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I am well aware that the climate is well against this position, but you cannot just dismiss the 'Damore' view out of hand. He is not just 'wrong'. The Damore vi

I am well aware that the climate is well against this position, but you cannot just dismiss the 'Damore' view out of hand. He is not just 'wrong'. The Damore view is at the very least plausible and tarring a whole industry filled with many thoughtful and introverted (i.e. not messing with others, often taken advantage of themselves) individuals to support some view of gender economics is morally wrong. We now live in a time where we are increasingly told what we should believe. In my view morality shouldn't extend to belief. For one it leaves certain individuals (like myself) out in the cold. Sorry, I cannot be told what to believe. Maybe this is just the current hot topic and many people want to read it, but to me it reads as a form of propaganda (by definition media created to determine what people believe) or at least journalistic activism, and who is this guy (apparently some business journalist) to write authoratively on the subject, based on one fact (the predominance of women in early programming jobs). The fact of the matter is that programming has changed beyond recognition, particularly between 1950 and 1980 or so and that is more than enough to at the very least plausibly explain the change in programmer demographic. Anyone who is in the industry knows these eras cannot be compared (surely?).

ocfx 9y ago
Yeah this article felt like clickbait to me. Also Google's reaction to Damore kind of proves at least half of his assertions correct. That many topics are too sacred to discuss critically without being labeled a certain way.
danharaj 9y ago
James Damore's arguments are only plausible in the weakest sense of the word. The only way someone would find his arguments convincing is if one's priors already favor his conclusion. If one weighs the evidence for social factors against biological factors, the question is how should a critical person weigh one against the other? It turns out if one ignores all the evidence for social factors and squint really hard at the biological ones, one can, I guess, scam oneself into thinking there's a strong argument there.
- Fricken 9y ago
  Biology and culture are not unrelated, there are very tight feedback loops at play there, the two factors are deeply intertwined. I'd be distrustful of anyone who suggests it's exclusively one or the other.
- sanxiyn 9y ago
  I found evidencs from CAH(Congenital adrenal hyperplasia) rather convincing, in that it is hard to imagine how that effect is entirely social. Admittedly, this evidence was not presented in Damore's memo, so I guess "The only way someone would find his arguments convincing" may stand, if we strictly restrict to "his arguments", but I think it's more useful to consider the best possible version of his arguments augmented by other people.
- mpweiher 9y ago
  His claim was that biological factors "could" explain the gap, at least in part, in that you can't rule out that possibility categorically. I don't recall him claiming that biological factors were the more important factors, never mind the only ones.
  - danharaj 9y ago
    If you don't consider evidence you are aware of in an argument, it means you don't think that evidence is necessary to consider. He wants his argument to be considered rigorously in which case it is appropriate to make inferences about what he didn't consider as well as what he did. It's a quiet truth that most disagreements between people have a crucial basis in the implicit nature of how we weigh and consider information. A great deal of defense of Damore's arguments are to only consider what is explicitly said and not how it fits into the broader discussion, which is implicit by definition. So Damore can claim he isn't saying that he thinks some female engineers currently at Google are there because the bar has been lowered (explicit) and this is accepted uncritically by some defenders, but it's not hard to draw the inference from his arguments and his policy suggestions that he thinks Google's current practices have a negative impact on the quality of engineers it recruits (implicit). Likewise we are told to evaluate the information he gave (explicit) but not consider why he omitted discussing the mountains of evidence that suggest alternative positions and how his arguments should be evaluated in light of it (implicit). My position is that there is the evidence of negative social feedback is significant enough that companies should experiment with changing their demographic compositions and empirically measuring performance. Because software engineering requires a great diversity of skills, including people skills, empathy and whole-systems thinking, I think it's very plausible that making the gender balance less skewed will lead to more productive teams.
cmiles74 9y ago
There is a lot wrong here, but what bothers me right this minute is the idea that computer programming has "changed beyond recognition" between 1950 and 1980 and that is the cause of the gender imbalance we see today. For sure, a lot of progress was made in the field during that time span. But did the work materially change? I don't think that's the case at all, we simply saw huge steps made in the quality of the tooling and the machines; they didn't fundamentally transform into different things. The tools improved a great deal and allowed the same amount of people to accomplish more work in the same amount of time, progress that continues to this day (we can complain about Electron until we're hoarse, but it does make it easier to get an application out on every device and one person could conceivably so just that). This is just more painful gymnastics and contortions trying to find another reason for the gender imbalance when the actual cause is obvious and well documented: one gender is working to keep the other out. Damore's memo is an example of this: entirely lacking in applicable science and with a basis grounded almost entirely in the man's existing biases. Talk to some of the people of another gender currently in the field and just listen to what they are saying. You'll hear about educators with axes to grind, encouraging them to pursue another field. You'll hear about coworkers and employers who suspect their work is not their own. You'll hear about job interviews where no answers are correct. And you'll come to Hacker News and read posts like these, from people in the field, insisting that there is no problem.
- belorn 9y ago
  > did the work materially change? I don't think that's the case at all How much money was the computer programming industry creating 1950 vs 1980. In the memo, one of the larger points was that men are exceptional pushed/forced/heavy incentivize by society towards high paying jobs. Would you argue that this claim is false?
  - cmiles74 9y ago
    I don't understand where you are going with this... Is your argument that since society seems biased to pay men more money, we should blindly do so? Does that logic apply to race as well as gender? IMHO, Damore was playing to the misplaced belief held by some men that they are innately better then everyone else and that societal biases have played no role in their successes.
pron 9y ago
> but you cannot just dismiss the 'Damore' view out of hand But it is not dismissed out of hand. It is dismissed by serious scholars after significant research. It is Damore who dismisses their well-informed position out of hand by taking out of context some papers whose significance he is not qualified to judge. It is he who rejects scholarship and serious investigation in favor of gut feelings. If Damore's view were as well researched as the prevailing view, then it would merit more careful consideration. But as it stands, he is some lay person who, for his own reasons, decides that the scholars are wrong. Physicists don't debate all the bloggers who misunderstand or take out of context physics papers, so why should social scholars debate some random guy at Google who wrote a rant? After all, the couple of papers he cites are scholarly works. Do you think those works are not debated in the research community? But you can't debate some layperson who clearly did not bother to put any effort into studying the issue (e.g., he does not discuss any other paper that contradicts his political views, and there are many more of those). If you want, there are some venues (like /r/science, /r/AskHistorians and others) where experts discuss research with laypeople, and you're welcome to ask them questions there. The belief that there is any serious scholarship behind Damore's rant that's being silenced by non-experts is the exact opposite of what's really going on.
- deepnotderp 9y ago
  http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/ http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-... http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...
  - pron 9y ago
    Both are conservative publications, which is fine, but: There are certainly some researchers, like those in the first article, who agree with Damore's position, but they are by far the minority; if you're interested in the subject, I suggest you at least read some research written by the majority opinion. The second link is written by a non-expert, and therefore does not constitute a scholarly opinion at all. I occasionally enjoy reading some of Alexander's writing, but he is clearly not a serious social scholar, and his writing suffers from some obvious methodological problems that have been well covered in social scholarship.

ocfx 9y ago

Yeah this article felt like clickbait to me. Also Google's reaction to Damore kind of proves at least half of his assertions correct. That many topics are too sacred to discuss critically without being labeled a certain way.

danharaj 9y ago

James Damore's arguments are only plausible in the weakest sense of the word. The only way someone would find his arguments convincing is if one's priors already favor his conclusion. If one weighs the evidence for social factors against biological factors, the question is how should a critical person weigh one against the other? It turns out if one ignores all the evidence for social factors and squint really hard at the biological ones, one can, I guess, scam oneself into thinking there's a strong argument there.

Fricken 9y ago
Biology and culture are not unrelated, there are very tight feedback loops at play there, the two factors are deeply intertwined. I'd be distrustful of anyone who suggests it's exclusively one or the other.
sanxiyn 9y ago
I found evidencs from CAH(Congenital adrenal hyperplasia) rather convincing, in that it is hard to imagine how that effect is entirely social. Admittedly, this evidence was not presented in Damore's memo, so I guess "The only way someone would find his arguments convincing" may stand, if we strictly restrict to "his arguments", but I think it's more useful to consider the best possible version of his arguments augmented by other people.
mpweiher 9y ago
His claim was that biological factors "could" explain the gap, at least in part, in that you can't rule out that possibility categorically. I don't recall him claiming that biological factors were the more important factors, never mind the only ones.
- danharaj 9y ago
  If you don't consider evidence you are aware of in an argument, it means you don't think that evidence is necessary to consider. He wants his argument to be considered rigorously in which case it is appropriate to make inferences about what he didn't consider as well as what he did. It's a quiet truth that most disagreements between people have a crucial basis in the implicit nature of how we weigh and consider information. A great deal of defense of Damore's arguments are to only consider what is explicitly said and not how it fits into the broader discussion, which is implicit by definition. So Damore can claim he isn't saying that he thinks some female engineers currently at Google are there because the bar has been lowered (explicit) and this is accepted uncritically by some defenders, but it's not hard to draw the inference from his arguments and his policy suggestions that he thinks Google's current practices have a negative impact on the quality of engineers it recruits (implicit). Likewise we are told to evaluate the information he gave (explicit) but not consider why he omitted discussing the mountains of evidence that suggest alternative positions and how his arguments should be evaluated in light of it (implicit). My position is that there is the evidence of negative social feedback is significant enough that companies should experiment with changing their demographic compositions and empirically measuring performance. Because software engineering requires a great diversity of skills, including people skills, empathy and whole-systems thinking, I think it's very plausible that making the gender balance less skewed will lead to more productive teams.

cmiles74 9y ago

There is a lot wrong here, but what bothers me right this minute is the idea that computer programming has "changed beyond recognition" between 1950 and 1980 and that is the cause of the gender imbalance we see today. For sure, a lot of progress was made in the field during that time span. But did the work materially change? I don't think that's the case at all, we simply saw huge steps made in the quality of the tooling and the machines; they didn't fundamentally transform into different things. The tools improved a great deal and allowed the same amount of people to accomplish more work in the same amount of time, progress that continues to this day (we can complain about Electron until we're hoarse, but it does make it easier to get an application out on every device and one person could conceivably so just that). This is just more painful gymnastics and contortions trying to find another reason for the gender imbalance when the actual cause is obvious and well documented: one gender is working to keep the other out. Damore's memo is an example of this: entirely lacking in applicable science and with a basis grounded almost entirely in the man's existing biases. Talk to some of the people of another gender currently in the field and just listen to what they are saying. You'll hear about educators with axes to grind, encouraging them to pursue another field. You'll hear about coworkers and employers who suspect their work is not their own. You'll hear about job interviews where no answers are correct. And you'll come to Hacker News and read posts like these, from people in the field, insisting that there is no problem.

belorn 9y ago
> did the work materially change? I don't think that's the case at all How much money was the computer programming industry creating 1950 vs 1980. In the memo, one of the larger points was that men are exceptional pushed/forced/heavy incentivize by society towards high paying jobs. Would you argue that this claim is false?
- cmiles74 9y ago
  I don't understand where you are going with this... Is your argument that since society seems biased to pay men more money, we should blindly do so? Does that logic apply to race as well as gender? IMHO, Damore was playing to the misplaced belief held by some men that they are innately better then everyone else and that societal biases have played no role in their successes.

pron 9y ago

> but you cannot just dismiss the 'Damore' view out of hand But it is not dismissed out of hand. It is dismissed by serious scholars after significant research. It is Damore who dismisses their well-informed position out of hand by taking out of context some papers whose significance he is not qualified to judge. It is he who rejects scholarship and serious investigation in favor of gut feelings. If Damore's view were as well researched as the prevailing view, then it would merit more careful consideration. But as it stands, he is some lay person who, for his own reasons, decides that the scholars are wrong. Physicists don't debate all the bloggers who misunderstand or take out of context physics papers, so why should social scholars debate some random guy at Google who wrote a rant? After all, the couple of papers he cites are scholarly works. Do you think those works are not debated in the research community? But you can't debate some layperson who clearly did not bother to put any effort into studying the issue (e.g., he does not discuss any other paper that contradicts his political views, and there are many more of those). If you want, there are some venues (like /r/science, /r/AskHistorians and others) where experts discuss research with laypeople, and you're welcome to ask them questions there. The belief that there is any serious scholarship behind Damore's rant that's being silenced by non-experts is the exact opposite of what's really going on.

deepnotderp 9y ago
http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/ http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-... http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...
- pron 9y ago
  Both are conservative publications, which is fine, but: There are certainly some researchers, like those in the first article, who agree with Damore's position, but they are by far the minority; if you're interested in the subject, I suggest you at least read some research written by the majority opinion. The second link is written by a non-expert, and therefore does not constitute a scholarly opinion at all. I occasionally enjoy reading some of Alexander's writing, but he is clearly not a serious social scholar, and his writing suffers from some obvious methodological problems that have been well covered in social scholarship.