Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#151

Post by dreta » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 8:31 PM UTC

All i got from the memo, besides the echo chamber part, which google, and others managed to prove almost immediately, was that the author thinks there are biological differences between men and women, which lead to women being less interested in the field, thus being under-represented, and that google's sexist practices won't change that, only make people resent the diversity hires.

Was i reading the wrong memo? Because everybody, including the 3 interviewees, no matter if they seem calm and collected, keep attributing malice, and talking about how the author said women are less suited to being good engineers, and that women shouldn't be encouraged to get interested in STEM. Where was that stated?

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#152

Post by gavanwoolery » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 8:31 PM UTC

Interesting thoughts - I think the biggest misunderstanding thus far involves generalizations. You can accurately make generalizations about a group of people, without implying that a given individual necessarily falls under that generalization. For example you could say "80 percent of males are into action movies" - but you should not go up to an individual male and state "you are into action movies" if you care about factual accuracy. Whether or not Damore's generalizations are accurate is up for debate, but lets say for the sake of argument that they are. I do not think its harmful to say "10 percent of women are really into engineering currently" no more than it is harmful to say "50 percent of women are really into engineering currently." In fact, only a subset of the male population is into engineering, so it is preferential even within a sex. If anything, I think it makes it worth celebrating the women who ARE into engineering even more. So (hypothetically) you could say fewer women are interested in engineering, but it does not mean those who are into engineering are somehow less qualified than males.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#153

Post by generic_user » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 8:32 PM UTC

rpiguy wrote: post #6

I really enjoyed the well reasoned discussion. I think a lot more constructive dialog is happening now that people have calmed down. Of all the sentiments expressed in the article, I mainly disagree with the comment that Damore did the company harm. He posted his thoughts on an internal discussion board and someone else leaked this internal document to the press. The leaker did harm to Google not Damore. In fact, I t…

> There are many people who believe he should have been fired anyway for offending his female coworkers and perhaps making them feel unsafe.

I feel unsafe as a Man when people advocate that employers should engage in gender discrimination against Men to enforce an arbitrary ratio of Men/Women the workforce.

Do I have the right to feel safe? Do Men have the right to get Women fired because they feel unsafe and threatened by the ideas they express?

There is a double standard and institutional bias that is being perpetrated by corporations like Google. I see no attempt to address these issues in away that changes there institutional bias and affords equity to the opponents to these ideas. This is simply damage control.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#154

Post by bufbupa » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 8:32 PM UTC

Delmania wrote: post #90

bufbupa wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you arguing we should spare factual discourse for the sake of someones subjective feelings?

Why don't you go ahead and read this: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2017/08/sloppy-scien... Simply put, unless you are mindful of someone's "subjective feelings" you will never be able to have a "factual discourse" with them. People are individuals and not statistics. You can quote statistics and average all day long, but if you offend, anger, or harm someone with your words, that person will not listen to…

Thanks for the link, but I disagree with your interpretation and the analogy here. I interpreted this link as saying "don't speak in absolutes", not "don't hurt someones feeling". More often than not, there's information you find out later, and its very likely that you could be wrong. EG: nobody can run a 4 minute mile.

This memo did not say women were bad engineers.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#155

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 8:32 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #133

kemayo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Language is a living thing. The meanings of words change over time, and that's normally a helpful thing, which lets us express culturally relevant concepts. In this case, it's pretty useful to have words which distinguish between biology and culture.

Totally. It's just confusing when people were already using 'gender' to distinguish XX/XY from copulation (since 'sex' means both).

If you use “ascribed gender” and “gender identity” to describe the (external and internal, respectively) social traits, you avoid the confusion between the two and with the biological trait that comes with using bare “gender” for that purpose.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#156

Post by Blackthorn » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 8:32 PM UTC

nicolashahn wrote: post #124

ryanbrunner wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one thing that struck me from the linked article was the point that the memo wasn't structured to invite discussion. It wasn't "let's have a chat", it was "here's an evidence bomb of how you're all wrong". I think advancing points is fine, but if you're after productive discussion rather than an adversarial debate, you need to proactively invite discussion. And if an adversarial debate was what he was after,…

Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem). Plenty of far more aggressive articles and essays have been writ…

> Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem).

This was addressed in the article. This burden has fallen on women since they were teenagers. To expect them to do it yet again, to have to defend themselves at work this time, is ridiculous.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#157

Post by humanrebar » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 8:33 PM UTC

lutorm wrote: post #142

Will_Parker wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law Emphatically defending the wrong ideas in a debate forum, and seeing what points do and do not withstand scrutiny, is a very traditional and pure form of discourse. I claim that this process is even at the heart of scientific progress.

I disagree. Making arguments by selectively withholding counter-evidence you are aware of to see if those arguments "withstand scrutiny" is not scientific process. Certainly, arguing about which evidence is more important, or how to resolve apparent conflicts between various data, is perfectly fine. But if you are making arguments that you know don't hold up to evidence, you are not arguing in good faith. For that to…

> ...is not scientific process.

Of course it isn't. When establishing narratives and complex causalities, you don't use scientific (inductive) reasoning, you use abductive reasoning. You use inductive and deductive reasoning to fill in points, but you have to use abductive reasoning to reach a broader conclusion.

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

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#158

Post by chippy » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 8:33 PM UTC

TACIXAT wrote: post #95

>Twitter is the worst way to have this debate but that’s where it mostly was taking place (with a sprinkling of medium posts and malformed news pieces to complement it). This is why I really appreciate HN. The discussion here was fairly reasoned and people could be pretty open. I appreciate the perspectives provided in this blog post too. Thanks to you all for making such a high quality community.

Most submissions about this topic have been flagged or moved off the front page. That this article hasn't been flagged and remains on the front page is because of it's provenance.

Now, the discussions do tend to be good on the whole - but many users here are fed up with the topic and want to get back to hacking. I'm glad to see more reasoned discussions happening, and hope that people could look back at themselves when this thing first occured and see how they reacted then.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#159

Post by jack9 » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 8:33 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #120

jack9 wrote: post #104

> that these arguments about innate biological traits are complicated by trans, non-binary, and intersex folks. 2% (outliers) of the population does not invalidate the trends of the other 98% This is just wrong. > I disagree that it’s possible to write what he did about general populations, then walk it back to say “but of course it doesn’t apply at an individual level.” Gorillas typically have black fur. So no goril…

> 2% (outliers) of the population does not invalidate the trends of the other 98% A universal claim is invalidated if there is even 1 exception.

Universal claims have to be made to be invalidated, I would think.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#160

Post by joe_the_user » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 8:33 PM UTC

zo1 wrote: post #107

joe_the_user wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd actually say just the opposite - the memo seemed to be written as well and in as conciliatory manner as it could be written and the memo made good (or at least plausible) point and bad points. But the bad points were so bad that it was appropriate and necessary to fire Damore. Essentially, as analogy, there's no way for a person to say "Black people are inferior and shouldn't be hired", as a message broadcast thr…

I'm always amazed at how touchy discussions on that topic are, even more so than the Male/Female ones. I personally wouldn't bring up any studies/factual-statistics regarding it in polite conversation with a member of the relevant race being present. There is a whole wikipedia article devoted to it with a range of information on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

"I personally wouldn't bring up any studies/factual-statistics regarding it in polite conversation with a member of the relevant race being present. [links to studies]"

Which is to say you either A: don't consider hn polite conversation or B: don't imagine the "relevant race" is present.