7 ms·

Your statement that "he complained about the plight of the conservatives at Google, and suggested that women as a group are innately less capable technologists,

Your statement that "he complained about the plight of the conservatives at Google, and suggested that women as a group are innately less capable technologists," is not a fair recounting of his arguments. He claims that Google's internal cultural dynamic is hostile towards conservatives, and that Google's hiring policy towards women is inappropriately favorable. There is nothing innately contradictory about these beliefs. Damore never argues against using groups to make big picture, strategic decision. Quite the opposite. What Damore is arguing is that Google's strategic decisions are rooted in ideology, not research, and the consequences of those decisions are discriminatory at the individual level. Worst of all is that because those decisions are rooted in ideology, they can't be questioned. Of course, Damore makes several other arguments. Damore suggests that Google's minority retention practices are discriminatory and ineffective, while agreeing that Google's corporate environment is likely a poor fit for women. Damore does make recommendations on how to show sensitivity towards women in order to boost retention of women and he bases these recommendations of his understanding of current, replicable research in psychology. What's important to note about Damore's recommendations is that while strategically they favor women, on an individual basis they do not. The practices that Damore suggests would be as open to men as they are to women.

dahart 9y ago
Maybe you misread or misunderstood Damore's letter. [Damore] "I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership." He did exactly what I said - he complained about the plight of conservatives at Google, and he suggested that women as a group are innately less capable technologists. That's not just fair, it is, without judgement, completely factually accurate. I didn't claim these two things are contradictory, that's your own straw man. I claim that one of them is wrong, and that if you swap them, one of them is still wrong. I'm a little surprised how many people are defending him. He's got no expertise in these matters at all. Why are you so sure this is a good argument overall? What makes you confident in his interpretation of modern psychology and social issues? His letter is specious - it sounds good for a bunch of reasons, and he has many valid points, but it's wrong overall. Programmers love arguments that favor consistency, and they're convinced it's always and forever more fair, but that's very often not true in reality. If society were already fair and if cultural sexism didn't exist, then not being extra sensitive to women might be the right thing to do. But the prevalence of cultural sexism is a fact, it exists just like racism does. We have to actively get rid of it before we can be consistent. Because it's there, suggesting that it's more fair to pay less attention to it is actually rationalizing sexism. What you're arguing for indirectly is to keep our level of sexism at the status quo, rather than fix it before we treat everyone exactly the same. Treating everyone exactly the same right now assumes there's no problem right now, but there is a problem right now. > Damore never argues against using groups to make big picture, strategic decision. Then I think your beef is with @nailer's comment above mine, and you can argue that with him. He said "Additionally Damore argued for assessing individuals as individuals rather than as tribe members and assuming discrepancy is down to bias - even if you did sub someone's chosen politics for their gender, Damore's proposed fix would still require you to assess the individual." You are contradicting what he said.
- tynpeddler 9y ago
  I didn't say your characterization of Damore's arguments was wrong, I said it was unfair. What I meant by that was that you stripped statements of context and nuance and represented them with negative connotations that are not warranted based on the original context. My understanding of your statement was that you were suggesting that Damore made definitive statements that are muddled and contradictory. If that was an unfair interpretation of your comment, then I apologize. I consider your statement "he suggested that women as a group are innately less capable technologists" to be unfair because it could be interpreted in multiple ways. The danger of misinterpreting this statement is so great, that the underlying idea can't be expressed in this manner. Damore uses the phrase "these differences MAY explain.."(emphasis mine) to indicate that evidence suggest, but does not prove, his hypothesis. You make Damore sound more definitive than he actually is (or at least how I understand him to be). The most dangerous word in your statement is "innately". If I remove it from your statement, than it becomes incontrovertibly true. Women as a group are less capable technologist, by simple nature of the fact that there are fewer of them. Why is the big question, and the word "innately" is the attempted explanation. If "innately" means that "women are generally to stupid to grasp computes, than that's codswhallop. There's no evidence to suggest that the mean IQ of women is any different than the mean IQ of men. If by "innately" you mean "men are biologically compelled to be assholes to women, and women are biologically compelled to flee this treatment", then that's a scary fucking problem that I hope we can solve in some manner other than the obliteration of the male sex. If "innately" means that "women generally don't give a shit about computers", then there is evidence to suggest that it might be true, though of course the evidence is far from conclusive . If "innately" means that "Men are more represented at the extremes at of most distributions, and since being a google engineer is an extreme position, men should be more represented there", then that is another possibility that is suggested, though obviously not proven, from current evidence. For me, the word "innately" is too fuzzy in its meaning and it makes me uncomfortable to use it in this context. As for your concerns about his expertise, his interpretations of current research concerning the cognitive differences between men and women are not out of line with current research and the interpretation of that research by well regarded members of the psychology community. Steven Pinker is a name that has come up frequently in the past few days, whose own views overlap Damore's to some degree. I find your interpretation of my motives to be uncharitable. My intention is not to argue that we should keep the status quo of sexism. I think we all agree that judging the capabilities of an individual based on their biological sex is bullshit. My concern (And it seems Damore shares this concern) is that we're replacing one kind of sexism with a different kind of sexism. That's not progress. I think you should ask yourself how comfortable you are with the following statement: "There are differences in the distribution of cognitive traits in the populations of males and females based on biological sex." (I use the word cognitive here to mainly refer to emotional differences though of course it can have other meanings. I apologize for using such broad language here but I felt that it was suited to this context) Note that this statement is one of pure fact. Either there are differences in the populations at large, or there aren't. Of course, it's a fact that will be incredibly difficult to discern, but at some point in the future, we could conceivably answer this question. Are you comfortable with this statement being disproven? Are you comfortable with it being proven? If you answered no to either of those questions, than you have an ideology that will be difficult to update with facts. Please note that these questions are all rhetorical. I'm not trying to attack you personally and I appreciate the time you've taken to respond to my post. I'm not an asshole, I just write like one.

dahart 9y ago

Maybe you misread or misunderstood Damore's letter. [Damore] "I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership." He did exactly what I said - he complained about the plight of conservatives at Google, and he suggested that women as a group are innately less capable technologists. That's not just fair, it is, without judgement, completely factually accurate. I didn't claim these two things are contradictory, that's your own straw man. I claim that one of them is wrong, and that if you swap them, one of them is still wrong. I'm a little surprised how many people are defending him. He's got no expertise in these matters at all. Why are you so sure this is a good argument overall? What makes you confident in his interpretation of modern psychology and social issues? His letter is specious - it sounds good for a bunch of reasons, and he has many valid points, but it's wrong overall. Programmers love arguments that favor consistency, and they're convinced it's always and forever more fair, but that's very often not true in reality. If society were already fair and if cultural sexism didn't exist, then not being extra sensitive to women might be the right thing to do. But the prevalence of cultural sexism is a fact, it exists just like racism does. We have to actively get rid of it before we can be consistent. Because it's there, suggesting that it's more fair to pay less attention to it is actually rationalizing sexism. What you're arguing for indirectly is to keep our level of sexism at the status quo, rather than fix it before we treat everyone exactly the same. Treating everyone exactly the same right now assumes there's no problem right now, but there is a problem right now. > Damore never argues against using groups to make big picture, strategic decision. Then I think your beef is with @nailer's comment above mine, and you can argue that with him. He said "Additionally Damore argued for assessing individuals as individuals rather than as tribe members and assuming discrepancy is down to bias - even if you did sub someone's chosen politics for their gender, Damore's proposed fix would still require you to assess the individual." You are contradicting what he said.

tynpeddler 9y ago
I didn't say your characterization of Damore's arguments was wrong, I said it was unfair. What I meant by that was that you stripped statements of context and nuance and represented them with negative connotations that are not warranted based on the original context. My understanding of your statement was that you were suggesting that Damore made definitive statements that are muddled and contradictory. If that was an unfair interpretation of your comment, then I apologize. I consider your statement "he suggested that women as a group are innately less capable technologists" to be unfair because it could be interpreted in multiple ways. The danger of misinterpreting this statement is so great, that the underlying idea can't be expressed in this manner. Damore uses the phrase "these differences MAY explain.."(emphasis mine) to indicate that evidence suggest, but does not prove, his hypothesis. You make Damore sound more definitive than he actually is (or at least how I understand him to be). The most dangerous word in your statement is "innately". If I remove it from your statement, than it becomes incontrovertibly true. Women as a group are less capable technologist, by simple nature of the fact that there are fewer of them. Why is the big question, and the word "innately" is the attempted explanation. If "innately" means that "women are generally to stupid to grasp computes, than that's codswhallop. There's no evidence to suggest that the mean IQ of women is any different than the mean IQ of men. If by "innately" you mean "men are biologically compelled to be assholes to women, and women are biologically compelled to flee this treatment", then that's a scary fucking problem that I hope we can solve in some manner other than the obliteration of the male sex. If "innately" means that "women generally don't give a shit about computers", then there is evidence to suggest that it might be true, though of course the evidence is far from conclusive . If "innately" means that "Men are more represented at the extremes at of most distributions, and since being a google engineer is an extreme position, men should be more represented there", then that is another possibility that is suggested, though obviously not proven, from current evidence. For me, the word "innately" is too fuzzy in its meaning and it makes me uncomfortable to use it in this context. As for your concerns about his expertise, his interpretations of current research concerning the cognitive differences between men and women are not out of line with current research and the interpretation of that research by well regarded members of the psychology community. Steven Pinker is a name that has come up frequently in the past few days, whose own views overlap Damore's to some degree. I find your interpretation of my motives to be uncharitable. My intention is not to argue that we should keep the status quo of sexism. I think we all agree that judging the capabilities of an individual based on their biological sex is bullshit. My concern (And it seems Damore shares this concern) is that we're replacing one kind of sexism with a different kind of sexism. That's not progress. I think you should ask yourself how comfortable you are with the following statement: "There are differences in the distribution of cognitive traits in the populations of males and females based on biological sex." (I use the word cognitive here to mainly refer to emotional differences though of course it can have other meanings. I apologize for using such broad language here but I felt that it was suited to this context) Note that this statement is one of pure fact. Either there are differences in the populations at large, or there aren't. Of course, it's a fact that will be incredibly difficult to discern, but at some point in the future, we could conceivably answer this question. Are you comfortable with this statement being disproven? Are you comfortable with it being proven? If you answered no to either of those questions, than you have an ideology that will be difficult to update with facts. Please note that these questions are all rhetorical. I'm not trying to attack you personally and I appreciate the time you've taken to respond to my post. I'm not an asshole, I just write like one.