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I've read the doc. At first skim, I thought it was going to be a reasonable "stop the echochamber" style doc, that points out issues with over-loving diversity

I've read the doc. At first skim, I thought it was going to be a reasonable "stop the echochamber" style doc, that points out issues with over-loving diversity without thinking about the impact of it, and that decries the strong-left culture at Google that can be alienating to right-leaning employees. But in reality, dude went full /r/TheRedPill and The_Donald on this. I think the best description I heard of the doc was 'right diagnosis, but overall lazy'. The doc called for reinforcement of stereotypes and removal of mandatory bias training. I can see how someone can see the surface and identify potential problems with it, but ultimately bias training is created by people with real credentials to be doing so -- psychologists, analysts, people who look at data and key results, both empirically and academically. To assume that a privileged engineer would know better than this hardworking team is pretty insulting, I think. There have been some ridiculous, over the top reactions to the doc, but I think it was mostly a case of someone of privilege not understanding why diversity programs are in place and feeling empowered to shit on people without any because they scratched the surface of problems. Again, /r/TheRedPill style content. It did spark discussion, and I think the consensus is that while there are some valid points about the left-leaning employee base, the overall doc fails to adequately dig into the matter, and does so in a hostile way while decrying anyone who disagreed with OP. opinions my own.

_0ffh 9y ago
I'd like to read the thing to form an opinion. Unfortunately I have not found any links yet. Could you share, please? Also, about "but ultimately bias training is created by people with real credentials to be doing so": That seems to be questionable. I know from a professional psychologist that diagnosis of unconscious bias and especially bias training are standing on extremely thin ice scientifically. The hypothesis that the whole bias training industry is a mix of financial exploitation of idologically overhyped and misinterpreted weak scientific results and well meaning but misguided do-goodism can be argued for quite confidently at this point.
- usmeteora 9y ago
  https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320 https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-di... I'd like to know your opinion about the neuroticism comment.
  - Klockan 9y ago
    There is overwhelming evidence that women on average are more neurotic, anyone who argues about gender diversity should be aware of this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2031866/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2031866/
    - Klockan 9y ago
      Did I really get downvoted for stating that people who argues about gender diversity should be aware of one of the strongest psychological differences between the sexes? It doesn't matter if the cause is biological or not, fact is that women are on average significantly more neurotic than men in all modern societies.
      - judahmeek 9y ago
        Didn't downvote you so I can really only guess, but my guess is that you were downvoted for the argument that you were implying. After all, even if the statistical female population does have a higher baseline for neuroticism, would that fact actually weaken the argument for gender diversity? How would it be any different from the fact that men on average are taller?
        Klockan 9y ago
        > After all, even if the statistical female population does have a higher baseline for neuroticism, would that fact actually weaken the argument for gender diversity? Nobody argued against diversity, the document in question only stated that our current diversity efforts aren't really working and that we should consider measurable gender differences such as prevalence of neuroticism if we want to really move the needle.
pandaman 9y ago
Having observed the fall of the USSR it's nothing unusual to me. When people are not comfortable with an oppressive regime they keep their moderate opinions to themselves. Voicing any opinion contrary to the Party line is dangerous no matter how extreme or moderate it is. So all dissenting opinions you are going to hear in public will be coming from extremists (e.g. "Have a Nuremberg-type tribunal for the Party's chiefs, lustrate the rest and their progeny for 7 generations!") because only the people who hold these opinions will be fed up enough to disregard consequences of their dissent. And there won't be many of them, since it's the definition of extremism to be in small minority. However, for every single dissident there were tens or hundreds of thousands of silent supporters who would openly express their disgust and outrage over such horrific person but, when talking with their buddies in private, repeat and spread these ideas thus radicalizing themselves. Eventually everybody but a minority of "true believers" shifted from "well, life kinda sucks right now but at least there is no war" to "burn it down and salt the earth!". When this happened the whole mighty Communist empire collapsed within a year. tl;dr When you see steam breaking through the seals you are about to experience the whole boiler's explosion. The steam that gets out first is weak but it's the sign of mounting pressure inside.
- factsaresacred 9y ago
  Great comment. What you are describing is called a 'preference cascade'. > In short, average people behave the way they think they ought to, even though that behavior might not reflect their own personal feelings. Given a sufficient "A-HA!" moment when they discover that their personal feelings are shared by a large portion of the population their behavior may change dramatically. An example of this is the British colonists before and after publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense. A year before the Declaration of Independence, America was full of patriotic British convinced that things could be worked out with King George, but on July 4, 1776 the colonies were full of Americans determined that they needed independence. Another is the relatively recent "Arab Spring." https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-preference-cascade https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-preference-cascade
  - TimonKnigge 9y ago
    Also preference falsification. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification
Klockan 9y ago
> I can see how someone can see the surface and identify potential problems with it, but ultimately bias training is created by people with real credentials to be doing so Not all experts agree that they work though: https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail
usmeteora 9y ago
Welp, before the entire document was released I made a long statement below based on what I read, trying to give a reasonable consideration for somebody elses viewpoint, but then I read the document where the reader noncholantly listed the following things as inherent underlying biological differences unique to women, not to be up for debate, as the nondisputable premise for how to address the ideological echo chamber,here were the top most infuriating things I read. I must be infuriated because I'm a women and I'm neurotic, which brings me to #1. "Neuroticism: higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance". Of course, women are neurotic, so that explains alot of why women in comparable roles just arent doing as well. "Harder time negociating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. These are just average differences, but this is seen as soley a womens issue" Well thank you for clearing that up. There is aboslutely nothing that causes these differences in women and it is entirely based on their faulty self perception that is there for a reason which must exist because....well you know the answer, which brings me to my next point... "Women are more agreeable." The only mental response I had to this statement was "are you sure women are more agreeable, or do you just perceive that they agree with you and have no real comprehension of how much they disagree with you?" "Men's higher drive for status." Someone please correct me if there is another response I'm supposed to have other than only being able to utilize blatant sarcasm to try to enter into the mindset of the author of this article, and me trying to be agreeable to it: Well, thank you for pointing out these fundamental permanent underlying unique biological traits holding women back from progress that Google has taken an unhealthy and self destructive burden on by trying to correct. If women could just...stop living in denial about how neurotic they are, how they are more agreeable, and overall just, not as motivated to reach high status positions, along with the obvious fact that they are more into social things than code, and that women like people and men like things, then maybe women could start coming to terms with why they are less successful, and we could have more pyschological safety in the work place if more men in the office could be open about these things and not feel scared to propogate them as undisputable truth. Perhaps some cooperation and pair programming would help, but I'm not necessarily Google should arbitrarily engage in doing that "just" to make it more appealing to women, instead Google should "be more open about the science of human nature". The sooner we can all just acknowledge women are neurotic agreeable socialites that eventually want to work part time and aren't driven by status, the sooner we can close the gender gap here at Google. Thank you, thank you so much for all the other people just like me at Google who agree with me but are too scared to say it because...well once you say it, it sounds so pathetically incorrect I'm the only one who is so drenched in my own understanding of reality that everyone else is clearly in denial about, who had the courage to say it. Thank you, thank you again for your time.
mirko22 9y ago
> bias training is created by people Yes it is, but I am afraid not by the people you say later on... > To assume that a privileged engineer would know better than this hardworking team is pretty insulting, I think. You assume he is privileged? Psychology knows about cognitive biases not "unconscious biases" which people are "trained" for and being tested on today. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sylvana-storey/unconscious-bias-making-m_b_8771258.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sylvana-storey/unconscious-bia... Also, for some reason "unconscious biases" test are mostly used to "measure racism and sexism" which is not what these types of tests are originally designed for. Most of the views in his document are actually supported by psychological research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

_0ffh 9y ago

I'd like to read the thing to form an opinion. Unfortunately I have not found any links yet. Could you share, please? Also, about "but ultimately bias training is created by people with real credentials to be doing so": That seems to be questionable. I know from a professional psychologist that diagnosis of unconscious bias and especially bias training are standing on extremely thin ice scientifically. The hypothesis that the whole bias training industry is a mix of financial exploitation of idologically overhyped and misinterpreted weak scientific results and well meaning but misguided do-goodism can be argued for quite confidently at this point.

usmeteora 9y ago
https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320 https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-di... I'd like to know your opinion about the neuroticism comment.
- Klockan 9y ago
  There is overwhelming evidence that women on average are more neurotic, anyone who argues about gender diversity should be aware of this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2031866/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2031866/
  - Klockan 9y ago
    Did I really get downvoted for stating that people who argues about gender diversity should be aware of one of the strongest psychological differences between the sexes? It doesn't matter if the cause is biological or not, fact is that women are on average significantly more neurotic than men in all modern societies.
    - judahmeek 9y ago
      Didn't downvote you so I can really only guess, but my guess is that you were downvoted for the argument that you were implying. After all, even if the statistical female population does have a higher baseline for neuroticism, would that fact actually weaken the argument for gender diversity? How would it be any different from the fact that men on average are taller?
      - Klockan 9y ago
        > After all, even if the statistical female population does have a higher baseline for neuroticism, would that fact actually weaken the argument for gender diversity? Nobody argued against diversity, the document in question only stated that our current diversity efforts aren't really working and that we should consider measurable gender differences such as prevalence of neuroticism if we want to really move the needle.

pandaman 9y ago

Having observed the fall of the USSR it's nothing unusual to me. When people are not comfortable with an oppressive regime they keep their moderate opinions to themselves. Voicing any opinion contrary to the Party line is dangerous no matter how extreme or moderate it is. So all dissenting opinions you are going to hear in public will be coming from extremists (e.g. "Have a Nuremberg-type tribunal for the Party's chiefs, lustrate the rest and their progeny for 7 generations!") because only the people who hold these opinions will be fed up enough to disregard consequences of their dissent. And there won't be many of them, since it's the definition of extremism to be in small minority. However, for every single dissident there were tens or hundreds of thousands of silent supporters who would openly express their disgust and outrage over such horrific person but, when talking with their buddies in private, repeat and spread these ideas thus radicalizing themselves. Eventually everybody but a minority of "true believers" shifted from "well, life kinda sucks right now but at least there is no war" to "burn it down and salt the earth!". When this happened the whole mighty Communist empire collapsed within a year. tl;dr When you see steam breaking through the seals you are about to experience the whole boiler's explosion. The steam that gets out first is weak but it's the sign of mounting pressure inside.

factsaresacred 9y ago
Great comment. What you are describing is called a 'preference cascade'. > In short, average people behave the way they think they ought to, even though that behavior might not reflect their own personal feelings. Given a sufficient "A-HA!" moment when they discover that their personal feelings are shared by a large portion of the population their behavior may change dramatically. An example of this is the British colonists before and after publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense. A year before the Declaration of Independence, America was full of patriotic British convinced that things could be worked out with King George, but on July 4, 1776 the colonies were full of Americans determined that they needed independence. Another is the relatively recent "Arab Spring." https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-preference-cascade https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-preference-cascade
- TimonKnigge 9y ago
  Also preference falsification. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification

Klockan 9y ago

> I can see how someone can see the surface and identify potential problems with it, but ultimately bias training is created by people with real credentials to be doing so Not all experts agree that they work though: https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail

usmeteora 9y ago

Welp, before the entire document was released I made a long statement below based on what I read, trying to give a reasonable consideration for somebody elses viewpoint, but then I read the document where the reader noncholantly listed the following things as inherent underlying biological differences unique to women, not to be up for debate, as the nondisputable premise for how to address the ideological echo chamber,here were the top most infuriating things I read. I must be infuriated because I'm a women and I'm neurotic, which brings me to #1. "Neuroticism: higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance". Of course, women are neurotic, so that explains alot of why women in comparable roles just arent doing as well. "Harder time negociating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. These are just average differences, but this is seen as soley a womens issue" Well thank you for clearing that up. There is aboslutely nothing that causes these differences in women and it is entirely based on their faulty self perception that is there for a reason which must exist because....well you know the answer, which brings me to my next point... "Women are more agreeable." The only mental response I had to this statement was "are you sure women are more agreeable, or do you just perceive that they agree with you and have no real comprehension of how much they disagree with you?" "Men's higher drive for status." Someone please correct me if there is another response I'm supposed to have other than only being able to utilize blatant sarcasm to try to enter into the mindset of the author of this article, and me trying to be agreeable to it: Well, thank you for pointing out these fundamental permanent underlying unique biological traits holding women back from progress that Google has taken an unhealthy and self destructive burden on by trying to correct. If women could just...stop living in denial about how neurotic they are, how they are more agreeable, and overall just, not as motivated to reach high status positions, along with the obvious fact that they are more into social things than code, and that women like people and men like things, then maybe women could start coming to terms with why they are less successful, and we could have more pyschological safety in the work place if more men in the office could be open about these things and not feel scared to propogate them as undisputable truth. Perhaps some cooperation and pair programming would help, but I'm not necessarily Google should arbitrarily engage in doing that "just" to make it more appealing to women, instead Google should "be more open about the science of human nature". The sooner we can all just acknowledge women are neurotic agreeable socialites that eventually want to work part time and aren't driven by status, the sooner we can close the gender gap here at Google. Thank you, thank you so much for all the other people just like me at Google who agree with me but are too scared to say it because...well once you say it, it sounds so pathetically incorrect I'm the only one who is so drenched in my own understanding of reality that everyone else is clearly in denial about, who had the courage to say it. Thank you, thank you again for your time.

mirko22 9y ago

> bias training is created by people Yes it is, but I am afraid not by the people you say later on... > To assume that a privileged engineer would know better than this hardworking team is pretty insulting, I think. You assume he is privileged? Psychology knows about cognitive biases not "unconscious biases" which people are "trained" for and being tested on today. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sylvana-storey/unconscious-bias-making-m_b_8771258.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sylvana-storey/unconscious-bia... Also, for some reason "unconscious biases" test are mostly used to "measure racism and sexism" which is not what these types of tests are originally designed for. Most of the views in his document are actually supported by psychological research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases