The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

There is money in tech so women have an interest in playing victim to gain advantages. There are also a few males who hope to gain status for themselves and securing their own position by taking the women's side (while keeping other men down).

Men who play (or are) victims on the other hand are generally ridiculed or ignored, so there is no advantage in doing so.

Behind ideas there is usually self interest.

This is correct. There is a lot being made about Google trying to enforce ideological purity, and not enough being made about why Google feels obligated to have this company culture in the first place.

I speculate (without much evidence) that Google's intention is to manage PR and deflect attention away from their actual lack of diversity. http://time.com/4391031/google-diversity-statistics-2016

The base of her argument rests on this:

"In fact, research has shown that cultures with greater gender equity have larger sex differences when it comes to job preferences, because in these societies, people are free to choose their occupations based on what they enjoy."

Jim Flynn's study has unequivocally proven that raising the standards of modern introduction and access to equal education, living standards, and nutrition show increases in overall propensity for cognitive achievement. Though, if you talk to an anthropologist the nature of the term "intelligence" and "cognitive ability" is used in the mixed usage term but says nothing of the nature of intelligence.

Nevertheless, the entire debate is whether we are actually in an egalitarian society to begin with. The nature of even measuring cognitive ability with the g-factor is that it is derived from relative populations. Gender differences might indeed be more amplified in these type of societies but the debate is whether we are already there and to what degree sectors of our large country have access to that.

I would argue, as others have, that the distribution of equal treatment, based on the evidence of exodus from the field of technology speaks far larger volumes about the industry as a whole than it does about biological differences.

Indeed, let's even take into account those biological differences that are being discussed here. Just because one has the propensity to behave a certain way in front a social group of men, and different when a female is around (this too has scientific backing), you could argue that the change in behavior over time would be a product of how distributed those groups are (in thought and in numbers). Food for thought.

It's also interesting to note that creative endeavors tend to lead to high correlations of neuroticism as well. If there are biological differences that show that women are, on average, tend to be more neurotic than men, it doesn't really say much about the nature of interaction or the way we behave with one another. Furthermore, to even attempt to use this as reasoning that women may not last within male-dominated environments is insulting in itself. What it really actually proves is that the inequality in both the diversity thought and in numbers only reinforces the problem. The logic is rot with flaws, (I'm paraphrasing several sections with lines of reasoning; i.e. de-emphasizing empathy) "due to the nature of the tendency for behaving a certain way, we should not make attempts at empathizing with one another because of the heightened sensitivity." Not only is this flawed logic, it's not scientific in the least bit. I would've fired him on that alone.

Indeed, you can also conclude from similar studies that creative endeavors have the tendency to being higher activity in the medial prefrontal cortex. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661315...) Due to the nature of mulling over problems, the tendency is that this often is indicitive of a higher threat sensitivity (real or otherwise); hence the neurotism. This doesn't say anything about the gender differences therein, but rather the brain itself when it comes to problem solving in general.

Of course, the greater problem here is about the nature of social interaction. We can take into account how men tend to behave around other men, or in the presence of women, or women around other women, or in mixed groups; we can take into account innate differences (however pronounced or not); we can even take into account the debate over the access to a population which is educated enough to enter the field of study. Even taking into account the meta-analysis study on things-people, it is a bit presumptuous to think that parity is not obtainable or necessary in STEM.

The nature of STEM revolves around the problems that are being solved. One would hope that those problems are about solving them for PEOPLE. One would hope that software engineers employ creativity and artistic nuances when architecting and collaborating with others. The base of that study only speaks about the anthropologic nature of how people behave within those fields. One can speak of the people-oriented nature of mechanics, engineering, and just about all fields of study. I find it a bit simplistic to categorize STEM as a whole as purely mechanics; it's reductionist and frankly insulting.

The practices at places like Google have been designed to get women who want to be in the field into the field. They're far from perfect. Being a straight white male in a progressive country and working at a larger corporation that is currently undergoing many of the same situations and issues that this whole thing is about -- I will likely be passed over to share the opportunity with people who traditionally have not even been given a chance to prove their ability. That's fine by me. I just have to adjust my trajectory. It's a great wide world with all kinds of wonder outside of optimized career paths.

To add, I started out as an English major. While I did well in most things I applied myself to, I spent the largest part of my youth studying humanities, the human condition, social mores (first hand, from the 'dirt' to the most pious), and art. I'm now back working in amongst the tech world, and studying science again, and that's how you have me here, contributing.

I'd also like to add that my grandmother was an early systems analyst and programmer (FORTRAN, COBOL) and had to work so hard to even be recognized that she wore it as a badge of honour the rest of her life. I didn't understand at the time she told me. I do now.

My mother on the other hand, left her career to look after my siblings and I to the chagrin of her feminista detractors who thought it was a move of weakness. She rallied against that her whole life, and I supported her then, too.

This wavering from one extreme to the other is really harmful, emotionally, on a large scale. However, sometimes we have to dig a little deep to make sure our colleagues, friends, and others get to see a little light. Somebody who's never had to struggle will never understand that fully.

The immediate and harsh backlash for proposing that science is not a good sole means for rationalizing how to work through social issues is pretty striking to me. Anyway, I never claimed to -- and certainly don't -- know what's best, but I know a slippery slope when I see one.

You must have missed the parts in the end where he advocated measures that systemically undermined diversity measures (let's not make this a moral issue, have less empathy, be more rational). While all of those arguments make sense individually, together they take down any diversity in thought: left side brain good, right side brain bad.

What we need more in this discussion is more emotional intelligence, not less.