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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 w

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.
manfredo 8y ago
> 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. Incorrect. He explicitly stated that white and Asian men faced a higher false negative rate. Not that underqualifies women and minorities were being hired. > 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). At this point you've completed diverged from what was written in the memo. At no point did the author say women shouldn't be engineers. His point was that we shouldn't try to socially engineer an arbitrary diversity target, and accept the possibility that even absent social pressures women may not choose to enter tech at the same rate as men.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Google's Real Diversity Problem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtjNbIxrYK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtjNbIxrYK4
- ryanobjc 8y ago
  Disagree with the whole “shoildnt Socially engineer” - this makes no sense! We live in highly constructed environment! Socially constructed. Laws, physics design, social structures, etc , etc. We do not live in a world where “social pressures” that might pressure women not to join tech can’t possible be “absent”. That just doesn’t exist, nor ever will. Thus, facing this reality, given the fact that women are under represented, what do we do next? I say, let a higher goal, one of equality of opportunity and a desire for more equal representation drive us to build a society that gives women the same chances men get. No one is saying hire regardless of talent. As for the original memo, I’ve read it many times and he has a core argument that women didn’t meet the hiring bar. Just repeating that isn’t what he claimed isn’t convincing. Bottom line: we do social engineering all the time. We will always do it. We can’t not even do it. Let’s instead of pretending what we do now is “neutral”, recognize it isn’t, determine what kinds of outcomes we’d like and ways to design those without being blantantly unfair. Rather than pretending status quo is as good as it gets and give up now.

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.

manfredo 8y ago

> 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. Incorrect. He explicitly stated that white and Asian men faced a higher false negative rate. Not that underqualifies women and minorities were being hired. > 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). At this point you've completed diverged from what was written in the memo. At no point did the author say women shouldn't be engineers. His point was that we shouldn't try to socially engineer an arbitrary diversity target, and accept the possibility that even absent social pressures women may not choose to enter tech at the same rate as men.

stcredzero 8y ago
Google's Real Diversity Problem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtjNbIxrYK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtjNbIxrYK4
ryanobjc 8y ago
Disagree with the whole “shoildnt Socially engineer” - this makes no sense! We live in highly constructed environment! Socially constructed. Laws, physics design, social structures, etc , etc. We do not live in a world where “social pressures” that might pressure women not to join tech can’t possible be “absent”. That just doesn’t exist, nor ever will. Thus, facing this reality, given the fact that women are under represented, what do we do next? I say, let a higher goal, one of equality of opportunity and a desire for more equal representation drive us to build a society that gives women the same chances men get. No one is saying hire regardless of talent. As for the original memo, I’ve read it many times and he has a core argument that women didn’t meet the hiring bar. Just repeating that isn’t what he claimed isn’t convincing. Bottom line: we do social engineering all the time. We will always do it. We can’t not even do it. Let’s instead of pretending what we do now is “neutral”, recognize it isn’t, determine what kinds of outcomes we’d like and ways to design those without being blantantly unfair. Rather than pretending status quo is as good as it gets and give up now.