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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

#131

Post by zozbot234 »

conception wrote: post #51

This topic is quickly going downhill in the comments, but I just wanted to clear some stuff up because there seems to be some "what he said isn't that bad!" People wrongly think he said women are bad or stupid but that's not what he did say. He also didn't -just- say men and women are different. He did say a 5-10% difference in certain traits is why there are huge discrepancies of women in leadership and science/engi…

> is what proactive programs to bring women into these positions are trying to reverse.

The difference in interests is biggest in the most "proactive" countries, those that try the hardest to help women reach social equality with men. It's obviously not "biological", but it looks like some complex interaction of subtle social dynamics, not just women being told to "stay in the kitchen".

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#132

Post by apta »

ergothus wrote: post #113
manigandham wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men and women (biologically and socially) have different interests. This is different than capabilities. Countries with the most free choices see the most division between sexes in different professions. Nobody seems to have a problem when it comes to auto mechanics, medical sciences, teachers, social services, lawyers, etc. Why are different interests such a controversial thing to accept?

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…

> when the profession becomes high profile, the women are driven out

Because of fierce competition, where males (primarily driven by testosterone) have a higher drive to compete. It's biological. This doesn't mean that there aren't going to be women who will compete with said men, just fewer of them.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#133

Post by zozbot234 »

apta wrote: post #132
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…

> when the profession becomes high profile, the women are driven out Because of fierce competition, where males (primarily driven by testosterone) have a higher drive to compete. It's biological. This doesn't mean that there aren't going to be women who will compete with said men, just fewer of them.

Law and medicine are very competitive fields, with a higher representation of women. And tech/CS has not always been as competitive as it perhaps is today. Hence Damore's argument is somewhat subtler than this, and focuses on diverging interests that lead to having fewer women in the pipeline to begin with. Some people point to the boom in videogames and home computers throughout the 1970s and 1980s as a reason why this divergence was not apparent earlier.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#134

Post by Nitramp »

smitty1e wrote: post #85
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...

And the lady engineers should put out some great work in reply and refute him.

That's not good.

Imagine how you'd feel. Imagine people would generally claim that someone who looks like you is a bad engineer (say, someone with your hair color). And then imagine that people would expect you to constantly disprove that assumption, just because of your hair color.

You'd be on the edge all the time. You'd never feel at home in the field. And whenever you interact with someone who doesn't have past work experience with you, they'd still assume you're a bad engineer.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#135

Post by amelius »

look_lookatme wrote: post #72
ergothus wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As someone who actually read what he wrote, I just had to bite my tongue. That's not what he said at all, As someone that also read it, those arent the words he used, but that is very much what he was saying. A facade of misrepresented psuedoscience doesnt change the intent, motivation, or reality.

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...

> He said on average women do not prefer the field, and optimizing to change that observable fact is a fool's errand.

Yes, it still leaves open whether the following is true:

> when women do prefer the field, they tend to be amazing engineers

Hence I'd say there is nothing wrong with the statement.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#136

Post by fzeroracer »

manigandham wrote: post #90
newacct583 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... this is typical of the way this argument goes. Many HN readers are essentially "fellow travellers" with Damore. And you agree with him, and with that whitepaper thing he wrote. But here's the thing: every time this comes up, this is framed, as you do, as a failure of "everyone else" (meaning left-leaning general folks, often women themselves) failing to understand the truth of what he wrote. But what you don't…

What was actually said is that men and women tend to have different interests on average, and therefore choose different professions when given equal freedom and opportunity. More men choose to be mechanical engineering and more women choose biological sciences. It's strange for that to be so controversial. Not having an interest in a field does not mean you're not capable. Perhaps that's the nuance that's missing.

This argument doesn't work because there were a significant number of woman devs back in the 70s and 80s. That claim is completely at odds with the history of programming.

And before people make the claim that programming was glorified hole punching as it seems to come up by that point in history we already saw the rise of modern abstractions and higher level development. It's controversial because it's trying to abstract some sort of universal biotruths by vaguely linking data with psuedoscience and correlation.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#137

Post by Taniwha »

erik_seaberg wrote: post #129
orwin wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 functi…

That's a red herring, and also the 60s - I started my career in the late 70s, 1/3 of my CS class was female, my first job in the US (as a kernel hack) was almost 50% female, still some of the best engineers I've ever worked with, all doing the same job I was.

I don't know what happened, by the time my daughter was doing CS the number of woman was < 10% and she and her compatriots were literally hounded out of the course by the bro-culture - personally I blame gamer culture, there's something terribly dysfunctional with kids these days

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#138

Post by eecc »

apta wrote: post #132
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…

> when the profession becomes high profile, the women are driven out Because of fierce competition, where males (primarily driven by testosterone) have a higher drive to compete. It's biological. This doesn't mean that there aren't going to be women who will compete with said men, just fewer of them.

I just wish there was less of this “fierce competition” and the ambitious little pricks that just want money and power moved on to poison other wells... I’m into my work for the mysterious thrill of creating machines out of thin air - a little less so since several years, and you might guess why - and loathe these sycophants, assholes and delicate manchildren ruining it

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#139

Post by alexis_fr »

The James Damore affair made me realize that women and defenders of women are highly bad faithed, and I hadn’t noticed before how much women were incompetent.

Before that I used to believe we were on a level playing field. After that I noticed that women are aggressively defended and despite that, it has been a century that they didn’t succeed.

I clearly don’t want to work with women anymore, and since I’ve started only working in all-male companies, my pay has doubled, because we don’t have dead weight on board.

I couldn’t care less what Damore said scientifically. I just know it hasn’t been discussed.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#140

Post by Smaug123 »

Would it be too much to ask that we collectively say "The Damore thing is obviously a [scissor statement](https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/), on which otherwise-reasonable people bafflingly manage to hold different views very strongly, and we should stop talking about it forthwith because no good can come of it"? Nothing new can be said on the subject, vanishingly few people can be persuaded one way or the other, and "news site primarily populated by shortform comments" is hardly the appropriate place to hold a protracted argument.
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