropriate response for a boss to have to that situation? Why is Damore the only person in trouble if…

I believe he's earnest, that makes his being wrong all the worse, he doesn't know he's wrong and he's not trying to be wrong. It's more convincing, and thus more damaging, that he sounds earnest.

I don't think it makes sense to assign blame, I don't care who's fault it is, and I believe he's free to share his thoughts. I hope you're not suggesting that being fired from a company is somehow censorship.

What I care about is that his ideas are regressive and unintentionally sexist. He is using specious scientific sounding arguments to say we should turn a blind eye to cultural sexism. By ignoring it, we perpetuate cultural sexism.

Re: Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O

#383

Post by mwytock »

peoplewindow wrote: post #369
mwytock wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See citation above. I'm saying its much too strong a claim to go from this paper to the conclusion that women are biologically less inclined to engineering. EDIT: To be consistent with my original statement (see child)

You are losing this argument because you aren't being consistent with yourself. Originally you said, "using these differences to conclude that women are biologically less inclined to engineering is a gross leap in reasoning" So you were talking about inclination and interest. You then claimed the facts were on your side, that it was offensive to claim otherwise, and the existence of anyone who doesn't already agree i…

Thanks for the play-by-play! I do disagree about winning/losing. I feel I've done a good job representing my views.

I fixed the typo in my statement, sorry for the confusion.

As I said, the fact that this memo is offensive to many people is evidenced by the huge outrage. I'm not sure how that is a controversial statement.

Re: Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O

#384

Post by stagbeetle »

mwytock wrote: post #350
LunaSea wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you link to these research papers you are mentioning?

See citation above. I'm saying its much too strong a claim to go from this paper to the conclusion that women are biologically less inclined to engineering. EDIT: To be consistent with my original statement (see child)

To summarize the reasoning path:

1). "Results provide strong support for hormonal influences on interest in occupations characterized by working with Things versus People"[0]

2). "Boys and men prefer occupations related to objects (e.g., auto mechanic, chemist), whereas girls and women prefer occupations involving work with people (e.g., day care worker, art teacher).[0]"

3). "Our results suggest that typical women, who are exposed to low levels of prenatal androgen, participate less than do men in STEM careers partly because they are interested in working with people. This is consistent with evidence that women value communal goals, which are perceived to be at odds with STEM careers (Diekman et al., 2010) and that women who enter STEM careers often do so in people-oriented professions, such as medicine (Benbow et al., 2000)."[0]

It's the paper that is concluding women are biologically less inclined to engineering.

[0]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/

Re: Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O

#385

Post by humanrebar »

dahart wrote: post #382
humanrebar wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...the problem is the FUD he's spreading... He seems earnest to me. If he's earnestly voicing ideas that result in fear, uncertainty, or doubt, is it his fault? What is the appropriate way to broach the subject publicly? Or are certain thoughts inherently unspeakable? If Damore bears significant blame, what is an appropriate response for a boss to have to that situation? Why is Damore the only person in trouble if…

I believe he's earnest, that makes his being wrong all the worse, he doesn't know he's wrong and he's not trying to be wrong. It's more convincing, and thus more damaging, that he sounds earnest. I don't think it makes sense to assign blame, I don't care who's fault it is, and I believe he's free to share his thoughts. I hope you're not suggesting that being fired from a company is somehow censorship. What I care abo…

> I hope you're not suggesting that being fired from a company is somehow censorship.

It is censorship. Read the first sentence:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship

The defense of the firing is that the censorship is justified, not that it isn't censorship.

> What I care about is that his ideas are regressive and unintentionally sexist.

It's not his fault, but he's fired anyway? That doesn't seem fair.

Re: Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O

#386

Post by dropstickle »

dahart wrote: post #365
dropstickle wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you are an american. 60% of americans are overweight. Does that mean you are overweight?

Clearly not. Does 60% of Americans being overweight today mean that it's likely that 60% of people are naturally and biologically incapable of maintaining a healthy weight? There are genetic differences among underweight and overweight populations, so it is "possible" that the distribution of healthy weights to overweight people is natural a result of those genetic traits, and not the result of advertising and availa…

I think you misunderstood me. I was not making a biological correlation, but a statistical one; namely that group averages doesn't say anything about an individual. The nature/nurture debate of overweight people is besides the point.

Re: Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O

#387

Post by unityByFreedom »

thegayngler wrote: post #358
unityByFreedom wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, he slipped in a huge assumption there as if it's established fact. Of course Asians in the US are smart. There is a high bar for foreigners entering the US. This is the genius behind "Give me your tired, your poor". We actually end up taking the hard working, wealthy ones who've gotten into college by passing tests in their second language at the same age as we go to school.

There was an article awhile back in the NYT stating that in many cases asians people can be found cheating on those tests or lying about their educational background. Lets face it. They have resources to both cheat and get tutoring on the ways to pass an exam. Lets see how everyone does cold turkey when all of the outside factors like money and resources other than race and gender are held constant. What are the resu…

> Lets see how everyone does cold turkey when all of the outside factors like money and resources other than race and gender are held constant.

It's impossible to completely separate biological from environmental factors. They're interdependent.

I agree that better research would be the proper way to attack this problem. It seems we will be stuck perpetually debating nature vs. nurture [1] for as long as we exist.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture

Re: Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O

#388

Post by clavalle »

GreaterFool wrote: post #307
clavalle wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, the author of this article is David Brooks -- a well known, very conservative, commentator. So, it might be fair and balanced in a Fox News sense of the phrase but not fair and balanced as most people would understand the phrase. And for the general population skew in interests/preferences to make any difference whatsoever to the makeup of Google's technical and leadership staff the argument would have to be t…

The author of the memo didn't argue that the male-female ratio is where it should be. It is almost certainly skewed due to gender biases. However, eliminating gender biases from recruitment is not necessarily the same as forced diversity (forced due to ideology that dictates that anything different than 50-50 is immoral). If Google were to announce that they will hire 50% women wouldn't that be illegal under Title VI…

I don't think anyone is saying anything different from 50-50 is immoral but that anything different (in this case vastly different) than 50-50 deserves some attention.

I don't think announcing a policy of hiring 50% women is necessary. Like you said, it is 'almost certainly skewed due to gender biases' so the obvious way forward is to try to track down those biases and remove them from the process.

There is also some questions about how to make the workplace more attractive to certain employees and applicants. Putting policies and services in place to cater to those employees goes a bit beyond mere removal of bias but could help as well.

Re: Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O

#389

Post by KirinDave »

humanrebar wrote: post #308
KirinDave wrote: post #164

And once again, the characterization of "allowing the debate" means one thing for James (why, he "cited studies") and another for everyone else (they are an angry mob). The most telling bias in this piece is that characterization. Perhaps is James had not hamfistedly "cited" population research (as Brooks suggests) but then given very specific personal-level fixes (e.g., pair programming , suggestions of "pipeline" f…

> Perhaps is James had not hamfistedly "cited" population research (as Brooks suggests) but then given very specific personal-level fixes (e.g., pair programming , suggestions of "pipeline" fixes, etc) he would not have cast quite so much doubt over his intent. I haven't heard this point before and I'd like to understand it. What's the problem here?

James essentially keeps tackling what he views as the central issue, a "pipeline" problem.

The larger body of feminist and even more centrist discourse has concluded that problem is not, in principle, what Google needs to address (other than at the very outermost edge of it's recruiting funnel, ensuring that recruiting engaged with organizations that support specific demographics). The internal problems with unfair treatment, unfair pay, and unequal opportunity need to be addressed first. James conveniently pretends these don't exist and suggests women aren't entering the field.

We can tackle the problems there in other ways, but young women are not uninformed by their predecessors or the news. They see a constant drumbeat of credible stories about how the boys world of tech both abuses women and does not reward them equally.

James's suggestion that it's merely a lack of social elements to keep women out of tech is somewhat offensive in this light, pushing the decision way from "self-defense and self-interest" to "biological predilection.'

Re: Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O

#390

Post by KirinDave »

Danihan wrote: post #188
KirinDave wrote: post #164

And once again, the characterization of "allowing the debate" means one thing for James (why, he "cited studies") and another for everyone else (they are an angry mob). The most telling bias in this piece is that characterization. Perhaps is James had not hamfistedly "cited" population research (as Brooks suggests) but then given very specific personal-level fixes (e.g., pair programming , suggestions of "pipeline" f…

>Stereotypes which may seem obvious and unimportant to 3/4 of a population may be a crushing burden and source of relentless stress to the remaining quarter. What an excellent quote. As a politically right-leaning gay person, I feel this way basically all the time, except I'm more like the 5% or 10%. Being a minority of a minority sucks, you don't fit in anywhere.

Try being non-binary. The men who've tried to wake my gay post my public coming out are still talking shit about me.

Which is to say: I appreciate your status and it's difficulty even if I don't agree with your politics.

Post reply on HN