James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google • Hacker News Board

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#911

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:27 PM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #863

andrewprock wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like there is only indirect evidence, and no direct evidence. In fact, the whole discussion smells far too much of "correlation means causation" to get anything useful out of it. There are some great weasel words like: "there is good evidence ... play a role ..." Without a hypothetical mechanism, this is all quite speculative.

>> Is there any evidence that this is biological, as opposed to cultural? > [Plenty] > It looks like there is only indirect evidence, And there go the goalposts, red-shifting into the sunset. > "correlation means causation" / "there is good evidence ... play a role ..." Well, remember that Damore's claim was that there is evidence that we cannot categorically rule out biological causes for the skewed representation,…

Damore’s claim was that the evidence justified specific corporate policy responses, including rejecting several of Google’s public core values.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#912

Post by stcredzero » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:39 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #854

stcredzero wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don't go witch-hunting. Sometimes old cultural artifacts go away in the "mother country" but persist in "the colonies." Seems like the witch-hunting mentality is something that's stuck around in the US, infecting both the political Right and Left.

And now as the colony is culturally (among other things) the most powerful/dominant actor on the stage of the world, the mindset is infecting the "old world" back.

It happened with traditional music.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#913

Post by hinkley » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:52 PM UTC

Goladus wrote: post #726

hinkley wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In any discussion of a social problem there are apologists. There are only so many ways to signal that you’re not a shill. It’s not a great solution, but we don’t have better. I agree on the data thing. I think when you get down to the bottom of things, lumping people under a label and treating them as a cohesive unit is part of the problem. If that’s true, getting permission from a small cohort of that group is stil…

There are only so many ways to signal that you’re not a shill. It’s not a great solution, but we don’t have better. Or, people can learn to read and act on the content of an argument rather than immediately trying to discredit someone with appeals to popular bigotry.

If we were discussing the merits of React vs Angular, sure.

But in general, telling someone they've been a jerk all their life leads to certain existential crises that they will do just about anything to avoid.

People don't just get defensive, they get cruel. There's a whole group of tricks that are basically gaslighting the person. They take an aggressively "reasonable" stance and trying to convince the person they're crazy and it's all them.

Because this happens often enough that many of these 'overtures' are obvious, it makes interacting with moderates a waste of time. I've seen person after person get DDOSed by a handful of people throwing walls of text at them but really just tangenting the conversation off into oblivion.

So when someone who is actually in your group takes a moderate position, unless you know them personally, you can't know if they're really a moderate or just a troll. That's not to say you spend effort on people at the extremes, it just means you are hesitant about overly-moderate people the way you are about people asking you for help on a street corner. You've tried it before and it's a scam so often you don't even want to make eye contact.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#914

Post by OCASM » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:53 PM UTC

swingedseraph wrote: post #831

OCASM wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did nothing wrong.

He did several things wrong, and simply _stating_ that he did not does not make it true.

He did nothing wrong, and simply _stating_ that he did does not make it true.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#915

Post by OCASM » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:54 PM UTC

jacksmith21006 wrote: post #886

OCASM wrote: post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Google unjustly firing somebody is obviously impossible.

Google is a US company. In the US when someone does what Damore did you get fired. It is just how it works. It might not be fair. It is also why Damore is at home unemployed. Nobody would hire him. I think part of the confusion on this matter is employment is very different in the US versus many other parts of the world. In the US and CA you can be fired for farting in a meeting.

We'll see if the courts agree with you.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#916

Post by stcredzero » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:55 PM UTC

akhilcacharya wrote: post #840

stcredzero wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have the benefit that now those people get included in a social environment that they would normally be cut out from, get payed more than they would otherwise and, hopefully, this will trickle down to their children and grandchildren Irish immigrants started out from a culture, where the typical peasant was 1/2 to 1/4th as wealthy as the median pre-Civil War American Slave. There was a period of time when ethnic Iris…

Disregarding the Flynn effect, the slow integration of Irish and the Catholics into American society prior to the end of Jim Crow and the fact that the US Black community and US mainstream left were lead by a black President who went to Harvard Law and Columbia, which toxic culture are they supposedly glorifying?

US mainstream left were lead by a black President who went to Harvard Law and Columbia

I voted for Obama. However, in retrospect, he was part of the shift of the American left into an authoritarian version. Those collegiate "progressive" protesters who say, "F your free speech" are part of this unfortunate shift.

which toxic culture are they supposedly glorifying?

Urban thug culture.

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Rednecks-Liberals-Thomas-Sowell...

There is a genteel African American culture. I've known people from that thread of American culture. It valued learning, rationality, responsibility, and manners. Also, not all Black Americans are too crazy about Obama's legacy.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6IJV_0p64s

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

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#917

Post by rendall » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 6:01 PM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #638

FabHK wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. Most of the pieces about the memo didn't take time to highlight that "neuroticism" and "agreeableness" refer to Big-5 personality traits, not the everyday understanding of the words. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits Most of the pieces didn't distinguish between descriptive and normative statements. Most of the pieces didn't distinguish between statements about distribution of something wi…

Except the Big Five has been debunked as being too lexical for biological differentiation. Basically its lexical nature introduces perceptual bias that skews any factor analysis for biological structures - i.e. behavior between genders, for example. The way Damore uses it to support his hypothesis wasn't correct. >And that is what the Big Five represents: a consistent model of how humans reflect individuality using l…

> Except the Big Five has been debunked as being too lexical for biological differentiation.

Has the Big Five model been actually debunked? Or, rather, has it received criticism.

But, yes, your focus on the content of the memo itself is a breath of fresh air in this overall debacle of a discourse.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#918

Post by rendall » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 6:08 PM UTC

"James Damore, a former Google engineer who was fired in August after posting a memo to an internal Google message board arguing that women may not be equally represented in tech because they are biologically less capable of engineering..."

I have stopped reading TechCrunch, ArsTechnica and Vice magazine because they continually report this inaccurately (at best) if they are not outright lying.

Once again, Damore never says that women are biologically less capable. Nothing like this is every stated nor even implied. In fact he goes out of his way to say this is not so, in the memo. Frustrating.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#919

Post by stcredzero » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 6:08 PM UTC

Aloha wrote: post #848

stcredzero wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have the benefit that now those people get included in a social environment that they would normally be cut out from, get payed more than they would otherwise and, hopefully, this will trickle down to their children and grandchildren Irish immigrants started out from a culture, where the typical peasant was 1/2 to 1/4th as wealthy as the median pre-Civil War American Slave. There was a period of time when ethnic Iris…

>The Polish and Italian immigrant groups' IQs increased from 85 to over 100 over the 1st half of the 20th century. Yes, because of improved living conditions, and better food compared to the old country - not because of political leadership.

not because of political leadership

In part because of leadership -- chiefly thought leadership, a part of which came in the form of assimilation. The power of human capital -- culture -- should not be underestimated. If it's just access to resources like improved food and living conditions, then every group would progress at the same rate. If it's just access to resources, then giving people resources would automatically make them richer. However, there are a number of Africans who advocate stopping aid to Africa. Africa is full or resources, and Japan has very few. Why is Japan so much wealthier?

Most of the answer is human capital.

If the cultures of the Polish and Italians were not encouraging their younger generations to better their fortunes through education and business, then the cultures would have lowered the material wealth of the groups and held them back, in much the same way that the early Irish immigrants to the US lowered the quality of life in their slums.

http://a.co/auz0JmV

In this, there is much hope. If cultural transmission can raise up the 19th century potato famine Irish to the 1st world mainstream, there is basically nothing it can't accomplish. (However, culture runs deep, below the level of the conscious mind. It can't be transmitted by simple edict.)

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#920

Post by stcredzero » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 6:19 PM UTC

notfromhere wrote: post #901

TeMPOraL wrote: post #850

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it is that the feminism movement of old basically won - women voices are being heard and treated as equally important in the society. But like many movements, instead of dissolving after successful accomplishment of its mission, it transformed into a form that tries to perpetuate its own survival and status of importance.

I would disagree with that. Women still face plenty of discrimination in society

This is true. Asians face plenty of prejudicial discrimination as well. I would say that everyone faces some form of it. My mother always says, "Living well is the best revenge."

After awhile, onlookers catch onto the fact one is spending all of their time moving the goalposts.