181–190 of 684 posts
I'm surprised greater attention is not focused on the fact the "science" is in the midst of a reproducibility crisis. This is a big issue in the hard sciences; I can only imagine what it's like in the squishy science of gender behavior. Tying your reputation to such a soft foundation is just inviting trouble.
What disturbs me most about this incident is how many people's first instinct, when faced with views they strongly disagree with, is to try and suppress those views and the person speaking them. Not to engage with the argument or to try and argue against it, just to shut the other person down. It's a totalitarian kind of response.
You follow different people than I do. I saw people engage with the arguments. Google's official responses explained how diversity was essential to their company.
That doesn't invalidate what I said. I said "What disturbs me most about this incident is how many people's first instinct..." I never said that literally every single person's response was like this. Are you trying to argue that there weren't a lot of people doing what I said?
From below (I wanted to make sure this didn't get hidden under a downvoted comment): >I fail to understand how a memo calling for MORE diversity can get headlined as "anti-diversity memo" on all big media outlets. Do journalists even do independent research anymore or are they just regurgitating whatever reuters send their way without scrutiny? The author is referring to psychological diversity, in other words, Googl…
There's a movie on Netflix at the moment, a German movie called "Er Ist Wieder Da" ("look who's back") about Hitler returning in modern-day Germany. It's part movie, part documentary - the actor playing Hitler travels around the country and talks to people about politics and the like, and finds there's a lot of people agreeing with some of the standpoints.
The nazis crossed a huge number of lines and had some batshit people at the helm, but I'm sure you could find some points that a lot of people would agree with even in these days. Same with white supremacists, some of which have toned down their racism and become more politically correct.
Not much new here. This article is essentially just re-affirming all the scientific statements that were already made in the original memo, backed by links to scientific studies. Only difference being that the author of this article has a PhD in sexual neuroscience (so people might have a harder time accusing her of not knowing what she's talking about) and is female (so some people might have a harder time of accusi…
I personally never called it out for sexism. I called it out for regressive-thinking as a solution based on plain fact. I can only be brief right now, but it's starting to get to me how so many people in an innovative sphere seem to have such a hard time with this. To me, it seems like it shouldn't be a second thought. If the main argument is that women do not [by nature of our scientific understanding] have minds tu…
We wouldn't have a percent of liberties and developments also in the anti-patriarchal quest without science and rationalism.
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> If it's scientific doesn't mean I can argue without repercussion that I should be allowed to cut before asian men in the line in the cafeteria because as tall people we are always hungrier. Even arguing that would (rightly) be considered racist. Suppose that height is an advantage in basketball and we thereby discover that asian men are underrepresented in the NBA. Are you claiming that is racist and something we h…
I don't. However, it's a fine line. Pro sports is a bit special, but it might be racist to not let a player try out because of an asian name, quoting that "thanks for your letter, but asian men are on average so short that we don't want to see you". Context, and what precise actions are taken is important here. The underrepresntation of black people in tech isn't "racist" though there are probably a lot of racist act…
Well of course it is, but it's inaccurate to suggest that the gender disparity in tech is entirely attributable to companies turning away female applicants on account of their gender. And if the suggestion was for some hypothetical company that was doing that to stop, there would be no objection.
The problem comes when the portion of the gender disparity that isn't attributable to discrimination is attributed to it anyway, and then employers are continually lambasted for something they didn't actually do.
It distracts from addressing the real problems (especially at the high school level) that could actually improve the gender ratio going forward.
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Nope. But the original memo defends discrimination against women and makes recommendations for future discrimination. Implementing these suggestions would be literally illegal for Google (subject to EEOC), and in fact Google is already in a lawsuit defending their alleged discrimination.
> the original memo defends discrimination against women Can you back up this claim with a citation from the document? If not, can you explain your thought (feeling) process?
> Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles and Google can be and we shouldn’t deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this).
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I personally never called it out for sexism. I called it out for regressive-thinking as a solution based on plain fact. I can only be brief right now, but it's starting to get to me how so many people in an innovative sphere seem to have such a hard time with this. To me, it seems like it shouldn't be a second thought. If the main argument is that women do not [by nature of our scientific understanding] have minds tu…
"He used science to reason out a way to revert to a state of community where he stands to gain more." This is spot on right here and the main difference between the memo and this article. The memo might have cited real science but it arrived at grossly inappropriate conclusions.
It frames everything through a lens of identity power struggles. Therefore, whether an argument is scientific and factual is secondary to what identity group the person making it belongs to, and what their group stands to gain from it.
This ideological lens is anti-science, anti-cooperation, extremely racist/sexist and ultimately focused on only one objective: reducing the power of the group perceived as being at the top of the social dominance hierarchy.
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I personally never called it out for sexism. I called it out for regressive-thinking as a solution based on plain fact. I can only be brief right now, but it's starting to get to me how so many people in an innovative sphere seem to have such a hard time with this. To me, it seems like it shouldn't be a second thought. If the main argument is that women do not [by nature of our scientific understanding] have minds tu…
Please define what's Regressive about plain facts... > it's starting to get to me how so many people in an innovative sphere seem to have such a hard time with this The prevailing (cultural) attitude is clearly against plain facts. The question should be why the prevailing attitude is against facts and real solutions but embraces lies and bad solutions. That is what is getting to intelligent people no matter their sp…
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> I think you're very intentionally trying mischaracterize people That's a pretty strong accusation. What is your evidence for that claim? Show me what I wrote that attempts to do that.
W.. what? Literally your post. I'd have to quote the whole thing. "many people's first instinct". It wasn't many people's first instinct. Again, I read the article, many others read the article and wrote detailed responses. It's not my job to point these out. Someone making a stupid argument does not obligate anyone to engage or correct them. A massive popular backlash against a shitty idea isn't "trying to shut it d…
If the backlash is devoid of logic and facts, consisting mainly of character attacks and shaming....ya, that's "shutting it down". And if that's not enough, how about being fired from your job?
It's amazing how differently people perceive the very same facts.