4 ms·

I read his memo (There is a copy on Gizmodo) and while I saw a lot of what I could educatedly guess looked like flaws in logic or even flaws in his reading of t

I read his memo (There is a copy on Gizmodo) and while I saw a lot of what I could educatedly guess looked like flaws in logic or even flaws in his reading of the research I've been unable to find someone who has put the effort in to debunk it thoroughly. Rather all I've been able to find is the equivalent of how dare he say these things. Does anyone have a link to a good debunking of the whole thesis?

saghm 9y ago
What was strange to me is that it didn't seem to actually cite any sources. When I scrolled down to the bottom to read the footnotes, I expected links to purported studies, but instead, they were just more rambling. I'd think the burden of proof should be on the author for the dubious claims within. EDIT: I looked at a link to the document on a separate comment on this thread, which appears to have links on some of the text that was missing from the Gizmodo article. Unfortunately, they aren't clickable, so I guess the most I can actually say about the citations is that they are rather informal.
- ggreer 9y ago
  From Gizmodo's summary[1]: > Two charts and several hyperlinks are also omitted. It's unclear whether Gizmodo removed the links or whether the leaker did. Either way, I bet some of those links were to research or summaries of research. 1. https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320/amp https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-di...
- jimrandomh 9y ago
  The links are clickable if you get the original PDF, rather than using DocumentCloud's PDF viewer. https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...
kevinburke 9y ago
There are a few, and I'd suggest you look further, for starters scroll up here: https://twitter.com/GlennF https://twitter.com/GlennF. Arguments about gender differences in CS should address the large decline in women's participation around 1984, the relatively better gender balance in other engineering/science majors, or the better gender balance for CS degrees granted in other countries. Annie Lowrey and others argued institutional effects far outweigh biological or IQ effects; basically, there's a much larger environment of harassment and bias, and Google has so many other levers in its control that the arguments advanced in the paper aren't really salient or important to the situation at Google. Other folks have argued the vast majority of engineers at Google are doing the equivalent of string concatenation; it's not exactly a difficult or demanding job. I think one reason people have been so angry about this is that women in the tech industry generally deal with much more harassment and bias than men do, see for example elephantinthevalley.com. To argue these are the biggest issues requires looking past everything in that survey, and implicitly declaring it not that important or salient. Imagine going to Flint, Michigan and arguing that a lack of charter schools are the community's biggest problem; you're going to get some bad reactions. People also tend not to like it when you suggest they're dumb or inferior.
- lisper 9y ago
  I think it is telling that the only actual reference you provided was to a live Twitter feed. Twitter is not the right venue for any kind of substantive debate about anything, let alone one where the opening salvo is a ten-page document.
  - RodericDay 9y ago
    Twitter is an excellent venue for discussion. It's one thing to complain that you don't like it, and another to pretend it's widely agreed upon as an invalid source.
    - lisper 9y ago
      > Twitter is an excellent venue for discussion. I didn't say it wasn't. Is said it was a bad venue for substantive debate. It's a fine venue for banal chitchat and voicing unsubstantiated opinions, which is what makes it so popular because that's a lot easier and more fun than actually diving into the depths of an issue.
lisper 9y ago
> Rather all I've been able to find is the equivalent of how dare he say these things. I completely agree. The original memo may be wrong, but it was a cogently and constructively stated position (if a bit thin on references) and it deserves to be at worst ignored, more likely respectfully rebutted, and (dare I even say this?) perhaps taken seriously. Because I think one of the reasons people are so up in arms about it is that they are afraid that if they start to try to rebut the argument they will find that it is not so easy to do, and possibly even that parts of the argument might even be correct.
- dudul 9y ago
  > a bit thin on references I've seen mentions of the fact that the Gizmodo version removed most of the links/references/graphs that were included in the original.
  - jackvalentine 9y ago
    Oh dear. If that's the case then I'm very confused.
    - scruple 9y ago
      That what, Gizmodo might mislead people for clicks?
  - lisper 9y ago
    The original is here: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I... At least I'm pretty sure that is the original. It has the author's name on it.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - dilap 9y ago
    Wow, you're right, per the lisper link. That is extremely shady of Gizmodo.
adjkant 9y ago
I've only seen it in comments thus far, but here's a good example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14951042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14951042 A quick Google, have not read the below: https://www.fastcompany.com/40449844/5-debunked-gender-myths-in-that-google-anti-diversity-rant https://www.fastcompany.com/40449844/5-debunked-gender-myths... Of course, internet comments will be reactionary. Pretending that is proving the point of the author is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm not saying you are inherently saying that, but I am sure many others will see it that way, as they already have commented in many of the threads about this.
- pcurve 9y ago
  +1 for the attempt, but the Fastcompany article is very weak at best, and doesn't even cite relevant studies to debunk the 5 points. It even manages to misquotes its own sources.
Edmond 9y ago
Not sure anyone has written a "debunking" piece but that could simply be because so much of what he wrote is standard trope for people with his views...if you read it naively it sounds like he has a point but if you're familiar with such attitudes then you'll quickly see through the pseudo-intellectual veneer of his argument. I supposed one could take the time to rebut everything he wrote but there will probably be someone new with similar arguments next week. What's important is that Google or any other organization striving for fairness (that is what diversity is partly about) isn't derailed by such sentiment.
- graphememes 9y ago
  That is poor reasoning and only adds fuel to the assertion that there is an echo chamber / shaming culture given the response to the assertions.
- jackvalentine 9y ago
  > "if you read it naively it sounds like he has a point but if you're familiar with such attitudes then you'll quickly see through the pseudo-intellectual veneer of his argument." Well I suppose that's my point isn't it? Expecting everyone who reads it to be "familiar with such attitudes" in order to come away with the "right" opinion is an awfully high bar to entry.
  - Edmond 9y ago
    No, that is not my expectation and I doubt it is the expectation of people who don't agree with his opinion. There is just a long history of his type of argument deployed in favor of his type of view. Frankly, rebutting such arguments can get exhausting especially for those who are the target of his post.
    - jackvalentine 9y ago
      How would you propose that this kind of blow-up be handled then in the future? It's going to happen again and in the absence of opposition that's just ceding ground without resistance to the kind of attitudes in the memo. I'm thinking if you're going to report on it, you need to either pull it apart with rigour or accept that you're just increasing the reach of it without opposition.
dudul 9y ago
What I find most surprising in regards to the reactions to this post, is that they are focused around the "how dare he call women stupid!" theme, instead of Google's alleged discriminatory practices. Ignoring the whole "is one gender really better at CS than the other?" thing, is it ok for Google to consciously lower the bar when hiring female candidates? From a legal point of view I mean. Same question for their classes/programs only open to women. I'm not a lawyer, so genuinely wondering :)
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  You're assuming that the claim is true. Why?
  - dudul 9y ago
    Note that I say "alleged". It's worth verifying imo. And for the classes and training programs it should be easy.
- warbaker 9y ago
  They don't lower the bar for women.
mnm1 9y ago
Shouldn't it be up to the author to prove his claims rather than someone else to disprove them? I see no evidence provided for his stereotypes of women, for example. Something this unsubstantiated doesn't need debunking. It's simply one man's unsubstantiated opinion, nothing more or less.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  "It's simply one man's unsubstantiated opinion, nothing more or less." That's how it should be treated. Nothing more. A lot of the pro-diversity arguments are pretty flimsy too so they should be treated the same way too.
- jackvalentine 9y ago
  > Shouldn't it be up to the author to prove his claims rather than someone else to disprove them? Look, yes. It should be. But the author has made his best 10 page effort to do so and now I'm looking for someone who has the necessary background to critically question his claims. That the manifesto has taken on a life of its own and spread as far as it has is only more reason for it to be succinctly and academically critiqued.
wsargent 9y ago
I don't know that there's a debunking of the thesis, because there's nothing very original in there -- it's repeats and retreads of other things that have been debunked over and over, so it all merges into a mashed up mess of points and rebuttals like a badly maintained wiki. There are a couple of books which I can recommend that talk about why you see so few women in computing (as opposed to biology, math, etc) and also why you see so few black men and women: * Unlocking the Clubhouse: http://a.co/8oXDROX * Stuck in the Shallow End: http://a.co/9HXgvKW These are not only well written, but they're also well researched and well thought out. They're worth reading on their own merits, but you may find them a useful debunking to the memo.
- jackvalentine 9y ago
  TBH I'm not really interested in the wider issue at all. For starters I'm not even in America and we have our own issues here. But this memo has dominated a lot of the internet that I use and figured surely someone has done the work to pull it apart. I'm not going to read two books just to figure out some google guy's 10 page memo - call me lazy but perhaps nobody is going to read two books just for that purpose.
  - wsargent 9y ago
    > I'm not going to read two books just to figure out some google guy's 10 page memo - call me lazy but perhaps nobody is going to read two books just for that purpose. Well, if it's any consolation, I wouldn't read it for that either. The blog posts and memos do accumulate, though, and at some point it's worth it just to have the sources to refer back to.
    - jackvalentine 9y ago
      Good point.
      - wsargent 9y ago
        Also, the larger problem with debunking is that it just doesn't work all that well. It's like arguing with an antivaxxer -- they may ask for logical discussion but it has no effect. Ultimately, what convinces them is social pressure or a sudden intrusion of reality i.e. their child gets sick, they have a female friend who encounters discrimination etc.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
kenjackson 9y ago
It's a long document, but reading his tldr he makes claims that I've rarely heard reasonable people make. Notably: The lack of discussion fosters the most extreme and authoritarian elements of this ideology. ○ Extreme: all disparities in representation are due to oppression ○ Authoritarian: we should discriminate to correct for this oppression I've never heard that all disparities are due to oppression before. I think the problem is that we don't know how much of the gap is due to oppression. There are studies that indicate that there are factors in our society that do oppress the achievement of girls in math/science. How do we figure out how to clear up these issues? And honestly, as someone who works in tech, I can honestly say that anecdotally I've encountered a LOT of sexist men in the field. I can't say it is the majority, but it is not a small minority. While I can't say with any certainty how much their biases impact the achievement of women in the field, I think most people outside of tech would be surprised at how much bias there is (because it is viewed as so much of a meritocracy). And then his other point about discriminating to fix the oppression simply is naïve and ignores the day to day discrimination that happens against most oppressed groups on a daily basis. I get that a better solution would be for there to be no more discrimination across the board -- we are all born into a world where discrimination is gone (and past fruits of discrimination disappear too), but that isn't going to happen. Sometimes the choices we have in front of us are the lesser of two evils -- and yes, looking at an evil always looks bad -- but I guarantee you that the author of this article would never trade his life in for the roll of the dice of being born a black female.

saghm 9y ago

What was strange to me is that it didn't seem to actually cite any sources. When I scrolled down to the bottom to read the footnotes, I expected links to purported studies, but instead, they were just more rambling. I'd think the burden of proof should be on the author for the dubious claims within. EDIT: I looked at a link to the document on a separate comment on this thread, which appears to have links on some of the text that was missing from the Gizmodo article. Unfortunately, they aren't clickable, so I guess the most I can actually say about the citations is that they are rather informal.

ggreer 9y ago
From Gizmodo's summary[1]: > Two charts and several hyperlinks are also omitted. It's unclear whether Gizmodo removed the links or whether the leaker did. Either way, I bet some of those links were to research or summaries of research. 1. https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320/amp https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-di...
jimrandomh 9y ago
The links are clickable if you get the original PDF, rather than using DocumentCloud's PDF viewer. https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...

kevinburke 9y ago

There are a few, and I'd suggest you look further, for starters scroll up here: https://twitter.com/GlennF https://twitter.com/GlennF. Arguments about gender differences in CS should address the large decline in women's participation around 1984, the relatively better gender balance in other engineering/science majors, or the better gender balance for CS degrees granted in other countries. Annie Lowrey and others argued institutional effects far outweigh biological or IQ effects; basically, there's a much larger environment of harassment and bias, and Google has so many other levers in its control that the arguments advanced in the paper aren't really salient or important to the situation at Google. Other folks have argued the vast majority of engineers at Google are doing the equivalent of string concatenation; it's not exactly a difficult or demanding job. I think one reason people have been so angry about this is that women in the tech industry generally deal with much more harassment and bias than men do, see for example elephantinthevalley.com. To argue these are the biggest issues requires looking past everything in that survey, and implicitly declaring it not that important or salient. Imagine going to Flint, Michigan and arguing that a lack of charter schools are the community's biggest problem; you're going to get some bad reactions. People also tend not to like it when you suggest they're dumb or inferior.

lisper 9y ago
I think it is telling that the only actual reference you provided was to a live Twitter feed. Twitter is not the right venue for any kind of substantive debate about anything, let alone one where the opening salvo is a ten-page document.
- RodericDay 9y ago
  Twitter is an excellent venue for discussion. It's one thing to complain that you don't like it, and another to pretend it's widely agreed upon as an invalid source.
  - lisper 9y ago
    > Twitter is an excellent venue for discussion. I didn't say it wasn't. Is said it was a bad venue for substantive debate. It's a fine venue for banal chitchat and voicing unsubstantiated opinions, which is what makes it so popular because that's a lot easier and more fun than actually diving into the depths of an issue.

lisper 9y ago

> Rather all I've been able to find is the equivalent of how dare he say these things. I completely agree. The original memo may be wrong, but it was a cogently and constructively stated position (if a bit thin on references) and it deserves to be at worst ignored, more likely respectfully rebutted, and (dare I even say this?) perhaps taken seriously. Because I think one of the reasons people are so up in arms about it is that they are afraid that if they start to try to rebut the argument they will find that it is not so easy to do, and possibly even that parts of the argument might even be correct.

dudul 9y ago
> a bit thin on references I've seen mentions of the fact that the Gizmodo version removed most of the links/references/graphs that were included in the original.
- jackvalentine 9y ago
  Oh dear. If that's the case then I'm very confused.
  - scruple 9y ago
    That what, Gizmodo might mislead people for clicks?
- lisper 9y ago
  The original is here: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I... At least I'm pretty sure that is the original. It has the author's name on it.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dilap 9y ago
  Wow, you're right, per the lisper link. That is extremely shady of Gizmodo.

adjkant 9y ago

I've only seen it in comments thus far, but here's a good example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14951042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14951042 A quick Google, have not read the below: https://www.fastcompany.com/40449844/5-debunked-gender-myths-in-that-google-anti-diversity-rant https://www.fastcompany.com/40449844/5-debunked-gender-myths... Of course, internet comments will be reactionary. Pretending that is proving the point of the author is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm not saying you are inherently saying that, but I am sure many others will see it that way, as they already have commented in many of the threads about this.

pcurve 9y ago
+1 for the attempt, but the Fastcompany article is very weak at best, and doesn't even cite relevant studies to debunk the 5 points. It even manages to misquotes its own sources.

Edmond 9y ago

Not sure anyone has written a "debunking" piece but that could simply be because so much of what he wrote is standard trope for people with his views...if you read it naively it sounds like he has a point but if you're familiar with such attitudes then you'll quickly see through the pseudo-intellectual veneer of his argument. I supposed one could take the time to rebut everything he wrote but there will probably be someone new with similar arguments next week. What's important is that Google or any other organization striving for fairness (that is what diversity is partly about) isn't derailed by such sentiment.

graphememes 9y ago
That is poor reasoning and only adds fuel to the assertion that there is an echo chamber / shaming culture given the response to the assertions.
jackvalentine 9y ago
> "if you read it naively it sounds like he has a point but if you're familiar with such attitudes then you'll quickly see through the pseudo-intellectual veneer of his argument." Well I suppose that's my point isn't it? Expecting everyone who reads it to be "familiar with such attitudes" in order to come away with the "right" opinion is an awfully high bar to entry.
- Edmond 9y ago
  No, that is not my expectation and I doubt it is the expectation of people who don't agree with his opinion. There is just a long history of his type of argument deployed in favor of his type of view. Frankly, rebutting such arguments can get exhausting especially for those who are the target of his post.
  - jackvalentine 9y ago
    How would you propose that this kind of blow-up be handled then in the future? It's going to happen again and in the absence of opposition that's just ceding ground without resistance to the kind of attitudes in the memo. I'm thinking if you're going to report on it, you need to either pull it apart with rigour or accept that you're just increasing the reach of it without opposition.

dudul 9y ago

What I find most surprising in regards to the reactions to this post, is that they are focused around the "how dare he call women stupid!" theme, instead of Google's alleged discriminatory practices. Ignoring the whole "is one gender really better at CS than the other?" thing, is it ok for Google to consciously lower the bar when hiring female candidates? From a legal point of view I mean. Same question for their classes/programs only open to women. I'm not a lawyer, so genuinely wondering :)

joshuamorton 9y ago
You're assuming that the claim is true. Why?
- dudul 9y ago
  Note that I say "alleged". It's worth verifying imo. And for the classes and training programs it should be easy.
warbaker 9y ago
They don't lower the bar for women.

mnm1 9y ago

Shouldn't it be up to the author to prove his claims rather than someone else to disprove them? I see no evidence provided for his stereotypes of women, for example. Something this unsubstantiated doesn't need debunking. It's simply one man's unsubstantiated opinion, nothing more or less.

maxxxxx 9y ago
"It's simply one man's unsubstantiated opinion, nothing more or less." That's how it should be treated. Nothing more. A lot of the pro-diversity arguments are pretty flimsy too so they should be treated the same way too.
jackvalentine 9y ago
> Shouldn't it be up to the author to prove his claims rather than someone else to disprove them? Look, yes. It should be. But the author has made his best 10 page effort to do so and now I'm looking for someone who has the necessary background to critically question his claims. That the manifesto has taken on a life of its own and spread as far as it has is only more reason for it to be succinctly and academically critiqued.

wsargent 9y ago

I don't know that there's a debunking of the thesis, because there's nothing very original in there -- it's repeats and retreads of other things that have been debunked over and over, so it all merges into a mashed up mess of points and rebuttals like a badly maintained wiki. There are a couple of books which I can recommend that talk about why you see so few women in computing (as opposed to biology, math, etc) and also why you see so few black men and women: * Unlocking the Clubhouse: http://a.co/8oXDROX * Stuck in the Shallow End: http://a.co/9HXgvKW These are not only well written, but they're also well researched and well thought out. They're worth reading on their own merits, but you may find them a useful debunking to the memo.

jackvalentine 9y ago
TBH I'm not really interested in the wider issue at all. For starters I'm not even in America and we have our own issues here. But this memo has dominated a lot of the internet that I use and figured surely someone has done the work to pull it apart. I'm not going to read two books just to figure out some google guy's 10 page memo - call me lazy but perhaps nobody is going to read two books just for that purpose.
- wsargent 9y ago
  > I'm not going to read two books just to figure out some google guy's 10 page memo - call me lazy but perhaps nobody is going to read two books just for that purpose. Well, if it's any consolation, I wouldn't read it for that either. The blog posts and memos do accumulate, though, and at some point it's worth it just to have the sources to refer back to.
  - jackvalentine 9y ago
    Good point.
    - wsargent 9y ago
      Also, the larger problem with debunking is that it just doesn't work all that well. It's like arguing with an antivaxxer -- they may ask for logical discussion but it has no effect. Ultimately, what convinces them is social pressure or a sudden intrusion of reality i.e. their child gets sick, they have a female friend who encounters discrimination etc.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

kenjackson 9y ago

It's a long document, but reading his tldr he makes claims that I've rarely heard reasonable people make. Notably: The lack of discussion fosters the most extreme and authoritarian elements of this ideology. ○ Extreme: all disparities in representation are due to oppression ○ Authoritarian: we should discriminate to correct for this oppression I've never heard that all disparities are due to oppression before. I think the problem is that we don't know how much of the gap is due to oppression. There are studies that indicate that there are factors in our society that do oppress the achievement of girls in math/science. How do we figure out how to clear up these issues? And honestly, as someone who works in tech, I can honestly say that anecdotally I've encountered a LOT of sexist men in the field. I can't say it is the majority, but it is not a small minority. While I can't say with any certainty how much their biases impact the achievement of women in the field, I think most people outside of tech would be surprised at how much bias there is (because it is viewed as so much of a meritocracy). And then his other point about discriminating to fix the oppression simply is naïve and ignores the day to day discrimination that happens against most oppressed groups on a daily basis. I get that a better solution would be for there to be no more discrimination across the board -- we are all born into a world where discrimination is gone (and past fruits of discrimination disappear too), but that isn't going to happen. Sometimes the choices we have in front of us are the lesser of two evils -- and yes, looking at an evil always looks bad -- but I guarantee you that the author of this article would never trade his life in for the roll of the dice of being born a black female.