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I think a charitable way of taking that particular statement might be: "The distribution of preferences and abilities of different groups differ." Note the bi

I think a charitable way of taking that particular statement might be: "The distribution of preferences and abilities of different groups differ." Note the binding emphasis to both sides of the 'and'. Also the focus on any specific cause for that difference should be addressed elsewhere, if at all. Not in an over-simplified singular soundbite. Edit: what flavor of markdown hell is HN using... I always forget.

richmarr 9y ago
The important point here is that Damore triggered a massive threat response in the colleagues he characterises as being below "the bar". He explicitly talks about that bar being lowered, which by implication undermines a proportion of employees at Google (and people that are inclined to defend that group). Furthermore he attacked 'diversity' hires as a whole, but only presented evidence on male/female differences not racial ones... so there's significant precedent for him making points that aren't backed up directly. I don't think he should get the benefit of the doubt there with regards to subtlety of meaning.
tepe1 9y ago
This is the funny thing about the memo. How it's read is completely determined by people's own biases. That sentence makes it very clear that Damore considers women to be biologically differently abled from men when it comes to programming. In fact he goes on to claim that this essential biological nature is so different that the practices of programming needs to be altered to better suit women (eg more pair programming). This is an extraordinary claim. It requires extraordinary evidence. There is no well-understood scientific mechanism that can get us from different genotypes to a different kind of thinking. There is no evidence that men and women's brains are so different that women need their own engineering practices. Of course it's not a new claim. Since the dawn of time it's been claimed that women can't do X. Just 50 years ago it was widely believed that women can't do law, math or science. Fifty years before that it was disputed that women were rational enough to vote. All of this claims have proved to be nonsense. But supposedly programming is different because of a study on rhesus monkeys? Logically, the entire memo -- including its wild rantings about Marxist intellectuals -- can be dismissed on the basis of extraordinary claims. Note that if somebody did provide a genetic ability decoder -- a machine that can analyze normal-form genes and then reliably predict mental ability -- that person would win the Nobel Prize and likely become very, very rich. But what's so interesting is that even when confronted with direct quotes about this nonsense plenty of people insist there is a more charitable interpretation of the memo. This suggests that people are actually starting at very different places.

richmarr 9y ago

The important point here is that Damore triggered a massive threat response in the colleagues he characterises as being below "the bar". He explicitly talks about that bar being lowered, which by implication undermines a proportion of employees at Google (and people that are inclined to defend that group). Furthermore he attacked 'diversity' hires as a whole, but only presented evidence on male/female differences not racial ones... so there's significant precedent for him making points that aren't backed up directly. I don't think he should get the benefit of the doubt there with regards to subtlety of meaning.

tepe1 9y ago

This is the funny thing about the memo. How it's read is completely determined by people's own biases. That sentence makes it very clear that Damore considers women to be biologically differently abled from men when it comes to programming. In fact he goes on to claim that this essential biological nature is so different that the practices of programming needs to be altered to better suit women (eg more pair programming). This is an extraordinary claim. It requires extraordinary evidence. There is no well-understood scientific mechanism that can get us from different genotypes to a different kind of thinking. There is no evidence that men and women's brains are so different that women need their own engineering practices. Of course it's not a new claim. Since the dawn of time it's been claimed that women can't do X. Just 50 years ago it was widely believed that women can't do law, math or science. Fifty years before that it was disputed that women were rational enough to vote. All of this claims have proved to be nonsense. But supposedly programming is different because of a study on rhesus monkeys? Logically, the entire memo -- including its wild rantings about Marxist intellectuals -- can be dismissed on the basis of extraordinary claims. Note that if somebody did provide a genetic ability decoder -- a machine that can analyze normal-form genes and then reliably predict mental ability -- that person would win the Nobel Prize and likely become very, very rich. But what's so interesting is that even when confronted with direct quotes about this nonsense plenty of people insist there is a more charitable interpretation of the memo. This suggests that people are actually starting at very different places.