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The Kolmogorov option

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Re: The Kolmogorov option

#371

Post by brighteyes »

geofft wrote: post #367
brighteyes wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, here is a concrete example of a linked document that supports his position http://www.bradley.edu/dotAsset/165918.pdf and the references therein. In particular, > sex differences in personality traits can be detected in early childhood [..] and remain fairly constant across adulthood [..] The effects of these sex differences lead to predictable differences in men’s and women’s leisure behaviors, occupational pr…

Occupational preferences are not the subject of the document, though. The subject is occupational qualification . The specific things he criticizes Google for doing are actions taken once minority candidates have already applied for a job, that is, once they have already expressed interest in the occupation they're applying for: they're about reducing unconscious bias in hiring, reducing the false negative rate in Go…

> Occupational preferences are not the subject of the document, though. The subject is occupational qualification.

No, he talks about both:

> I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.

and

> These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas.

(emphasis mine in both cases). And that linked document does support that claim of his.

(Again, I'm not defending all his claims; just that one.)

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#372

Post by macrael »

akvadrako wrote: post #167
macrael wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim... I'll try and avoid "the most famous and pervasive lazy cheat in American dialogue about free speech" in the future. :0 I really think it's worth reading the employment lawyer piece I linked, it's good to get the actual legal perspective on this whole situation.

Is it? Why? I think it's not a legal issue - clearly Google can fire him without cause. But it's a cultural issue; is it morally acceptable to still work at or with Google, even though they show this behavior? Personally, this pisses me off enough that I've switched to DuckDuckGo for the moment.

Please read the article I linked by an employment lawyer, it definitely is a legal issue. Choosing to not fire the employee would have opened them up to serious legal liability. Now, you can believe that the law is disastrously unjust and that a manifesto calling your colleagues' abilities into question based on their gender should not qualify as creating a hostile work environment, but I am curious if you would feel the same if the arguments had all been based on race instead of on gender?

The most eye opening piece of advice I've received on these subjects has been to try and listen to and believe as many people from these disadvantaged groups as possible. Women and minorities all have rhyming stories of being discriminated against. Part of the nature of systematic discrimination is that it is mostly invisible to the majority that benefit from it. It has to be, because when we notice it, it feels wrong.

The vast majority of women I've seen speak on the issue of this manifesto have said similar things: that they recognize the type of man who would write it, that they've had to deal with that type of man their whole careers, and that giving credence to his arguments by airing them in a company sanctioned forum is demoralizing, making their jobs more difficult, and making them feel more like outsiders to the company.

I believe in the paradox of tolerance. In order to build a tolerant environment, there are some things that cannot be tolerated.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#373

Post by jamesrcole »

Sniffnoy wrote: post #162
pjc50 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all subjects are amenable to "rational discussion", since it's inherently a restricted format which has implicit rules about what does and does not count as "rational". It also tends to presume its own weightlessness. Men seem very unwilling to recognise that the memo and the discussion itself is harmful.

> Men seem very unwilling to recognise that the memo and the discussion itself is harmful. ...you realize where this goes, right? Like -- suppose you're right; and suppose you're given the power to suppress all such harmful discussions. You apply it. No more such discussion. Great. Now suppose this occurs but in fact you're wrong. We must then ask: How would you find out that you're wrong? Well, in such a case, you p…

Excellent comment.

> suppose you're right; and suppose you're given the power to suppress all such harmful discussions.

I would suggest an additional thought experiment:

imagine that 200 years ago people had suppressed what they considered harmful discussions.

Why are so many people who are interested in progressive causes so against the things that have and do help progress such causes?

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#374

Post by btilly »

icebraining wrote: post #123
danarmak wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what Darwin's Descent of Man says, but considering the immediate reaction, I'd say it's not worth defending.

It probably wasn't. Better to write and defending texts that can actually change the public position until the Descent of Man becomes not quite as unpalatable, and therefore eventually worth defending. I'm prefer effectiveness over martyrdom.

I'm sorry, I know that I'm reading a dead discussion. But your comment shows that you have no idea what impact The Descent of Man had. Both good and bad.

You can argue for or against it on many grounds, ranging from Darwin's sexism to the importance of treating humans as just another animal to its misuse by the eugenics movement culminating in the Nazi excesses.

But arguing against it because it did not impact the public position shows an ignorance of history.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#375

Post by macrael »

kbart wrote: post #241
macrael wrote: post #34

Tell me, truly, is this a view held by many here? That, as the church denounced Galileo's observation that we turn around the sun as heretical, so too our modern PC culture suppresses legitimate inquiry into wether gender is a determinant of programming aptitude? This is a comparison worth drawing? Galileo was a scientist. He published papers, books, treatises. He devoted his life to the pursuit of the truth, found a…

"James Damore is a junior programmer who wrote a 10 page 'manifesto' accusing his colleagues of having inferior genes." Read it again, there was not a single word about "inferior". "Different" is the correct word here. Your posts highlights the precise reason we can't have a meaningful discussion on this problem. Your second link to a graph about women working with computers have another explanation - typist was seen…

Why then did that track so neatly with other scientific majors? There's no reason that you'd need the same number of aspiring typists as aspiring doctors.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#376

Post by danarmak »

geofft wrote: post #347
danarmak wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an employee argues for ASP, you might fire him because this implies he's a really bad technical worker. But you wouldn't (have to) fire him because, in arguing for ASP, he hurt the feelings of the PHP proponents in the company and made them feel they have to justify themselves, provoking some to say they would not be willing to work with him in the future even on PHP projects, and that if he wasn't fired they woul…

Nope, a "civil debate" about PHP vs. ASP is a waste of time. No reasonable employer will give you space for debate between the two. If there were a company-wide week-long debate about PHP vs. ASP at my employer, I would seriously question whether I should be at a company where these sorts of questions are considered debate-worthy, whether I have to justify every decision I make about common-sense things (why am I wri…

There's an important difference between silencing opinions that (you think) are very stupid for practical engineering reasons, and not wanting to work with the fools who hold them; and between silencing opinions because you think they are morally abhorrent and harmful just by being expressed, and punishing people for holding or expressing them.

Morality is a psychologically distinct category. Being morally wrong is not the same, is not treated the same, as being factually wrong. A core part of the problem here is that something we'd want to be discussed factually, like choice of programming language, instead became a moral issue.

If a programmer advocates for ASP in a PHP company, it's reasonable he'd be fired, although I'd hope he'd be given a warning and a second chance first. However, thousands of people across the company would not get involved, the CEO of a megacorp would not cancel his family vacation to make a personal statement, the news media would not give it prominent coverage. Nobody much would care about a not-very-senior employee turning out to have a foolish or wrong factual opinion and being fired for it. But everyone cares about an employee making a moral stand that some (including other employees) may agree with, and being fired for that.

To repeat my earlier point: advocacy of ASP, here standing for any technical or factual matter, might be very wrong factually; but advocating for ASP would not hurt people's emotions and feelings of safety.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#377

Post by jamesrcole »

pjc50 wrote: post #263
Sniffnoy wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Men seem very unwilling to recognise that the memo and the discussion itself is harmful. ...you realize where this goes, right? Like -- suppose you're right; and suppose you're given the power to suppress all such harmful discussions. You apply it. No more such discussion. Great. Now suppose this occurs but in fact you're wrong. We must then ask: How would you find out that you're wrong? Well, in such a case, you p…

> bad epistemic practices The idea that some groups of humans are intrinsically inferior to others is one of these "banned" "facts" that has been excluded from civilised discussion for a reason, and that lies in the history of so-called "scientific racism" that was used to justify genocides in the 20th century. The idea that "some groups of humans have a statistical average of some attribute that is higher than some…

> The idea that some groups of humans are intrinsically inferior to others is one of these "banned" "facts" that has been excluded from civilised discussion for a reason

Have you ever heard the quote "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it"?

I think it's much better to be able to discuss bad ideas, and discuss why they are bad, rather than to prevent (or apply strong pressure against) anyone from publicly bringing them up.

If we make it difficult to discuss about certain topics, who decides which ideas can't be talked about? What if a bigoted group comes into power? Won't this norm to hinder certain discussions hand them a powerful weapon for oppression?

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#378

Post by fnord123 »

brighteyes wrote: post #327
manicdee wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Kolmogorov Option is not to simply stay quiet, it is to not participate in activities where the only outcomes are negative. So while avoiding the Red Pill brigade, participate in team building and reinforcing relationships with the people you want to keep around you. So you have a safe area (a domain of your life, not a physical constraint) where you relate to people with protected attributes the way they wish to…

"Choose your battles" does make sense, and I think the Kolmogorov option is an honorable one. But I'm not sure it should apply here: First, Kolmogorov lived in a dictatorship. Most people talking here live in a democracy. We have many more options for fighting incorrect but widely-accepted beliefs. Second, Kolmogorov lived before the internet. Internet anonymity helps minorities speak up and get organized (as we can…

>"Choose your battles" does make sense

It's a phrase that implies you should fight less. Which leaves you ill equipped at fighting when it matters to you.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#379

Post by aidenn0 »

macrael wrote: post #34

Tell me, truly, is this a view held by many here? That, as the church denounced Galileo's observation that we turn around the sun as heretical, so too our modern PC culture suppresses legitimate inquiry into wether gender is a determinant of programming aptitude? This is a comparison worth drawing? Galileo was a scientist. He published papers, books, treatises. He devoted his life to the pursuit of the truth, found a…

Ultimately I think it boils down to whether or not you see the memo as dog-whistle misogyny.

HN's guidelines specifically encourage posting anything that "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." So we can hopefully assume that the

I think anybody who is intellectually curious is interested in whether population-level neurological sexual dimorphism has any significant impact on career outcomes. If you do not read the memo as dog-whistle misogyny, then you will see this reaction as an indication that investigating this fact is forbidden.

Just to quote a few things you said as an example:

"legitimate inquiry into whether gender is a determinant of programming aptitude"

"accusing his colleagues of having inferior genes."

The memo in question never once mentioned engineering aptitude nor ability. It did claim that women were not pursuing software jobs due to a combination of things they found distasteful, some of which were inherent to the job and others of which are cultural.

Again, if it's dog-whistle misogyny, then reading this as: "I think I can get away with talking about differences of preference, so I'll just let people fill in the blanks in terms of differences of ability" makes perfect sense, but I hope you could see how others might not make that inference?

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#380

Post by the8472 »

jacalata wrote: post #346
the8472 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> BUT, I do think (hope?) we can agree that there are some ideas that are abhorrent. I use the example of race-based slavery above. Well, if you feel confident that race-based slavery is in no way justifiable then it should be relatively easy to find arguments why it is not justifiable, no? An obvious one would be pointing out largely overlapping intra- and inter-race variances in genetics. If your race-based-slavery…

And you believe that a paper arguing that "black people are genetically suited to being slaves and therefore we should not expect them to become managers at google in a demographically representative proportion" is a reasonable statement to make about Google promotion practices and should not lead to the speaker being fired, so long as he adds references to the Bell Curve and the lack of black executives America?

If he can back his arguments with research and they don't contain any logical flaws then one should at least entertain them for a few minutes. After all he might be (partially) right and do his employer a favor.

If he is wrong in ways that could be honest mistakes then one should first try to point out the mistakes so he can retract his document until he can find stronger evidence or truly see the error of his ways. For that to happen people need to respond with rational arguments, not with outrage.

If he is wrong and does not respond to counter-arguments and -evidence, then some HR response would be appropriate. And note that I say "HR response", not dogpiling and not necessarily firing.

Argument-by-firing will only harden the ideological frontlines and further extremes.

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