Outraged about the Google diversity memo? • Hacker News Board

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#631

Post by emanreus » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 3:39 PM UTC

jernfrost wrote: post #400

Great perspective. As a Northern European having dealt with American company ownership I don't think the main problem in Google's case was political correctness but rather a general American problem with how free speech is defined in the US. Freedom in America is always about government NOT doing something, while in Europe government is defined as a protector of these freedoms. This shows up clearly with respect to s…

Speaking of Norway... An interesting documentary about gender differences and affirmative action. (40 min)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E577jhf25t4

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#632

Post by michaelchisari » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 3:39 PM UTC

yorwba wrote: post #291

michaelchisari wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, GD has been around for over 20 years. It's not obscure. It's extremely popular. Most coders have used it at some point. I could whip upa similar graph without breaking a sweat that says whatever I'd like, and it would have all the same hallmarks of this one. I could even do it in PHP using ImageMagick (if I felt masochistic) and fake the file header to say it was created using GD. Or build it in photoshop, an…

> So I think unless there's someone who can point to greater evidence that this is an internal graph, there's just no reason to believe it is. So I think unless there's someone who can point to the actual internal graph, there's just no reason to believe this is fake. The distribution this poll shows is not so outlandish as to be unbelievable, and importantly it does not lend itself to overwhelmingly support one side…

> Why would anyone spend time and effort to fake it?

It's a heated argument on the internet. There'd be plenty of incentive to fake a graph in order to bolster one's opinion.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#633

Post by michaelchisari » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 3:40 PM UTC

rtx wrote: post #355

michaelchisari wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now, we have two indicators: The way the swings on the special elections are going, which are all violently swinging away from the Republicans, even if Republicans end up winning, it's barely by single digits in double digit districts. And the polling, which in aggregate, across all demographics, has been continually moving more and more negative each passing month. Even polls like Rasmussen, which have a tradi…

Here is something that will explain what happened. Though it may disappoint you. Ossoff got 125,517 votes Handel got 134,799 votes. Compare Dem - 124,917 Rep - 201,088 As you see there was no swing in Dem's favour.

You know, people think elections are about convincing one side to switch over to the other. That's actually not how swings occur. They happen by people deciding to stay home or come out.

A special election is a hard sell. Democrats sold it. Republicans didn't.

Mid-term elections are also hard sells. We'll see who can sell it.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#634

Post by madez » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 3:41 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #580

madez wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's bad to write "woman, or black man, or muslim'. Being a woman or a black man is something that is determined before birth. Your religious views are adopted after birth. That's why I think it is bad to speak of muslim people, as if that defined them the most. That leads to seperation and distrust, we-against-them. Your sex and skin colour is given, your religion can change.

> That's why I think it is bad to speak of muslim people, as if that defined them the most. Lots of people primarily identify by their religious affiliations. I think that's fair. > Your sex and skin colour is given, your religion can change. Ask a Muslim which will change first: their gender, their skin color, or whether Mohammed was Allah's prophet. All that being said, your point about religion and race being sepa…

> Ask a Muslim which will change first: their gender, their skin color, or whether Mohammed was Allah's prophet.

You are generalizing in a way that will create animosity. There are liberal people which identify as muslims.

Even though most religious people identify themselves by their religious affiliations, not all do, and not everbody is religious.

I think religion is a cancerous meme, that we shouldn't pay respect to. I don't even want to be asked whether I am religious, nor what religion.

My name allows a funny pun in that regard: I'm Christian, but I'm not.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#635

Post by hashberry » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 3:41 PM UTC

losteverything wrote: post #545

Let me present a walmart associate opinion on the person that was fired. Tldr - sometimes really smart people do the dumbest things. Where was his common sense? For the average associate i know the overarching Question would be did he not know he could be fired? "I would have loved to go to college. I couldn't afford it. Id love to have a job at Google. He probably makes over one hundred thousand dollars. All those y…

> I just dont understand how people who are supposed to be so smart can be so dumb.

Aspergers or something similar. Watch the Jordan Peterson interview. He's not well-spoken and he's not even that passionate. It's a joke the mainstream media is calling his memo a "manifesto" when it was just his attempt to analyze gender and diversity in his own socially awkward way. This really is about outrage culture.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#636

Post by michaelchisari » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 3:41 PM UTC

supremesaboteur wrote: post #373

michaelchisari wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Republicans won all 6 special elections. By slim margins in what should have been extremely safe districts. Then they lost the next 2, one of which by way a 30 point swing. The swing is not something you can hand-wave away. It's one of the best metrics we have as a predictor for 2018. > The republicans spent like $3 Million dollars. Estimates on how much was spent on the election range from $40-$60 million. $23…

Democrats spent a lot more money on these races and were still not able to win. This is clearly a problem for them. The swing in margins can be explained by the fact that the President's party mostly always loses some points

> the President's party mostly always loses some points

Not in the double digits, they don't. And not in special elections shortly into the first year of the Presidency, especially.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#637

Post by ZeroGravitas » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 3:43 PM UTC

adrusi wrote: post #582

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the last two bullet points of his tl;dr count?: * 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. * Discrimination to reach equal representation is [...] bad for business. Which I read as, "woman aren't as good, that's why they don't already work here, if we hire more of them, they'll not be able to do the job as…

It's an unreasonable reading. If you read past the tl;dr you see that none of the differences in traits he talks about are about ability, just interest, so interpreting it as "women aren't as good" is wrong.

Can you explain why hiring women who are just as good as, if not better than, men at the job, but who would prefer (on average) to work elsewhere, perhaps somewhere with more women employees, would make the business do worse?

And can we note that I replied to someone saying "he didn't say that", suggested a place where he did and got replies from different people saying "yes he did say that, and he's correct" and replies saying "no, you're misreading what he said as it's explained in more detail later".

So it appears at the very least (and I feel I'm being generous here), that his words can be misread by people on both sides of the issue, which might be worth bearing in mind for those trying to paint his detractors as a hysterical mob who haven't even read the memo.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#638

Post by rayiner » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 3:43 PM UTC

Sacho wrote: post #559

rayiner wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So we'll see what we see in every other company now also at Google. No mixed teams. Do folks really believe that's what gender-balanced work places are like? I used to work at a large New York law firm where 40% of the lawyers were women. All of my teams were mixed, and out of happenstance I spent the bulk of my time working for women partners. Nobody was "terrified" because everyone knew how to act like a professi…

I don't dispute your conclusion, but for the sake of argument, how can you be sure nobody was "terrified", given the claim from GP that people would hide their opinions on the matter very carefully?

I guess I don't know if people were secretly terrified of the mixed-gender situation. But the recruiting process at a big firm involves 12 weeks of alcohol-fueled social events, and I saw pretty much everyone participate. People socialized and made friends with people of the opposite gender, as if we were in a first world country where that was okay. And when I started full time, I never saw any friction in the exclusively mixed-gender teams I worked on.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#639

Post by dahart » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 3:43 PM UTC

carapat_virulat wrote: post #280

dahart wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Claim bearers are burdened with proof. I think that was her point...

But the point of the original "manifesto" was that google makes the claim that uneven distribution of men and women is due to discrimination, and the "manifesto" explains how a 100% fair and non-discriminatory selection process may result in uneven results. In that case, there's no reason to assume discrimination unless it's proved.

> there's no reason to assume discrimination unless it's proved.

Yes there is. Cultural sexism is already widely known to be a massive problem, and active discrimination is only a small part of that. Discrimination is known to exist as well. At the same time there is no known, no proven connection between sex and capacity for engineering, that doesn't even exist as as far as we know.

The number of women in tech is changing over time, faster than evolution, the number of women starting computer science degrees is changing over time, faster than evolution, and many companies employ a larger percentage of women than Google. So, there definitely are reasons to assume cultural sexism and discrimination are involved, and there are more reasons to do so than not.

Burden of proof is on Damore. He has made vague and blanket generalizations about some of the differences between men and women to jump to very specific conclusions that there is no proof of. The burden of proof absolutely rests on him to back up his claims. What he's done so far is spread some FUD, he used sophomoric logic to invent a theory that rationalizes his own desire to discriminate. By claiming that women aren't innately as good- something for which is there no evidence- that frees him up (and anyone who believes the same) to openly not hire women, or to pay them less, for example.

Active discrimination is only one part of the wider issue. Cultural stereotypes, and fear and self-selection by women and men are part of the larger cultural sexism issue too, among other things. There are fewer women studying computer science now than 10 years ago. There are more women studying computer science now than 40 years go. If the primary differences in the capacity for engineering are innate, then how do you explain that? Evolution of human capacity for engineering is not taking place on a yearly basis, so obviously innate biology is not the primary force at play here.

The number of women in the workforce has gone up over the last decade at the same time the number of women in tech has declined, yet all the male-female differences Damore commented on would affect all men and women in business. Remember, he only claimed that women are more open, more agreeable, and more neurotic, and that men are more driven for status. If this explains the gender gap in tech, then it should also explain the same gender gap in business globally, and it fails to do that by miles.

The same arguments that Damore is putting forward were used to discriminate against women in tech have been used in the paste to discriminate against women in the workforce in general, and against women in the military as well. Maybe read a little more history. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_workforce https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_military http://www.computerscience.org/resources/women-in-computer-s...

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#640

Post by Frondo » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 3:43 PM UTC

nippples wrote: post #94

sidlls wrote: post #87

I'll repeat this again here: it's very likely he wasn't fired for trying to have a discussion. It is more likely he was fired because he did so by propagating gender stereotypes and doubling-down on those stereotypes (his suggestions for how to improve diversity essentially were just context-specific extensions of these stereotypes), which both almost certainly reduced his credibility as a coworker to the point that…

> It's possible to have a discussion about these issues today. It's not rational to give special preference and excessive leeway to discussion that isn't actually fact based (and is in many ways based on nothing related to facts). Well, that's great, because his points on gender differences are actually extensively backed by research. When he's talking about that, he isn't talking about what should be or what can be…

"Well, that's great, because his points on gender differences are actually extensively backed by research. When he's talking about that, he isn't talking about what should be or what can be, he's talking about what is."

Doing a lit review--i.e., knowing the research in a field--is a thing that take a lot of time and working in that field.

I'd trust this guy to be up to date on algorithm research, and present an even-handed exposition on what's good for task x or y, cause that's presumably the thing he spends his days doing.

I see no reason to assume that he can do a thorough, even-handed lit review on a field he doesn't have working experience with, like biology or evolutionary psychology.

There's also been a long history of using "science" to support objectionable ideas (e.g. scientific racism).

Saying this (not a researcher, not a biologist, not an evolutionary psychologist) guy's writing is extensively backed by research just doesn't move the needle for me in any way.