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I don't find her critiques convincing in all respects. A couple of her answers seem to be strawmen. For example: The passing mention of IQ is interesting, sinc

I don't find her critiques convincing in all respects. A couple of her answers seem to be strawmen. For example: The passing mention of IQ is interesting, since it has nothing to do with gender, which is the focus everywhere else. He’s presumably talking about race, but he doesn’t want to be branded a racist, so he keeps the reference subtle. So why risk doing it at all? It’s a dog-whistle to the alt-right. She admits she is _assuming_ his intentions - sets up the strawman, and counters it. BOOM - the guy is now racist. As for Milo and his ilk - yeah they can go to hell - but what? This guy gets fired for speaking publicly? That seems a double standard.

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
Maybe what would advance this conversation is if you could tell me which of her critiques you did find convincing.
- yorwba 9y ago
  Not the person you are asking, but since I also found some of her arguments to be straw men, I will list some parts I find convincing. > As an evolutionary biologist, the claim that these observations are “exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective” is especially painful to read. I would not dismiss the field completely, but many of its predictions have turned out to be wildly misguided. > All in all, we have no reason to think female software engineers should perform worse at software engineering based on female trait distributions. And there’s a huge amount of evidence that promoting diversity improves the performance of teams and companies. Note that that was a straw man, but I agree with the denotation anyway. > We know that negative stereotypes damage people’s performance. We know that unconscious bias influences our judgement of others’ competencies. Consequently, whenever there’s significant cultural prejudice against certain groups, as there is with female software engineers, we expect to see inequalities emerge. So it’s implausible to attribute these differences to biology alone. This touches on the part where I disagree the most with the memo: he acknowledges that bias exists, but appears to base his recommendations mostly on his non-bias explanations. He would have done better to underline that he doesn't want all anti-bias programs to end, but instead open them to more people where that makes sense. (He mentions a program to help women get better at negotiation, which would also help men who are bad at negotiation, but who are excluded because of their gender.)

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago

Maybe what would advance this conversation is if you could tell me which of her critiques you did find convincing.

yorwba 9y ago
Not the person you are asking, but since I also found some of her arguments to be straw men, I will list some parts I find convincing. > As an evolutionary biologist, the claim that these observations are “exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective” is especially painful to read. I would not dismiss the field completely, but many of its predictions have turned out to be wildly misguided. > All in all, we have no reason to think female software engineers should perform worse at software engineering based on female trait distributions. And there’s a huge amount of evidence that promoting diversity improves the performance of teams and companies. Note that that was a straw man, but I agree with the denotation anyway. > We know that negative stereotypes damage people’s performance. We know that unconscious bias influences our judgement of others’ competencies. Consequently, whenever there’s significant cultural prejudice against certain groups, as there is with female software engineers, we expect to see inequalities emerge. So it’s implausible to attribute these differences to biology alone. This touches on the part where I disagree the most with the memo: he acknowledges that bias exists, but appears to base his recommendations mostly on his non-bias explanations. He would have done better to underline that he doesn't want all anti-bias programs to end, but instead open them to more people where that makes sense. (He mentions a program to help women get better at negotiation, which would also help men who are bad at negotiation, but who are excluded because of their gender.)