5 ms·

i agree with everything written here. The culture articles on the wsj are bizzare. I think they can be chalked up to good old journalism selective sources (happ

i agree with everything written here. The culture articles on the wsj are bizzare. I think they can be chalked up to good old journalism selective sources (happy employees aren’t running to tell all), combined with a “where there’s smoke there’s fire” belief. And that’s me being as charitable as possible. The internal experience just doesn’t match what they’re writing.

stcredzero 8y ago
What if the unhappy employees are honestly relating their experience? What if you can openly share your opinions, so long as it's in a rather narrow range of acceptable opinions? What if some of those "unacceptable" opinions happen to be held by scientific researchers who maintain a moderate position that both nature and nurture is involved in gender differences? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8 How would that differ from the anti-evolution groupthink I'd expect to find at certain megachurches?
- ryanobjc 8y ago
  Again, selection bias. Not every employee is going to be happy at every company. And as I noted in a different comment, there are axioms at companies you just won’t be fruitful arguing against. That’s a hard fact of working for someone else. As for the veiled Damore references, the problem isn’t the discussion that men and women are different in a variety of ways, the problem is he was using it as a justification to argue that his female coworkers didn’t meet the same hiring bar, and that in general some just don’t make better engineers. Jumping from “there are differences” (which no one disagrees with!) to women shouldn’t be engineers is a huge leap. One filled with bogus arguments, misreading studies (one of the study authors damore quoted, came out and said that he drew the incorrect conclusion from it.). His essay was motivated reasoning, had tons of fallacies (commonly, the map isn’t the territory, and the world isn’t Boolean logic). As someone who just had a baby, you would not believe how much gender patterning happens from age 0. Even before they are born, do you want the blue or pink elastic band for holding the fetal heart monitor on? Clothes choices, word choices. It’s difficult to tease this out. Additionally, we know the human body is very flexible and adaptable. You can a introduce hormones to a xy and watch it grow secondary sex characteristics. To say that the research is in and we know anything with any certainty is hubris of the highest order. And this is all before we stop to consider how we want to build the world? Why bother with wheel chairs and ramps? We frequently reject naturalistic arguments when it comes to universal human rights. I don’t see why this is any different. And on a final note, it seems like people think that we are now in a world of equal oppertunity and all we’re doing now is attempting to create equal outcome. I invite you to really reflect and consider, are you sure we have equal oppertunity? Are you sure? If you are, then you’d be willing to switch places with a poor black woman, because you’d still end up where you are now right?
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    the problem is he was using it as a justification to argue that his female coworkers didn’t meet the same hiring bar, and that in general some just don’t make better engineers That's not how I interpreted his memo, and I think the widespread emotionally wrought interpretation of his memo in that fashion reveals virulent groupthink. Didn't a large number of women not go to work because of induced "feels?" You can a introduce hormones to a xy and watch it grow secondary sex characteristics. That's strong evidence for at least a partial physiological basis of gender. To say that the research is in and we know anything with any certainty is hubris of the highest order. Then why would holding an opinion evoke such a strong response? I invite you to really reflect and consider, are you sure we have equal oppertunity? Are you sure? If you are, then you’d be willing to switch places with a poor black woman, because you’d still end up where you are now right? I dated a creole woman for 9 years and asked her to marry me. This last paragraph of yours speaks for itself, in terms of the presence or absence of ideological groupthink. If that poor black woman had the same cultural upbringing as my ex-girlfriend's maternal grandmother, then sure, why not?
  - belorn 8y ago
    > Are you sure? If you are, then you’d be willing to switch places with a poor black woman Such question attempts to distill gender roles into a single binary "better" or "worse". If I ever get accused of a crime and put in a trial then sign me up to get the court statistics for poor black woman rather than poor white man. Who would not choose to get fewer year in prison, smaller fines and better results in regard to criminal psychology tests? If my life goals was to have a large social support network, long life, and children then again we see that poor black women has better statistical results than poor white men. Lower risk for suicide and homelessness is also nice. If my life goals was to have a large income or have a professional title such as CEO then being a poor white man is still significant worse than rich black man, but compared to poor black woman it is better. Rich white man tops the results on this goal which usually is the only data point people care about in this kind of discussions. Overall which one has most benefits? It depend on what goals in life one values higher. Maslow's hierarchy of needs comes in mind. Personally I find that gender roles is a mixed bag and would prefer them to go away and be replaced by equality on all data points.
  - 8y ago

stcredzero 8y ago

What if the unhappy employees are honestly relating their experience? What if you can openly share your opinions, so long as it's in a rather narrow range of acceptable opinions? What if some of those "unacceptable" opinions happen to be held by scientific researchers who maintain a moderate position that both nature and nurture is involved in gender differences? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8 How would that differ from the anti-evolution groupthink I'd expect to find at certain megachurches?

ryanobjc 8y ago
Again, selection bias. Not every employee is going to be happy at every company. And as I noted in a different comment, there are axioms at companies you just won’t be fruitful arguing against. That’s a hard fact of working for someone else. As for the veiled Damore references, the problem isn’t the discussion that men and women are different in a variety of ways, the problem is he was using it as a justification to argue that his female coworkers didn’t meet the same hiring bar, and that in general some just don’t make better engineers. Jumping from “there are differences” (which no one disagrees with!) to women shouldn’t be engineers is a huge leap. One filled with bogus arguments, misreading studies (one of the study authors damore quoted, came out and said that he drew the incorrect conclusion from it.). His essay was motivated reasoning, had tons of fallacies (commonly, the map isn’t the territory, and the world isn’t Boolean logic). As someone who just had a baby, you would not believe how much gender patterning happens from age 0. Even before they are born, do you want the blue or pink elastic band for holding the fetal heart monitor on? Clothes choices, word choices. It’s difficult to tease this out. Additionally, we know the human body is very flexible and adaptable. You can a introduce hormones to a xy and watch it grow secondary sex characteristics. To say that the research is in and we know anything with any certainty is hubris of the highest order. And this is all before we stop to consider how we want to build the world? Why bother with wheel chairs and ramps? We frequently reject naturalistic arguments when it comes to universal human rights. I don’t see why this is any different. And on a final note, it seems like people think that we are now in a world of equal oppertunity and all we’re doing now is attempting to create equal outcome. I invite you to really reflect and consider, are you sure we have equal oppertunity? Are you sure? If you are, then you’d be willing to switch places with a poor black woman, because you’d still end up where you are now right?
- stcredzero 8y ago
  the problem is he was using it as a justification to argue that his female coworkers didn’t meet the same hiring bar, and that in general some just don’t make better engineers That's not how I interpreted his memo, and I think the widespread emotionally wrought interpretation of his memo in that fashion reveals virulent groupthink. Didn't a large number of women not go to work because of induced "feels?" You can a introduce hormones to a xy and watch it grow secondary sex characteristics. That's strong evidence for at least a partial physiological basis of gender. To say that the research is in and we know anything with any certainty is hubris of the highest order. Then why would holding an opinion evoke such a strong response? I invite you to really reflect and consider, are you sure we have equal oppertunity? Are you sure? If you are, then you’d be willing to switch places with a poor black woman, because you’d still end up where you are now right? I dated a creole woman for 9 years and asked her to marry me. This last paragraph of yours speaks for itself, in terms of the presence or absence of ideological groupthink. If that poor black woman had the same cultural upbringing as my ex-girlfriend's maternal grandmother, then sure, why not?
- belorn 8y ago
  > Are you sure? If you are, then you’d be willing to switch places with a poor black woman Such question attempts to distill gender roles into a single binary "better" or "worse". If I ever get accused of a crime and put in a trial then sign me up to get the court statistics for poor black woman rather than poor white man. Who would not choose to get fewer year in prison, smaller fines and better results in regard to criminal psychology tests? If my life goals was to have a large social support network, long life, and children then again we see that poor black women has better statistical results than poor white men. Lower risk for suicide and homelessness is also nice. If my life goals was to have a large income or have a professional title such as CEO then being a poor white man is still significant worse than rich black man, but compared to poor black woman it is better. Rich white man tops the results on this goal which usually is the only data point people care about in this kind of discussions. Overall which one has most benefits? It depend on what goals in life one values higher. Maslow's hierarchy of needs comes in mind. Personally I find that gender roles is a mixed bag and would prefer them to go away and be replaced by equality on all data points.
- 8y ago