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Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

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Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#841

Post by pokemongoaway »

stevenh wrote: post #822
pokemongoaway wrote: post #818

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not conceding to be on your "amorphous right," but the amorphous left seems to put words in everyone's mouth. I haven't seen anyone in this thread say that they are certain that Google broke the law in this case - since they are a private organization. What I have seen a lot of is people reframing and mischaracterizing the memo as "anti-diversity," "sexual harassment," "pseudoscience," etc. I don't need to know i…

He was referring to Damore's supposed right not to be fired as "amorphous".

Thanks - it seems so, but the rest of my comment still applies. Correction noted.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#842

Post by on_and_off »

curyous wrote: post #559
adrianmonk wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> punished for speaking out It wasn't merely that he spoke out. It's not just what you say, it's how you say it. Saying "women, on average, have more neuroticism" is not how you start a dialog. It's how you start an argument. Let's not debate whether it was a factual statement, but suffice it to say that "what I said was factual so there's nothing wrong with it!" isn't a defense. There are a million statements that a…

"women, on average, have more neuroticism" is provably true. It's been measured. It's a shame that we can't start a discussion with the truth

"black people on average commit more crimes; these violent outburst make them unable to work in engineering teams"

Here; I took a real statistic, made it a generality and pretended that it applied to engineering.

Just because you cherry pick facts to support an argument does not mean that you are 'speaking the truth' as you wrote.

Moreover suggesting that a portion of your coworkers do not have its place here is crossing a very big line.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#843

Post by _Tev »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #788
stcredzero wrote: post #784

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it is not and I take umbrage at the offensive undertone of your comment ("parroting"? Really?). Psychology is not climate science, it's currently going through a widely publicised reproducibility crisis and in any case, the reliance on p-values has been criticised widely by experts in fields as varied as economics, medicine and of course the humanities. The big-5 model itself has been the subject of much cr…

He's citing "legitimate scientific sources" but he doesn't understand them, so his citations are meaningless. Where am I claiming that "the whole field isn't valid"? I said there's a reproducibility crisis and that the reliance on p-values has been criticised in various fields. I made no claim that his interpretations are "wrong". I said that his interpretations are most likely wrong because he's not a psychologist a…

It's funny how you are trying to defame Damore and then take offense at the perceived insult. And all the appeals to authority can be used against you - you are not an expert in those fields, so you cannot claim Damore is wrong.

At least provide some citations or examples before you use such childish phrases as "sai-ent-tifickal". You sound really terrible when arguing like that.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#844

Post by wolf550e »

tome wrote: post #824
wolf550e wrote: post #770

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the Damore memo came out, people have calculated that to explain the only 20% women working for google, the average IQ of google engineers needs to be 160. That is laughable.

Interesting. Do you have a link to that calculation? Maybe tptacek was impliticly referencing that calculation. I took what he said at face value but maybe real world numbers make my claim moot. By way of calculation, apparently 30k software engineers work for Google[1] so there are probably around 15k in the USA. There are 600k software engineers in the USA[2]. I estimate that Google employs about 10% of the enginee…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14997524

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#845

Post by _Tev »

ubernostrum wrote: post #481
stcredzero wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the same thing as "objectively not bad". Anything that requires an imputational and emotional interpretation (which can't be supported by particular facts) to be "bad" is "objectively not bad." if we assume he had some purpose in mind that he thought was important Here, you're basically admitting that the reading required to support your position is an imputational and emotional interpretation which can't…

So let's play with this a bit. We're at a point where we've got actual empirical data showing that in a bunch of other fields of human endeavor which have: 1. Seen a huge observed gender gap, and 2. Comforted themselves with "rational" and "objective" and "scientific" explanations to prove it wasn't their fault, and 3. Eventually been persuaded to try even simple measures to test whether bias on the part of people in…

> Damore is practically a cliché. He's the person who ends up in the history book under "wow, people actually used to believe that stuff".

You know, that can be applied to you as well.

> Meanwhile, you want to have your knee-jerk reflexes checked, judging by the kinds of catchphrases you immediately jump to when confronted with even mild disagreement.

Oh the irony. It's funny to see oneself in such mirror (I was using the "I will be proven right and I know it" shitargument too).

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#846

Post by no-s »

conanbatt wrote: post #821
mirimir wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He was terminated at Google's discretion under at-will employment, the same standard that might allow you to be fired for coming to work with blue hair. Exactly. Google had the right to fire him. Which is why he should have published his memo anonymously. Unless, like Snowden, he felt that authentication was important, and was willing to face the consequences.

I think there is something pernicious about Google saying "tell me your opinion", "This is my opinion", "You are fired". In moral or practical sense, that can be a breach of contract. As far as I know, this memo was published within a space where controversial topics are debated, and was made public by someone else. The person that leaked the memo did actual measurable damage to Google's reputation and PR efforts: we…

yeah, the discussion keeps neglecting this point. They fired him for doing what they asked. With respect to "at will employment", he didn't do it the way they wanted. What a funhouse. This action points out there is a set of rules which override what the employer tells you are the working conditions. The employer can reference those rules retrospectively to justify why your firing was not unlawful under the NRLA. I feel like this is beneficial to Damore's case though, because it shows that he can't seek relief from this catch-22 situation under the NRLA, and it's truly about the difference between what Google promised and what actually happened. It seems like this misrepresentation was deliberate.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#847

Post by no-s »

Udik wrote: post #260
d1zzy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have the thought, you just can't discuss it with your coworkers in your workplace, for obvious reasons I would say.

I find it funny that you can't discuss factual things that relate to your company's decisions and plans with your coworkers in your workplace.

>I find it funny that you can't discuss factual things that relate to your company's decisions and plans with your coworkers in your workplace.

Especially when they ask for your feedback. Actually perhaps there is an actionable error on the part of Google - did Damore have a reasonable expectation of confidentiality? Why did Google let it be disseminated publicly by other Google employees, heheh?

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#848

Post by deanCommie »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #727
deanCommie wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only when it comes to things that the right is is indisputably on the wrong side of history and hasn't figured it out yet (gay rights, gender rights, etc). Its not like the alt left yet to preach about communism or unions or taxation with the same privileged safety. Subjects like this get a lot of reasonable discussion from both sides at left leaning companies. But when it comes to things like diversity? And you are…

>Only when it comes to things that the right is is indisputably on the wrong side of history and hasn't figured it out yet (gay rights, gender rights, etc). Except that's not how it works the other direction. You mentioned communism. The left is indisputably on the wrong side of history here and hasn't figured it out yet. And yet somehow the right is still willing to engage in reasonable discussion. A person could ta…

> And yet somehow the right is still willing to engage in reasonable discussion.

This is a joke right? Proposing universal health care, paid maternity leave, or raising the minimum wage leads to screams of "SOCIALISM!" and any explicit support of socialism leads to screams about the millions of people killed by Stalin.

There is no reasonable discourse about the idea of weak-link based cultures (rather than strong-link), or government-mandated egalitarianism.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#849

Post by joshuamorton »

stcredzero wrote: post #526
brian-armstrong wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the bits in his memo were pseudoscientific bunk, no better than phrenology. Making a lot of noise about 'facts' doesn't help here, in fact it does the opposite. So it seems your stand here is irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

Some of the bits in his memo were pseudoscientific bunk, no better than phrenology. One of the cited studies from the Damore memo was done across 55 countries, and effectively has a P value which is eyebrow-raisingly high. (They used another stats test.) It's definitely an important result, and is acknowledged as such by a big swathe of Psychology academia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Ge…

Sure, but just because I cite a study doesn't mean that the conclusions I make are valid. You seem to be saying that because Damore has citations in his memo it is ironclad (or perhaps you think that people who disagree with it disagree with every word of it).

Neither of those things are the case. There are subsections of the memo that are both objectionable and unscientific. That he has some things that are science-y does not make the entire document wholly unobjectionable.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#850

Post by fixermark »

topmonk wrote: post #167
Analemma_ wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The null hypothesis is to assume there is innate equivalence; the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate otherwise and the attempts I've seen so far are lacking.

The null hypothesis would be to accept the state of things as they are. If there are very few women in computer science, you wouldn't assume it was due to some conspiracy or "systematic discrimination" without any proof. You wouldn't enact policies of reverse discrimination (affirmative action) to correct some supposed imbalance of the system. You'd simply admit you don't know why, and search for proof of the reason.

A more correct null hypothesis is to accept the state of things as they are given signal from across time, though. Which raises the immediate question of why most programmers were women until recently.
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