Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

backreaction.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

731–740 of 872 posts

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#731

Post by KirinDave »

mistermann wrote: post #691
KirinDave wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are kicking and screaming against anything that upsets your viewpoint on this issue. Interesting. So in this case I shouldn't debate anyone here. Because somehow that makes me wrong because... By not agreeing my worldview is small? > that any discrimination based on age, gender, or race is absolutely not tolerated. Honestly, I genuinely do not believe that many people here believe this. I think they find excuse…

> Interesting. So in this case I shouldn't debate anyone here. Because somehow that makes me wrong because... By not agreeing my worldview is small? "forgive these men their outrageously outdated and somewhat dehumanizing viewpoints and calmly explain to them that currently they are benefitting from a system called patriarchy that has normalized male dominance" doesn't sound like you're open to a debate, it sounds li…

So what you're saying is you don't appreciate my tone?

You can nose around my comments. While I'm somewhat acidic with people who suggest it is the feminist responsibility to endure every negative opinion in perpetuity, I'm engaging in most conversations honestly.

I am quite confident in the core components of these observations, but I was more skeptical of it some time ago. If you genuinely believe I cannot be swayed, why do YOU bother talking to me?

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#732

Post by throwaway12124 »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #504
Const-me wrote: post #113

IMO the best comment from there: Giulio Prisco said... The results of this incident are easy to predict. Now everyone at Google (and everyone in large tech companies, and everyone in academy) knows that they can be fired for expressing opinions that dissent from the party line. Of course they'll shut up for fear of losing their job and the means to support their family. But they won't change their position. If anythi…

So, I've done some work in finance, and I just, don't see it. At the major banks you've got literal hours of training about the things you can and cannot say with association with the firm and with its image. Fuck whatever you think about diversity and playing nice with the feelings of everyone, the brand damage alone would (and did in Google's case) have gotten James fired if he was working in the "real world". Free…

It'll be interesting to see whether any of the leakers that caused that bad PR are actually fired. Seems doubtful.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#733

Post by KirinDave »

TimJYoung wrote: post #612
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…

I really didn't want to comment on this topic, but who can pass up a chance at self-immolation ? Being left-leaning, I've been doing a lot of looking into some of the ideas floating around amongst the right-leaning crowd since the election. Based upon that, I would say that yes, that is an unreasonable reading. My understanding (subject to being completely off-base, of course) is that the argument is about biological…

I think it's a bit of a popular straw man that a 50/50 split is desired. It's more along the lines of, "There are no obvious artificial disadvantages for people in these groups, and if that happens then the resulting distribution will almost certainly change."

If you look at the published #s right now, they're... very striking. It makes the hypothesis that it's just the preference of women and people of various minorities quite an aggressive hypothesis, in a bayesian sense.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#734

Post by whataretensors »

sersi wrote: post #597
tchaffee wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that means that it's a topic that needs to be discussed instead of being censored and the author fired. Here is what CEO said on the about it in his response [1]: "many points raised in the memo—such as the portions criticizing Google’s trainings, questioning the role of ideology in the workplace, and debating whether programs for women and underserved groups are sufficiently open to all—are important topics. The a…

The main problem I see with that is that poll that says that a third of the employees didn't disagree with the memo. If there's such a large percentage that agree with it then it's time for discussion. It's not a minority opinion and that memo shows what a lot of people think but will not be afraid to express. So, instead of having open discussion on the topic which would help changing ideas, those opinions are being…

Yes, if you deny the reasonable conversation then the extremists will claim it as validating their ridiculous standpoints.

You can see this in action if you read the response to this on any extremist online gathering spot. A lot of people didn't fully read or comprehend the memo and use it as proof of their nonsense world view.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#735

Post by doubleshame »

In my opinion, a lot of this rhetoric is being repeated. But the points raised by the original memo require a bit of perhaps subtle mathematics to understand.

This is an attempt at curating a list of relevant math and rationality articles, so that we can at least speak the same language when talking about this.

Start here: I personally view it as the base model of all beliefs that we can hold. It talks about some kinds of things that we can know and how much we should have confidence in what we know.

Bayes theorem: http://arbital.com/p/bayes_rule_guide

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#736

Post by doubleshame »

doubleshame wrote: post #735

In my opinion, a lot of this rhetoric is being repeated. But the points raised by the original memo require a bit of perhaps subtle mathematics to understand. This is an attempt at curating a list of relevant math and rationality articles, so that we can at least speak the same language when talking about this. Start here: I personally view it as the base model of all beliefs that we can hold. It talks about some kin…

Another Bayes theorem. This is IMO the most important idea so I am including this alternate text as well.

http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes/

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#737

Post by andrewprock »

NaliSauce wrote: post #432
mpweiher wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That experiment was done in STEM academia recently, and showed a 2:1 hiring advantage for women. http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract It should also be noted that the earlier study, which showed a smaller effect and only if the resumes were calibrated to be (a) mediocre and (b) precisely calibrated to be the same, was done in Psychology . Which is, of course, a field dominated by women and maybe not the t…

>That experiment was done in STEM academia recently, and showed a 2:1 hiring advantage for women. Back when I was still at university I was on a hiring panel for a new prof. In a first step we ranked all the applicants using qualitative and quantitative metrics (the rankings across qualitative/quantitative and people on the panel was very similar when we compared rankings at the end) and then we handed in a shortlist…

When you say the ranking was quantitative, what sort of quantities did you measure? Did you ever evaluate the quality of your metrics, and how predictive they were for future success?

IIRC, Google did the same thing and concluded their hiring metrics had very little predictive value beyond setting a certain bar. Once you rose to that level, most discriminatory power of the metric evaporated.

If that was the case where you were, then is probably very little predictive value between "top scores" and "median scores".

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#738

Post by jshevek »

zimpenfish wrote: post #531
jshevek wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Assuming someone is posting in bad faith for this reason is an act of bad faith. Your statement reveals hypocrisy.

A throwaway account created specifically to post one comment is a sign of bad faith. It's entirely possible that I am wrong but the lack of subsequent engagement suggests otherwise.

"using a newly created account means you aren't."

This is wrong. Using a newly created account does not mean the communicator is approaching this in bad faith. That's a complete non sequitor.

"lack of subsequent engagement suggests otherwise."

Not at all. There are numerous reason they might not engage further within this time frame - or ever.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#739

Post by michaelchisari »

yorwba wrote: post #652
michaelchisari wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

My point is that if you are going to fake a graph to bolster your opinion, you might as well fake one that actually bolsters your opinion, instead of just mildly suggesting that not everyone disagrees with you.

I'm really disappointed we're even having this conversation on Hacker News. A graph with no source, no methodology, no context is useless. We're computer programmers, we should know enough about data to recognize this and dismiss it until we have those things.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#740

Post by doubleshame »

doubleshame wrote: post #735

In my opinion, a lot of this rhetoric is being repeated. But the points raised by the original memo require a bit of perhaps subtle mathematics to understand. This is an attempt at curating a list of relevant math and rationality articles, so that we can at least speak the same language when talking about this. Start here: I personally view it as the base model of all beliefs that we can hold. It talks about some kin…

"Magic is fueled by belief and willpower" "Magic that works whether or not you believe in it"

What is belief and what is reality. An existential notion of truth that I subscribe to.

http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth/

Post reply on HN