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Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

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Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#211

Post by Super_Jambo »

Const-me wrote: post #147
relics443 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that Trump was only elected because he was appealing to the alt-right? Surely that was part of it, but why is everyone so eager to "blame" it on the marginalized alt-right? Is it a scare tactic for 2020 /r

I’m not saying that, and the GP mentions alt right just as one possible outcome. But I think Trump is definitely more right than left, at least compared to Clinton. This might have contributed to his victory.

'More right' Clinton is a neo-liberal and Trump is a lunatic.

It's pretty hard to put that into a left-right economic spectrum.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#212

Post by GVIrish »

Const-me wrote: post #113

IMO the best comment from there: Giulio Prisco said... The results of this incident are easy to predict. Now everyone at Google (and everyone in large tech companies, and everyone in academy) knows that they can be fired for expressing opinions that dissent from the party line. Of course they'll shut up for fear of losing their job and the means to support their family. But they won't change their position. If anythi…

> Now everyone at Google (and everyone in large tech companies, and everyone in academy) knows that they can be fired for expressing opinions that dissent from the party line.

This is an example of people taking exactly the wrong lesson from this situation. The guy wasn't fired for having a 'dissenting opinion'. He was fired because he basically said women are underrepresented in IT because they are biologically unsuited for it. If someone's 'opinion' is that phrenology explains why black people are underrepresented in tech they'd meet with a similar fate

There are a lot of situations these days where people are expressing opinions at work that are insensitive to or outright disparage another group of people, then getting shocked when they're fired.

The problem is that tolerance in the workplace of bigotry towards any group is rapidly eroding and some people don't know where the line of appropriateness is. They've never had to think much about the impact of their opinions on minorities and women so they're almost blind about what is over the line.

The thing is that many people who get into these situations have at least some idea that what they're gonna say is offensive. They'll preface things with, "I'm not racist but..." but continue right on saying it. Like they know on some level it's offensive but they don't consider that 'hey, maybe I'm in the wrong and I shouldn't go there'. 'No, it must be that liberals are out to censor me and destroy free speech'.

It's funny that some people point to a situation like this and say, "This is why we have Trump." If people voted for someone who routinely espoused racist and misogynist attitudes as a reaction to being criticized, that pretty much means they actually are bigots on some level. If you're not a bigot, the reasons to vote for him would be his policies, not his crude and prejudiced 'political incorrectness'

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#213

Post by elcapitan »

_b8r0 wrote: post #183
Const-me wrote: post #113

IMO the best comment from there: Giulio Prisco said... The results of this incident are easy to predict. Now everyone at Google (and everyone in large tech companies, and everyone in academy) knows that they can be fired for expressing opinions that dissent from the party line. Of course they'll shut up for fear of losing their job and the means to support their family. But they won't change their position. If anythi…

I made the grave mistake of trying to express that point on Twitter. Twitter seems to be a poor vehicle for nuanced debate at the best of time, but it's a dumpster fire right now full of raging people who don't understand what you've just said. I was in SV last year for a couple of months during the election, and everyone I met were all paid up members of the church of political correctness up front, but when you spo…

> "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum"

"What kind of freedom is there inside a corporation? They’re totalitarian institutions – you take orders from above and maybe give them to people below you. There’s about as much freedom as under Stalinism."

Amen to that.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#214

Post by mpweiher »

memedtodeath wrote: post #180
jancsika wrote: post #121

> And let us be clear that, yes, such policies mean every once in a while you will not hire the most skilled person for a job. Therefore, a value judgement must be made here, not a logical deduction from data. Is diversity important enough for you to temporarily tolerate an increased risk of not hiring the most qualified person? That’s the trade-off nobody seems willing to spell out. Perhaps because it's not a necess…

When the Australian public service experimented with blinding demographic data on resumes, fewer women and minorities were hired: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria... A blind recruiting process only increases diversity if there exists significant bias against diverse candidates. I wouldn't be surprised if Silicon Valley has a bias in favor of diverse candidates, like Australia's public serv…

And I think that this is the bind that Google and others are finding themselves in: the assumption is prejudice so they make honest and effective efforts to combat prejudice and don't get the desired result in terms of outcomes.

See the example of the GitHub-sponsored conference whose trial of blind reviewing resulted in zero women speakers.

So Google is getting hammered from two sides, on the one hand they're getting sued because the outcomes are not what they're supposed to be, on the other hand they are already doing diversity programs that at least skirt or already dip into illegal practices. (In his interviews, James Damore has mentioned secretive diversity session that were not recorded, unlike everything else at Google, and that told of practices such as quotas that to him seemed extremely sketchy or downright illegal)

Of course this goes back to Pinker's comment in his debate with Elizabeth Spelke that we must distinguish the moral proposition that people should not be discriminated against on account of their sex from the empirical claim that males and females are (biologically) indistinguishable, because distinguishing them is actually essential to protecting the core of feminism. Because if you don't distinguish and it turns out that your empirical proposition is false, you must then either (a) discriminate or (b) distort/suppress the truth, or both. And that appears to be exactly what is happening.

https://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_index.htm...

UPDATE: Google's Diversity Efforts Fall Flat -- https://www.axios.com/googles-diversity-efforts-are-making-l...

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#215

Post by dx034 »

GVIrish wrote: post #212
Const-me wrote: post #113

IMO the best comment from there: Giulio Prisco said... The results of this incident are easy to predict. Now everyone at Google (and everyone in large tech companies, and everyone in academy) knows that they can be fired for expressing opinions that dissent from the party line. Of course they'll shut up for fear of losing their job and the means to support their family. But they won't change their position. If anythi…

> Now everyone at Google (and everyone in large tech companies, and everyone in academy) knows that they can be fired for expressing opinions that dissent from the party line. This is an example of people taking exactly the wrong lesson from this situation. The guy wasn't fired for having a 'dissenting opinion'. He was fired because he basically said women are underrepresented in IT because they are biologically unsu…

> He was fired because he basically said women are underrepresented in IT because they are biologically unsuited for it.

I don't understand why people keep repeating that statement. He said that biological differences explain the different ratios of men and women, NOT that women are not suited for tech jobs. He explicitely did not say (nor mean) that a woman can't be a good software engineer. Just that on average, more men than women will show the features needed for software engineers.

That is a huge difference. It doesn't disqualify any woman working at Google. It just means that the goal to reach 50% women could lead to a worse outcome.

Disclaimer: I don't necessarily support his claims, nor do I support his memo as such. I just think that it's worth thinking about and that there should be more scientific studies to explore this. Diversity campaigns should be based on science, not on populism.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#216

Post by dandare »

Disagreeing with Damore’s arguments is perfectly ok.

Not liking the style of his memo is perfectly ok.

Calling Damore young and clueless is useless ad hominem. Chances are he is smarter than you and me and the memo is actually well sourced.

Calling him a WHITE MAN is an essentialism that reveals the author's bias.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#217

Post by michaelchisari »

cm2187 wrote: post #208
michaelchisari wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll see how the trend moves going forward, but even after capturing (by rhetoric if not act) the white house, the alt-right continues to be a radical fringe, and suffers from serious internal contradictions that make any serious movement building doomed. The movement has attracted the attention of a lot of white nationalists, anti-semites and hardline fascists (amren, natall, kss), while also attracting a new wave…

I am not sure I get your objection. It's like saying that Clinton couldn't win the election because she had far-left/communist sympathisers. I am sure she did. And I am also sure these were a marginal portion of her electoral base. I don't see how these extremists would stand in the way of a broader movement. I am not bullish on Trump long term, but not because some extremists also support him, but because of his own…

It might be important I clarify that I'm not talking about the right, I'm talking about the far right (re-branded as the "alt-right"). This does not include most people who vote Republican or consider themselves traditional conservatives.

The traditional conservative movement is dying out. Quite literally, it has a demographic problem that it is not sure how to resolve. In it's place, you have the alt-right, which does tend to be more youthful, but which acts as an umbrella for a wide variety of extremist viewpoints, everything from extreme libertarianism to conspiracy theorists to white nationalism to single-issue anti-islamic advocates and a whole host of others. And within that milieu, a large proportion of people are not singularly committed to those hard-right ideologies as much as they define themselves solely in their rejection of liberalism, the left, or social justice. The result is a whole host of confusion. The alt-right is constantly infighting about cultural issues such as traditional masculinity or gay rights, to the difference between opposition to illegal immigration (a viewpoint which can claim to be more centrist) or opposing immigration altogether, including legal (which is held by the nationalist wing of the movement).

As the voting base disappears, these groups will have to figure out how to grow their movement, make political demands, maintain a presence without burning out, etc. Just like all movements do. But that's exactly where those intense internal divisions come in and wreak havoc.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#218

Post by mpweiher »

manicdee wrote: post #204
memedtodeath wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the Australian public service experimented with blinding demographic data on resumes, fewer women and minorities were hired: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria... A blind recruiting process only increases diversity if there exists significant bias against diverse candidates. I wouldn't be surprised if Silicon Valley has a bias in favor of diverse candidates, like Australia's public serv…

Note that men and women typically present themselves differently on CVs and in selection criteria, with men typically giving themselves credit for work done in teams while women typically talk about the teams they were part of. This would easily explain why blind resumes resulted in a larger proportion of men being selected. edit: to contrast with the orchestra scenario, a resume is not a skill test, while an auditio…

Interesting hypothesis, but apparently not what happened:

"The trial found assigning a male name to a candidate made them 3.2 per cent less likely to get a job interview.

Adding a woman's name to a CV made the candidate 2.9 per cent more likely to get a foot in the door."

http://abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to...

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#219

Post by gambiting »

jancsika wrote: post #121

> And let us be clear that, yes, such policies mean every once in a while you will not hire the most skilled person for a job. Therefore, a value judgement must be made here, not a logical deduction from data. Is diversity important enough for you to temporarily tolerate an increased risk of not hiring the most qualified person? That’s the trade-off nobody seems willing to spell out. Perhaps because it's not a necess…

There was an argument made about it some time ago, that in 19th century playing music was an excellent education for a lady, so thousands if not hundreds of thousands of women had to take piano/violin/flute lessons and become skilled at playing music. Yet that time period has yielded close to zero great women musicians/composers, even though the society has pushed them at a disproportional rate to pursue music playing. Obviously there are other factors here, like the expectation that a woman is a housewife first even if she can play music really well. It's an interesting debate I think.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#220

Post by michaelchisari »

Const-me wrote: post #210
michaelchisari wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't say that inspires confidence that the poll is even legitimate. Do we at least have proof that it actually was an internal Google poll and not someone's 15 minutes in photoshop?

No, we don’t have that proof. However, the design matches the defaults of google forms, exact colors and their sequence, too: http://imgur.com/WPC0ogZ Also the header says "gd-jpeg v1.0", it’s a cross platform open source C library with bindings for all modern programming languages including Go and Python: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GD_Graphics_Library Even if that’s a fake, it’s a good one.

I mean, GD has been around for over 20 years. It's not obscure. It's extremely popular. Most coders have used it at some point.

I could whip upa similar graph without breaking a sweat that says whatever I'd like, and it would have all the same hallmarks of this one. I could even do it in PHP using ImageMagick (if I felt masochistic) and fake the file header to say it was created using GD. Or build it in photoshop, and pull it into a binary editor.

So I think unless there's someone who can point to greater evidence that this is an internal graph, there's just no reason to believe it is.

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