Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The e-mail Larry Page should have written to James Damore

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–46 of 46 posts

Re: The e-mail Larry Page should have written to James Damore

#41

Post by neo4sure »

dekhn wrote: post #36
splintercell wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The turn off for me was when the article starts talking about what engineering is (Yonatan Zunger's article does the same thing, "Essentially, engineering is all about cooperation, collaboration, and empathy for both your colleagues and your customers."). I don't believe empathy, cooperation, collaboration or managing team is engineering. Engineering is human mind dealing with systems and things. Engineering is as mu…

Any sufficiently complex engineering job involves a social component unless you can somehow isolate yourself from the rest of the world. I had many engineering jobs when I was a junior programmer where there was a well defined interface, a well defined job for me to do, and I did it alone and submitted the code without review and it worked. But, when I started working on teams and on more ambitious projects (some of…

Well said.

Re: The e-mail Larry Page should have written to James Damore

#42

Post by PrimHelios »

bberrry wrote: post #40

It baffles me how this rebuttal is convincing to anyone. Damore argued group differences are in part responsible for the relatively fewer women in tech. I can't see how that over-arching point has been refuted here, no matter how snarky the response.

Because he didn't provide any proof of his claim except a few cherry-picked misinterpreted Wikipedia articles. What proof is there that biological differences are at all responsible? Damore clearly can't seem to find any, or he just didn't care enough to try to find any.

His over-arching point is fundamentally incorrect (as evidenced by the fact that other countries see engineering as a stereotypically female job), and even if it were correct, he didn't provide any actually acceptable proof of said claim.

Let's ignore what I just said though and look at your "group differences are in part responsible" line there. What does it matter if something is in part responsible? How does that at all completely invalidate the possibility that Google is discriminatory? Let's say for a second that Google actually does discriminate against women. Is that perfectly fine now because biological differences are in part to blame? How does that at all invalidate the actual problem being addressed by the diversity memo?

Re: The e-mail Larry Page should have written to James Damore

#43

Post by splintercell »

dekhn wrote: post #36
splintercell wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The turn off for me was when the article starts talking about what engineering is (Yonatan Zunger's article does the same thing, "Essentially, engineering is all about cooperation, collaboration, and empathy for both your colleagues and your customers."). I don't believe empathy, cooperation, collaboration or managing team is engineering. Engineering is human mind dealing with systems and things. Engineering is as mu…

Any sufficiently complex engineering job involves a social component unless you can somehow isolate yourself from the rest of the world. I had many engineering jobs when I was a junior programmer where there was a well defined interface, a well defined job for me to do, and I did it alone and submitted the code without review and it worked. But, when I started working on teams and on more ambitious projects (some of…

You're missing my point. I KNOW how bigger projects are done. My argument is something like this:

Imagine if people kept on saying "Engineering isn't just about building things, it's about design and aesthetics, it's important to know the elements of typography. It's all about that. As a Jr developer you can get away by not caring about design and beauty, but as you go up, it won't fly", then this would annoy most of us because even if it was an absolute requirement to know theory of types and aesthetics in order to do a work as an engineer in a bigger company, that ISN'T fundamentally engineering.

Engineering at its core is about building things, and on it's shoulders other elements (like design, users, engineering management etc) stands. Just like if you are an educator, at it's core, it's about teaching.

> Suddenly, I realized that I could achieve more by engineering people through writing design docs, code review, and cat-herding.

And you'd discover that by learning psychology, you are achieving even more. The problem is, in that case Psychology to HR is the same as Legal to HR, it's expansion of domain.

Re: The e-mail Larry Page should have written to James Damore

#44

Post by Chris2048 »

PrimHelios wrote: post #42
bberrry wrote: post #40

It baffles me how this rebuttal is convincing to anyone. Damore argued group differences are in part responsible for the relatively fewer women in tech. I can't see how that over-arching point has been refuted here, no matter how snarky the response.

Because he didn't provide any proof of his claim except a few cherry-picked misinterpreted Wikipedia articles. What proof is there that biological differences are at all responsible? Damore clearly can't seem to find any, or he just didn't care enough to try to find any. His over-arching point is fundamentally incorrect (as evidenced by the fact that other countries see engineering as a stereotypically female job), a…

For the articles to be "cherry-picked" they must be picked from ones that draw an opposite conclusion.

There is a difference between proving something is possible and that something is True. Damore may have only demonstrated the first, but this is enough to refute the claim "There is sexism in tech because the gender ratio is not equal".

This is why it is important that group differences are in part responsible - it puts a burden on Google et al to find the magnitude if that influence, rather than attribute all of it to sexism. In other words, you can't attribute anything to sexism (without proof) as soon as there are multiple possible influences/causes.

Re: The e-mail Larry Page should have written to James Damore

#45

Post by PrimHelios »

Chris2048 wrote: post #44
PrimHelios wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because he didn't provide any proof of his claim except a few cherry-picked misinterpreted Wikipedia articles. What proof is there that biological differences are at all responsible? Damore clearly can't seem to find any, or he just didn't care enough to try to find any. His over-arching point is fundamentally incorrect (as evidenced by the fact that other countries see engineering as a stereotypically female job), a…

For the articles to be "cherry-picked" they must be picked from ones that draw an opposite conclusion. There is a difference between proving something is possible and that something is True. Damore may have only demonstrated the first, but this is enough to refute the claim "There is sexism in tech because the gender ratio is not equal". This is why it is important that group differences are in part responsible - it…

>For the articles to be "cherry-picked" they must be picked from ones that draw an opposite conclusion.

No, it means he picked articles that supported his viewpoint while ignoring the ones that didn't.

>There is a difference between proving something is possible and that something is True. Damore may have only demonstrated the first, but this is enough to refute the claim "There is sexism in tech because the gender ratio is not equal".

Damore demonstrated the first, and then used that to say that to completely discount any sexism in tech.

>This is why it is important that group differences are in part responsible - it puts a burden on Google et al to find the magnitude if that influence, rather than attribute all of it to sexism. In other words, you can't attribute anything to sexism (without proof) as soon as there are multiple possible influences/causes.

That exact statement could be used against Damore and his supporters.

EDIT: to add to this, Damore would've been completely justified if he had said this to open a dialogue, but he didn't. He should have said "There are multiple possibilities, let's not immediately jump to conclusions.", but he didn't. He took a handful of Wikipedia articles, twisted around what they said to fit his confirmation bias, then said "I'm right, you're wrong, deal with it." and then claimed that was the truth (his twitter handle is @fired4truth). He's very clearly a narcissist who can't handle that he could possibly be wrong.

Re: The e-mail Larry Page should have written to James Damore

#46

Post by Chris2048 »

PrimHelios wrote: post #45
Chris2048 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the articles to be "cherry-picked" they must be picked from ones that draw an opposite conclusion. There is a difference between proving something is possible and that something is True. Damore may have only demonstrated the first, but this is enough to refute the claim "There is sexism in tech because the gender ratio is not equal". This is why it is important that group differences are in part responsible - it…

>For the articles to be "cherry-picked" they must be picked from ones that draw an opposite conclusion. No, it means he picked articles that supported his viewpoint while ignoring the ones that didn't. >There is a difference between proving something is possible and that something is True. Damore may have only demonstrated the first, but this is enough to refute the claim "There is sexism in tech because the gender r…

> it means he picked articles

That's what I mean, He picked those that drew one conclusion, apart from those that drew the opposite, which were not picked.

> then used that to say that to completely discount any sexism in tech

What do you mean "discount"?

> That exact statement could be used against Damore and his supporters.

How? I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying Damore and his supporters are claiming there is no sexism in tech, i.e. the influence of sexism is zero?

> I'm right, you're wrong, deal with it.

Right about what?

Post reply on HN