Now imagine how "we just randomly throw away some of the resumes from black people but we are not lowering the bar" would fare in court of law or public opinion.
Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo
861–870 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo
#862Earlier quoted context omitted.
I found that study here: https://sc.lib.miamioh.edu/bitstream/handle/2374.MIA/6026/di... "Participants were 333 introductory psychology students (193 women) who participated for partial course credit, and 27 paid participants (14 women) from STEM classes. The majority (86.94%) were of European American descent. The median age was 19 years, ranging from 18 to 43. " "For each of the core careers, participants rated how…
Let me just say this is why "show me the study" is never a productive line of debate. If someone agrees with the point the study seems to support, they say, "Hah! Studies!" and call anyone who disagrees "anti-science". But if someone disagrees with the point, they pull up the study, pick out some section of it where any type of subjective judgment call was made (usually the details of the sample, because that's the m…
Given the power we see in 100+ study meta-analysis in medicine, I think we have to move towards a model where research grants in other fields (psych, sociology, etc.) are jointly awarded to multiple independent groups to jumpstart the meta-analysis for a given new topic from the outset. How to keep the "independent" groups from colluding will be a challenge unfortunately. As will funding for the extra replications. For the reasons you cite, single, stand-alone studies are almost useless these days.
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo
#863Earlier quoted context omitted.
The leaker did harm to Google not Damore I am 100% certain that the trackiest company in the world is perfectly capable of knowing exactly who leaked it. They have chosen to protect that person, for reasons unknown at this time.
Is there some positive net benefit of Google releasing the details of the person they fired for leaking the internal information? Companies rarely mention details about firing employees for misconduct.
Well, they didn't and it resulted in a war of leaks. Now anyone with inside information knows they can settle scores by doing it. I think we will see a lot more of it. Good for justice, not so good for Google...
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo
#864Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read the full memo ( https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-james-damore-memo-uncenso... ) and it didn't seem like that at all. Saying that discrimination exists but differences in gender representation aren't necessarily caused by discrimination didn't seem like 'you're all wrong', not do the 'suggestions' seem like something someone writing authoritatively would make. Not a female engineer so appreciate I may be miss…
The first page or so is not about gender diversity, but about "Left biases" and "Right biases" and the statement that "the media, and Google lean left". He then follows with "Google's left bias has created a politically correct monoculture". So the difference is between these two statements: a. I believe X, and b. You are all leftists. Leftists believe Y. Y is wrong. The answer is actually X.
Saying Google's culture leans left doesn't mean everyone in Google is a leftist. Nor does acknowledging bias imply that people with that bias is wrong - just biased, Eg looking at a specific part of a larger picture. There's a difference.
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo
#865Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>All it would have taken was for him to run the essay past a couple of people with solid domain expertise, and they would have pointed out the dozens and dozens of problems with his assertions, reasoning and perspective. I don't think this squares with truth. There is at least one PH.D psychologist who mentioned the memo was generally correct.
The people he cited told reporters they disagree with his interpretations of their research. There's a wired article going around with direct quotes but I'm mobile and can't find it easily.
Of course they did. When the press is on a witch hunt, and somebody is made to be the scum of the earth, people want to distance themselves from them. And if they hear what said person said framed as an "anti-diversity manifesto" (as if that was what it was), "sexist" etc, they would obviously say they "disagree with his interpretations of their research".
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo
#866Earlier 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…
> I think many people were just so unprepared to hear any argument from an opposing viewpoint that they read into it what they wanted to.
also, may be due to backfire effect? Oatmeal did a brilliant job explaining it [0]
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo
#867Now imagine how "we just randomly throw away some of the resumes from black people but we are not lowering the bar" would fare in court of law or public opinion.
Sure, everyone would call that a bad policy. It's taking a minority that's biased against and making those biases worse.
But imagine it was "90% of our hires are white, so we're trying to change that by throwing out some white resumes". You'd get a much more mixed reaction.
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo
#868I 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…
> In fact, I think the memo had been posted for a week or two before it was leaked.
a month ago.
> ... said he initially shared the 3,300-word memo internally a month ago.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-10/fired-goo...
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo
#869Earlier quoted context omitted.
>both the left, the feminist movement, and the right fanned the flame against male teachers I find it hard to believe that this would be generally true. Source? Edit: obviously you're always going to have some twats doing things like that, but that's true for everything. I'm looking for evidence that it's more than average here.
I second the request. I spent several years as a K-5 teacher, I didn't perceive this dynamic at all. All US teachers are rightfully extremely wary of being alone with any child, and from what I've seen that is a concern for teachers of all genders.
The specific case was in 2015, Sweden, Kristianstad (if you want to search for sources). The media storm grow a bit extra since the individual had worked as a substitute in 26 different schools and the potential list of victims was very large. Now in 2017 I hope that most of the male-only restrictions are gone. People forget, new fears replaces old fears, and risk assessments get realign.
Random article of the time: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/skane/pedofilanklagelserna...
Random article #2: http://www.tv4.se/efter-tio/klipp/barnsk%C3%B6taren-mitt-liv...
It was a couple years ago and I could not hope to find all the media articles from that time, including radio and TV reports. But I wish that no teachers should ever need to be wary of being alone with a child. It seems similar when I hear people that they should be wary of being alone with female coworkers in fear of being accused of sexual assault.
Edit: I did consider when I wrote the above comment yesterday that I might be doing the exact same harm that the Female engineers in the article was worried about by bringing up the case. At the same time it was one of the reasons why it so strongly reminded me of this case. As a teacher, do you find it that writing this on HN is harming teachers by bringing up pedophilia in the context of kindergarten teachers?
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo
#870Take the example of plumber, any girls are expected to be a plumber? Engineer is a bit alike as techical. The different part in google case is more mental but not physical.