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

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#161

Post by unityByFreedom » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 5:09 PM UTC

scruple wrote: post #152

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One of the political cries of evangelicals is that if we let in muslims, they will outbreed whites.

It's a continuation of the European wars of religion, and they're pretending that they never agreed to the Peace of Westphalia which is one of the earliest documented agreements to live in peace with freedom of religion.

I'd argue that they want to go to war again, but then someone will just tell me that it was Hillary who wanted to start WW III.

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#162

Post by jaredsohn » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 5:13 PM UTC

scruple wrote: post #152

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I had thought this was more about non-Hispanic whites being less than 50% of the population.

More info on that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority_minority

This is the case for five states right now: Hawaii, New Mexico, California, Texas, and Nevada.

That article suggests the whole United States will be majority-minority by 2043 and for children by 2019. (But a critique is that these studies treat somebody with any Hispanic, Asian, or Black ancestry as non-white.)

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#163

Post by dang » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 5:15 PM UTC

my_first_acct wrote: post #154

dang wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 chanc…

Ok, fair enough.

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#164

Post by scruple » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 5:43 PM UTC

jaredsohn wrote: post #162

scruple wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I had thought this was more about non-Hispanic whites being less than 50% of the population. More info on that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority_minority This is the case for five states right now: Hawaii, New Mexico, California, Texas, and Nevada. That article suggests the whole United States will be majority-minority by 2043 and for children by 2019. (But a critique is that these studies treat somebody w…

That's very interesting. Thank you. I had heard the term majority-minority before (around an election cycle, I'm sure) but had never given it much of a read or consideration. I don't have much time to digest the article right now but hope to return to it this evening.

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#165

Post by someguydave » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 6:01 PM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #145

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.

> they sudden find themselves to be the target of irrational hatred and hostile actions. So who exactly is being doxxed and threatened over this? Who is doing the doxxing and threatening? Yes, the debate is being stifled by hatred and hostile actions. We should all oppose that, but some seem to be withholding their condemnation because the results suit them.

James Damore was summarily fired for honestly writing about the problems he saw with Google's personnel policies, backed with evidence. That is pretty threatening in my book.

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#166

Post by dwild » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 6:08 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?

> That men and women are biologically different is a 100% fact.

For anything that's biological, that's perfectly fine. You won't see anyone suggest men to go to a gynecologist either ;).

> Why do we have to try and make them equal?

Which inequality make sense to you?

> celebrate people as individuals

The goal is to help individuals be who they want to be and not be judged for the sex they were born with or their nationalities.

You are from India right? Perfect example, because of outsourcing, many people believe that Indian people aren't as good in development. You are probably really good, I don't doubt that. However, there may be some people that see on your CV that you are from India and quickly decide that because you are from there, you are less qualified than someone else. Maybe the stats does prove it to be right in general, mostly because outsourcing was a great way to boost India economy, but as an individual for you, they are wrong.

The thing is, changing theses bias are extremely hard and theses bias had a pretty negative repercussion over the years. We need to hire more of them to make sure that theses bias disappear and create an environment that won't make them fear it.

We need to be careful though not to lower the hiring requirement though in the process. We need qualified people that won't create worst bias with time.

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#167

Post by observation » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 6:41 PM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #143

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…

What I find frustrating is that so few people on either side of that one point seem able to separate that from the rest of the memo. There only seem to be two camps here. (1) The biological-differences part is wrong, therefore everything else based on that is invalid. (2) The biological-differences part is right, therefore everything else in the memo is also right. Why do so many people who condemn (1) as unscientifi…

Sure that is true. But any public debate always reduces a topic to its least complex form.

The core question really is: do meaningful biologist differences exist?

I see this as a scientific question, it has metrics, and we already have the answer. It is yes.

From there you can have a discussion about the nuances, but in regard to those people who do not believe the answer is Yes, there's no more point in validating their arguments than those of creationists or communists. Sometimes they'll bring up interesting perspectives maybe, but they are basically just wrong.

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#168

Post by ng12 » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 6:43 PM UTC

dwild wrote: post #166

puranjay wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> That men and women are biologically different is a 100% fact. For anything that's biological, that's perfectly fine. You won't see anyone suggest men to go to a gynecologist either ;). > Why do we have to try and make them equal? Which inequality make sense to you? > celebrate people as individuals The goal is to help individuals be who they want to be and not be judged for the sex they were born with or their nati…

> but as an individual for you, they are wrong

This is why I firmly believe this is a case where actions speak louder than words. Pontificating about whether men are biologically predisposed to be software engineers is not a bad thing, marginalizing qualified female engineers because they are female is.

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#169

Post by gfodor » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 6:52 PM UTC

mLuby wrote: post #111

gfodor wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there is. So are you suggesting equal efforts should be expended to equalizing the representation of men in nursing and women in bricklaying, as we do other fields? They are skewed worse than most, so perhaps more effort should be put there? Are the skews in those fields equally unacceptable or somehow more acceptable? And if they are more acceptable, why? Based upon the public discourse, the commonly accepted a…

I'm simply making an ethical claim. Any` skew sounds unacceptable to me. If we agree that any` skew is unacceptable, I'd suggest we take advantage of leverage and seek the greatest skew correction per resources allocated. That might well turn out to be in construction workers… `statistically significant

I guess there is also an inductive problem with not accepting any skew whatsoever. For example, the field of medicine has minimal skew, but if you drill into specialties, there is massive skew. At what level of granularity does skew stop mattering? It has to become noisy at some point, but good luck deciding on a concrete and consistent metric for determining where that is.

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#170

Post by troupe » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 6:59 PM UTC

VarFarYonder wrote: post #30

troupe wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And he also pointed out that people are scared to actually talk about these things at Google. Considering he was fired, that seemed like a pretty on the mark observation.

If worked at Google and thought the evidence suggests that due to natural difference in the sexes, women are less likely to seek a job in tech -- that's not an ethical opinion on whether that is as it should be, but an opinion (whether right or wrong) on how things are -- then I'd be more scared than ever of voicing that opinion.

Yes, and if the evidence he was using was wrong the best thing Google can do is to explain why it is wrong to change the perception. Instead, they are basically telling people that if they look at the evidence and reach a similar conclusion, they stand a chance of being fired for talking about it.

If someone points to the fact that there are many more blacks in the NFL than can be accounted if football talent is randomly distributed in the population and points to some evidence that maybe there are biological differences behind those numbers, the worst thing you can do is try to punish them for thinking. If they are using bad data, address that. If they are making a logical error, address that. But you can't just try to punish them because they looked at the statistics and the evidence and reached a conclusion that you don't like, but don't want to explain why you think it is wrong.