Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

Thanks for your reply. I regret that hacker news is not a great format for engaging in these sorts of long running (and long winded!) discussion, but's it's what we've got and so I'd like to continue if it's alright with you.

I think there are a lot of small disagreements we may have about this issue, but there's a big elephant in the room that I would like to focus on. Namely, my statement that women as a group are less technical capable than men, and your reaction to that statement.

I want to focus here because it's the point where we disagree the most, and I think it offers the best opportunity to highlight the differences in our thinking and, most importantly, to highlight the different ways we each use language.

'I know you don't mean to sound as bad as you do, but that sounds really, really bad.'

First off, I agree with you. This statement could be taken in some very terrible ways which is why I chose to bury it deep in an obscure comment thread, surrounded by lots qualifying statements, while pleading with my audience that my comments be interpreted charitably. I understand that you want to interpret each statement within the context of human history but for the time being, I would ask that we try to engage in a conversation free of that context. From my point of view, we are hypothesizing, not proposing policy (I think one of the flaws of Damore's memo was that he did not cleanly separate hypothesizing from policy proposals, and so he was not able to cleanly discuss what evidence may or may not say). To me, trying to discuss the evidence for trait distribution in human populations while worrying about the sad history of human bigotry is like trying to write a recipe for spaghetti and interjecting a discussion on the weather and soil best required to raise tomatoes. Technically the subjects are related, but I think we can all appreciate how that could make the spaghetti recipe difficult to understand if we don't carefully partition out all the concerns at this stage.

Do you have any objections to the statement that "Men as a group (compared to women as a group) are less capable knitters by simple nature of the fact that there are fewer of them"?

From my personal experience, this statement seems incontrovertibly true. If I needed a group of highly skilled knitters to accomplish a large project, I have no doubt that the vast majority of the people I would end up recruiting would be women. Does this mean that men can't be good knitters? Absolutely not. Stephen West is a male knitter who travels the world drawing (small) audiences wherever he goes. There are knitting groups in Finland and Amsterdam that are mostly male, which love to get together, drink beer, and knit. Nevertheless, I am confident in my original statement that men as a group are less capable knitters. From my perspective, this is ultimately a matter of skill not talent. Skill by it's very definition requires time and practice, and generally people people don't spend time and practice on things they don't have an interest in.

Now let's assume that men as a group are biologically less interested in knitting (obviously I'm pretty deep into the hypothetical here), from the definition of innate we could say that men as a group are innately less interested in knitting. If men as a group are innately less interested in knitting, I would claim that men are less likely to acquire knitting skills. If men as a group are innately less likely to acquire knitting skills that I would comfortable saying that men as a group are innately less capable knitters. 'Capable' mean competent, and if you don't have skills, you're not competent.

With all that in mind, let's look at Damore's statement that "the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership".

One reading of this statement is as you have read it. Ability refers to talent, IQ, mathematical, and technical talent. Thus the reference to biology means that Damore believes women tend to have a lower IQ that that makes them unsuitable to be engineers except in exceptional cases.

However, there is another way to read the statement, and from my conversations with friends, my spouse, and reading of various articles and blogs, it is a very common reading. Let me paraphrase Damore: "The distribution of preferences and acquired skills of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and these differences may explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership." Ability means "the means or skill to do something", thus I believe that this paraphrasing is fair.

I would argue that Damore intends the second interpretation of his statement. He never tries to cite evidence that claims women are stupid. All his citations revolve around the possible differences in the perceptions and interests of men and women. He then argues that differences in interests may result in a difference in acquired skills, which results in a large difference in the populations of men and women who are suitable to apply to Google.

P.S. I did want to address the definition of 'Cognitive'. Ripped straight from Google,'Cognitive' means 'the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses'. To me, innate preferences absolutely effect how someone acquires knowledge and how they reason about their experiences. Other definitions refer to perception and intuition, as well as IQ and working memory. I understand 'Cognitive' to be a grab bag word that can refer to any mental trait that effects the way you think. I asked my question to try and understand if you were comfortable with the idea that there are any statistically significant differences between the populations of men and women in how they tend to view, perceive, think about, or respond to their environment.