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10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google

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Re: 10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google

#61

Post by mrchicity »

abalone wrote: post #50

This is not merely sexist. Amidst his rambling "evolutionary psychology" argument he also protests racial diversity programs.[1] And his explanation for that? It's buried here: "Left tends to deny science concerning biological differences between people (e.g., IQ and sex differences)." (emphasis mine) So women are bad at programming because of evolution and non-whites/asians are bad at it because they're dumb. Accord…

How is that racist?

Racist is "I think all Mexicans are dumb, so I won't hire any or even give them an interview. I hate Mexicans."

Racism is not "Groups of humans evolved dramatically different physical characteristics, vulnerability to health conditions, ability to consume foods like lactose, and countless other characteristics. There's some evidence to suggest they may have different distributions of skills required to do this job well. Even if there are no innate differences, there are certainly cultures that prioritize learning the skills we require more than others.

I wouldn't be surprised to see different groups represented at different rates vs. the general population at this job. However, I'm smart enough to realize there are extremely skilled and extremely unskilled members of every group, and I'd gladly interview and hire from any."

Re: 10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google

#62

Post by szemet »

wpietri wrote: post #51
jorgemf wrote: post #10

> I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.…

The right topic isn't biology, it's history. Historically, for millennia women were treated as property of men. This was justified with all sorts sexist jabber. The same is true of race; ou can read all sorts of racist nonsense from the era of slavery. E.g., the Cornerstone Speech, in which the vice-president of the Confederacy said straight out: "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its fou…

Yes. It is the is-ought [1] distinction. People differences may be a biological fact, but this factual knowledge does not informs us what to do with it. We can do then anything: amplify it, suppress it, or don't care

"Natural"[2] - if it has any meaningful definition at all - is not an ethical category. Evolution is not normative.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is–ought_problem

[2] For example for a naturalist everything is natural :)

Re: 10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google

#63

Post by fidgetPing »

abalone wrote: post #50

This is not merely sexist. Amidst his rambling "evolutionary psychology" argument he also protests racial diversity programs.[1] And his explanation for that? It's buried here: "Left tends to deny science concerning biological differences between people (e.g., IQ and sex differences)." (emphasis mine) So women are bad at programming because of evolution and non-whites/asians are bad at it because they're dumb. Accord…

Hold on, do you deny that IQ has a strong heritable component and that there's a well-documented IQ difference between different populations? Cause that's all he's saying, while also emphasizing that these statements mean little when referring to specific individuals.

Re: 10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google

#64

Post by jorgemf »

saimiam wrote: post #48
freshhawk wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often ask people who talk about this two simple questions: - Is the extreme sex disparity in the prison population in the United States a result of a massive system of anti-male oppression or a result of population level sex differences between men and women. - How do you interpret the experiences of trans people on hormones who experience their personalities change after taking hormones. I'll admit it is a bit of…

Of course there are gender differences..but the only relevant question in this context you or anyone should ask is whether those gender differences justify lower participation of women in technology. If you're a capitalist, if you believe in exploiting the market to the benefit yourself, you would be stupid and shortsighted to not find a way to utilize women and minorities in any way possible to serve your business.…

> you would be stupid and shortsighted to not find a way to utilize women and minorities in any way possible to serve your business.

> companies like Google are doing exactly that by promoting policies to bring in and retain women

The problem is that they do it in the extreme. They want to achieve 50% of male and 50% and currently that distribution is not real, there are much more men that women in technology. So they have a positive discrimination for women to get a position even when there is a man that fits better, so they can achieve the 50/50.

If you want the best people and the pool of candidates is 70/30 you cannot have the best candidates with 50/50. You should have like 70/30 that is something proportional to the pool of candidates.

This leads to the question why there are less women than men in technology. Is it discrimination, oppression, a free choice?

Re: 10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google

#65

Post by wrinkl3 »

meowface wrote: post #40

This document conveys its message poorly and comes across as far less neutral than I think it's intending to be. It raises some valid points, but it kind of feels like an extremely hamfisted interpretation of a recent blog post by Scott Alexander: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-m... I don't think Google's official response to it is very good either, though.

Yup, definitely sounded like a SSC reader attempting to channel Alexander.

Re: 10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google

#66

Post by freshhawk »

saimiam wrote: post #48
freshhawk wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often ask people who talk about this two simple questions: - Is the extreme sex disparity in the prison population in the United States a result of a massive system of anti-male oppression or a result of population level sex differences between men and women. - How do you interpret the experiences of trans people on hormones who experience their personalities change after taking hormones. I'll admit it is a bit of…

Of course there are gender differences..but the only relevant question in this context you or anyone should ask is whether those gender differences justify lower participation of women in technology. If you're a capitalist, if you believe in exploiting the market to the benefit yourself, you would be stupid and shortsighted to not find a way to utilize women and minorities in any way possible to serve your business.…

First off, if you found those population differences they wouldn't be usefully predictive when it came to your actual employees. The effect sizes are too small and other individual factors much too large.

Second, those differences wouldn't "justify" anything, they would only explain that a disparity would exist in a perfectly just world.

Mainly though, you say "of course there are gender differences" when that's literally not an acceptable thing to say publicly right now. Especially as a corporation. And the evidence showing irrational sexism and racism in tech is even better than the evidence around sex differences.

The question is how to tell how much each factor contributes, because one we want to correct and the other is just a part of the human condition. Since we can't ask the question right now, that's probably step one.

As to just letting the market sort it out ... I find it completely unconvincing that that would ever work. I think that's a naive view of how culture, human social organization and human rationality work. Not even mentioning the fact that serfdom and slavery are very efficient structures from the market point of view.

Re: 10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google

#67

Post by hw »

Let's take gender, race, food preference out of the equation. Say a person with qualities A and another person with qualities B both interview at a company. Turns out that at the company (and in the industry in general, type Bs are a minority), and there's a movement to hire more of type Bs.

If type A did better in an interview than type B, but the company ended up hiring a type B because of the whole diversity thing, is that considered a bad thing? Wouldn't that be considered preferential treatment? Why are there company initiatives or programs for B but not for A.

As someone who is of type B, I feel offended that there are 'initiatives' that help me get jobs at companies. I dont need my hand held or the job given to me just because i'm the only B applicant in a pool of 10 applicants

Re: 10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google

#68

Post by brandonmenc »

mcphage wrote: post #18

Simple response to his thesis: there used to be more women in programming... back when it was harder.

> back when it was harder

Is this true?

Or is it the old "machine code is harder" idea?

How many people here programmed assembly language in middle school, but would have been stumped (or at least strained to the max in comparison) if made to read say, the Design Patterns book?

Re: 10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google

#70

Post by linhares »

mempko wrote: post #37
sattoshi wrote: post #16

Diversity always seems like a silly objective. Of all things, why focus on race and gender? How about hairstyle? Why not height? Maybe I feel like my weight is not represented fairly! I'm just poking fun. Those aren't real questions. The author promotes the only diversity that matters: diversity of thought. Anything else should at worst a proxy to get some.

The only response to his post that matters are from the women in tech. Do they appreciate it? What's your guess?

what makes you say something like this?
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