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The Kolmogorov option

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Re: The Kolmogorov option

#451

Post by geofft »

Aapjes wrote: post #447
geofft wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why are the programs he's criticizing all about either successfully hiring or retaining women who are already interested in working at Google ? He also explicitly mentions ability: " Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biologi…

People's qualifications are not all the same. Imagine that Google wants to hire 1,000 people, but 10,000 people apply for a job. Then Google logically ought to take the best 1,000 people that apply. With diversity quota's, the company may decide to hire a less able woman in favor of a more able man.

The company may also decide to hire a less able man in favor of a more able woman.

Given that the vast majority of incompetent people I've worked with have been men (if not all of them), I'm surprised to see less attention to this phrasing of the problem. Maybe it is too politically incorrect to bring up?

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#452

Post by jacalata »

Aapjes wrote: post #447
geofft wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why are the programs he's criticizing all about either successfully hiring or retaining women who are already interested in working at Google ? He also explicitly mentions ability: " Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biologi…

People's qualifications are not all the same. Imagine that Google wants to hire 1,000 people, but 10,000 people apply for a job. Then Google logically ought to take the best 1,000 people that apply. With diversity quota's, the company may decide to hire a less able woman in favor of a more able man.

The reality is that 2,000 of them are indistinguishably good and diversity programs are intended to make sure that google hires equally able women out of that group instead of choosing all the men.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#453

Post by eli_gottlieb »

pavlov wrote: post #191
habitue wrote: post #33

Let's say this is about the Google memo. And let's say, for the sake of argument, you're a person who thinks Damore had some good points and some bad points but you think the hysterically censorious response to him was way over the line. But you don't want to become a pariah yourself, so you stay quiet about it. The argument Damore was making was fiddly, kind of subtle and takes a long time to explain, it's not worth…

Because no one stopped and offered a third option: actually discussing his argument, acknowledging where he was right, and discussing what he got wrong. You're assuming Damore's argument exists in a vacuum. But it doesn't. It had a stated purpose of changing HR and hiring policies at Google, and with that, the unavoidable implication that some of Damore's colleagues actually shouldn't be with the company. When you th…

>(Damore's firing was unavoidable under current US law.)

If he wasn't lying when he said he'd filed a claim with the National Labor Relations Board, his firing was illegal under current US law.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#454

Post by dragonwriter »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #453
pavlov wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because no one stopped and offered a third option: actually discussing his argument, acknowledging where he was right, and discussing what he got wrong. You're assuming Damore's argument exists in a vacuum. But it doesn't. It had a stated purpose of changing HR and hiring policies at Google, and with that, the unavoidable implication that some of Damore's colleagues actually shouldn't be with the company. When you th…

>(Damore's firing was unavoidable under current US law.) If he wasn't lying when he said he'd filed a claim with the National Labor Relations Board, his firing was illegal under current US law.

> If he wasn't lying when he said he'd filed a claim with the National Labor Relations Board, his firing was illegal under current US law.

Only, as I understand, if it was in retaliation for the claim; firing for the memo, and any perceived hostile workplace effects it had, would not be illegal (and may actually contribute to avoiding liability for that conduct.)

Of course, if he made a claim it will be a disputed question of fact as to whether or not it was retaliation.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#455

Post by eli_gottlieb »

vanderZwan wrote: post #140
benchaney wrote: post #113

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". I don't see how this follows. Are you suggesting that some topics can only be discussed if the discussion includes a non-sequitur. > Men seem very unwilling to recognise that the memo and the discussion itself is harmful. On the balance it seems…

No, the claim is that you cannot have context-free universally true premises for every type discussion. Most of this discussion outrage is based on people on all sides not realising they start from different, inherently subjective premises, and then believe they can build a universally true objective claim on that card house. EDIT: This is why I believe people in STEM fields would really benefit from spending some ti…

>To me, appeals to "rational discussion" represent an unwillingness to accept that humans are messy, irrational creatures, and that rationality itself is but a tool, not an end-goal (and by extension, a denial of one's own irrationality). We're not modelling our society on Skinner-boxes for a reason.

Whoever told you Skinner-boxes were the end-point of rationality was... deeply wrong, and probably doing such damage to public discussion that they should be reprimanded.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#456

Post by defen »

jacalata wrote: post #440
defen wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the sense that you're trolling, rather than engaging in good-faith discussion.

A good faith effort to see if you managed to refrain from reacting as though I had actually stated that as a fact rather than merely mentioning it as a thought. I was curious to see if you actually had such a strange understanding of the phrase that you didn't think he was advancing it as a position, or if you were simply arguing that it was a plausible interpretation of the phrase.

I know what you were doing, that's why I suggested that you were trolling - posting with dishonest motivation.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#457

Post by Aapjes »

jacalata wrote: post #452
Aapjes wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People's qualifications are not all the same. Imagine that Google wants to hire 1,000 people, but 10,000 people apply for a job. Then Google logically ought to take the best 1,000 people that apply. With diversity quota's, the company may decide to hire a less able woman in favor of a more able man.

The reality is that 2,000 of them are indistinguishably good and diversity programs are intended to make sure that google hires equally able women out of that group instead of choosing all the men.

Imagine a theoretical scenario where they have 500 female applicants and 9,500 male applicants, but desperately want a 50/50 workforce. Then they logically would hire all female applicants, including those who are not part of the 2000 most capable applicants.

Using your number, with 2k out of 10k applications being indistinguishable elite, that means 1 in 5 applicants are suitable to be hired on merit. Assuming that female applicants are no better or worse than the men, you'd expect 100 of those 500 female applicants to be indistinguishable from 1,900 male applicants.

So then 400 women would be hired who are in fact distinguishable worse than those elite 100 women and 1,900 men.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#458

Post by Aapjes »

geofft wrote: post #450
Aapjes wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

geofft, By your reasoning brighteyes has just proven that you have reached conclusions not justified by the paper, so will you resign from your job, given that you think such incompetence on the part of Dalmore is inexcusable and makes him incapable to do his job?

If this were an internal company forum where I were making serious policy proposals that I expected the company to take seriously -- that is, if this were something I were doing as part of my job, and I were paying as much attention to detail as I should for every part of my job -- and if I had a senior title, then yes, definitely, I would offer my resignation or at least request a demotion. I would be letting my cow…

During his interview with Jordan Peterson, Damore explained that he was looking for criticism/push back against his claims, which was why he posted it to a Skeptics forum within Google.

He didn't actually present it directly to management, nor did he publish it publicly. Many people improve their work by asking for feedback, so you seem to demand the impossible: for him to create something great, but without allowing him to refine his work in a way that many people need to create something great.

BTW. I am not aware that Damore had a senior job title and even if he had, his job didn't involve writing rigorous papers. So I'm not sure how you can say that this document proves that he was bad at his job. In his interview he said that his last performance review put him in the top few percent of performers at Google. So if we assume that he is not lying, you seem have drawn wild conclusions based on weak evidence, that far stronger evidence actually contradicts.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#459

Post by macrael »

jnwatson wrote: post #444
macrael wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"...that they recognize the type of man who would write it..." is the most illuminating phrase I've read from the left, and I'm terrified of it. That I can choose to have a coworker fired over my projection, from his writing, of his internal psychological state is new to me. The race to be the biggest victim makes sense to me now. That's awesome power.

Again, according to the employment lawyer I linked, he was fired for the contents of his writing, not some projection of his mental state.

What I'm trying to point out is that people on the receiving end of discrimination in our industry have recognized patterns of behavior that mostly pass beneath my (and perhaps, your) radar. But they are patterns that women across the board, in different companies, in different fields, recognize and can name to one another. This is what structural sexism means, these patterns are built into our society, today. And this manifesto matched perfectly with a number of negative patterns, hence the strong negative response.

(also, writing is inherently a projection of internal psychological state so I'm not sure I really understand the problem you are talking about)

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#460

Post by macrael »

kbart wrote: post #436
macrael wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn't check this data and you didn't provide a link, so can't comment on that, but do you honestly believe that women's position in 70s-80s were better than it is now? I seriously doubt that, just ask your mother or other older women for their opinion.

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...

This is the link I put up earlier. It is tracking women's enrollment in majors lined up with different fields. It shows the percentage of women enrolled in majors for programming tracking along with people enrolled in medicine, law, and the hard sciences until the 1980s where suddenly it deviated rather significantly.

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