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James Damore and three others end Google suit

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Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#991
post #989

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yeah, that's exactly why that's not enough data to put together policy. Except it is, and I just proved it above. >You might as well measure bumps on people's heads to predict whether they want anti-violence funding Bumps on people's heads have nothing to do with violence. This is a non sequitur. >you'll have about as much luck as you will chasing it after skin color That makes no sense. The fact that the group is m…

> Bumps on people's heads have nothing to do with violence. This is a non sequitur. I submit to you it's exactly as irrelevant as skin color. I submit to you if you take the population that you have described, change only the category from "African American" to another category and nothing else, and kept the same population of people with no other parameters changed, you would not see a change in the violence rate. B…

>I submit to you it's exactly as irrelevant as skin color.

It quite possibly is. No one mentioned anything about skin color except you.

>I submit to you if you take the population that you have described, change only the category from "African American" to another category and nothing else, and kept the same population of people with no other parameters changed, you would not see a change in the violence rate.

This is a non sequitur tautological fallacy. Of course if you kept the population the same nothing would change. This is a poor attempt at strawmaning that still makes no sense.

>Believing that measurable correlation implies causation is one of the major failings that I see often encouraged in the computer science space.

There is no correlation here, it's an indisputable fact. Your major failing is your inability to understand these basic concepts, including correlation/causation because it's not even being used here.

>You made claims about population and then claims about interventions that suggest that the population membership is causal.

It's not a claim, it's a fact. Regardless of the suggestion of causality, YOU ASKED:

Give an example theory, I did. Give an example policy, I did. Now you're moving the goalposts on "suggestions of population membership" which is immaterial to the points I made and proved above.

>What if the causal issue is poverty?

It could be, but it's totally immaterial to the facts I stated above.

Again, it is a FACT that African Americans commit more crimes than Asian Americans.

You can draw theories and propose policy from these basic FACTS, but the facts are not open to interpretation, which is what I claimed and proved above.

>Poverty in the United States is so deeply correlated with being a member of a racial category that it is extremely hard to disambiguate effects that show up in race from effects that show up in income and asset levels. This is what I mean when I say lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Immaterial to the discussion at hand, and may not even be correct, not that it matters.

>Because if the cause is poverty and not "African American culture," then violence interventions for African Americans are like "get your energy level up" interventions for people who are starving.

Makes no sense, and is immaterial to the discussion about the facts.

They are the official ethnic group that is the most violent; if we are to target a specific group for ethnic-centric anti-violence training, the that is the best policy to go with from the basic hard facts laid above.

QED.

>You'll waste good money treating the wrong problem. You'll also miss people that also have the same problem but don't get any intervention because they don't fit the poorly-defined template.

Except by definition it is treating the correct problem, and targeting the correct group. It's not poorly defined, it's fact based.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#992
post #991

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bumps on people's heads have nothing to do with violence. This is a non sequitur. I submit to you it's exactly as irrelevant as skin color. I submit to you if you take the population that you have described, change only the category from "African American" to another category and nothing else, and kept the same population of people with no other parameters changed, you would not see a change in the violence rate. B…

>I submit to you it's exactly as irrelevant as skin color. It quite possibly is. No one mentioned anything about skin color except you. >I submit to you if you take the population that you have described, change only the category from "African American" to another category and nothing else, and kept the same population of people with no other parameters changed, you would not see a change in the violence rate. This i…

The reasoning presented in this thread is pretty representative of the thought processes Damore laid out in his memo.

Which is pretty indicative of why he was fired.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#993

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not fair summary of the document at all. In fact Damore was aligned with the purpose of the diversity groups and trying to reason how what is known about different preferences and personalities between men and women could be used to help improve diversity at Google. For example, Damore's memo has a section where he reasons that one reason women may not be promoted as often is because Google is organized to rec…

> Damore was aligned with the purpose of the diversity groups I'm curious your source on this information.

His leaked manifesto.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#994

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his failure was just naivete. He thought Google wanted legitimate feedback or would support intellectual honesty over popularity. That was wrong.

I mean, the authors of some of the studies Damore cited came out and said that he was misrepresenting them and that they disagreed with the conclusion he drew from them.

Source? I remember multiple cited authors coming out in support of Damore.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#995
post #964

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History shows interpretation of facts can be extremely racist and sexist. Phrenology and hysteria both come to mind.

Phrenology and hysteria are not facts, and their interpretations are not facts either. Some facts are not open to interpretation.

Flagged comment:

Those were theories to describe specific phenomenas, not facts.

Certain facts are indisputable and not open to interpretation:

FACT: African-Americans are more likely to commit violent crimes than Asian Americans.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#996
post #981

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite possibly, if one shows one's work on how one arrived at that statement (statistics can be bloody slippery things, and while individual data points are facts, the analysis, interpretation, and summarization of them starts to wander away from "fact," especially when one begins to do curve fitting or assumptions about population distributions). And if one runs with that fact alone and tries to build behaviors on i…

>Quite possibly, if one shows one's work on how one arrived at that statement (statistics can be bloody slippery things, and while individual data points are facts, the analysis, interpretation, and summarization of them starts to wander away from "fact," especially when one begins to do curve fitting or assumptions about population distributions). Any and every statistical study ever done on race and crime supports…

Flagged comment:

>Quite possibly, if one shows one's work on how one arrived at that statement (statistics can be bloody slippery things, and while individual data points are facts, the analysis, interpretation, and summarization of them starts to wander away from "fact," especially when one begins to do curve fitting or assumptions about population distributions).

Any and every statistical study ever done on race and crime supports the FACT stated above. Per capita, it's an indisputable fact that they commit more violent crimes, raw numbers alone, no curve fitting or extrapolation.

>And if one runs with that fact alone and tries to build behaviors on it, one's likely to fall into a similar trap to the one the phrenologists fell into: assuming that a single fact is descriptive enough of the world to dictate theory or practice.

Which brings us back to my original statement. Are facts racist and sexist?

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#997
post #952

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is sexism a political view? Edit: burn, karma, burn

Are facts racist and sexist?

Flagged comment:

Those were theories to describe specific phenomenas, not facts.

Certain facts are indisputable and not open to interpretation:

FACT: African-Americans are more likely to commit violent crimes than Asian Americans.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#998

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. There's this one user named lawnchair_larry who believes that women are, on average, weaker performers in tech[1], that it's for biological reasons[2], and that it's fair to discriminate against women in hiring decisions because of it[3]. Yes, he phrased some of his opinions as questions, but anyone with a fifth grade reading level can figure out the implied answer. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960…

Care to ctrl-f for “weaker” in your citation (which doesn’t even say what you claim) and paste the sentences immediately after? Here, let me help you: It should also be a possibility that they're [women] actually stronger performers in tech (I bet you reached for the down arrow before getting to that sentence). Pretending everyone must have equal ability and 50% of executives and 50% of programmers should be women do…

I saw that you said women might also be stronger in tech, but I know that you don't actually think that we are, because you also think that men are predominant in tech fields for biological reasons. Unless you think that women are stronger in tech and biologically predisposed against it, the only possibility is that you think women are weaker in tech. Further, if you didn't believe that it was women who are weaker in tech, it wouldn't be contextually relevant to bring up the possibility of a skill difference in a discussion about the prevalence of women in tech. Finally when confronted about this, you don't explicitly deny thinking that women are inferior in tech, you just point out that your comment didn't technically exclude the logical possibility that you thought otherwise. People reading your comments aren't stupid and aren't robots: the "I'm not touching you" game doesn't fool anyone.

The chance that the natural gender distribution across a profession would be exactly 50/50 would be quite low, in the same way that any particular hand in a card game is unlikely. However, the chance that the natural percentage of women would be 50±n could be quite reasonable for low values of n. By contrast, the chance that we would get the actual distribution of men vs. women in (say) software engineering we see in the real word by chance alone is incredibly low.

Every adult who isn't mentally disabled understands what an average is. However, saying "women are inferior" does not become less offensive when you add "on average" to then end. And yes, I only have specific information saying that you think women are inferior in tech, but every argument you've made could just as easily be applied to business, politics, or pretty much any area of life that has an important impact on the world.

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