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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

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
I appreciate your response too, and I'm not impugning your motives, nor judging you. I have no doubt you believe your motives to be good and in the interest of fairness and equality. Many men who are siding with Damore believe that. What I do think is that you're not fully prepared for this discussion and not aware of the history and causes of discrimination and systematic bias. Do you know about the book "The Bell Curve" and the controversy it caused in the 90's? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve Don't skip the "criticisms" section. > I think we all agree that judging the capabilities of an individual based on their biological sex is bullshit. You're further demonstrating a misreading of Damore's letter. Yes I do agree, judging engineers according to biological sex is bullshit. If you agree with that, then you didn't understand what Damore said. The memo says explicitly "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. I think you actually don't agree with Damore, and you just don't know it yet. Talking about how he hedged with a "may" and didn't state it as fact is a huge cop-out. He stated as fact that abilities are different (for which there's no evidence.) What he proposed is that the imbalance in current distribution might be caused by a proportional imbalance of ability (for which there exists mountains of contrary evidence). The entire point behind his statement is to establish that biological sex could be responsible for the distribution imbalance, and it's possible there's no sexism or discrimination against women going on, and thus nothing to fix. This is FUD. It doesn't matter whether he's claiming it's a fact, what he's doing is casting doubt. The problem with denying that discrimination exists and asserting there are other causes is obvious: it's hypocritical, it's a way of discriminating. > The most dangerous word in your statement is "innately". I am using 'innate' as synonymous with biological, meaning hard-wired and unchangeable, a trait that comes with the package. Let me re-phrase, Damore suggested that woman as a group are biologically less capable technologists than men. This is the same sense that other people in this thread used 'innate'. It may help you to lookup the definition, e.g. "adj. Possessed at birth; inborn. adj. Possessed as an essential characteristic; inherent." > If I remove it [innately] 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. I know you don't mean to sound as bad as you do, but that sounds really, really bad. The capability of any individual has nothing to do with how many others there are. In this specific case, it's quite possible that the few women in tech are more capable than the average man. Damore was not suggesting that women are less capable as a group because there are fewer of them, he suggested that it's possible that women can't do tech as well as men because they're women. > 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) You might also want to look up the word 'cognitive'. It doesn't mean what you think it does, and you just misused it pretty badly. Taken at face value, that statement would suggest to most people that the mean IQ of women is different than the mean IQ of men, which I already know you don't believe.

dahart 9y ago

I appreciate your response too, and I'm not impugning your motives, nor judging you. I have no doubt you believe your motives to be good and in the interest of fairness and equality. Many men who are siding with Damore believe that. What I do think is that you're not fully prepared for this discussion and not aware of the history and causes of discrimination and systematic bias. Do you know about the book "The Bell Curve" and the controversy it caused in the 90's? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve Don't skip the "criticisms" section. > I think we all agree that judging the capabilities of an individual based on their biological sex is bullshit. You're further demonstrating a misreading of Damore's letter. Yes I do agree, judging engineers according to biological sex is bullshit. If you agree with that, then you didn't understand what Damore said. The memo says explicitly "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. I think you actually don't agree with Damore, and you just don't know it yet. Talking about how he hedged with a "may" and didn't state it as fact is a huge cop-out. He stated as fact that abilities are different (for which there's no evidence.) What he proposed is that the imbalance in current distribution might be caused by a proportional imbalance of ability (for which there exists mountains of contrary evidence). The entire point behind his statement is to establish that biological sex could be responsible for the distribution imbalance, and it's possible there's no sexism or discrimination against women going on, and thus nothing to fix. This is FUD. It doesn't matter whether he's claiming it's a fact, what he's doing is casting doubt. The problem with denying that discrimination exists and asserting there are other causes is obvious: it's hypocritical, it's a way of discriminating. > The most dangerous word in your statement is "innately". I am using 'innate' as synonymous with biological, meaning hard-wired and unchangeable, a trait that comes with the package. Let me re-phrase, Damore suggested that woman as a group are biologically less capable technologists than men. This is the same sense that other people in this thread used 'innate'. It may help you to lookup the definition, e.g. "adj. Possessed at birth; inborn. adj. Possessed as an essential characteristic; inherent." > If I remove it [innately] 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. I know you don't mean to sound as bad as you do, but that sounds really, really bad. The capability of any individual has nothing to do with how many others there are. In this specific case, it's quite possible that the few women in tech are more capable than the average man. Damore was not suggesting that women are less capable as a group because there are fewer of them, he suggested that it's possible that women can't do tech as well as men because they're women. > 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) You might also want to look up the word 'cognitive'. It doesn't mean what you think it does, and you just misused it pretty badly. Taken at face value, that statement would suggest to most people that the mean IQ of women is different than the mean IQ of men, which I already know you don't believe.