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The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

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Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

#251

Post by Inconel »

door wrote: post #168
Invictus0 wrote: post #22

It is one thing to debated the veracity of a view, it is another to declare that that view should not be debated. For every point there is a counterpoint; every argument a counterargument. Arguing that the reasoning is flawed is not sufficient to ban it from discussion.

personally a bunch of middle class white male tech bros who have never taken a soft science course in their lives discussing racism and sexism in tech doesn't sound very productive to me. it's shocking how little humility that group of people has, how unwilling they are to say "hey I don't really understand this, I should defer to someone who does", how eager they are to use their hamfisted biological essentialism to…

>tech bros who have never taken a soft science course in their lives

Can someone here comment on the veracity of this statement? I was never smart or disciplined enough to attend college but I do have the good fortune of working with a large number of engineers. Many of them attended extremely highly ranked universities and it seems, from my talking with them on the subject of college education, that all of them took at least some introductory courses in the humanities/social sciences. Some of them are extremely well read and passionate about a number of non-science related topics. Even my coworker that attended Caltech, about as STEM focused a school as you'll find based on what I've heard, double majored in ME and History. I admit I could just be working in a unique place, but I find it hard to believe most people working in tech have no exposure to collegiate level soft science courses, or that they are singularly focused on tech related issues.

Slightly off topic but regarding the whole tech bro term, this has never really sat well with me. For one, it seems to be used to disparage a particular demographic , which I generally find uncivil, but it also doesn't seem very accurate to me, particularly in this instance. For better or worse, when I think tech bro, I usually imagine the more frat-like college educated guys flocking to tech for the pay, but probably not working in the actual tech side of things. I usually imagine more finance and biz dev types. Maybe this is equally unkind on my part. Ironically, I image those people come from a more humanities/soft sciences background.

Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

#252

Post by mcguire »

DuskStar wrote: post #63
Hnrobert42 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I was willing to give him a fair hearing until he listed a handful of differences between men and women that he ascribes to biology without any factual support. And therein lies the unconscious bias against which he is railing. To him, there is no question that men and women, on average, are fundamentally different in ways that affects their ability to and interest in work in tech. I agree with him that folks s…

There are actually a few studies showing gender differences in infants and monkeys. (males preferentially looking at/interacting with mechanical things, females faces/dolls) From that, you can assume that there are at least some biological differences in behavior between the sexes - and thus differing workplace representation is not necessarily 100% derived from social pressures. And if that's the case, achieving a 5…

"...The mental test applied was the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB),..."

Well, ok, then.

"Males have only a marginal advantage in mean levels of g (less than 7% of a standard deviation) from the ASVAB and AFQT, but substantially greater variance. Among the top 2% AFQT scores, there were almost twice as many males as females. These differences could provide a partial basis for sex differences in intellectual eminence."

Now if we only knew the AFQT scores for, say, computer programmers. Oh, wait, we kinda do (http://www.military.com/join-armed-forces/asvab/asvab-and-ai...).

Air Force-wise, Electronic signals intelligence requires a G72, Cyber Systems Operations and Cyber Security requires G64. The ASVAB score is a percentile,

"Thus, an AFQT score of 90 indicates that the examinee scored as well as or better than 90% of the nationally-representative sample of 18 to 23 year old youth. An AFQT score of 50 indicates that the examinee scored as well as or better than 50% of the nationally-representative sample." (http://official-asvab.com/understand_coun.htm)

So being smarter than 65-70% allows you into those jobs.

(I am, by the way, loving Fig. 1. If I'm reading this right, "Auto and shop information" is a better predictor of g than "General science" knowledge.

"Participants were administered the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) which has 10 subtests: science, arithmetic, word knowledge, para- graph comprehension, numerical operations, coding speed, auto and shop information, mathematics knowl- edge, mechanical comprehension, and electronics infor- mation."

Yeah, that's the ASVAB I remember.

"Four of the subtests comprise the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) which includes only the more general, less vocationally-specific tests: arithme- tic, word knowledge, paragraph comprehension, and mathematics knowledge."

Well, at least intelligence, as defined, is less vocationally specific.

Aha! Table 1!

Someone please correct my understanding here if I've missed anything.

The male mean AFQT89 score was 38.7, the female mean was 38.2. The standard deviations were 30.1 and 27.7, respectively. (Wait, what?) The male-female standard deviation ratio was 1.09.

So those are the kinds of numbers we're talking about.

Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

#253

Post by rifung »

devrandomguy wrote: post #193
door wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

straight men commenting on the attractiveness of women's bodies is pretty blatantly sexual. what other reason is there to make that kind of comment? "pure aesthetics"? like Wow Jessica from accounting's body is consistent with Greek Ideals about Archetypal Female Beauty. come on.

Commenting on someone's bathing suit is not inherently sexual, because we do it in non-sexual contexts; for example, I complemented my nephiew's new swim trunks earlier this summer. A particular complement might be sexual, but we shouldn't assume that. For all we know, the guy is gay, and we are now discriminating against that. Furthermore, commenting directly on the awesomeness of someone else's body is also not inh…

> Commenting on someone's bathing suit is not inherently sexual, because we do it in non-sexual contexts; for example, I complemented my nephiew's new swim trunks earlier this summer.

The person wasn't commenting on the bathing suit but on how a coworker's body looked in a bathing suit.

I suppose without additional context we will not know whether it was indeed sexual or not, but if it didn't make anyone uncomfortable I don't see why anyone would bother reporting it.

Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

#254

Post by door »

remarkEon wrote: post #236
door wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uh yeah i'd rather trust people who study society for a living for their opinions on social theory than some computer science major who has never taken a soft science class in his life

So your comment is (rightly) getting downvoted. I think readers here tend to reject anecdotal arguments and rely on data. The critiques of sociology and anthropology are legitimate: those fields are not like technical fields and they lend themselves to weird conclusions that don't get peer reviewed in a way that's different from, say, math or physics.

that's because data isn't 100% appropriate for social sciences. you can't measure everything. shocking as it may be for STEM majors (full disclosure: i have a physics degree), people's feelings and subjective experiences matter, and forms of reason that are not-numerical (ie, philosophy, politics, law, etc) are rigorous and have value. it's weird that this is a radical perspective in this culture.

Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

#255

Post by renaudg »

acdha wrote: post #213
renaudg wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here you go : https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/wh...

That blog post doesn't go into biological reasons — read through it and for each bit of evidence, ask whether the relationship described could be explained by social expectations in early childhood. Talking about career preferences in high school students is much later than what people are talking about – socialization starts before they can talk! I'm married to a neuroscientist and have spent a lot of time talking w…

When you actually read the blog post, you'll see that it does quote research finding sex differences 1) as early as within 2 days after birth and 2) similar in baby monkeys' toy preferences as in human children.

I'll let you decide (Occam's razor is helpful) whether that is more likely the product of biology or "social expectations in early childhood" (within 2 days? in monkeys?).

Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

#256

Post by smsm42 »

door wrote: post #187
devrandomguy wrote: post #170

How is it sexual?

straight men commenting on the attractiveness of women's bodies is pretty blatantly sexual. what other reason is there to make that kind of comment? "pure aesthetics"? like Wow Jessica from accounting's body is consistent with Greek Ideals about Archetypal Female Beauty. come on.

How did you know this was a straight man talking about a woman?

> "pure aesthetics"

You do not think people can appreciate the beauty of human body without wanting to immediately have sex with it? Ever been to a museum? Especially classical section? A lot of skin there. Apparently, those people were real maniacs and sexual predators...

Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

#258

Post by taysic »

0xbear wrote: post #121

As a former Googler: dude is _so_ getting fired and blacklisted. I've seen people driven out just for saying someone else looks good in a bathing suit. Not a direct or indirect report, mind you, a person completely outside the chain of command, at a team event in (IIRC) Hawaii. A small minority of people takes victim mentality and makes it near religious internal dogma. The rest just go along with it due to fat paych…

If that were true and significant, it would mean the company would bleed talent and become such an uncomfortable place to work that a competitor would gain advantage. That's why the market works. For the record, I've heard the exact opposite about the google work environment.

Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

#259

Post by haberman »

rayiner wrote: post #125
factsaresacred wrote: post #5

I fail to understand the outrage but attribute that to the fact that few bothered to read the document before allowing themselves to be outraged by it - such is the shallow, feeling-fueled, hysteria-laden media cycle of today. The doc presents a point-of-view, grounded in reality. Furthermore it's not "anti-diversity", but rather anti-discrimination - specifically 'positive 'discrimination which it discredits while p…

The argument basically proceeds as follows: 1) Gender differences exist 2) ??? 3) Differences in representation are explainable by gender differences The problem with the "???" step is that it's unrigorous handwaving. "Women prefer working with people." Okay, so that's why the majority of accountants are women? That's why STEM fields that don't involve people at all (math, biology) actually have quite a lot of women,…

I agree that "???" is unrigorous handwaving. And I don't think it purports to be rigorous; from the document: "Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership." (emphasis mine). "May" and "in part." I don't think this purports to be a proof.

Is this argument any more rigorous?

1. There is a non-50% representation between men and women in tech.

2. Unjust discrimination and societal pressures are the only possible explanation for this imbalance. Therefore we must intervene until it is 50%.

There is no doubt that unjust discrimination and societal pressures exist, and that we should fight these so that anyone with talent and interest can succeed in this field.

However, if 100% of these pressures were removed, would we have exactly 50% representation of men and women in tech? Many people appear to believe very strongly that this is true. What is the basis for this belief? Are we willing to entertain the possibility that, even without these pressures, we would have less than 50% representation of women in tech?

Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

#260

Post by stagbeetle »

door wrote: post #244
stagbeetle wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment was one of the points argued in the memo. It's important to understand and prioritize intention or else: > increases [in our] our sensitivity, which is not universally positive: sensitivity increases both our tendency to take offense and our self censorship, leading to authoritarian policies. This means distinguishing between a well-meaning comment and a maleficent or predatory remark.

your intentions don't excuse inappropriate behavior. if you really didn't intend to say something that made someone feel disrespected, your response should be "Oh, I am so sorry, I won't make that kind of comment in the future", not "Well you're wrong for being offended." that kind of response is basically saying "your feelings don't matter, all that matters is what is going on in my head and not what I actually did…

Intent is vital in the deliverance and sentencing of criminals (as well as severity).

You'll find that the U.S.A's EEOC does not label one-off remarks as sexual harassment.[0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_harassment#EEOC_Definit...

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