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

481–490 of 660 posts

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

#481

Post by notacoward »

glorkk wrote: post #425
JacobJans wrote: post #134

This guy claims that women are more neurotic and talkative than men; and that they prefer thinking about aesthetics; and that women are more "cooperative." The subtext is that this is the reason we shouldn't support women becoming software engineers. Uggghhh.

You either fail at reading comprehension or you are being dishonest. Nowhere does the author say we "shouldn't support women becoming software engineers". His argument is simply that women are, on average, less inclined to become software engineers because of innate psychological differences, which explains the unbalanced gender ratio in tech. He suggests we should stop all forms of "positive" discrimination in the f…

> employment quotas that are aimed to correct the gender imbalance, and instead select individuals based on their merit.

That is itself misrepresentative enough that your own snark about reading comprehension or dishonesty rebounds on you. Quotas aren't the issue. Echo Chamber Guy is railing against all measures to increase diversity, including many that would improve the correlation between merit and hiring/promotion.

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

#482

Post by 4ad »

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.

> I meant people don't talk about it [saying someone else looks good in a bathing suit] out of respect for their coworkers, not because they are afraid to get fired.

There is nothing disrespectuful about saying saying someone looks good in a bathing suit. It's normal social interaction. In fact the supression of various forms of normal social interraction, either by some explicit rule or law, or by some sort of chilling effect is what's causing all these crazy problems.

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

#483

Post by door »

hjrnunes wrote: post #476
factsaresacred wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. > In her preface to the first edition, Halpern wrote: “At the time, it seemed clear to me that any between-sex differences in thinking abilities were due to socialization practices, artifacts and mistakes in the research, and bias and prejudice. ... After reviewing a pile of journal articles that stood several feet high and numerous books and book chapters that dwarfed the stack of journal articles … I changed m…

Who'd a known? Repeated observations in all types of human societies everywhere for thousands and thousands of years turn out to be true. Thank god we have science to confirm that to us!

Turns out confirmation bias is real!

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

#484

Post by humanrebar »

rayiner wrote: post #432
humanrebar wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was referring to when women were disallowed from law schools or bar associations. But there's a bit of nuance to the history of it. Women have been in court in different ways for a long time. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awlaw3/women_lawyers.htm...

Women were allowed into the bar long before hiring them was routine. The New York bar admitted its first women in 1886. But it was in the 1970s (as a result of a class action lawsuit) that firms were forced to routinely hire women attorneys. Today, half of associates in large law firms are women. That's the legacy of affirmative action programs. The change turned out to be self-sustaining, even after the programs wer…

My point was that the history of the tech sector and the history of the legal profession are not similar. Hopefully that's very clear at this point.

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

#485

Post by humanrebar »

mcguire wrote: post #411
humanrebar wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you thought "CEO" when you read "men" is the point. By definition, most men aren't leaders of companies, but they get lumped in with them as equally tainted, overpaid power-misers.

No, I thought "CEO" when I read "high paying, high status". Most leaders of companies are men, right?

But most men are not leaders of companies. In fact, most men have nowhere near that level of income, power, and status.

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

#486

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

rayiner wrote: post #341
haberman wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that "???" is unrigorous handwaving. And I don't think it purports to be rigorous; from the document: "Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership." (emphasis mine). "May" and "in part." I don't think this purports to be a proof. Is this argument any more rigorous? 1. There is a non-50% representation bet…

The difference is that we know that unjust discrimination and social pressure exist; we know it was historically very bad; and we have a concrete theory of causation. With the biological explanation there is no theory of causation.

> ...and we have a concrete theory of causation. With the biological explanation there is no theory of causation.

Even if your description of the situation is accurate, just because there's a theory on one side and none on the other does not remotely imply that theory is automatically correct and should be acted upon.

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

#487

Post by tptacek »

mzw_mzw wrote: post #466
tptacek wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SPLC is not a reliable source, but I think what they have to say about Charles Murray checks out.

If, as you've just admitted, the SPLC is not reliable, why do you think it checks out?

What's hard about this for you to understand?

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

#488

Post by pacala »

door wrote: post #289
Inconel wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>tech bros who have never taken a soft science course in their lives Can someone here comment on the veracity of this statement? I was never smart or disciplined enough to attend college but I do have the good fortune of working with a large number of engineers. Many of them attended extremely highly ranked universities and it seems, from my talking with them on the subject of college education, that all of them took…

that's cool that you know so many people with diverse education, but the absolute ignorance of and disdain towards the social sciences in this thread definitely does not challenge the tech bro stereotype

For example, somebody detected (and published) a 53% extrasensory perception effect (ESP, predict the future), using "methodological sound" social sciences techniques, https://slate.com/health-and-science/2017/06/daryl-bem-prove....

The field is marred with systemic issues, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#Replication...

> A report by the Open Science Collaboration in August 2015 that was coordinated by Brian Nosek estimated the reproducibility of 100 studies in psychological science from three high-ranking psychology journals.[35] Overall, 36% of the replications yielded significant findings (p value below .05) compared to 97% of the original studies that had significant effects. The mean effect size in the replications was approximately half the magnitude of the effects reported in the original studies.

> The same paper examined the reproducibility rates and effect sizes by journal (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology [JPSP], Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition [JEP:LMC], Psychological Science [PSCI]) and discipline (social psychology, cognitive psychology). Study replication rates were 23% for JPSP, 38% for JEP:LMC, and 38% for PSCI. Studies in the field of cognitive psychology had a higher replication rate (50%) than studies in the field of social psychology (25%).

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

#489

Post by [deleted] »

tomp wrote: post #264
tptacek wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For differences in representation to be explainable by something other than sexism --- which has been rampant in other fields, in particular medicine and law, in the past and then enduringly corrected --- you'd need to establish either that CS is somehow fundamentally different from every other hard science, virtually all of which see better (usually: much better) gender parity than CS does. In other words: you'll ne…

> CS is somehow fundamentally different from every other hard science, Well the obvious difference is that CS is not a science at all. It's really more akin to engineering, which AFAIK has a similar gender imbalance.

[deleted]

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

#490

Post by neilk »

haberman wrote: post #259
rayiner wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument basically proceeds as follows: 1) Gender differences exist 2) ??? 3) Differences in representation are explainable by gender differences The problem with the "???" step is that it's unrigorous handwaving. "Women prefer working with people." Okay, so that's why the majority of accountants are women? That's why STEM fields that don't involve people at all (math, biology) actually have quite a lot of women,…

I agree that "???" is unrigorous handwaving. And I don't think it purports to be rigorous; from the document: "Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership." (emphasis mine). "May" and "in part." I don't think this purports to be a proof. Is this argument any more rigorous? 1. There is a non-50% representation bet…

Strawman
Post reply on HN