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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

#861

Post by pnako »

fzeroracer wrote: post #824
pnako wrote: post #818

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women are the majority of CS grads in Saudi Arabia, and you'll find that they are many women studying CS in third-world countries that typically are less "gender egalitarian" than Western countries. In wealthy, western countries giving men and women the choice of what to study without having to think too much about where they'll end up in society, that's where you see the most gender imbalance. https://en.wikipedia.o…

Yes, but to make this argument you would have to demonstrate that the West somehow became much more gender egalitarian in the past 30 years in order to explain the drop in CS grads. So what happened from the late 80s to now that resulted in women gaining more freedom and therefore shifting them out of CS? And more specifically: Why has this only affected computer science? The gender equality paradox supposedly holds…

The fact remains that there are more women studying engineering (not just CS) in less egalitarian third world countries than in progressive western countries, despite the latter having campaigns, funding, etc.

The idea that male and female primates (including humans) have different ways to look at the world seems very sensible to me, and that would explain why "women care more about people" and "men care more about things".

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#862

Post by UncleMeat »

ALittleLight wrote: post #804
UncleMeat wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A recurring pattern in this debate is that people criticize Damore for a lack of expertise. Which is odd given that Damore, a Harvard Masters Degree holder in Systems Biology, is clearly conversant with the research and the context he is giving advice in. Oh boy. I've got a PhD in CS from one of the best programs in the world. I'm wildly unqualified to synthesize research in another field and would surely make terr…

Do you genuinely believe that you are unqualified to read research papers and come up with an opinion about them with sufficient rigor to merit responding to a request for a feedback from a training program you attended at work?

Yes absolutely. I'm barely even qualified to synthesize conclusions from CS papers outside of my subfield. Drawing broader conclusions from a slice of the literature requires immense context.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#863

Post by wpietri »

ALittleLight wrote: post #828
wpietri wrote: post #823

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an article about Damore's POV, so I believe the correct way to express it is that Damore claims he wrote it in response to a request for feedback. And given that he put it up with a go link, it's pretty clear he didn't just submit this as an email to the D&I team. He published it internally, hoping to spark discussion. So I think it's disingenuous to talk about this as if it were something Google's managers or…

I said Damore was asked for feedback not that his managers ordered him to write the document and then fired him for it. Damore claimed he originally wrote it as feedback for a diversity meeting he attended and then shared it for broader feedback. To my knowledge this account has never been contested by Google or anyone else and is the agreed upon account. I agree it is possible that Damore is lying about why he wrote…

When you talk about how "Google fired Damore" and "They asked him for feedback" you imply that the firer and the feedback-re are the same entity. But there's no reason to think that's the case. A more plausible interpretation is that somebody running D&I programs said something general, like "we welcome feedback on our programs". But there's no evidence that he specifically was asked, and even if he were, sharing it broadly appears to be his own idea. In which case, the general request for feedback is irrelevant to him getting fired.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#864

Post by UncleMeat »

pas wrote: post #813
UncleMeat wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microbiology is “things, not people” and is far more balanced.

One counterexample doesn't "disprove" the correlation. (Mostly because the example is in the correlation already, and the correlation holds, plus it's just a correlation.)

The comment I responded to very clearly implies that this "things, not people" is the reason for gender imbalance in CS. They are doing far more than identifying a correlation.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#865

Post by wpietri »

lliamander wrote: post #789
wpietri wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reply from a throwaway account to this is for some reason dead, but it seems good to me, so I'm pulling it out of the garbage. --- This is false. Why are people claiming Google solicited his feedback? Is that how the news was reported? If it was a feedback, it wouldn't have been written in a Google Doc, and shared in an internal mailing list. It was written during a time when diversity in tech was the topic du jour…

Damore laid out the timeline pretty clearly: * He attended a voluntary HR run seminar on diversity, and feedback was solicited. * He wrote the memo and submitted it to HR * HR sat on the memo without response for a month, after which he started sharing it on some internal mailing lists

In which case, the "request for feedback" bit, which Damore's defenders here are making a big deal about, was irrelevant. Him sharing it internally was not anything people asked for; it was something he decided to do on his own.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#866

Post by UncleMeat »

ekianjo wrote: post #856
UncleMeat wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A while back I published some research that had implications about the us government’s treatment of digital privacy. A Russian media arm reached out to me for an interview. I said no. Damore has the same choice. Saying weird stuff about the kkk having cool uniforms was his own choice.

> Damore has the same choice. You mean he had the choice between: - not speak at all and let all the media portray him as a misogynist and generally horrible person - or try to explain himself with whoever was willing to hear him, knowing that he would also be judged "by association" in a negative light? Sorry but it seems like there was no good choice for Damore anyway in terms of reputation.

His brief media appearances just doubled down. It wasn't about how he was trying to express himself more clearly. It was about how "the left" was out to sabotage him and tech is taken over by SJWs. The media appearances weren't going to do anything to repair his reputation even if they were on NPR.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#867

Post by XorNot »

ergothus wrote: post #847
XorNot wrote: post #845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And again, in the 1970s the internet - and multiplayer gaming with a social component - effectively did not exist as a widespread hobby. This is cherrypicking in the most bizarre way: if you can't explain the earlier oscillation, why should I accept the later oscillation? Which also doesn't line up with the type internet gaming which was exploited around the 2010s mark where alt-right groups began aggressively recrui…

> if you can't explain the earlier oscillation, why should I accept the later oscillation Clearly women in the 1970s had no other obstacles - they couldn't obtain credit(!), much less be on equal footing in so many other ways. The issue is not "but there is an earlier oscillation", it's "if women have been slowly moving in direction of equality, what reversed that?" or "If women were able to 'be interested' back then…

Women started being excluded once computing was considered a "serious" career path and salaries ticked up. Before then serious engineering was mechanical engineering, chemistry, physics.

Sexist (and racial) exclusionary behavior ticks up once a field becomes commoditized and the general populace move on in, because the general populace carry with them the prevailing attitudes of the times.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#868

Post by wpietri »

kortilla wrote: post #830
wpietri wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't a political space. It was a corporate space that Damore used for an explicitly political end.

It was a political space. The topic was literally about gender hiring policies.

To the extent that every space is political, sure. But it's not like Google had declared themselves steward of a space devoted to political discussions. They're a business. Employees at work should keep in mind they're at work.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#870

Post by afiori »

StephenAmar wrote: post #319
pjc50 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.. so you'd destroy their life instead?

Always assume that what you say could be on the front page of the New York Times.

While this is a good advice, it is a terrible response after the fact.
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