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

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

gizmodo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 660 posts

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

#451

Post by [deleted] »

brooklyn_ashey wrote: post #415
mcguire wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" ...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…

The SAT was shown to be a flawed test in that it is racially, gender, and income-level biased. I'd be interested to look into the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery with a keen eye to bias. I have to say that anything designed by/for the armed services makes me suspicious of bias for obvious reasons. I will see if I can find any studies on this-- would be good to know. Found something about gender bias on thi…

[deleted]

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

#452

Post by Qub3d »

abalone wrote: post #447

Also ridiculously racist. Really! Amidst his rambling "evolutionary psychology" argument concerning the gender gap he also protests racial diversity programs.[1] And his explanation for that? Are black people also bad at programming because of evolution? It's buried here: "Left tends to deny science concerning biological differences between people (e.g., IQ and sex differences)." (emphasis mine) So non-whites are doi…

I can't speak for software engineers as I'm not really one myself, but I have seen evidence that guys in the development and IT fields are legitimately scared of interacting with women and in the process violating some rule they didn't know of [0]. Reality may be different from what they perceive, the but point is that some men do actually perceive this "threat". The motivations of this internal letter, whatever they are, seem to be almost certainly highly emotional.

Whenever a difficult, nuanced topic like the one HN is discussing here comes up, its important to consider the medium by which all of us are communicating. Your quote with emphasis added is a perfect example: it may have been something this particularly frustrated individual threw out without much thought (the entire letter going public at all shows a lack of thought), but it could very well have been dog-whistling to racists.

The thing is, we can't know. Unless we're in a forum (in the Socratic sense) where thoughts can be clarified, I propose we take things at their face value. That's all we can confidently do.

[0]:http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2091#comment-326664

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

#453

Post by needlessly »

lotsoflumens wrote: post #384

TL;DR Some guy not only speaks his mind, but has the balls to actually write his thoughts down. The completely predictable response from "forward thinking progressives" follows.

He doesn't even attach his own name to the writing.

He's a coward

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

#454

Post by 0xbear »

rifung wrote: post #390
0xbear wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say you're surprised, and then confirm my opinion almost to the letter. Truth is, it's dangerous to not "keep it to yourself", so people don't talk about it.

Perhaps I didn't express myself well but I certainly did not intend to confirm your statement. > Truth is, it's dangerous to not "keep it to yourself", so people don't talk about it. I meant people don't talk about it out of respect for their coworkers, not because they are afraid to get fired. I'm sure there are some who are just afraid to get fired, but I sincerely believe they're the minority.

Can't tell if you're one of those people who get people fired for differences of opinion or you just honestly don't see it. So I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the latter.

I find it amusing that I only have to concern myself with "respect for my coworkers" if my opinion is different from the liberal side on some cause célèbre. I.e. if I comply with liberal dogma and say that having lower hiring bar (or other kinds of preferential treatment) for women is OK, I can say so publicly without fear of it being a career limiting move, but if I believe the opposite and say so publicly, I'm 100% guaranteed to receive a ping from HR reminding me to STFU and never mention it again.

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

#456

Post by defen »

tptacek wrote: post #162
smsm42 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with the "???" step is that it's unrigorous handwaving. Probably because nobody actually knows right now what actually causes the differences and how. The case that is caused exclusively by entrenched sexism - somehow driven by people graduating from the same institutions who have been fighting sexism for decades now, and by the same people who repudiate and denounce sexism on every corner - also does n…

Read what Rayiner wrote more carefully. Computer science is unique among STEM fields --- even mathematics --- in its gender imbalance. The "???" here has a name: it's called "special pleading". It's not hard to see why people would get angry at a special pleading intended to excuse gender disparities.

> Computer science is unique among STEM fields --- even mathematics --- in its gender imbalance.

"In mathematics, just 15 percent of tenure-track positions are held by women, one of the lowest percentages among the sciences, along with computer science (18 percent), and engineering (14 percent)."

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/11/math-wom...

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

#457

Post by _xhok »

lazyjones wrote: post #46
rayiner wrote: post #19

The intellectual contortion required to get from the premise to the conclusion is actually quite impressive. > On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed because: > They’re universal across human cultures Except the gender ratio in science/engineering is anything but universal across cultures. 70% of science/engineering students in Iran are women: ht…

> Indeed, in many parts of the world that are not known for being "liberal" with regard to gender equality, women make up a significantly higher percentage of the scientific workforce than in the U.S Because, unsurprisingly, they're also not very liberal with regard to women choosing their field of studies. Frequently, their parents decide for them.

This is an interesting point. A harsher way to phrase this is, judging by empirical evidence thus far, it takes controlling, illiberal attitudes in order to hold the gap closed.

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

#458

Post by tbrownaw »

rifung wrote: post #197
Animats wrote: post #143

I'm amazed that people are seriously upset by someone publishing that. Somehow, most of the women I know don't complain about harassment much. The one who does complain mostly gets it from her female boss. The one in SF tech says that Uber people tend to be jerks but the rest of the industry there isn't bad. The one from France has more problems with age than with sex. The lawyer has had some annoyances, but finds it…

> Somehow, most of the women I know don't complain about harassment much. It does not seem productive to trivialize and disregard people's issues only because we haven't witnessed them ourselves. Indeed this attitude is actually why an internal group where people can report sexist, racist, and other inappropriate behavior is called "Yes at Google", because so many people thought this kind of thing doesn't happen, or…

It does not seem productive to trivialize and disregard people's issues only because we haven't witnessed them ourselves.

There's a difference between trivializing or disregarding particular complaints, vs questioning just how representative they are of the broader situation.

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

#459

Post by the_cyber_pass »

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…

Aren't blacklists supposed to be illegal in the US?

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

#460

Post by the_cyber_pass »

smsm42 wrote: post #335

Can anybody explain to me why it is called "anti-diversity" or even "sexist"[1]? Never in the whole document the author argues against diversity. [1] https://www.recode.net/2017/8/5/16102476/google-diversity-vp...

It's a product of the left/right divide in modern American politics. It's mostly a dog whistle so the other side knows he is ok to unperson.
Post reply on HN