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James Damore and three others end Google suit

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Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#121

Post by azgard »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #96
klipt wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no fan of totalitarian governments, but blaming America's problems with coronavirus on China seems like a reach to me - we had two months warning just from watching what happened in China and our government did literally no preparation during that time. I suspect if we'd had longer warning we would have just spent longer doing nothing.

2009 swine flu pandemic originated in Mexico and wasn't contained either. Killed 250,000 people. Don't see anyone blaming Mexico. Flip side China and Vietnam have squelched the virus. While the Federal Government continues to do nothing leaving everything to various states.

Wikipedia says 12,469 deaths were estimated, 3,433 confirmed[1]. It says there were 274,000 _hospitalizations_ ... is that what you're referring to?

I'd like to think that if 250k Americans died, we'd know more about it.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic_in_the...

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#122

Post by joelhoffman »

amazingman wrote: post #115
magic5227 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a society tells a woman she's not likely as interested in something, guess what profession she is more likely to choose? Not the one she's being told she won't be happy with.

What an oddly paternalistic point of view.

People do form a lot of their personalities as small children, after all.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#123

Post by Gibbon1 »

azgard wrote: post #121
Gibbon1 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2009 swine flu pandemic originated in Mexico and wasn't contained either. Killed 250,000 people. Don't see anyone blaming Mexico. Flip side China and Vietnam have squelched the virus. While the Federal Government continues to do nothing leaving everything to various states.

Wikipedia says 12,469 deaths were estimated, 3,433 confirmed[1]. It says there were 274,000 _hospitalizations_ ... is that what you're referring to? I'd like to think that if 250k Americans died, we'd know more about it. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic_in_the...

> The number of lab-confirmed deaths reported to the WHO is 18,449,[7] though this 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic is estimated to have actually caused about 284,000 (range from 150,000 to 575,000) deaths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#124

Post by azinman2 »

koheripbal wrote: post #104
azinman2 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But he did become an alt-right / Fox News / conservative machine darling.

If Fox praised Obama, would that immediately make him alt-right?

If over and over again they praised and held him up as a symbol fighting for some ideology they espoused, and some enemy (media/ideology also identified over and over) supposedly tried to silence him, then I suppose it’d be analogous?

I’m not sure what that proves.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#125

Post by xiphias2 »

jashmatthews wrote: post #92
look_lookatme wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what he said. He said on average women do not prefer the field, and optimizing to change that observable fact is a fool's errand. I don't have an opinion on whether he's right or wrong but I don't think he shouldn't be able to make that argument...

> Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate Damore deliberately chose to cast doubt on whether the women Google hired were as good as the men. Otherwise, it's easier and less controversial to just argue that any form of discrimination is wrong.

At Google casting doubt was a good in the early days. Even in search relevance of the results were the most important factor, even if it meant much less clicks, and the culture that Eric Schmidt created with the founders reflected that.

Nowadays I think it's a better strategy at Google to not discuss if you don't agree with its policies. It's still a great workplace as long as you can discard politics.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#126

Post by manigandham »

jashmatthews wrote: post #114
koheripbal wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling it a "manifesto" is trying to give reader here some bias against it. Like he was some alt-right madman. He wrote a post. Not a manifesto. "There are productive ways to have these kinds of conversations" Well obviously there aren't when posting a comment in an internal company forum gets you fired.

He skipped over classical liberal and very quickly gave interviews to prominent alt-right figures like Stefan Molyneaux.

He interviewed with Dave Rubin and Joe Rogan. Also who on the left would interview him? That's the issue with claiming that he only talked to one side.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#127

Post by orwin »

manigandham wrote: post #117
ergothus wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) I'd argue that you arent paying much attention to those other industries. I certainly see issue commonly raised in a few you mention that are in my circles. Things that still make me double-take. 2) tech is just the latest in a series. Comp sci degree enrollment for women DROPPED for recent decades - that's not a biological lack of interest. This has occurred in many professions - when the profession becomes high…

What other professions? What series? Computer science degrees and jobs are seeing a rise in women, but they're already the majority in biological sciences and other disciplines. Would you claim men are conditioned to not going into those fields? The research on the topic covers what I state about different countries and societies showing how different interests affect professions. Here are some links: https://stanmed…

Nah, in the late 50s and until the 90s, there was around 25% on women in computer science in the US, and close to 50% in some countries like France an UK (i think a book was written on why in 2017).

I've talked to Pr. Emeritus Mallard a lot three year ago, who was a biology researcher studying genotype and phenotype in animal/vegetal populations (for context, he got his degree around the time we discovered ADN). From what he remember, there was a lot more than 50% women when he started, at least as "programmers", although they were barely viewed as clever seamstress at the time.

Each time he wanted to do a computer-assisted statistical study in the early days, the programmer was a woman (again, from what he remembers) and he always thought the field was dominated by them, at least for grunts work.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#128

Post by jashmatthews »

manigandham wrote: post #126
jashmatthews wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He skipped over classical liberal and very quickly gave interviews to prominent alt-right figures like Stefan Molyneaux.

He interviewed with Dave Rubin and Joe Rogan. Also who on the left would interview him? That's the issue with claiming that he only talked to one side.

As he said in his interview with Peterson, he declined interviews with any centrist media. He filed an NLRB complaint before posting, hired Charles Johnson (who is a professional conspiracy dude and claims to know where MH370 is) to run PR and made a bee-line directly for maximum exposure with people like Molyneaux.

That's a very deliberate choice. He's no martyr of rational thought.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#129

Post by erik_seaberg »

orwin wrote: post #127
manigandham wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What other professions? What series? Computer science degrees and jobs are seeing a rise in women, but they're already the majority in biological sciences and other disciplines. Would you claim men are conditioned to not going into those fields? The research on the topic covers what I state about different countries and societies showing how different interests affect professions. Here are some links: https://stanmed…

Nah, in the late 50s and until the 90s, there was around 25% on women in computer science in the US, and close to 50% in some countries like France an UK (i think a book was written on why in 2017). I've talked to Pr. Emeritus Mallard a lot three year ago, who was a biology researcher studying genotype and phenotype in animal/vegetal populations (for context, he got his degree around the time we discovered ADN). From…

There was a time when it was "systems analysts" who gathered requirements and made decisions and wrote flowcharts, and "programmer" was a glorified data entry position translating a flowchart into assembly/FORTRAN/COBOL on punch cards that the system could run. As computers became more powerful, "programmer/analysts" began writing their own source code in "higher-level" compiled languages (this meant reentrant functions and loops and "if" blocks rather than globals and computed "goto") as the full-time "programmer" job became obsolete with automation.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#130

Post by zozbot234 »

jashmatthews wrote: post #92
look_lookatme wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what he said. He said on average women do not prefer the field, and optimizing to change that observable fact is a fool's errand. I don't have an opinion on whether he's right or wrong but I don't think he shouldn't be able to make that argument...

> Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate Damore deliberately chose to cast doubt on whether the women Google hired were as good as the men. Otherwise, it's easier and less controversial to just argue that any form of discrimination is wrong.

That's actually not what "false negative rate" means - what he's trying to say is that you can find more candidates which are just as good, because you're putting more effort into searching for them. But of course it's an easy thing to miss, especially if you're not familiar with that terminology - and with existing tech-hiring practices that accept a higher false-negative rate to begin with. Damore never expected his memo to be spread as widely as it was, and this ongoing confusion is part of how it became such a political hot potato.
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