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I think I can. Here's the document: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/3

I think I can. Here's the document: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideol... JD says: "On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways", and then has the nice overlapping bimodal distribution graph. In my read, this data is foundational to many of his arguments, but there's a fundamental flaw in his application of it, which is: why you should expect anyone at Google (or, well, any sub-group with a filter process) would be meaningfully predictable by or representative of their biology's bimodal distribution, in the first place? I've noticed that a lot of Damore proponents never actually engage with the questions I ask them. Can you provide answers to the questions I've already asked? Edit: Acccctually. I'm noticing that this is exhausting for me (wouldn't be surprised if you felt the same) annnnd I don't predict it'll generate all that much worthwhile buuuut I have an idea. Rather than hash over something someone else said four years ago - what do you think of workshopping something that you'd like to express, that you think would receive a negative reception "by the orthodoxy", ala JD? Because I'm willing to bet my time and energy on my thesis that "tone" is what sunk his essay, and that I can help someone else express themselves in a way that'll receive a much, much better reception. (I realize that while I might just be betting my time and energy, you'd be likely to be betting much more, but we're rather limited by this medium haha)

civilized 5y ago
> why you should expect anyone at Google (or, well, any sub-group with a filter process) would be meaningfully predictable by or representative of their biology's bimodal distribution, in the first place? This is an important point and would have been my main intellectual critique of Damore as well. Statistics of large populations don't necessarily generalize to small subpopulations. For this reason Damore's arguments, while worthy of consideration, are quite a bit less than conclusive. At the same time I think Damore's points were basically insightful and likely to have some truth even within Google. In particular, there's a lot about tech that could be more human, and that women would disproportionately excel at. Why don't we do more of that stuff? Not only would we employ more women productively in tech, everybody would be happier with how tech works in society. One of the most progressive and "woke" women I know at my work said essentially this to me, unprompted. This was her idea of how to make tech better. Damore's idea! (Of course she'd never admit that it was Damore's but...)
ALittleLight 5y ago
I read your comment opposed to Damore as something like "Damore says this distribution of traits exists in the general population, but it doesn't necessarily exist in the subset of Google." Please correct me if I'm wrong. I think that point is true and I think it is the kind of thing where, if Google were considering taking Damore's feedback, they should investigate. Is Google's population of employees noticeably different from the general population? How about the population of people who interview at Google? I think that the assumption that Google, with 150k (or whatever it was at the time) employees plus candidate employees, roughly approximates population trends is a reasonable starting place for a single author writing up some thoughts. If this were an academic paper we would probably expect the author to consider this at some point. If it's some thoughts the author put together on diversity? Seems like a crazy standard to me. I'm not sure what questions you've asked that haven't been responded to. I see a couple questions in your parent comments asking whether your take on Damore was nuanced/critical. If that's what you're referring to my answers to those questions are that I feel you badly misrepresent Damore and your commentary on him is short of meaningful. Regarding your edit - in my view we have a substantive disagreement here, over Damore. I don't see why we would abandon that to discuss other topics. My position on Damore is that you and others misrepresent Damore in order to gaslight and threaten people who disagree with you. "Unapproved thoughts on diversity? That's an anti-diversity political screed. You are a sexist bigot who will be fired and relentlessly slandered in national media." By gaslighting I mean that you and others pretend to invite "conversation" but when disagreements happen there is less conversing and more heretic-burning. Damore is a perfect example. Google hosts a diversity class, the class asks for feedback, Damore shares his thoughts on diversity, then he is terminated and renounced in the media, and even here, by you, on Hacker News.
- civilized 5y ago
  I think RangerScience means better than you assume, but you're not wrong about the broader strokes: fake inviting of conversation followed by vicious Cultural Revolution-style denunciation. I commented on it over here as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29610571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29610571
- joshuamorton 5y ago
jbay808 5y ago
> why you should expect anyone at Google (or, well, any sub-group with a filter process) would be meaningfully predictable by or representative of their biology's bimodal distribution, in the first place? I don't think you would; however you might find you end up with a ratio of both groups that is not 50/50 but rather proportional to the ratio between the areas of both curves that lie above some cutoff. For a maybe less controversial take, as of 2021 there are far more women than men who do, say, embroidery as a hobby. In that sense "population by hours spent embroidering per year for fun" is two overlapping histograms that skew differently by gender. Big peaks for both groups at zero. However, once we filter our discussion to "people who do embroidery as a hobby", cutting off the majority of both populations (but the supermajority of men), we can't assume that the same pattern holds. The trend might even flip; the average man-who-does-embroidery might do it much more than the average woman-who-does-embroidery, just because they've been so strongly selected for; less committed men never would have picked up that hobby at all. But we can be pretty sure that the population of men who spend even an hour a year embroidering is much smaller than the population of women who do the same, without making any assumptions that those men who do embroidery have any lesser skill, interest, or dedication.

civilized 5y ago

> why you should expect anyone at Google (or, well, any sub-group with a filter process) would be meaningfully predictable by or representative of their biology's bimodal distribution, in the first place? This is an important point and would have been my main intellectual critique of Damore as well. Statistics of large populations don't necessarily generalize to small subpopulations. For this reason Damore's arguments, while worthy of consideration, are quite a bit less than conclusive. At the same time I think Damore's points were basically insightful and likely to have some truth even within Google. In particular, there's a lot about tech that could be more human, and that women would disproportionately excel at. Why don't we do more of that stuff? Not only would we employ more women productively in tech, everybody would be happier with how tech works in society. One of the most progressive and "woke" women I know at my work said essentially this to me, unprompted. This was her idea of how to make tech better. Damore's idea! (Of course she'd never admit that it was Damore's but...)

ALittleLight 5y ago

I read your comment opposed to Damore as something like "Damore says this distribution of traits exists in the general population, but it doesn't necessarily exist in the subset of Google." Please correct me if I'm wrong. I think that point is true and I think it is the kind of thing where, if Google were considering taking Damore's feedback, they should investigate. Is Google's population of employees noticeably different from the general population? How about the population of people who interview at Google? I think that the assumption that Google, with 150k (or whatever it was at the time) employees plus candidate employees, roughly approximates population trends is a reasonable starting place for a single author writing up some thoughts. If this were an academic paper we would probably expect the author to consider this at some point. If it's some thoughts the author put together on diversity? Seems like a crazy standard to me. I'm not sure what questions you've asked that haven't been responded to. I see a couple questions in your parent comments asking whether your take on Damore was nuanced/critical. If that's what you're referring to my answers to those questions are that I feel you badly misrepresent Damore and your commentary on him is short of meaningful. Regarding your edit - in my view we have a substantive disagreement here, over Damore. I don't see why we would abandon that to discuss other topics. My position on Damore is that you and others misrepresent Damore in order to gaslight and threaten people who disagree with you. "Unapproved thoughts on diversity? That's an anti-diversity political screed. You are a sexist bigot who will be fired and relentlessly slandered in national media." By gaslighting I mean that you and others pretend to invite "conversation" but when disagreements happen there is less conversing and more heretic-burning. Damore is a perfect example. Google hosts a diversity class, the class asks for feedback, Damore shares his thoughts on diversity, then he is terminated and renounced in the media, and even here, by you, on Hacker News.

civilized 5y ago
I think RangerScience means better than you assume, but you're not wrong about the broader strokes: fake inviting of conversation followed by vicious Cultural Revolution-style denunciation. I commented on it over here as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29610571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29610571
joshuamorton 5y ago

jbay808 5y ago

> why you should expect anyone at Google (or, well, any sub-group with a filter process) would be meaningfully predictable by or representative of their biology's bimodal distribution, in the first place? I don't think you would; however you might find you end up with a ratio of both groups that is not 50/50 but rather proportional to the ratio between the areas of both curves that lie above some cutoff. For a maybe less controversial take, as of 2021 there are far more women than men who do, say, embroidery as a hobby. In that sense "population by hours spent embroidering per year for fun" is two overlapping histograms that skew differently by gender. Big peaks for both groups at zero. However, once we filter our discussion to "people who do embroidery as a hobby", cutting off the majority of both populations (but the supermajority of men), we can't assume that the same pattern holds. The trend might even flip; the average man-who-does-embroidery might do it much more than the average woman-who-does-embroidery, just because they've been so strongly selected for; less committed men never would have picked up that hobby at all. But we can be pretty sure that the population of men who spend even an hour a year embroidering is much smaller than the population of women who do the same, without making any assumptions that those men who do embroidery have any lesser skill, interest, or dedication.