6 ms·

I think the 7 points Scott outlined are fantastic, and I absolutely agree with him. This sounds a bit strange to write, but I think Scott, and a lot of people

by Lon7 9y ago

I think the 7 points Scott outlined are fantastic, and I absolutely agree with him. This sounds a bit strange to write, but I think Scott, and a lot of people here and on the web, are almost thinking too logically and critically about all this. I have no problem with what they are doing, but I also don't think it is a very effective technique. Like it or not, this women in tech issue is in the domain of politics, and it will remain there. I see a whole bunch of really smart people applying the same problem solving skills they use in their daily engineering work to this problem. They try to rely on strict evidence, and proof and debate. And There's nothing wrong with that at all, but it isn't very effective in the political domain. It takes certain skills and lots of practice to correctly communicate with this type of purely logical debate. A ten page paper read by someone without these skills is very likely to be misunderstood. And that's exactly what happened. I wish that wasn't the case, but that's not the world we live in. If you are trying to persuade, you need to know your audience. In cases like this, your audience is not just your fellow tech community, but a large percentage of the entire world! It is people who won't follow your carefully constructed arguments. James Damore's critical mistake is that seemed totally ignorant to this point. The people reading his paper were not just going to be fellow googlers who had the skills to take his arguments at face value, it was everyone. You need to be aware of this when dealing in politics.

js8 9y ago
I see what you're saying, but I think it's more complicated. If you start to play politics and try to be more persuasive, you are losing the moral high ground. That's why many people would prefer to play openly.
- Lon7 9y ago
  I agree. But it is really tough to actually play openly, and tough to know when others are playing openly. Enough time has passed that experts have had time to comprehend the original document, and it seems like James was only pretending to play openly. He misrepresented a lot of the science and put his own spin on it. A great answer by an evolutionary biologist on how James was absolutely wrong on almost every point he made: https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-biological-claims-made-in-the-document-about-diversity-written-by-a-Google-employee-in-August-2017 https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio...
  - js8 9y ago
    > Enough time has passed that experts have had time to comprehend the original document, and it seems like James was only pretending to play openly Doesn't seem like that to me. The Suzanne Sadedin's answer (which I personally find kinda hard to understand, IMHO it avoids the core argument) was the only answer (of several I read) from an actual scientist that disagreed with what Damore has wrote. Other scientists' responses either agreed or declined to comment. In particular, here: http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/ http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...
    - Lon7 9y ago
      I hadn't read that Guillette article. David P Schmitt, the only one whos work was used in the memo doesn't exactly seem to agree with the memo. His third and fourth paragraphs say that any differences between sexes is small and not relevant to work going on at google. I think we can say that there is a lot of disagreement in the scientific community. The memo painted a much different picture.
  - j9461701 9y ago
    If that is a "great response" I'd hate to imagine what you consider a poor one. It's an informal reply on quora from someone we have no verification about that cites exactly one supporting scientific study - and that is about bird mating practices. The rest cites amazon bookstore pages, blogs, articles in general interest magazines, other quora responses, or wikipedia articles (which themselves actually undermine the point she was trying to make - eg skimming the stereotype threat article, consensus seems to be it isn't real). The rest is an attempt to justify calling the author a fascist racist sexist etc. etc. and thereby gloss over the actual question at hand (namely, was he right?). My education is in physics and CS, so I am not qualified to judge what is accurate in something like evolutionary psychology. But when I see a paper that weasely, juking around the issue while engaging in personal attacks, it inclines me to believe the memo is scientifically valid and this sort of emotion based response is the only one available to its detractors.
    - 9y ago
Cthulhu_ 9y ago
The main challenge is reason versus emotion. Damore and this article made a few points based on reason and science and logical arguments and such, but it was countered by emotion, if not by values and morals - and those are almost impossible to counter. That is, "I believe this statement / manifesto is wrong on a moral level" is very hard to counter with reason alone. The Charlotteville (?) riots (and by extension the Alt-Right/Nazi vs Antifa fights) are proof of this - there's loud, violent protestors on both sides, neither of which is engaging in a debate because they're both strongly opposed on a moral level.
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  Empirical consequentialism does not have a monopoly on "reason", "science", or "logical arguments". In fact, computational complexity theory and modern mathematical logic provide, IMO, some of the most compelling arguments against the idea that we can make good rational decisions without value systems and moral codes (aka heuristics for an otherwise intractable problem).
  - eli_gottlieb 9y ago
    Tell me, what intractable problem are "value systems" and "moral codes" heuristics for? The hypothetico-dialectical method of talking about morality, as if it was simultaneously mathematics and politics, has always confused me. Plainly there ought to be some observable evidence that we've done the right thing, or the term "right" has no meaning at all other than "theorem within a politically fashionable consistent axiom schema."
    - throwawayjava 9y ago
      > Tell me, what intractable problem are "value systems" and "moral codes" heuristics for? Suppose you already have a solution in-hand for determining what the "best world" is, and everyone agrees on this definition of what is "right" and "good". Now, can you calculate with any accuracy what actions each person should take in order for us all to arrive at that "best world"? I think it's clear to most people who have taken an algorithms course that such a calculation -- even with perfect knowledge about the current and future state of the world -- is completely and totally intractable. (And besides, it doesn't take an algorithms course to notice we don't have that perfect knowledge; I don't even know if it will rain this afternoon.) Value systems and moral codes -- e.g., "no stealing and no murdering except in X,Y,Z cases" -- provide us with a set of heuristics that while perhaps not optimal at least seem to keep us in decently good steady states for a while. > The hypothetico-dialectical method of talking about morality, as if it was simultaneously mathematics and politics, has always confused me. The point is to explore the theoretical limits of what's even possible. If we can show that something is impossible even in a highly idealized setting, then we can probably conclude that the same thing is impossible in more messy settings. Of course, "all models are wrong" and all that. But if pure consequentialism doesn't work well even in the most ideal of settings, that might be a good indicator that it also doesn't work well in far more messy settings. > Plainly there ought to be some observable evidence that we've done the right thing Why is that so "plain"? Besides, "what should I do?" is a far more... timely... question than "did I just do the right thing?" > or the term "right" has no meaning at all other than "theorem within a politically fashionable consistent axiom schema." Outside of religious and spiritual folks, I think most people agree that morality is socially constructed.

by Lon7 9y ago

js8 9y ago

I see what you're saying, but I think it's more complicated. If you start to play politics and try to be more persuasive, you are losing the moral high ground. That's why many people would prefer to play openly.

Lon7 9y ago
I agree. But it is really tough to actually play openly, and tough to know when others are playing openly. Enough time has passed that experts have had time to comprehend the original document, and it seems like James was only pretending to play openly. He misrepresented a lot of the science and put his own spin on it. A great answer by an evolutionary biologist on how James was absolutely wrong on almost every point he made: https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-biological-claims-made-in-the-document-about-diversity-written-by-a-Google-employee-in-August-2017 https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio...
- js8 9y ago
  > Enough time has passed that experts have had time to comprehend the original document, and it seems like James was only pretending to play openly Doesn't seem like that to me. The Suzanne Sadedin's answer (which I personally find kinda hard to understand, IMHO it avoids the core argument) was the only answer (of several I read) from an actual scientist that disagreed with what Damore has wrote. Other scientists' responses either agreed or declined to comment. In particular, here: http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/ http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...
  - Lon7 9y ago
    I hadn't read that Guillette article. David P Schmitt, the only one whos work was used in the memo doesn't exactly seem to agree with the memo. His third and fourth paragraphs say that any differences between sexes is small and not relevant to work going on at google. I think we can say that there is a lot of disagreement in the scientific community. The memo painted a much different picture.
- j9461701 9y ago
  If that is a "great response" I'd hate to imagine what you consider a poor one. It's an informal reply on quora from someone we have no verification about that cites exactly one supporting scientific study - and that is about bird mating practices. The rest cites amazon bookstore pages, blogs, articles in general interest magazines, other quora responses, or wikipedia articles (which themselves actually undermine the point she was trying to make - eg skimming the stereotype threat article, consensus seems to be it isn't real). The rest is an attempt to justify calling the author a fascist racist sexist etc. etc. and thereby gloss over the actual question at hand (namely, was he right?). My education is in physics and CS, so I am not qualified to judge what is accurate in something like evolutionary psychology. But when I see a paper that weasely, juking around the issue while engaging in personal attacks, it inclines me to believe the memo is scientifically valid and this sort of emotion based response is the only one available to its detractors.
  - 9y ago

Cthulhu_ 9y ago

The main challenge is reason versus emotion. Damore and this article made a few points based on reason and science and logical arguments and such, but it was countered by emotion, if not by values and morals - and those are almost impossible to counter. That is, "I believe this statement / manifesto is wrong on a moral level" is very hard to counter with reason alone. The Charlotteville (?) riots (and by extension the Alt-Right/Nazi vs Antifa fights) are proof of this - there's loud, violent protestors on both sides, neither of which is engaging in a debate because they're both strongly opposed on a moral level.

throwawayjava 9y ago
Empirical consequentialism does not have a monopoly on "reason", "science", or "logical arguments". In fact, computational complexity theory and modern mathematical logic provide, IMO, some of the most compelling arguments against the idea that we can make good rational decisions without value systems and moral codes (aka heuristics for an otherwise intractable problem).
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  Tell me, what intractable problem are "value systems" and "moral codes" heuristics for? The hypothetico-dialectical method of talking about morality, as if it was simultaneously mathematics and politics, has always confused me. Plainly there ought to be some observable evidence that we've done the right thing, or the term "right" has no meaning at all other than "theorem within a politically fashionable consistent axiom schema."
  - throwawayjava 9y ago
    > Tell me, what intractable problem are "value systems" and "moral codes" heuristics for? Suppose you already have a solution in-hand for determining what the "best world" is, and everyone agrees on this definition of what is "right" and "good". Now, can you calculate with any accuracy what actions each person should take in order for us all to arrive at that "best world"? I think it's clear to most people who have taken an algorithms course that such a calculation -- even with perfect knowledge about the current and future state of the world -- is completely and totally intractable. (And besides, it doesn't take an algorithms course to notice we don't have that perfect knowledge; I don't even know if it will rain this afternoon.) Value systems and moral codes -- e.g., "no stealing and no murdering except in X,Y,Z cases" -- provide us with a set of heuristics that while perhaps not optimal at least seem to keep us in decently good steady states for a while. > The hypothetico-dialectical method of talking about morality, as if it was simultaneously mathematics and politics, has always confused me. The point is to explore the theoretical limits of what's even possible. If we can show that something is impossible even in a highly idealized setting, then we can probably conclude that the same thing is impossible in more messy settings. Of course, "all models are wrong" and all that. But if pure consequentialism doesn't work well even in the most ideal of settings, that might be a good indicator that it also doesn't work well in far more messy settings. > Plainly there ought to be some observable evidence that we've done the right thing Why is that so "plain"? Besides, "what should I do?" is a far more... timely... question than "did I just do the right thing?" > or the term "right" has no meaning at all other than "theorem within a politically fashionable consistent axiom schema." Outside of religious and spiritual folks, I think most people agree that morality is socially constructed.