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> Having unconscious bias or otherwise being incorrect doesn't make you intellectually dishonest. If you purport to be a (competent) scientist in the 21st cent

> Having unconscious bias or otherwise being incorrect doesn't make you intellectually dishonest. If you purport to be a (competent) scientist in the 21st century then personally I expected you to be highly aware of biases such as publication bias & confirmation bias and act accordingly. That speaks either to his discipline/understanding or his honesty, I don't know which. > Whether or not his claims are true, Damore presented a much more metered and reasonable argument than virtually all of his detractors or even published social pundits. Damore was metered, but understandably triggered a threat response in the people who his memo targeted as being below "the bar". You may have read a selection of counter-arguments, some of which will be less "metered and reasonable" than his. Unfortunately the emotional tenor of an argument is not the measure of its merit.

Seenti 9y ago
>That speaks either to his discipline/understanding or his honesty, I don't know which. You're holding him to an unbelievably high standard that is never applied to those making the case that gender disparities are due to societal discrimination. I can't imagine you're being driven to apply this standard to him by anything other than a preconceived notion that women are underrepresented in engineering due to sexism and that anyone that disagrees is a misogynist. >Damore was metered, but understandably triggered a threat response in the people who his memo targeted as being below "the bar". Damore did not target anyone as below the bar. He made a statistical observation about the distribution of personality types among gender groups and how that would play out in gender representation in various occupations, to counter the discrimination-as-cause-of-disparity narrative. No individual was cast as below the bar due to their gender. The threat response was immature.
- richmarr 9y ago
  > You're holding him to an unbelievably high standard that is never applied to those making the case that gender disparities are due to societal discrimination. No, this is wrong. Societal discrimination is directly measurable at the point of hiring. There are a mountain of studies measuring this. It simply doesn't require modelling the effect as it propagates through society. As I've mentioned elsewhere, nobody is claiming that bias is the only factor involved, but it's one we can measure and act on. > Damore did not target anyone as below the bar... The threat response was immature Aside from explicitly saying "lowers the bar", explicitly saying "I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes" and making multiple references to lower drive, mathematical ability, etc. Please. As you know, threat responses aren't driven by 'maturity' they're driven by percieved threat. Damore's clumsy language caused people at Google to be afraid, and justifiably so. He may have intended to spark a dialog but his words are confrontational. Don't confront people on this topic because you'll often get a fight/flight response. Instead you must engage and build trust.
  - weberc2 9y ago
    As I understand it, the data about discrimination in hiring are mixed, but I'm interested in learning more. Your threat response point seems like dressing up a group's overreaction to make it justifiable. It's also another example of different standards being applied to liberal groups vs conservatives groups (offending conservative groups is basically a sacrament, but saying anything that can be remotely twisted into an offensive statement toward a liberal group is nearly criminal). I've never seen anyone make any sort of threat-response/justifiable-offense argument when conservatives are upset about, say, "blasphemy day" or just the constant misrepresentation in the media. In particular though, there's nothing which should remotely cause offense, even in the selection of quotes you shared (but good on you for quoting and not taking offense at strawman--very few of Damore's critics have been so kind). Damore's arguments (however factual) were better than I could make, but it's ridiculous that the criticism is that he didn't successfully prevent everyone from taking offense. He couldn't have done more to prevent offense without damaging his own case. I think this is another case of the left refusing to be pacified by anything less than complete political capitulation. Meanwhile any sort of expression from liberal groups, even defamation or riots, are defended, and any one who criticizes them have impossible standards. The double standards here should be unbelievable.
    - richmarr 9y ago
      > As I understand it, the data about discrimination in hiring are mixed, but I'm interested in learning more. Great, do that. > Your threat response point seems like dressing up a group's overreaction to make it justifiable. Your overreaction point seems like dressing up a group's threat response to make it seem unreasonable. There are threat responses and irrational behaviour on both sides (whichever side you naturally agree with) and failing to recognise that means that you're not empowering yourself to engage with this topic on any useful level. I wrote about threat response in my post on this: https://medium.com/finding-needles-in-haystacks/we-need-to-talk-about-james-2ca1143dbae4 https://medium.com/finding-needles-in-haystacks/we-need-to-t...
      - weberc2 9y ago
weberc2 9y ago
> If you purport to be a (competent) scientist in the 21st century then personally I expected you to be highly aware of biases such as publication bias & confirmation bias and act accordingly. That speaks either to his discipline/understanding or his honesty, I don't know which. I've never been on a discussion board where this was the norm. More importantly, and to repeat my earlier point, this isn't even the norm for well-regarded, published content on the subject. It appears the standards are very high for dissenting opinions. > You may have read a selection of counter-arguments, some of which will be less "metered and reasonable" than his. Unfortunately the emotional tenor of an argument is not the measure of its merit. Maybe, but given that Damore's memo is largely criticized for causing offense (despite doing more than what is reasonable to avoid it), it certainly seems pertinent that other points of view aren't held to the same scrutiny. > Damore was metered, but understandably triggered a threat response in the people who his memo targeted as being below "the bar". Probably, but he did a much better job of mitigating it than I could have, and we never, ever hold liberal viewpoints to this standard. In particular, it's positively mainstream to publish absolutely brutal criticisms of men; we don't even feign sensitivity.
- richmarr 9y ago
  You may well have a point that people too readily make scathing assessments of 'men' as a group. Bad Thing A doesn't justify Bad Thing B though, does it. As for the high burden of proof, I invite you to suggest a model that estimates the effect size we should observe in gender representation in tech companies based on Damore's 'biological' differences
  - weberc2 9y ago
    >Bad Thing A doesn't justify Bad Thing B though, does it. No, but I don't think stating an observation about a group as politely as possible is a bad thing. It's not like saying "women may be less interested in tech" or "diversity quotas can lead to bar-lowering" are even unflattering or absolute observations. We just live in a culture of professional victims who are ever-primed to take offense at anything. The moral thing isn't to critique Damore's communication--better communication wouldn't have helped; only capitulation. The moral thing to do is to oppose the victimhood culture. > As for the high burden of proof, I invite you to suggest a model that estimates the effect size we should observe in gender representation in tech companies based on Damore's 'biological' differences I don't have that model, and I never claimed to. Moreover, no one needs a model to point out inconsistencies in the current model, especially inconsistencies which are mutually harmful.

Seenti 9y ago

>That speaks either to his discipline/understanding or his honesty, I don't know which. You're holding him to an unbelievably high standard that is never applied to those making the case that gender disparities are due to societal discrimination. I can't imagine you're being driven to apply this standard to him by anything other than a preconceived notion that women are underrepresented in engineering due to sexism and that anyone that disagrees is a misogynist. >Damore was metered, but understandably triggered a threat response in the people who his memo targeted as being below "the bar". Damore did not target anyone as below the bar. He made a statistical observation about the distribution of personality types among gender groups and how that would play out in gender representation in various occupations, to counter the discrimination-as-cause-of-disparity narrative. No individual was cast as below the bar due to their gender. The threat response was immature.

richmarr 9y ago
> You're holding him to an unbelievably high standard that is never applied to those making the case that gender disparities are due to societal discrimination. No, this is wrong. Societal discrimination is directly measurable at the point of hiring. There are a mountain of studies measuring this. It simply doesn't require modelling the effect as it propagates through society. As I've mentioned elsewhere, nobody is claiming that bias is the only factor involved, but it's one we can measure and act on. > Damore did not target anyone as below the bar... The threat response was immature Aside from explicitly saying "lowers the bar", explicitly saying "I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes" and making multiple references to lower drive, mathematical ability, etc. Please. As you know, threat responses aren't driven by 'maturity' they're driven by percieved threat. Damore's clumsy language caused people at Google to be afraid, and justifiably so. He may have intended to spark a dialog but his words are confrontational. Don't confront people on this topic because you'll often get a fight/flight response. Instead you must engage and build trust.
- weberc2 9y ago
  As I understand it, the data about discrimination in hiring are mixed, but I'm interested in learning more. Your threat response point seems like dressing up a group's overreaction to make it justifiable. It's also another example of different standards being applied to liberal groups vs conservatives groups (offending conservative groups is basically a sacrament, but saying anything that can be remotely twisted into an offensive statement toward a liberal group is nearly criminal). I've never seen anyone make any sort of threat-response/justifiable-offense argument when conservatives are upset about, say, "blasphemy day" or just the constant misrepresentation in the media. In particular though, there's nothing which should remotely cause offense, even in the selection of quotes you shared (but good on you for quoting and not taking offense at strawman--very few of Damore's critics have been so kind). Damore's arguments (however factual) were better than I could make, but it's ridiculous that the criticism is that he didn't successfully prevent everyone from taking offense. He couldn't have done more to prevent offense without damaging his own case. I think this is another case of the left refusing to be pacified by anything less than complete political capitulation. Meanwhile any sort of expression from liberal groups, even defamation or riots, are defended, and any one who criticizes them have impossible standards. The double standards here should be unbelievable.
  - richmarr 9y ago
    > As I understand it, the data about discrimination in hiring are mixed, but I'm interested in learning more. Great, do that. > Your threat response point seems like dressing up a group's overreaction to make it justifiable. Your overreaction point seems like dressing up a group's threat response to make it seem unreasonable. There are threat responses and irrational behaviour on both sides (whichever side you naturally agree with) and failing to recognise that means that you're not empowering yourself to engage with this topic on any useful level. I wrote about threat response in my post on this: https://medium.com/finding-needles-in-haystacks/we-need-to-talk-about-james-2ca1143dbae4 https://medium.com/finding-needles-in-haystacks/we-need-to-t...
    - weberc2 9y ago

weberc2 9y ago

> If you purport to be a (competent) scientist in the 21st century then personally I expected you to be highly aware of biases such as publication bias & confirmation bias and act accordingly. That speaks either to his discipline/understanding or his honesty, I don't know which. I've never been on a discussion board where this was the norm. More importantly, and to repeat my earlier point, this isn't even the norm for well-regarded, published content on the subject. It appears the standards are very high for dissenting opinions. > You may have read a selection of counter-arguments, some of which will be less "metered and reasonable" than his. Unfortunately the emotional tenor of an argument is not the measure of its merit. Maybe, but given that Damore's memo is largely criticized for causing offense (despite doing more than what is reasonable to avoid it), it certainly seems pertinent that other points of view aren't held to the same scrutiny. > Damore was metered, but understandably triggered a threat response in the people who his memo targeted as being below "the bar". Probably, but he did a much better job of mitigating it than I could have, and we never, ever hold liberal viewpoints to this standard. In particular, it's positively mainstream to publish absolutely brutal criticisms of men; we don't even feign sensitivity.

richmarr 9y ago
You may well have a point that people too readily make scathing assessments of 'men' as a group. Bad Thing A doesn't justify Bad Thing B though, does it. As for the high burden of proof, I invite you to suggest a model that estimates the effect size we should observe in gender representation in tech companies based on Damore's 'biological' differences
- weberc2 9y ago
  >Bad Thing A doesn't justify Bad Thing B though, does it. No, but I don't think stating an observation about a group as politely as possible is a bad thing. It's not like saying "women may be less interested in tech" or "diversity quotas can lead to bar-lowering" are even unflattering or absolute observations. We just live in a culture of professional victims who are ever-primed to take offense at anything. The moral thing isn't to critique Damore's communication--better communication wouldn't have helped; only capitulation. The moral thing to do is to oppose the victimhood culture. > As for the high burden of proof, I invite you to suggest a model that estimates the effect size we should observe in gender representation in tech companies based on Damore's 'biological' differences I don't have that model, and I never claimed to. Moreover, no one needs a model to point out inconsistencies in the current model, especially inconsistencies which are mutually harmful.