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From the article: > women may not be equally represented in tech because they are biologically less capable of engineering Why do news outlets persistently mi

by Veen 9y ago

From the article: > women may not be equally represented in tech because they are biologically less capable of engineering Why do news outlets persistently misrepresent what he actually said? I've read his memo and just about every news article says it contains claims that it doesn't. I have no view on whether he's right or not, but I remain shocked at the misrepresentation of his views throughout the tech media.

verroq 9y ago
Techcrunch is just setting themselves up for libel
- bhouston 9y ago
  Hard to sue publications.
  - mikeryan 9y ago
    Not sure Gawker would agree with you.
    - dguaraglia 9y ago
      Gawker wasn't sued for libel.
      - dguaraglia 9y ago
        Next time someone complains about me "jumping the gun" for talking about brigading on posts regarding Damore, I'll point them to this comment, where I state a 100% correct, non-controversial, non-offensive fact and I still get downvoted. Hard to explain, huh?
        grzm 9y ago
        This is a highly contentious thread with a lot of participants and over 740 comments at this point. I don't think you can reach any meaningful conclusion other than HN members are human and behave in all variety of ways, rational, and otherwise.
        dguaraglia 9y ago
        Of course Hacker News participants are just human. That said, automatic downvoting of non-controversial, easily-proven statements, while comments with highly subjective and inflammatory takes get upvoted show the worst this community has to offer. I used to think HN provided a good balance of open-mindedness and tech topics. It was a nice refuge from places like reddit and Twitter that had become overly politicized. In the last year - in particular since Damore's little lesson about shitting where you eat - the same kind of smarmy calls for "tolerance of different opinions" mixed with constant brigading of people (talk abut "tolerance") have taken over HN. I really hope for our community's sake that it's just a small number of users ruining it for everyone.
        grzm 9y ago
        I very much understand and appreciate the frustration. I think you should cut your fellow members a bit of slack. There are assumptions in your comment here that may not be entirely accurate or at least aren't representing the whole picture. I'm going to attempt to provide alternative perspectives here: I'm not claiming they're correct, but are an attempt to broaden what other's may be perceiving. That doesn't mean their perceptions are correct or even fair. > "automatic downvoting" Let's set aside the idea that they're automatic for a moment. Unless your mind reading skills are better than mine, it's hard to know the intent from a downvote alone. You can't even know who did it, other than it's not the person you responded to. > "of non-controversial, easily-proven statements" Even these may not be constructive to the conversation. They may be tangential, irrelevant, or intentionally misleading. Members may downvote for any of these reasons. > "comments with highly subjective and inflammatory takes get upvoted show the worst this community has to offer." Yeah, highly charged comments can get upvoted: emotions are a powerful thing, and there's a lot of evidence (is it even controversial at this point?) that emotions fire before rational thought. And there's increasing evidence that our rationality actual does more to rationalize our emotions than work as some sort of logic engine. People have to work against this, and that, indeed, is effort. Frustrating? Incredibly so. Human? Very. That's not to say we shouldn't work against this, at least some of the time. Internet fora make this all the more difficult because we're engaging with such limited bandwidth. We don't get to hear tone, or see facial expressions. We only have this limited text stream, and so we're likely bringing a lot more of ourselves to fill in the gaps than we often realize. There's a lot of charged language in your comment here. That's just an observation, not a judgement. How should I respond to that? Should I attempt to put it to the side and respond in a way I think is most effective? Or should I write you off as some hot head that can't control their commenting, going against site guidelines by complaining about voting? Or just silently downvote you for doing so? I often get the impression that that's how some members perceive others as behaving. I don't think that's a useful starting point from which to improve HN, so it's one I consciously choose not to take. > "a small number of users" I think it's a combination of a small number of users and the fact that each of us—just because we're human—can sometimes slip. What we can do the rest of the time is not let the slip-ups of others make us respond in kind. It takes more than one person to spread the flames. Help make HN the place you want it to be. Submit good articles. Write good comments. Upvote good articles and comments. Downvote and flag those you don't think are appropriate for HN. It sounds like you follow HN, so you know how threads on contentious articles go. Do what you can to make it better. (And make a conscious effort to not make it worse.) That includes commenting within the guidelines, such as not commenting on downvotes or mentioning you're flagging articles or complaining that a submission is inappropriate for HN. If you really think there's abuse going on, do contact the mods via the contact link in the footer: they want members to bring things like that to their attention so they can address it. Honestly, there's really little else you can do, but I think it's enough. Which is why I'm taking the time for this comment. Anyway, best wishes.
    - rainbowmverse 9y ago
      Relitigating this in a Hacker News sub-thread seems like a bad way to spend time.
- hsod 9y ago
  Is it libelous to interpret someones words in a way they don't like?
  - AFNobody 9y ago
    > I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Not if it is anything resembling a reasonable interpretation of the text.
    - gnicholas 9y ago
      I was curious about this statement also, because he doesn't present any evidence of different abilites in the memo. On a reddit AMA, he explained that he had actually removed the ability-related evidence, which isn't what you'd expect: instead of showing that women have less of an ability to code, the evidence suggests that women who have high math ability are more likely to have high verbal ability also, vis a vis men with high math ability. So women with high math ability have more options than men, on average, because they're likely to have more verbal ability as well. These women can then pursue jobs in other areas, whereas the men with high math ability don't have those options and therefore pursue things like coding. I'm not weighing in on whether this evidence (which was based on SAT, IIRC) is correct or has been interpreted validly. I'm just pointing out that this was what Damore claimed (after the snafu arose—so take with at least a grain of salt) this statement was in reference to. I'd love to know if others have different information, especially if it was in earlier drafts of the doc.
  - ng12 9y ago
    IANAL, but I think so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misrepresentation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misrepresentation
  - gnicholas 9y ago
    It is libelous to say that someone said something that they did not say (assuming, as in all cases, that what you say could hurt their reputation in the community). There a spectrum of behavior: one the one hand, there are straight up misquotes—where you attribute a direct quote improperly. On the other hand, there are synthetic statements, where you 'sum up' what someone has said in a distilled way. In this case, TC would argue that they are distilling his memo by using the phrase "biologically less capable of engineering". Personally (and as a former lawyer, but not a libel lawyer), I think this position is not especially strong, since he focused mostly, if not exclusively, on inclination-type evidence. If you're going to give a one-sentence summary of the memo, you probably shouldn't refer to ability instead of inclination. And given that the person they're talking about just sued Google, I'd say it's unwise to use a characterization like this—even if it is ultimately legally justifiable. Why not say "biologically less suited for engineering", which would encompass the possibility of both ability and desire?
dguaraglia 9y ago
What wording do you suggest they use?
- keerthiko 9y ago
  His memo was more along the lines of "women are less represented in tech because the industry does not favor their traits which are possibly a result of biological differences"
  - JustSomeNobody 9y ago
    And what biological differences would those be?
    - anonemouse145 9y ago
      Read the paper, including citations.
  - rifung 9y ago
    The article seems to have it correct to me? From the memo: "I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership" preferences and abilities he says.
    - anonemouse145 9y ago
      Yes. And? He suggests ways to alter Google's engineering jobs to suit abilities females are more likely to excel at, such as making work more social. Its almost like different doesn't mean worse.
  - lurr 9y ago
    Also women aren't going into "high stress jobs" because they are too neurotic for them. oh and diversity programs are bad. for some reason.
- 9y ago
brndnmtthws 9y ago
News outlets generate income through sensationalism, and that's the storyline that they need to drive the most traffic.
- threeseed 9y ago
  This has nothing to do with the news and everything to do with what Damore did. He was fired for a reason.
  - ironjunkie 9y ago
    Sure, and the politically correct system is never wrong. Continue to live in your utopia
    - dang 9y ago
      Name-calling and personal attacks will get you banned here. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and clean up your act. Here's a principle to help: If you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.
  - anonemouse145 9y ago
    No he didn't. Stop spreading lies. This is the heart of the lawsuit. Unless you mean he was fired as part of a witch hunt which was much ado about nothing, and that's a sad fact of basing firing decisions on tweets. That is true.
    - dang 9y ago
      This comment breaks the HN guideline against calling names in arguments. We ban accounts that do that, so please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do that. Edit: it looks like you've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly and ignoring our requests to stop. If you keep doing that we will ban you.
ebbv 9y ago
From his memo: > I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. He said exactly that, right there. Why do conservatives always appear to defend this guy and try to pretend the memo wasn't full of repugnant crap.
- x3n0ph3n3 9y ago
  I think the "preferences" part carries more weight. More men want to be engineers than women.
  - ebbv 9y ago
    We're not debating what you think, we're debating what he said, and he included abilities in there. He said what they claim he said, but people always appear to try to claim he didn't.
  - itaris 9y ago
    > preferences and abilities
  - threeseed 9y ago
    And if all Damore said was that he would still be at Google.
    - lurr 9y ago
      I don't know why you are being downvoted. I think if he had made a better written argument that focused more clearly on the idea that part of the gender gap is due to a lack of interest by women, that he probably still would be employed.
  - wellboy 9y ago
    Men also select more career oriented roles with higher pay, of which CS careers are one of the main ones.
briholt 9y ago
The misrepresentation is a feature, not a bug. They need to create dragons in order to justify their dragon-slaying crusade. This has been going on for years, BTW.
paulgb 9y ago
Is the quote you pulled not saying the same thing as this from Damore's memo? > I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Edit: ebbv beat me to it
- ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  There's a difference between "fewer women wind up having the skills for X" and "women are worse at X".
  - ng12 9y ago
    It's a little grating, to be honest. The tech world loves statistics and empirical research until it clashes with their world view.
    - threeseed 9y ago
      What a ridiculous comment. (a) There is no consistent world view for tens of millions of people distributed across the globe, (b) there is no research, none, that specifically states that women are genetically predisposed to be less suited to engineering and (c) there is no clear rules about what aspects of our biology are required to be a great engineer.
      - ng12 9y ago
        I mean this stuff has been studied for years: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4129348/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4129348/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4157091/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4157091/ Maybe these studies are wrong, maybe the conclusions Damore drew were wrong (I certainly think they are). However, I think witch-hunting people for asking questions about sensitive topics is a much more clear and present danger.
john_moscow 9y ago
>Why do news outlets persistently misrepresent what he actually said? Because this creates controversy, controversy creates engagement and engagement brings more ad revenue to the news outlets.
dmode 9y ago
Can you elaborate on what in your mind is the correct interpretation ? Because, reading his memo, I had the exact same takeaway as the Techcrunch quote you posted here.
- imartin2k 9y ago
  I tried to explain this in a blog post. It also irritates me why this is so consequently misinterpreted, as it makes for quite a big difference for the overall narrative. Because of course if someone would claim that an individual woman cannot be as good as an individual man in engineering (or better), that person would be an idiot. "Misunderstanding statistical distribution" https://medium.com/@martinweigert/misunderstanding-probability-distribution-ee19f8537415 https://medium.com/@martinweigert/misunderstanding-probabili...
  - lukev 9y ago
    That's a strawman. Nobody is saying that Damore thinks every man is a better programmer than every woman. He suggested that on average men are biologically more suited to programming, and the contention of his opponents is that that is still a problematic and inappropriate thing to say.
    - ThrustVectoring 9y ago
      He very clearly stated that the average male programmer is as good as the average female programmer. Please don't insinuate otherwise by stripping away some of the semantics Mr. Damore used - he used it for a reason to make a more precise claim than you're criticizing.
      - lukev 9y ago
        Again, that's not the argument. Even stating that men are more suited to become programmers* is problematic!
        9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
PeterStuer 9y ago
Because the press loves polarization. Hitting sensitive nerves is the perfect click-bait. There is no sensible discussion possible anymore on this topic, so it is low hanging fruit.
lukev 9y ago
What? Did we read the same memo? One of his central points is that the representation gap between men and women in technology is due to different biological distributions. From the memo: > I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Minus a bit of softening language ("in part", "may"), proposing that women are on average less biologically capable of programming is exactly what he's saying. Also, because I know how HN works, let me pre-empt the inevitable reply to this one: "but what if there ARE sex differences?! shouldn't we be allowed to talk about that!? Freedom of speech!?!" Scientists who study this stuff (including those cited by Damore) can and do talk about it, and the consensus is that biological sex differences are not that big of an effect, certainly not enough to explain the gender disparity in tech. What effects there may be are absolutely dominated by sociological factors. Sociological factors that some companies are attempting to counter, which is what Damore didn't like, which is why he issued his complain-y memo to start with. And THAT is why people are upset with him. Not because he's an amateur biologist with a day job as a programmer who just earnestly wants to have an innocent conversation about sexual dimorphism. It's because he's just another brogrammer whose jimmies got rustled by the thought of women being his peers, and decided to insult (on average) his female colleagues and create a hostile work environment for which he was (quite correctly) fired.
- Alex3917 9y ago
  > the consensus is that biological sex differences are not that big of an effect, certainly not enough to explain the gender disparity in tech. Whether sex differences explain the gender disparity in tech isn't even the kind of question that cog dev folks ask.
  - DoofusOfDeath 9y ago
    > You're making stuff up. Hey, let's keep things civil. Please consider Hanlon's Razor in this case. How about something like, "I don't think you're correct about the consensus. Citations please?"
zouhair 9y ago
When the majority of people coming to your defense are right wing extremists[0][1] and neo-nazis you are doing something wrong. You can also read his twitter account, he went full on alt-right. I am happy he got his ass fired. [0]: http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/18/james-damore-like-gays-1950s-conservatives-stay-closet-google-silicon-valley/ http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/18/james-damore-like-g... [1]: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/450202/google-employees-awesome-anti-diversity-screed http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/450202/google-employees...
- coolso 9y ago
  > When the majority of people coming to your defense are right wing extremists[0][1] and neo-nazis you are doing something wrong. When the majority of people are too afraid to come to someone's defense (publicly) because they're afraid that the internet pitchfork mobs will come and destroy their lives too, a large part of society is doing something wrong. And that large part of society that attempts to do the silencing/shaming/smearing/destroying of the opposition might think they're scoring a victory for their cause (whether or not that cause is worthy is beside the point), but that's not necessarily true, and we saw proof of that in the last US election.
  - lurr 9y ago
    > we saw proof of that in the last US election. When Clinton got millions more votes?
- erik_seaberg 9y ago
  http://thehill.com/policy/technology/348246-poll-google-was-wrong-to-fire-engineer-over-diversity-memo http://thehill.com/policy/technology/348246-poll-google-was-... reports solid opposition to his firing. If only extremists are openly defending him, it's because they have less to fear.
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
  The alt right did not do him any favors as it probably made it harder for him to understand what he did wrong. Of course he had to be fired as how could you have him on a team trying to work together. As a manager you have to think about everyone in the team.
Digory 9y ago
Americans, even those who attend good schools, do not understand statistical claims. This leaves them susceptible to all kinds of flim flam, especially when they are invested in an idea.
- DoofusOfDeath 9y ago
  > Americans, even those who attend good schools, do not understand statistical claims. I'm having some difficulty understanding your statement. Would you mind clarifying a few things? - Do you mean all Americans, or just some? - When you say "do not understand", what do you mean by that? - I'm unclear as to why you specifically mentioned Americans. Are you comparing them to some other group(s)? And if so, which one(s)?
  - wellboy 9y ago
    He means 80% of Americans probably, not 100% and that that is a lot more than in any other demographic in the western world. Be aware, 60% of Republicans belie e that the earth really is only 6,000 years old. By not understanding he means that, that they don't understand that they don't understand that in distribution when traits are different on a average that that doesn't mean that in one group all individuals of one groups have stronger or weaker traits than individuals of the other group.
  - Digory 9y ago
    >I'm having some difficulty understanding your statement. Heh. I rest my case. But, to respond directly: of course, I'm speaking colloquially to suggest many Americans. I specifically mention Americans because this discussion is about an American suing an American company, in a kerfuffle over American ideals (and law) of sex nondiscrimination. American education norms seem to leave even bright people susceptible to deep confusion when claims are based on statistics.
    - DoofusOfDeath 9y ago
      > Heh. I rest my case. I'm Irish.
lurr 9y ago
Okay, replace engineering with management and that's exactly the argument he made.

by Veen 9y ago

verroq 9y ago

Techcrunch is just setting themselves up for libel

bhouston 9y ago
Hard to sue publications.
- mikeryan 9y ago
  Not sure Gawker would agree with you.
  - dguaraglia 9y ago
    Gawker wasn't sued for libel.
    - dguaraglia 9y ago
      Next time someone complains about me "jumping the gun" for talking about brigading on posts regarding Damore, I'll point them to this comment, where I state a 100% correct, non-controversial, non-offensive fact and I still get downvoted. Hard to explain, huh?
      - grzm 9y ago
        This is a highly contentious thread with a lot of participants and over 740 comments at this point. I don't think you can reach any meaningful conclusion other than HN members are human and behave in all variety of ways, rational, and otherwise.
        dguaraglia 9y ago
        Of course Hacker News participants are just human. That said, automatic downvoting of non-controversial, easily-proven statements, while comments with highly subjective and inflammatory takes get upvoted show the worst this community has to offer. I used to think HN provided a good balance of open-mindedness and tech topics. It was a nice refuge from places like reddit and Twitter that had become overly politicized. In the last year - in particular since Damore's little lesson about shitting where you eat - the same kind of smarmy calls for "tolerance of different opinions" mixed with constant brigading of people (talk abut "tolerance") have taken over HN. I really hope for our community's sake that it's just a small number of users ruining it for everyone.
        grzm 9y ago
        I very much understand and appreciate the frustration. I think you should cut your fellow members a bit of slack. There are assumptions in your comment here that may not be entirely accurate or at least aren't representing the whole picture. I'm going to attempt to provide alternative perspectives here: I'm not claiming they're correct, but are an attempt to broaden what other's may be perceiving. That doesn't mean their perceptions are correct or even fair. > "automatic downvoting" Let's set aside the idea that they're automatic for a moment. Unless your mind reading skills are better than mine, it's hard to know the intent from a downvote alone. You can't even know who did it, other than it's not the person you responded to. > "of non-controversial, easily-proven statements" Even these may not be constructive to the conversation. They may be tangential, irrelevant, or intentionally misleading. Members may downvote for any of these reasons. > "comments with highly subjective and inflammatory takes get upvoted show the worst this community has to offer." Yeah, highly charged comments can get upvoted: emotions are a powerful thing, and there's a lot of evidence (is it even controversial at this point?) that emotions fire before rational thought. And there's increasing evidence that our rationality actual does more to rationalize our emotions than work as some sort of logic engine. People have to work against this, and that, indeed, is effort. Frustrating? Incredibly so. Human? Very. That's not to say we shouldn't work against this, at least some of the time. Internet fora make this all the more difficult because we're engaging with such limited bandwidth. We don't get to hear tone, or see facial expressions. We only have this limited text stream, and so we're likely bringing a lot more of ourselves to fill in the gaps than we often realize. There's a lot of charged language in your comment here. That's just an observation, not a judgement. How should I respond to that? Should I attempt to put it to the side and respond in a way I think is most effective? Or should I write you off as some hot head that can't control their commenting, going against site guidelines by complaining about voting? Or just silently downvote you for doing so? I often get the impression that that's how some members perceive others as behaving. I don't think that's a useful starting point from which to improve HN, so it's one I consciously choose not to take. > "a small number of users" I think it's a combination of a small number of users and the fact that each of us—just because we're human—can sometimes slip. What we can do the rest of the time is not let the slip-ups of others make us respond in kind. It takes more than one person to spread the flames. Help make HN the place you want it to be. Submit good articles. Write good comments. Upvote good articles and comments. Downvote and flag those you don't think are appropriate for HN. It sounds like you follow HN, so you know how threads on contentious articles go. Do what you can to make it better. (And make a conscious effort to not make it worse.) That includes commenting within the guidelines, such as not commenting on downvotes or mentioning you're flagging articles or complaining that a submission is inappropriate for HN. If you really think there's abuse going on, do contact the mods via the contact link in the footer: they want members to bring things like that to their attention so they can address it. Honestly, there's really little else you can do, but I think it's enough. Which is why I'm taking the time for this comment. Anyway, best wishes.
  - rainbowmverse 9y ago
    Relitigating this in a Hacker News sub-thread seems like a bad way to spend time.
hsod 9y ago
Is it libelous to interpret someones words in a way they don't like?
- AFNobody 9y ago
  > I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Not if it is anything resembling a reasonable interpretation of the text.
  - gnicholas 9y ago
    I was curious about this statement also, because he doesn't present any evidence of different abilites in the memo. On a reddit AMA, he explained that he had actually removed the ability-related evidence, which isn't what you'd expect: instead of showing that women have less of an ability to code, the evidence suggests that women who have high math ability are more likely to have high verbal ability also, vis a vis men with high math ability. So women with high math ability have more options than men, on average, because they're likely to have more verbal ability as well. These women can then pursue jobs in other areas, whereas the men with high math ability don't have those options and therefore pursue things like coding. I'm not weighing in on whether this evidence (which was based on SAT, IIRC) is correct or has been interpreted validly. I'm just pointing out that this was what Damore claimed (after the snafu arose—so take with at least a grain of salt) this statement was in reference to. I'd love to know if others have different information, especially if it was in earlier drafts of the doc.
- ng12 9y ago
  IANAL, but I think so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misrepresentation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misrepresentation
- gnicholas 9y ago
  It is libelous to say that someone said something that they did not say (assuming, as in all cases, that what you say could hurt their reputation in the community). There a spectrum of behavior: one the one hand, there are straight up misquotes—where you attribute a direct quote improperly. On the other hand, there are synthetic statements, where you 'sum up' what someone has said in a distilled way. In this case, TC would argue that they are distilling his memo by using the phrase "biologically less capable of engineering". Personally (and as a former lawyer, but not a libel lawyer), I think this position is not especially strong, since he focused mostly, if not exclusively, on inclination-type evidence. If you're going to give a one-sentence summary of the memo, you probably shouldn't refer to ability instead of inclination. And given that the person they're talking about just sued Google, I'd say it's unwise to use a characterization like this—even if it is ultimately legally justifiable. Why not say "biologically less suited for engineering", which would encompass the possibility of both ability and desire?

dguaraglia 9y ago

What wording do you suggest they use?

keerthiko 9y ago
His memo was more along the lines of "women are less represented in tech because the industry does not favor their traits which are possibly a result of biological differences"
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  And what biological differences would those be?
  - anonemouse145 9y ago
    Read the paper, including citations.
- rifung 9y ago
  The article seems to have it correct to me? From the memo: "I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership" preferences and abilities he says.
  - anonemouse145 9y ago
    Yes. And? He suggests ways to alter Google's engineering jobs to suit abilities females are more likely to excel at, such as making work more social. Its almost like different doesn't mean worse.
- lurr 9y ago
  Also women aren't going into "high stress jobs" because they are too neurotic for them. oh and diversity programs are bad. for some reason.
9y ago

brndnmtthws 9y ago

News outlets generate income through sensationalism, and that's the storyline that they need to drive the most traffic.

threeseed 9y ago
This has nothing to do with the news and everything to do with what Damore did. He was fired for a reason.
- ironjunkie 9y ago
  Sure, and the politically correct system is never wrong. Continue to live in your utopia
  - dang 9y ago
    Name-calling and personal attacks will get you banned here. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and clean up your act. Here's a principle to help: If you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.
- anonemouse145 9y ago
  No he didn't. Stop spreading lies. This is the heart of the lawsuit. Unless you mean he was fired as part of a witch hunt which was much ado about nothing, and that's a sad fact of basing firing decisions on tweets. That is true.
  - dang 9y ago
    This comment breaks the HN guideline against calling names in arguments. We ban accounts that do that, so please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do that. Edit: it looks like you've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly and ignoring our requests to stop. If you keep doing that we will ban you.

ebbv 9y ago

From his memo: > I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. He said exactly that, right there. Why do conservatives always appear to defend this guy and try to pretend the memo wasn't full of repugnant crap.

x3n0ph3n3 9y ago
I think the "preferences" part carries more weight. More men want to be engineers than women.
- ebbv 9y ago
  We're not debating what you think, we're debating what he said, and he included abilities in there. He said what they claim he said, but people always appear to try to claim he didn't.
- itaris 9y ago
  > preferences and abilities
- threeseed 9y ago
  And if all Damore said was that he would still be at Google.
  - lurr 9y ago
    I don't know why you are being downvoted. I think if he had made a better written argument that focused more clearly on the idea that part of the gender gap is due to a lack of interest by women, that he probably still would be employed.
- wellboy 9y ago
  Men also select more career oriented roles with higher pay, of which CS careers are one of the main ones.

briholt 9y ago

The misrepresentation is a feature, not a bug. They need to create dragons in order to justify their dragon-slaying crusade. This has been going on for years, BTW.

paulgb 9y ago

Is the quote you pulled not saying the same thing as this from Damore's memo? > I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Edit: ebbv beat me to it

ThrustVectoring 9y ago
There's a difference between "fewer women wind up having the skills for X" and "women are worse at X".
- ng12 9y ago
  It's a little grating, to be honest. The tech world loves statistics and empirical research until it clashes with their world view.
  - threeseed 9y ago
    What a ridiculous comment. (a) There is no consistent world view for tens of millions of people distributed across the globe, (b) there is no research, none, that specifically states that women are genetically predisposed to be less suited to engineering and (c) there is no clear rules about what aspects of our biology are required to be a great engineer.
    - ng12 9y ago
      I mean this stuff has been studied for years: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4129348/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4129348/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4157091/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4157091/ Maybe these studies are wrong, maybe the conclusions Damore drew were wrong (I certainly think they are). However, I think witch-hunting people for asking questions about sensitive topics is a much more clear and present danger.

john_moscow 9y ago

>Why do news outlets persistently misrepresent what he actually said? Because this creates controversy, controversy creates engagement and engagement brings more ad revenue to the news outlets.

dmode 9y ago

Can you elaborate on what in your mind is the correct interpretation ? Because, reading his memo, I had the exact same takeaway as the Techcrunch quote you posted here.

imartin2k 9y ago
I tried to explain this in a blog post. It also irritates me why this is so consequently misinterpreted, as it makes for quite a big difference for the overall narrative. Because of course if someone would claim that an individual woman cannot be as good as an individual man in engineering (or better), that person would be an idiot. "Misunderstanding statistical distribution" https://medium.com/@martinweigert/misunderstanding-probability-distribution-ee19f8537415 https://medium.com/@martinweigert/misunderstanding-probabili...
- lukev 9y ago
  That's a strawman. Nobody is saying that Damore thinks every man is a better programmer than every woman. He suggested that on average men are biologically more suited to programming, and the contention of his opponents is that that is still a problematic and inappropriate thing to say.
  - ThrustVectoring 9y ago
    He very clearly stated that the average male programmer is as good as the average female programmer. Please don't insinuate otherwise by stripping away some of the semantics Mr. Damore used - he used it for a reason to make a more precise claim than you're criticizing.
    - lukev 9y ago
      Again, that's not the argument. Even stating that men are more suited to become programmers* is problematic!
      - 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

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PeterStuer 9y ago

Because the press loves polarization. Hitting sensitive nerves is the perfect click-bait. There is no sensible discussion possible anymore on this topic, so it is low hanging fruit.

lukev 9y ago

What? Did we read the same memo? One of his central points is that the representation gap between men and women in technology is due to different biological distributions. From the memo: > I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Minus a bit of softening language ("in part", "may"), proposing that women are on average less biologically capable of programming is exactly what he's saying. Also, because I know how HN works, let me pre-empt the inevitable reply to this one: "but what if there ARE sex differences?! shouldn't we be allowed to talk about that!? Freedom of speech!?!" Scientists who study this stuff (including those cited by Damore) can and do talk about it, and the consensus is that biological sex differences are not that big of an effect, certainly not enough to explain the gender disparity in tech. What effects there may be are absolutely dominated by sociological factors. Sociological factors that some companies are attempting to counter, which is what Damore didn't like, which is why he issued his complain-y memo to start with. And THAT is why people are upset with him. Not because he's an amateur biologist with a day job as a programmer who just earnestly wants to have an innocent conversation about sexual dimorphism. It's because he's just another brogrammer whose jimmies got rustled by the thought of women being his peers, and decided to insult (on average) his female colleagues and create a hostile work environment for which he was (quite correctly) fired.

Alex3917 9y ago
> the consensus is that biological sex differences are not that big of an effect, certainly not enough to explain the gender disparity in tech. Whether sex differences explain the gender disparity in tech isn't even the kind of question that cog dev folks ask.
- DoofusOfDeath 9y ago
  > You're making stuff up. Hey, let's keep things civil. Please consider Hanlon's Razor in this case. How about something like, "I don't think you're correct about the consensus. Citations please?"

zouhair 9y ago

When the majority of people coming to your defense are right wing extremists[0][1] and neo-nazis you are doing something wrong. You can also read his twitter account, he went full on alt-right. I am happy he got his ass fired. [0]: http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/18/james-damore-like-gays-1950s-conservatives-stay-closet-google-silicon-valley/ http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/18/james-damore-like-g... [1]: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/450202/google-employees-awesome-anti-diversity-screed http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/450202/google-employees...

coolso 9y ago
> When the majority of people coming to your defense are right wing extremists[0][1] and neo-nazis you are doing something wrong. When the majority of people are too afraid to come to someone's defense (publicly) because they're afraid that the internet pitchfork mobs will come and destroy their lives too, a large part of society is doing something wrong. And that large part of society that attempts to do the silencing/shaming/smearing/destroying of the opposition might think they're scoring a victory for their cause (whether or not that cause is worthy is beside the point), but that's not necessarily true, and we saw proof of that in the last US election.
- lurr 9y ago
  > we saw proof of that in the last US election. When Clinton got millions more votes?
erik_seaberg 9y ago
http://thehill.com/policy/technology/348246-poll-google-was-wrong-to-fire-engineer-over-diversity-memo http://thehill.com/policy/technology/348246-poll-google-was-... reports solid opposition to his firing. If only extremists are openly defending him, it's because they have less to fear.
jacksmith21006 9y ago
The alt right did not do him any favors as it probably made it harder for him to understand what he did wrong. Of course he had to be fired as how could you have him on a team trying to work together. As a manager you have to think about everyone in the team.

Digory 9y ago

Americans, even those who attend good schools, do not understand statistical claims. This leaves them susceptible to all kinds of flim flam, especially when they are invested in an idea.

DoofusOfDeath 9y ago
> Americans, even those who attend good schools, do not understand statistical claims. I'm having some difficulty understanding your statement. Would you mind clarifying a few things? - Do you mean all Americans, or just some? - When you say "do not understand", what do you mean by that? - I'm unclear as to why you specifically mentioned Americans. Are you comparing them to some other group(s)? And if so, which one(s)?
- wellboy 9y ago
  He means 80% of Americans probably, not 100% and that that is a lot more than in any other demographic in the western world. Be aware, 60% of Republicans belie e that the earth really is only 6,000 years old. By not understanding he means that, that they don't understand that they don't understand that in distribution when traits are different on a average that that doesn't mean that in one group all individuals of one groups have stronger or weaker traits than individuals of the other group.
- Digory 9y ago
  >I'm having some difficulty understanding your statement. Heh. I rest my case. But, to respond directly: of course, I'm speaking colloquially to suggest many Americans. I specifically mention Americans because this discussion is about an American suing an American company, in a kerfuffle over American ideals (and law) of sex nondiscrimination. American education norms seem to leave even bright people susceptible to deep confusion when claims are based on statistics.
  - DoofusOfDeath 9y ago
    > Heh. I rest my case. I'm Irish.

lurr 9y ago

Okay, replace engineering with management and that's exactly the argument he made.