The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google • Hacker News Board

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

#611

Post by nostrademons » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 4:21 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #589

flukus wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politics at the national level is made up of outliers, like sports people and actors. It's entirely possible that women are better at politics but not better than this 0.01% of people at politics, especially considering that men deviate from the norm more often.

What about local politics? Surely that's dominated by women? What about the politics of a social club, a trade union, or similar groups? Are they all dominated by women? (Answer: No). I'm not sure how you can merge the two theories that "Women are just better at people skills" and "Women aren't better than the best". The whole thesis is claiming that women are as naturally superior at people skills as men are natural…

The politics of social clubs and small organizations very often are dominated by women. It's just that these groups are often very gendered, and so if you're a male and don't make a conscious effort to cross gender stereotypes in your hobbies, you'd never know they exist.

I remember my time in the Harry Potter fandom, which is ~99% female. Boy, was there politics. I can remember some truly epic [1][2] incidents of Internet drama all driven by people seeking social status through any means of manipulation possible.

[1] https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Ms.Scribe_Story:_An_Unauthorize...

[2] https://fanlore.org/wiki/Victoria_Bitter_Wank#Further_Readin...

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

#612

Post by tptacek » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 4:23 PM UTC

zimpenfish wrote: post #584

ggreer wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize this is getting off topic, but can you explain why you think that, "All available evidence strongly suggests that Charles Murray is in fact a racist"? I've read The Bell Curve and listened to a debate where Murray argued in favor of universal basic income. I came away from both thinking that he's been totally misrepresented. I just reviewed my notes for The Bell Curve to make sure I hadn't mis-remembered th…

> "All available evidence strongly suggests that Charles Murray is in fact a racist"? https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/07/why-is-charles-murray... > A far more illuminating piece of evidence about the Murray racial worldview is found in his little-read 2003 book Human Accomplishment, the text that substantiates point 2 on the above List Of Racist Charles Murray Beliefs: Black cultural achievements are almost negli…

I hadn't read this piece before, and it's quite good. Thank you!

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

#613

Post by smithsmith » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 4:46 PM UTC

The author has a point. One suggestion to hire people without bias is to make the interview online for the most part and then conduct very few face to face interview with multiple rounds and getting an averaged feed back of the interviewees in text format and judge based upon it.

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

#614

Post by rmc » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 5:23 PM UTC

yarper wrote: post #594

rmc wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about local politics? Surely that's dominated by women? What about the politics of a social club, a trade union, or similar groups? Are they all dominated by women? (Answer: No). I'm not sure how you can merge the two theories that "Women are just better at people skills" and "Women aren't better than the best". The whole thesis is claiming that women are as naturally superior at people skills as men are natural…

It's a pretty drastic oversimplification to say "women have better people skills" but there are definitely personality differences between men and women [1]. (I don't know why this comes as a surprise to anyone) [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/

When people see a tech company that's 90% male, they say "Oh well, men and women are different, that's the explaination."

So where are the places which are 90% women? Why isn't politics 90% women. Instead it's about ~20% and that's after years of campaigning & activism.

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

#615

Post by dionidium » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 5:27 PM UTC

nowo wrote: post #571

haberman wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your labeling of my argument as a "trope" is unnecessary and dismissive. If we are talking tropes, pretty much nothing is more trope-y right now than the cycle of outrage and virtue signaling that is sure to follow any push-back against the current orthodoxy of social justice. It's so predictable you can set your watch to it (witness: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/08/06... ). So please, spare…

> The question is: where are the goalposts? Is the industry sick and oppressive towards women until it hits 50% representation? I don't think that's a fair expectation. It's hard to find a benign reason why the percentage of women CS majors would halve in the last 30 years while the profession as such has become more attractive. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...

One possible benign reason: as society has gotten more free and open to women's choices, their preferences have been revealed. (Note that this also may explain why there are more female computer programmers in Iran than in, say, Finland. Women are more free to do what they want to do in Finland.)

Now, look, this explanation may be wrong, but, no, it's not hard to imagine alternate explanations. Nice and neat conclusions in the social sciences are hard to come by. Anybody in this thread claiming that they know exactly which explanations are the right ones is full of shit.

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

#616

Post by rmc » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 5:27 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #611

rmc wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about local politics? Surely that's dominated by women? What about the politics of a social club, a trade union, or similar groups? Are they all dominated by women? (Answer: No). I'm not sure how you can merge the two theories that "Women are just better at people skills" and "Women aren't better than the best". The whole thesis is claiming that women are as naturally superior at people skills as men are natural…

The politics of social clubs and small organizations very often are dominated by women. It's just that these groups are often very gendered, and so if you're a male and don't make a conscious effort to cross gender stereotypes in your hobbies, you'd never know they exist. I remember my time in the Harry Potter fandom, which is ~99% female. Boy, was there politics. I can remember some truly epic [1][2] incidents of In…

But what about the non-gendered "political" things, like trad unions, local political party organisations, universities, other non-gendered clubs, if women are really better at people skills, shouldn't them be dominating those areas in the same way men are dominating STEM? Can you find a group which, at the low levels is about 50:50, and yet women dominate the political/organisational level?

How much counter-examples can you ignore before you say well maybe this "women are good at people skills, men are good at STEM". It seems like people really think "well men are better at basically everything"

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

#617

Post by jondubois » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 5:29 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #133

jondubois wrote: post #52

I agree that giving someone an unfair advantage because of their gender or race is a form of discrimination. Gender and race are just two of many factors that individuals might struggle with when it comes to their career and life. If you're an introvert, short, fat, nerdy-looking or you have a weak posture; there's no support group to offset your shortcomings and all the insidious ways in which they will sabotage you…

When you have a culture where more than 40 million people live below the poverty line and even wealthy people can be bankrupted by medical conditions, debates about workplace privilege seem like a niche form of special pleading. The US economy is a monstrous engine powered by discrimination and inequality. Discrimination against (mostly) college educated women who might want to be developers is barely a footnote in t…

Very true, it's completely arbitrary in the grand scheme of things and it doesn't deserve so much limelight. If it's a problem in one company, then the discussion should be kept within the confines of the one company instead of making it everyone's fault and everyone's problem. It's preemptively biasing us to overcompensate in areas that are already very well compensated.

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

#618

Post by nostrademons » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 5:50 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #616

nostrademons wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The politics of social clubs and small organizations very often are dominated by women. It's just that these groups are often very gendered, and so if you're a male and don't make a conscious effort to cross gender stereotypes in your hobbies, you'd never know they exist. I remember my time in the Harry Potter fandom, which is ~99% female. Boy, was there politics. I can remember some truly epic [1][2] incidents of In…

But what about the non-gendered "political" things, like trad unions, local political party organisations, universities, other non-gendered clubs, if women are really better at people skills, shouldn't them be dominating those areas in the same way men are dominating STEM? Can you find a group which, at the low levels is about 50:50, and yet women dominate the political/organisational level? How much counter-examples…

Most of those are gendered, but they're gendered in ways that are the "default" for society (i.e. masculine) and so you don't notice them. Traditional unions and local political parties, for example, represent industries and civic institutions that have historically been populated with men only.

In industries that actually are 50/50 or majority female, you do see a number of women in top leadership positions. For example, the president of the national teacher's union is a woman [1], as are the three co-presidents of the national nurse's union [2], as is my alma mater's (which only went co-ed in 1974) college president [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randi_Weingarten

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Nurses_United

[3] https://www.amherst.edu/amherst-story/president

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

#619

Post by _xhok » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 5:57 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #606

dionidium wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recall that this entire subthread is the result of your claims about Murray. I am not an expert in the field, so I don't have strong opinions about the competing explanations for group differences in IQ. What I'm fighting against/for isn't any particular claim about intelligence, but rather your framing of one particular claim.† I do strongly hold the position that a genetic explanation, should one exist, says absolu…

I'm sorry, you'll have to forgive me, but I'm still in the dark as to what it is you actually believe. Help me understand the difference you see between observations about population aggregates in studies versus observations about "races".

You want to lump (a) people who simply think, as a technical opinion, that there are population statistical differences with (b) people who desperately want an excuse to cleanse society of black people. They are not the same thing, and to pretend they are is to oversimplify truth in order to make a virtuous statement.

Some people argue that this is a good thing to do, but if you do this you can't complain about the phrase "virtue signaling," as someone prioritizing virtue over accuracy.

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

#620

Post by alpsgolden » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 6:34 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #616

nostrademons wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The politics of social clubs and small organizations very often are dominated by women. It's just that these groups are often very gendered, and so if you're a male and don't make a conscious effort to cross gender stereotypes in your hobbies, you'd never know they exist. I remember my time in the Harry Potter fandom, which is ~99% female. Boy, was there politics. I can remember some truly epic [1][2] incidents of In…

But what about the non-gendered "political" things, like trad unions, local political party organisations, universities, other non-gendered clubs, if women are really better at people skills, shouldn't them be dominating those areas in the same way men are dominating STEM? Can you find a group which, at the low levels is about 50:50, and yet women dominate the political/organisational level? How much counter-examples…

Personally, I think "women are good at people skills, men are good at STEM" is a misleading simplification. Men and women have different strengths in people skills. It has been my observation that men are better at treating other people as abstractions, or with some detachment. I don't have it on hand, but I recall seeing some survey where it said women have a harder time working with people they personally dislike. Men are better at giving and taking criticism without making it personal. I think women on average find it much more emotionally taxing to run a team of twenty people where they have to fire people and give harsh feedback.

(One other confounding variable, women also have big hormonal changes after childbirth and after menopause, so it's especially young women who have these problems).

It seems like people really think "well men are better at basically everything"

Seems to me that women are much better at taking care of small children, and being attentive and reactive to their needs, and doing mundane repetitive or helpful tasks, and men are better at almost all things dealing with the outside world, dealing with nature, and large scale organization. This is what I observe myself, it is consistent with the data, and it is exactly what you would expect based on the environment in which we evolved.