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

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

theglobeandmail.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 684 posts

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

#441

Post by and0 »

mistermann wrote: post #416
and0 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The backlash is not devoid of logic and facts. Again, a shitty argument does not merit a thesis on it's shittyness from everyone who dismisses it, and there are plenty of in-depth critiques that you would've sought out if your agenda was to actually look into it and better yourself. Also, Google firing him did not shut the argument down. He can happily draft more memos or expand on it. Google Docs is free.

> there are plenty of in-depth critiques I'd be interested to read a few if you could provide some links. This assumes they exist of course, from the reading I've done on the topic I haven't seen any substantial rebuttal linked anywhere, but I've heard more than one person complain that the only rebuttal they've seen is "sexist!". I have no particular horse in the race so if you do have content to back up your assert…

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2143285-memo-to-all-tec...

Is probably the best response I can find at the moment. A few days back my Twitter was full of medium posts responding to specific points, but Twitter is not great about finding these things.

I agree with the linked article 100%, which states that there is plenty of scientific evidence that states the contrary, and there is plenty of science done about cultural differences.

A lot of what is so frustrating is that so much of this is just common sense, especially to identify that there are a huge number of cultural factors acting like a feedback to make people behave a certain way to meet expectations.

I'd refute most religions the same way. It's very clear to me that, for example, the Bible was written by humans vs something divine, as the odds of a God thinking and behaving (being petty, spiteful, or even altruistic) exactly like the humans that read it do seems pretty slim and frankly unimaginative.

There's a "chicken or the egg" question that needs to come with every assessment of behaviors of groups vs societal expectations and pressures on those groups. People in power, like yourself presumably (despite your insistence of having "no particular horse in the race) will always pretend that things are the way they are because of divine or otherwise pre-determined reasons. It's silly that people who consider themselves so rational are unable to comprehend how obvious this is.

Also lol @ programs for underrepresented groups “increase race and gender tensions”. Get fucked, dude.

edit: came across one of the ones I read before from a recently ex-Google employee: https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man...

it's super good and worth a read

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

#442

Post by jdmichal »

mmirate wrote: post #354
omikun wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> left side brain good, right side brain bad We're programmers/engineers, not painters/artists. Hence I don't see where that statement doesn't hold absolutely true for us. (Except perhaps for management, team leads and entrepreneurs.)

This is how you end up with a convoluted technical solution that takes a month to program, instead of just talking to the business to adjust the requirement and turn it into a couple hours of work.

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

#443

Post by Chris2048 »

kenjackson wrote: post #399
Chris2048 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the world is looking for a 50/50 split in gender ratios. Most reasonable people.. This exact target has made it into more than just a few institutions. > He selectively uses research In inviting discourse, he is also inviting "the other side" of the argument to do as much the same. I think his effort was big enough without raising the bar - why not bear the burden of evaluating the evidence alone? This memo is expl…

>Did he not release to the correct forum? What is the correct time and place? I don't really understand the forum he submitted to. It sounds like a huge public internal mailing list. That sounds like the wrong forum to me. This probably could've gone to the new VP of diversity directly. Maybe I'm overly paranoid but I pretty much never write anything about race, religion, gender, disabilities, age, etc... at work. An…

I believe it was released in one place, and later leaked to another. No word on the consequence to the leaker.

> Maybe I'm overly paranoid

Maybe you aren't, and maybe you shouldn't have to be?

> the dominant majority in power

Who is this? Men? Liberals? The 1%?

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

#444

Post by daughart »

Anyone who wants to use "science" in this way needs to read "The Golem" by prominent sociologists of science Collins and Pinch. It's a short, enjoyable read. One of the things you'll learn is that science can only ask the questions humans want to ask, and science often says exactly what people want it to say.

https://www.amazon.com/Golem-Should-About-Science-Classics/d...; online link: http://cstpr.colorado.edu/students/envs_5110/collins_the_gol...

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

#445

Post by [deleted] »

agarden wrote: post #409
tptacek wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damore is smart enough not to come out and say directly that he believes all women to be less qualified; instead, he just strings together a series of assertions that leaves reasonable people with only one conclusion, which is that the women at Google are beneficiaries of a lowered bar that results in the women at Google being on average less qualified than the men. I have very little patience with arguments rooted i…

Oh, so you know what he is actually thinking even though he doesn't say it and says things that are contrary to it. I see. This, too, helps me understand the outrage. Thank you for being honest. (I do hope the 'thank you' above can be read by people in a calm, snark-less voice. It is genuine. I appreciate Ptacek being forthright. I learned from it. It really does make the thread better and furthers the conversation i…

[deleted]

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

#446

Post by dsfyu404ed »

travmatt wrote: post #117
monochromatic wrote: post #78

Earlier 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?

You know what they say about black people leaving the hood?

Well there's parallels for a lot of groups.

Some cops find new careers as politicians and then threaten reporters who ask questions they don't want to answer because that's what cops often do (I know I'm over-generalizing).

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

#447

Post by jazzyk »

dTal wrote: post #306
weddpros wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is Google fired this guy for distributing WRONG information. Wrong is the important word here. If the information is right, it completely changes the case, and the guy was fired for Wrong reasons. I hope he'll sue and win his job back (yes, I think Google needs this guy more than ever).

Nah, he was fired for drawing negative attention to Google. Whether he was right or not is irrelevant; if you publicly criticise the company you work for, on a "controversial" topic, getting fired is the expected outcome.

Google has been doing an excellent job drawing (the wrong kind of) attention to themselves, thank you very much.

High-visibility lawsuits have been brewing already:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/08/google-wo...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pa...

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

#448

Post by Jabanga »

Delmania wrote: post #338
ObnoxiousProxy wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author mentions many many times throughout his memo that these are 'average' observations and by no ways representative of the entire female population. The author did not say that all women are more interested in people, merely that there is a higher proportion in comparison to the male population. The author suggests that when these average statistics propagate into life decisions and employment preferences, yo…

The author advocates for ending programs designed to get more females into technology and leadership positions because he views them as discrimination. His basis is precisely what you mentioned, that on average women are X. In his mind, the fact that men are more status oriented than women means that men will be disproportionately in leadership roles. That's "just the way it is" and we should accept it and create "se…

Can you at least admit that your initial comment: that he "defends discrimination against women", is unfounded?

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

#449

Post by agarden »

tptacek wrote: post #439
agarden wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, so you know what he is actually thinking even though he doesn't say it and says things that are contrary to it. I see. This, too, helps me understand the outrage. Thank you for being honest. (I do hope the 'thank you' above can be read by people in a calm, snark-less voice. It is genuine. I appreciate Ptacek being forthright. I learned from it. It really does make the thread better and furthers the conversation i…

For what it's worth: your thanks might be intellectually honest, but your summary of my argument is not.

> For what it's worth: your thanks might be intellectually honest, but your summary of my argument is not.

I am very open to being corrected.

When you said, "Damore is smart enough not to come out and say directly that he believes all women to be less qualified", I took it to mean that you think Damore actually believes that all women are unqualified and arguing about populations is a just a smokescreen for what he is really thinking. This is helpful to understand because it means that you don't think the memo is actually about population-level differences and so exploring that argument is a waste of time.

But if you didn't actually mean that, I misunderstood and apologize.

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

#450

Post by dsfyu404ed »

monochromatic wrote: post #403
travmatt wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And didn't the president promise to pay the legal defense of supporters of his who committed violence on his behalf to intimidate a free press? It seems you have an odd system of weighting where college kids policing language is weighted very heavily, and elected officials committing and advocating violence to further political goals weighs very lightly. I'm beginning to suspect your analysis is more driven by how yo…

> And didn't the president promise to pay the legal defense of supporters of his who committed violence on his behalf to intimidate a free press? Not to my knowledge. Are you talking about when he (perhaps jokingly) said: > So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them. I will pay for the legal fees.

> So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them. I will pay for the legal fees.

Biden could say that at a state dinner and nobody would blink twice

Post reply on HN