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10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google

gizmodo.com

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Re: 10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google

#141

Post by Zarath »

wpietri wrote: post #108
Zarath wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would we ever know if men actually were worse than women at math? There will always be a sufficient number of confounding variables as to have plausible deniability, not that it really matters. I think the line for when we're grasping at straws (or when we have enough evidence to draw a conclusion) is different for different people, which is why there is debate over such stupid things in the first place.

I doubt we ever will know. But we certainly won't know until we eliminate the effects of the enormous confounding variable of our centuries of sexism.

The point is that will literally always be a confounding variable.

Re: 10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google

#142

Post by FT_intern »

runamok wrote: post #137
mrchicity wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really true though? Where I've worked, almost everyone was from an upper class or upper middle class background, grew up in a handful of superzip suburbs like Atherton/Scarsdale or high COL cities like NY, stable family life, attended a top tier university, had similar cultural interests or hobbies, read the same news sources, even had similar vices. They looked like a Benetton ad, but all acted exactly the s…

My last team was pretty diverse as far as country of origin (India, China, Brazil, Canada, Turkey, UK, many parts of the US), culture, ages, etc. I know some came from rural and some for lack of a better word 'white trash' upbringing. I will say we were mostly men though. It was a great team and I miss them.

Many people who speak about diversity in tech don't actually have experiences in engineering so they don't understand that race and gender are not that important in engineering. Engineering is very multi-cultural and people care more about nationality than race/gender. There is a huge diversity of nationality and cultures.

Re: 10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google

#143

Post by gopz »

ElmntOfSurprise wrote: post #94
habitue wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the gender differences he talks about are very obviously coming from this meta-study: http://sci-hub.cc/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x He uses a lot of the same terminology as the paper, references big-5 personality traits etc, as well as the same personality dimensions like people-object axis. The left vs. right stuff is clearly coming from Jonathan Haidt's Moral foundations theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

Note however that Gizmodo say > Two charts and several hyperlinks are also omitted The links that were removed are probably relevant. Some passages in the text even have quotation marks around them where I assume that links to sources were removed.

Yeah, what was up with that? I was really disappointed that stuff was omitted and assumed it was why some of the author's claims seemed so bold. Is there a link to something closer to the original around?

Re: 10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google

#144

Post by marcell »

biocomputation wrote: post #78
npxcomplete wrote: post #56

My interpretation is that the author is cheifly concerned with two points: that biology impacts performance, and that dissenting views in Google are at time met with hostility that is more political reflex than it is critical countenance. The first point should be obviously true, however we live in a time were identity politics on the left tries to shout down any but the hard line reaction to biological determinism.…

First you say this: >> for that sexism play A role, not the ONLY role in creating the gender discrepancy Then you say this: >> Yet of all the women I've known most weren't driven to excel to the same level of most men I've known. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt in that I'm going to assume that it wasn't your intention to make a disturbingly sexist remark in a discussion about sexism. You can replace women with…

> How can anyone think this when half their DNA comes from a man and the other half from a woman?

This looks like a throw-away comment but betrays a bit of ignorance about basic biology. Men have anywhere from 2x-10x more testosterone than women (lots of individual variance) [1], which has a huge effect on personality. Just because most of your DNA is inherited 50/50 does not preclude huge differences between the sexes. This is even more obvious when looking at other, non-human species [2].

[1] http://www.hemingways.org/GIDinfo/hrt_ref.htm

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_dimorphism

Re: 10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google

#145

Post by marcell »

nyxtom wrote: post #119

While some of the points are worth exploring, and have actually with Google's own research (aka psychology safety and Google's project Aristotle on what makes a great team), much of this essay becomes immediately discredited by creating suspect on the premise of questioning employment opportunities for women. I thought about this a bit but let's say it was indeed a factor of employment and advancements over some men…

> Decades of research by organizational scientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists and demographers show that socially diverse groups (that is, those with a diversity of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation) are more innovative than homogeneous groups.

Can you point to the two or three best studies showing this? It seems really hard to study objectively--how do you measure innovativeness? how do you control for all sorts of potentially confounding variable?

Re: 10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google

#146

Post by wpietri »

honestoHeminway wrote: post #138
wpietri wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is definitely not irony. If you have evidence that harm never once originated from people saying words, I'd love to see it. Otherwise, I think you're making an assertion that you'd like to be true. Discussions have effects. That's why we have them.

Words are not actions. Even if you are linguist and coders, you must realize that the code is not the execution.

Humans aren't computers. Words and actions are not always distinct. Indeed, they mostly aren't distinct. If words didn't have an effect on the world, we wouldn't have evolved language.

Re: 10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google

#147

Post by wpietri »

Zarath wrote: post #141
wpietri wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt we ever will know. But we certainly won't know until we eliminate the effects of the enormous confounding variable of our centuries of sexism.

The point is that will literally always be a confounding variable.

I and many others are working for that not to be the case.

Re: 10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google

#148

Post by BoiledCabbage »

cprayingmantis wrote: post #130
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and luckily for them, they don't have to additionally suffer from systemic racial discrimination, which the equivalent member of a minority group frequently would have. Nowhere does it proclaim "If your X your life is hard, if you're Y your life is easy." What is said (roughly) is that for two people otherwise equivalent, if one is X and the other is Y, that in general , in current society life is additionally ha…

I'm not sure your observation of of "white trash", "redneck", and "trailer rats" not suffering from systemic racial discrimination is an accurate one. I for one can assure you that people know how to suss out the difference and it starts at a young age.

It's not clear to me what you're saying. Unless I'm misunderstanding you, "redneck" isn't a racial group.

No-one is arguing that class-based discrimination doesn't exist, as it certainly does.

Re: 10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google

#149

Post by BoiledCabbage »

flukus wrote: post #135
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and luckily for them, they don't have to additionally suffer from systemic racial discrimination, which the equivalent member of a minority group frequently would have. Nowhere does it proclaim "If your X your life is hard, if you're Y your life is easy." What is said (roughly) is that for two people otherwise equivalent, if one is X and the other is Y, that in general , in current society life is additionally ha…

> that in general, in current society life is additionally harder for Xs - and this is due to for historical reasons. In general, yes it is. But you aren't hiring people in general, you are hiring individuals. If you are trying to combat *ism than applying generalizations to individuals is exactly what you should be avoiding.

I hear this argument frequently and it's flawed.

Negative effects are applied in generalities across most aspects of society. Academic research has consistently shown this. Countering effects are also applied in generalities across society.

It is impractical (and not quantifiable) for every instance to be brought forward via an individual lawsuit. While note a perfect analogy, it has similarities to a class-action lawsuit.

We all know it isn't a perfect solution, but it's still better than doing nothing.

In an ideal world, negative effects wouldn't be applied in generalities across segments of society. But that is only very slowly changing.

Re: 10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google

#150

Post by honestoHeminway »

wpietri wrote: post #146
honestoHeminway wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Words are not actions. Even if you are linguist and coders, you must realize that the code is not the execution.

Humans aren't computers. Words and actions are not always distinct. Indeed, they mostly aren't distinct. If words didn't have an effect on the world, we wouldn't have evolved language.

Sorry, i violently reject your opinion. I found it to be the source of some of the utmost terror in totalitatiran regimes, where "Words" are equal to "Traitorous actions" and thus punnished.

And i found that behind this kind of thought, usually a anti-democratic yearning for a opion dictatorship lurks.

Still, violently rejecting does not include preventing you from uttering it.

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