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

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

#521

Post by Jabanga »

Delmania wrote: post #465
Jabanga wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>These 2 lines essentially state that as women are more interested in people, there are some roles they might not be able to perform. That's absurd. You're not even interpreting his comments at face value. You're attributing a subtext to them that only exists in your imagination. >Strip away his science and his words, he's a misogynistic techbro What an absolutely hateful and sexist comment. It amounts to: "strip awa…

> That's absurd. You're not even interpreting his comments at face value. You're attributing a subtext to them that only exists in your imagination. Really? The first bullet point is "women are more people oriented". The second bullet point is that there are limits to how people oriented specific roles or even Google as a whole can be. If you want to take his words at face value, go ahead, but the belief that there a…

>The first bullet point is "women are more people oriented".

No, the first bullet point is:

>Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things

Which is true, and does not ascribe a particular set of traits to all women. It makes a statistical observation that refutes the notion that sexism is the cause of gender disparity in the STEM fields.

> If you want to take his words at face value, go ahead, but the belief that there are some roles than women cannot do due to their differences is consistent with the rest of his essay.

That is your own very ungenerous, cynical and totally unsupported conjecture, that you're attributing to the author's intent and message.

Promoting the lie that men and women do not differ on the average in their biological tendencies toward various interests and competencies leads to the lie that it is systemic sexism that has resulted in the gender differences seen in various occupations, which leads to destructive discriminatory (affirmative action) policies to correct discrimination that doesn't exist.

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

#522

Post by SippinLean »

Jabanga wrote: post #438
SippinLean wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easily disproved by the entire school of evolutionary psychology and many other modern schools of thought. The question is if there is more to consider in social constructs than simply evolutionary biology.

Postmodernists and feminists are generally very critical toward evolutionary psychology and hostile toward its scholars, so you're actually supporting my point.

You notably skipped over the majority of my comment, and only added more unfounded sweeping generalizations comparable to your similar ranting about feminists elsewhere.

>The question is if there is more to consider in social constructs than simply evolutionary biology.

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

#523

Post by lawnchair_larry »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #380
peoplewindow wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy's post was science, according to scientists - 5 of them have now spoken up saying that. Maybe there'll be more. With respect to "why not try to solve it", it's a reasonable question. The guy answers that too - he is all for trying to solve it. He even makes suggestions about new ways to do it, like encouraging pair programming. But he feels the current solutions aren't working and are, in fact, causing bigger…

You're right that a number of scientists have come out to say his post was science. I'm saying that they are not the conclusive authority on the posters' intent. He is of course entitled to feel and think whatever he wants, but maybe a little old-fashioned advice would help here: measure twice, cut once. He clearly didn't think through the effects of posting a stern essay to a company-wide board on a subject that is…

There's the problem. You're too suspicious of his unstated intent, and dismissing his stated intent. That seems to put him in an impossible position.

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

#524

Post by quxbar »

megous wrote: post #36

What I find interesting about all this is how many people take personal offense from statistics. (and conclusions drawn from statistics) The author seems to put an effort into explaining statistical distribution and what it means and what not. He's explicit that statistical observations can't be used to judge particular individuals. Draws a graph of overlapping distributions to drive the point home even more. I'm not…

Maybe i'm offended because, as a white man, it leaves me open to all kinds of statistics about how white men are overwhelmingly likely to be serial killers, compared to other groups. And it would follow that we could do a better of catching serial killers by assuming white men are unable to control their murderous impulses, and adjusting how our laws work so white men are diverted from jobs involving human contact. That way we don't lower the bar for the safety of our lawful citizens.

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

#525

Post by sctb »

and0 wrote: post #441
mistermann wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

Please stop violating the guidelines by posting uncivil, gratuitous provocation. You've been doing this a lot and it leads to us having to ban the account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#526

Post by Jabanga »

daughart wrote: post #500
Jabanga wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the postmodern anti-science belief, which assumes that truth is not really truth. It is just a device used in power struggles between identity groups. It's so extreme that there was actually paper published on feminist glaciology [1]. This is not science. It is just dogma and actually hostile to the principle of science as a pursuit of objective truth carried out by people of good faith. [1] http://journals.s…

You should read a little about the history and sociology of science.

Why? What will I learn?

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

#527

Post by notacoward »

program_whiz wrote: post #511
notacoward wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What would you say if the results were essentially the same as the status quo? OK, I'll bite. I'd say that's both surprising and interesting. Then I'd ask why the status quo is even relevant. "Best qualified" at the time of taking the test might not mean "most productive a year hence" when a candidate's circumstances might have kept them from reaching their full potential. Indeed, circumstances might have kept them…

Not being sarcastic, is there evidence that more diverse teams are better? There seems to be some anecdotal evidence going both ways (i.e. more diverse viewpoints vs team cohesion). I can imagine that there's a balance point as well. You could have one extreme where people are so similar that its basically a one-person team with 8 arms. You could also have a team so diverse they can never agree, have no common langua…

The most often cited paper w.r.t. gender diversity (the kind most at issue here) seems to be this one:

https://papers.tinbergen.nl/11074.pdf

A more readable summary is here:

http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/impact-gender-diversity-performan...

The authors did indeed find a balance point, at about 50:50 (a far cry from the 81:19 among engineers at Google). OTOH, this was for a very different kind of task than programming. Another starting point is here:

http://www.chabris.com/Woolley2010a.pdf

It's particularly interesting that many summaries of this work will use vague terms like "composition of the group" to avoid mentioning anything in the findings about number of women in the group.

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

#528

Post by and0 »

mistermann wrote: post #509
and0 wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck.

If you find yourself having similar problems with numerous people, you might want to consider the possibility that perhaps you should consider viewing the world from a different perspective. It's not easy, but it's possible.

I can think of plenty of rooms I could walk into right now (or throughout history) and not have anyone agree with me on something I care about. I don't consider this a problem, in most of those scenarios.

I'd recommend you take your own advice. You didn't even try to read anything I posted, and you sure as hell aren't applying the same critical thinking to shoot down the insane ramblings in the original memo.

Enjoy your privilege, enjoy your current power. Make sure anyone who questions the order of things that grant you all this do so only in a manner you find agreeable, not that it would change your mind or anything. I'm not going to pretend you're doing this in good faith any longer.

Fuck, why do I bother on this site?

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

#529

Post by dragonwriter »

Jabanga wrote: post #521
Delmania wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's absurd. You're not even interpreting his comments at face value. You're attributing a subtext to them that only exists in your imagination. Really? The first bullet point is "women are more people oriented". The second bullet point is that there are limits to how people oriented specific roles or even Google as a whole can be. If you want to take his words at face value, go ahead, but the belief that there a…

>The first bullet point is "women are more people oriented". No, the first bullet point is: >Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things Which is true, and does not ascribe a particular set of traits to all women. It makes a statistical observation that refutes the notion that sexism is the cause of gender disparity in the STEM fields. > If you want to take his words at face value, go ahead, b…

> It makes a statistical observation that refutes the notion that sexism is the cause of gender disparity in the STEM fields.

It does no such thing, because:

(1) STEM fields, especially applied rather than theoretical ones, involve people as much as things

(2) While in some STEM fields gender disparities are apparent from fairly early in career progression, that's not true of all STEM fields; in some (many of them around biosciences) women are overrepresented in education and entry-level work, but still lag men in pay and advancement (problematically for the “it's about men wanting to deal with things and women wanting to deal with people” explanation of STEM gender disparities, this leaves women dealing more with things while the men move to higher levels where they deal with people.)

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

#530

Post by allemagne »

tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #341
allemagne wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for the abuse of the term (I've never experienced what you're describing), but 'mansplaining' refers to a very real phenomenon. To put gender aside, egos and biases can always get in the way of two people explaining their viewpoints. You are pretty lucky if you've never had somebody explain a concept you already understood in a very condescending way. Many men do this to women when they assume that thes…

I 100% agree with your second statement - condescension happens all the time. I've seen it a bunch. But first, men do this to each other all the time. Most of my conversations with my male friends involve us constantly disagreeing with each other, in a way I've rarely observed in groups of women. It's far more likely that if someone is willing to be condescending, they're going to do it to everyone. Of course there a…

I haven't experienced a person who misuses "mansplaining" in the way you're describing. I'm sure it happens, and I don't agree with those who do that, but I have witnessed the situation the word is meant to describe several times too. I'm more inclined to think that it still happens all the time and is accurately pointed out by the word.

I agree that someone willing to condescend to women will be more likely to condescend to a junior employee or a teenager (i.e. they've already shown the propensity for prejudice), but I don't agree that they are probably condescending to everyone (I'd argue that kind of person is very rare).

It's not that there are legions of very sexist and evil people who are not prejudiced in any other way, it's that there's an unfortunately large spectrum of mostly well-meaning people who might harbor conscious or unconscious beliefs about women specifically. They might also harbor similar beliefs about minorities, or have a life experience that justifies their beliefs in their eyes, but nevertheless it's a big enough cross-section of society and a strong enough phenomenon that it's been noticed. That there is some subset of SJWs who think that they can take advantage of this isn't an extreme claim, but that it's a stronger phenomenon is a pretty extreme claim to me.

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