Please don't flag the article if you simply disagree. The key to changing minds is understanding the other side. Not shutting them out of the conversation.
IIRC, flagging has a lower karma threshold than downvoting.
The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science
321–330 of 684 posts
Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If the main argument is that women do not [by nature of our scientific understanding] have minds tuned to engineering prowess to the extent that men do for whatever cause, then just how does that itself prescribe that we should stop pushing for an expansion there? You are wrong in this assumption. I am going to try to explain it. We have group A and group B with different genetics. We measure everybody in the group…
You are missing the trees for the forest. Your argument is on individual skills in a distribution within a gender. Have you considered how gender distribution within a team may affect productivity? This is the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Even if we hire more of group B and we end up with a lower average of a particular skill in the team, if productivity goes up as a result, then it is still a good hir…
First your comment of missing the trees for the forest didn't add anything to the discussion.
1) If you hire more from group B other company cannot hire them. So you will have imbalance in another place. You don't solve the problem but move it to another company.
2) Skills usually are related. If you need some set of skills for a position I don't see how not having them is going to increase the productivity.
3) I never said we are assigning the right skills to the positions. I strongly believe that we should have more "female" skills in more tech positions because they add value and we are not doing it now.
4) When you are not good at one skill you don't want to have a position where that skill is valuated. You are happy working in positions that fit the skills you have. This fact decrease the number of women that want go into tech because they don't like it. We can solve this if we add more "female" skills to tech positions and learn to assess everybody by their skills even when they are different.
Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
Worse, with social justice this usually takes the form of a motte and bailey argument. The statement that "we don't mean all white men" and "we mean a system of systemic biases/practices" is usually a defense in response to being called out for dismissing someone for being white or male. "Mansplaining" is the clearest example of this. Supposedly it's only used to describe a man condescendingly explaining something a…
Of all terms that have been formed on the internet, "mansplaining" is the one I hate the most. All a discussion is, at the end of the day, is two people explaining their own viewpoints. But now, with this word, you have a get-out-of-conversation-free card because if you don't like someone's response, just say it's mansplaining. It's almost unbelievably ignorant.
I can't speak for the abuse of the term (I've never experienced what you're describing), but 'mansplaining' refers to a very real phenomenon.
To put gender aside, egos and biases can always get in the way of two people explaining their viewpoints. You are pretty lucky if you've never had somebody explain a concept you already understood in a very condescending way.
Many men do this to women when they assume that these women aren't as knowledgeable as they are. 'Mansplaining' specifically describes this.
Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science
#324> But sexism isn’t the result of knowing facts; it’s the result of what people choose to do with them. We know that men are taller than women. I can see you agreeing, but actually this statement is ambiguous, because these two are not the same thing: A man is taller than a women On average, men are taller than women Sexism is taking a random male and a random female, and claiming that despite all the facts presented…
> Sexism is taking a random male and a random female, and claiming that despite all the facts presented to you, the male is taller than the female. It doesn't matter that in a specific case a female is taller than a male.
Upvoted for this. Great definition of sexism.
> Well I'd argue that isn't great accuracy as 50% is what you'd expect from chance.... In fact, I might expect a similar accuracy from a machine-learning technique to predict sex based on your height. ...With height, I don't think anyone thinks it's anything other than genetic....
If the method is probably as good at predicting sex as one based on height, which everyone agrees is genetic, then why isn't that great accuracy?
Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science
#325This defense of the "manifesto" is flawed just like the others. It picks out a small subset of the claims made in the document, discards the context and all the other claims, and then harangues us for having a problem with "science". I could argue "water is composed of two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule, so women are bad at software development", and my argument would just be a difference of degree worse…
Thank you for this great response. I think you've covered why the 'manifesto' cannot be supported on a scientific basis very well. There's another issue with the manifesto that I don't think is talked about as much. And that's the human element. All the cited science in the manifesto is irrelevant in my opinion. As an engineer you work with other people. You probably spend 40 or 50 hours a week with them. They may or…
I understand the arguments about how valuable interpersonal skills are to software development, but I don't like talking about them for a couple reasons:
1. The effect sizes we're talking about are tiny. A randomly selected cohort of men and women can routinely be expected to produce more women innately skilled at math, or more men innately skilled at negotiation. It's one of the more galling aspects of the debate about this stupid "manifesto", which at one point redraws a well-known chart about the overlap in ability between men and women to exaggerate the difference between the sexes: at no point do any of the advocates of the "manifesto" address effect size compared to the observed disparity in the field.
2. Very little about computer science as it is practiced in the industry is tied with any rigor to any particular skill. For the most part, software development is a standard white-collar symbol manipulation job in which productivity is defined mostly by meticulousness and generic learning and pattern matching. Attempts to break down aptitude by gender tend to imagine computer science in terms of compiler theory and algorithm design, when in reality 90% of all software development is repeated iterations of "wire this database column into this UI table".
Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If the main argument is that women do not [by nature of our scientific understanding] have minds tuned to engineering prowess to the extent that men do for whatever cause, then just how does that itself prescribe that we should stop pushing for an expansion there? You are wrong in this assumption. I am going to try to explain it. We have group A and group B with different genetics. We measure everybody in the group…
The point is, many people feel very bad at the thought that the distribution you mention exists. Some feel it's not something inherent and can be changed.
The more important point is, that when people feel strongly about something, facts presented that counter their opinion trigger cognitive dissonance. That's why nearly everyone I follow on Twitter was complaining about a memo (usually calling it a manifesto) that had little to nothing to do with the one I read.
Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
In modern days, suppressing free speech is 90% a leftist thing.
Didn't a republican congressman literally commit a violent assault on a reporter, and then win accolades by the right and get rewarded for it? Do you believe violent assaults chill free speech?
I didn't say 100%.
Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you mean "Welcome to modern politics". Suppressing free speech you don't agree with is a time-tested tradition of most mainstream political thought. However, it's most disappointing to see from people you otherwise agree with.
In modern days, suppressing free speech is 90% a leftist thing.
Hardly, it's just that the left are bigger hypocrites because free-speech is ostensibly a core tenant of liberalism, however, conservative ideology rejected free-speech as a value long ago. The only reason these liberal anti-speech protests make the news is because colleges invite speakers to their campuses. Imagine how conservatives would react if Richard Dawkins or Bill Maher tried to give a speech in a Christian church? Imagine the reaction if liberal thinkers spoke up during church sermons to exclaim that scientific evidence conflicts with many contemporary religious ideas. This never happens because they're never invited or welcome to do so, thus conservatives are able to relish the comfort of their safe-spaces while lambasting liberals for protesting openly antagonistic speakers like Ann Coulter on college campuses.
It's a well established fact that conservatives are, at a minimum, just as guilty of hostility to ideas they don't like as liberals.
Consider Megyn Kelly, a celebrated conservative journalist whose career was completely destroyed simply because she asked Trump some tough questions.
Consider Tomi Lahren who was a cherished conservative icon until she came out in support of abortion based on her conservative principles of individual freedom... following that expression of free speech she was squeezed out of her job and destroyed in the conservative press.
Consider Gretchen Carlson who was humiliated and dragged through the mud in conservative circles after she spoke out about her own experiences with sexual harassment in the workplace.
Consider John McCain who is regularly blasted as a RINO because he occasionally takes an action that is not in complete lockstep with the party line.
Consider Glenn Beck who was on the receiving end of boycotts and death threats because early on, he spoke out against Trump in favor of the eminently conservative Ted Cruz!
Consider Ted Cruz himself who was literally booed off stage during the RNC because he dared to instruct the audience to "vote with your conscience" instead of blindly praising Trump.
The list goes on and on, so I have to reject your assertion that "suppressing free speech is 90% leftist" as utter ignorance.
Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science
#329I 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? Debate me instead of downvoting please. Downvoting is like forfeiting a discussion and shows that you question your own narrative.
As far as I could tell from the coverage (I couldn't get past the first few paragraphs of the memo), it asks for more diversity in terms of right-wing/conservative thinking, and for Google to stop encouraging women to apply. On the surface – that's asking for both more and less diversity, however Google rejects the idea that conservative views (that are compatible with Google's HR policies) are discouraged, which wou…
> I couldn't get past the first few paragraphs of the memo
So you didn't read it? Because ... you were offended or because of practical reasons (like you are illiterate) ?
I don't think that the memo asked for "less diversity" just not forced diversity, at least not the way it is forced at google.
> , however Google rejects the idea that conservative views (that are compatible with Google's HR policies) are discouraged
I have a hard time believing that since they already take a hard stance against their conservative users. Also have you seen some of the tweets from the opposite forces at google? I don't think so...
Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science
#330As with many defenses of the Damore memo (and more than a few attacks against it as well), this completely misses the point. Let's say for the sake of argument that there are differences in ability and/or preference between men and women. Let's even say that the magnitude of those differences is sufficient to explain a 4:1 ratio between male and female engineers at Google (which is clearly not true). My response is s…
To clarify: your point is that the question of whether or not he's right is irrelevant; he shouldn't have said what he said, because what he said is abhorrent and/or dangerous?
No, that's a total misrepresentation of what I said. I'm saying whether he's right on that one point is irrelevant, because he tries to make a hundred others that are just as bad. But thanks for showing how Damore's supporters are just as guilty of "virtue signaling" as they accuse others of being.