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Comment by KirinDave | Hacker News Reader

It's mysterious to me how literally every action a feminist takes is somehow directly responsibile for all problems that befall them, with every action that might possibly hurt a man being somehow a catastrophe in the making.

Not 3 weeks ago we had a thread here where a woman spoke up about harassment and people said it was exactly the wrong thing. Mad someone for touching your bum? Speak up. You spoke up? Now you're ruining the work environment and being unfair.

In this memo's case, perhaps you're mad at someone for saying you're genetically predisposed to be less capable of individual action (e.g., don't worry I am sure if we set up pair programming that will make it fair for you social women types)? Well it's your fault for not arguing against it. Oh you spoke up and that person got fired for violating some pretty basic corproate policy? Well congrats now it's your fault they're radicalized. Now Trump is inevitable, thanks for putting him in power, I hope North Korea nukes your house!

The only solution that ever seems to be okay is stand there and smile as people say, do, and justify unfair things. Or maybe sit there and "debate" with them as they spout tired 1970s-debunked rhetoric about communication skills and and meticulisly avoid the idea that benefits might take any shape or form beyond what they themselves want this year.

As for that "memo", I still don't get why the underlying premise that Google's level of technical competitiveness was hurt by these policies is taken without a critical eye. That's a pretty big assertion for a company who's essentially leading numerous areas in the world's tech markets and research fields.

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He didn't say it the fault of feminists, only that this was probably going to be the result.

And It's exactly why public debate should be had. To come to a better solution in the middle, rather than create fringes on the sides.

Your reaction here is just more of the 'Shock and Awe' and hurt feelings that doesn't really help push the agenda.

Problem is most of this subject has been in public debate for decades, centuries even. The people trying to maintain the status quo are never going to give it up willingly. They're always going to cry when change comes and they aren't ready for it (IE when they're dead). At some point the debate has to be reasonably over and action expected.

And some subjects don't have middle ground. Women being treated less than equal isn't a middle ground sort of issue.

There are already sides, there have been sides forever. People being pushed or pulled one way or another isn't a new phenomena. And there's no amount of public debate and middle ground treading you can do to prevent people who are going to be polarized as of the result of any backlash of their already fringe beliefs. That's inevitable. And the gymnastics required to keep them in the middle just aren't worth it. The actual goal is the thing of value for the people pushing for it. Not appeasing ignorance and bigotry just enough to keep them pacified.

> And some subjects don't have middle ground. Women being treated less than equal isn't a middle ground sort of issue.

Which is why you need to have ongoing discussion, to determine if people are or are not being treated less equally. People who believe they are "right" but are unable or unwilling to defend that position with words ("the debate is over") should not be trusted, ever.

> People who believe they are "right" but are unable or unwilling to defend that position with words ("the debate is over") should not be trusted, ever.

So what you're saying is the debate is over about the intentions of people saying the debate is over?

Haha, that's a nice turn of words.

Well, assuming you're serious, what's your thoughts on that? Can we have any absolutes? Or is everything indeterminate? If nothing is knowable and communication is not possible shall we stop sending our children to school and go back to living in caves?

> He didn't say it the fault of feminists, only that this was probably going to be the result.

So what we all should do is forgive these men their outrageously outdated and somewhat dehumanizing viewpoints and calmly explain to them that currently they are benefitting from a system called patriarchy that has normalized male dominance. We should then calmly suggest that btw, people who are not visually and immediately white suffer a lot under this system too. And I know he benefits but could he please stop?

These folks already hold radical views. He wasn't "radicalized" by being forced to own it. He isn't forced to "vote Trump" because his views are known. He already had them, and they're for the most part outdated, impropable or insulting already.

Why then is the right decision to give him a pass on violating corporate HR policy?

The irony is that all the things you argue against him for, his small worldview, not willing to come to his senses, are what you are doing yourself.

You are kicking and screaming against anything that upsets your viewpoint on this issue.

And we actually agree on the most important facet (as do most people) that any discrimination based on age, gender, or race is absolutely not tolerated.

But how to achieve this in the real world is not a walk in the park. For example, positive discrimination is not a fair system in my opinion. I would think focusing on making the interview process blind is better. So can we argue on these specifics or am I just a bully and a bigot for holding a different opinion?

> You are kicking and screaming against anything that upsets your viewpoint on this issue.

Interesting. So in this case I shouldn't debate anyone here. Because somehow that makes me wrong because... By not agreeing my worldview is small?

> that any discrimination based on age, gender, or race is absolutely not tolerated.

Honestly, I genuinely do not believe that many people here believe this. I think they find excuses for men at every turn or rationalize marginalizing women need (e.g., as I write this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14980201) That is part of _my_ larger point about how the natural response on HN is to say, "Well if you had handled this correctly we wouldn't be in a situation where it looks like sexual harassment."

> So can we argue on these specifics or am I just a bully and a bigot for holding a different opinion?

I want you to re-read this paragraph and ask yourself what the premise here is. This thread starts by saying, "We should debate." I point out how dismissive this often I'd on HN and your response is, "You're kicking and screaming and just as guilty as James. Now, agree with me in total OR call me names."

I don't know if you're a bigot, but this is a poor tactic to adopt when coupled with the ultimatum: "Or am I a bully?"

> Interesting. So in this case I shouldn't debate anyone here. Because somehow that makes me wrong because... By not agreeing my worldview is small?

"forgive these men their outrageously outdated and somewhat dehumanizing viewpoints and calmly explain to them that currently they are benefitting from a system called patriarchy that has normalized male dominance" doesn't sound like you're open to a debate, it sounds like you are highly certain that your opinion is correct, full stop.

So what you're saying is you don't appreciate my tone?

You can nose around my comments. While I'm somewhat acidic with people who suggest it is the feminist responsibility to endure every negative opinion in perpetuity, I'm engaging in most conversations honestly.

I am quite confident in the core components of these observations, but I was more skeptical of it some time ago. If you genuinely believe I cannot be swayed, why do YOU bother talking to me?

Not sure really, I guess it is a bit of a hobby, observing the psychological behavior of humans. To me, it is absolutely fascinating how widespread the affliction is where when you find yourself in a disagreement with a person, you can ask them if they think their position is right, they say yes, are you confident, they say yes (or, perhaps by this time they may already instinctively sense danger and leave the conversation), and then if you say ok, let's make a deal, I will ask you a question, and you must answer the question, the one I asked not a modified version of it, and you cannot change the subject....and then after that you can ask me a question....and so on.

In my experiences, this experiment "fails" 90%+ of the time, either by the person refusing to participate, or refusing to hold up their end of the bargain. Yet, they continue to believe absolutely that they are "right"!

I mean to me, this is very fascinating to observe in action.

I read the thread you linked and I'm not sure what you want us to see. It looks like Sacho is being completely reasonable and you two are having a rational, honest discussion.

I don't see anyone "rationalizing marginalizing women"

It looked like the other poster was trying to evaluate the arguments rationally, that's not the same as rationalizing.

You should really read the article. It didn't say anything negative like you're suggesting.

You should read my origin post, I wasn't talking about the top article, I was talking about the character of the discourse on HN.

There can be no discussion when you start with a bad premise. What can you argue with someone that says the other sex is inferior?

There can be no discussion when people attack a straw man instead of read the article. Nobody said anyone is inferior, at all.

That is obviously not at all clear, given the multi-national debate around this issue.

How does one knows that the premise is bad when you're not even allowed to disciss it? Furthermore, how come the discussion itself is viewed as harmful? If you claim that the premise is wrong shouldn't it be very easy to prove so? What if the other person is open minded and actually willing to consider your arguments, as long as you're willing to do the same?

>Mad at someone for saying you're genetically predisposed to be less capable of individual action?

He never said that. Could you cite the portion where he literally says women are less capable?

Do the last two bullet points of his tl;dr count?:

* Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership.

* Discrimination to reach equal representation is [...] bad for business.

Which I read as, "woman aren't as good, that's why they don't already work here, if we hire more of them, they'll not be able to do the job as well as men so the business will suffer"

Is that an unreasonable reading?

I really didn't want to comment on this topic, but who can pass up a chance at self-immolation ?

Being left-leaning, I've been doing a lot of looking into some of the ideas floating around amongst the right-leaning crowd since the election. Based upon that, I would say that yes, that is an unreasonable reading.

My understanding (subject to being completely off-base, of course) is that the argument is about biological differences related to interests and aspirations, not intelligence and capabilities. In other words, the early developmental stages cause differences in the brain among men and women that affect, in very general terms, what both may end up aspiring to in terms of career choices and hobbies/interests.

Women (again, speaking generally) could easily do any knowledge-based job performed by men, but you're going to have problems finding the numbers that you need if you want to hit a solid 50/50 distribution in certain types of fields. I think this is why certain fields have had very little trouble reaching either parity or female dominance after the women's equality movement started, while other fields struggle to this day. For example, I've read that SV has no problem with the distribution amongst the non-tech fields and that they slightly favor women, but in terms of engineering and tech, the distribution still lags by quite a bit. This would imply that SV is doing everything in its power to hire and promote women, and that there is something else going on that is the cause of what we're seeing. However, it could also imply that tech and engineering are all filled with men that are actively hostile to women to such a degree that women, even women extremely interested in such fields, simply avoid them. I suspect that, like all things in life, it's a mix of both.

I think it's a bit of a popular straw man that a 50/50 split is desired. It's more along the lines of, "There are no obvious artificial disadvantages for people in these groups, and if that happens then the resulting distribution will almost certainly change."

If you look at the published #s right now, they're... very striking. It makes the hypothesis that it's just the preference of women and people of various minorities quite an aggressive hypothesis, in a bayesian sense.

I'm having a hard time making sense of your first paragraph.

As for the second, which published numbers are you referring to ?

Google's published diversity report.

That can be a reasonable reading, but I don't see what's so controversial about it.

Would you agree that women are naturally physically weaker than men, and this makes for a convincing argument why you would expect more men doing physically demanding jobs? Is this a controversial statement to make?

A difference in traits does not even have to produce a difference in ability to produce a difference in representation. Some of the traits Damore listed allegedly lead women to value a better work/life balance, to focus more on family, etc, which naturally means they would have a lower representation in highly competitive, career-based environments. None of the traits Damore listed seem to discuss "engineering ability", but they do affect all the other skills you need to thrive in the environment.

(This is assuming that the science Damore laid out is sound, which I can't really vouch for, as I am a layman in those fields. However, most of the arguments against Damore seem to be focused on his logical conclusions, rather than the factual basis behind them - e.g. KirinDave seemed to focus on how unfair Damore's conclusions were, rather than how wrong his quoted research was).

> Would you agree that women are naturally physically weaker than men, and this makes for a convincing argument why you would expect more men doing physically demanding jobs? Is this a controversial statement to make?

There is a big difference between agreeing that some differences might exist and arguing that any token gestures for the women who DO qualify under the identical standard are unfair.

That's where this argument breaks down even if we pretend that it's not based on a leaning tower of broscience observations and dated dualist notions of "intellect".

Providing opportunities for minorities in the workplace substantially improves the lot of folks in those categories.

If we could point to the current diversity numbers and say, "Women who do qualify are rarer in the population than men, but tend to equal outcomes once we select for this population? Your argument would make more sense.

But wages are imbalanced, harassment is more prevalent, and turnover is higher. So I'm not as inclined to shrug and walk away just yet.

I don't disagree with what you're saying. I want to point out you are employing a classic motte-and-bailey tactic. In your initial post, you said:

> In this memo's case, perhaps you're mad at someone for saying you're genetically predisposed to be less capable of individual action

Getting mad at the memo seems like an unreasonable reaction to me, especially for the stated reason. Now you've moved to:

> There is a big difference between agreeing that some differences might exist and arguing that any token gestures for the women who DO qualify under the identical standard are unfair.

This seems wholly agreeable. I don't know what Google's policies are and I don't think Damore really managed to explain them well, to describe the negative effects of them, and to adequately argument why his propositions were better. I don't see why this is a fireable offense, but I can also support the argument that once the outrage broke out, Google's decision was logical and reasonable. But notice we've moved away from being outraged at his assertions, to just finding his conclusions questionable. Is this worth getting mad over? We are in the motte, in agreement that you should not just take what he said as gospel, throw your hands up and say "well let's dismantle all of Google's efforts", that's the essence of discussion! You can present a reasonable counter-argument to what he said, and I can certainly find many points to agree on it!

What I'm worried about though, is that once we stop talking, you will charge down to the bailey, and decry Damore as a sexist who should never have opened his mouth, because he caused people to get mad. That the science he quoted is "broscience observations" and thus he is stupid(and dangerous!) to even believe it. That somehow him making an argument precluded others from challenging him, from finding his argument unpersuasive, or presenting a counter-argument that may sway him, or others who feel like him. The discussion is already poisoned by this tactic. I believe that's what the author in this thread was trying to get at.

> What I'm worried about though, is that once we stop talking, you will charge down to the bailey, and decry Damore as a sexist who should never have opened his mouth,

You're wrong. I've met him in passing, he didn't strike me as worth considering, then or now. I deliberately avoided prior conversations precisely because of how clear it was that he was going to be fired for this. He had to know it would happen. There's only one outcome that COULD have come of writing that memo.

Is he a sexist? I think he holds some sexist notions. This is an unsurprising outcome if you believe that historically society has been quite sexist. Is he a card-carrying MRA of the school of Roosh? I do not think so.

> That the science he quoted is "broscience observations"

This is a misunderstanding I can clear up. I don't really have a problem with observations of behavior based on gender. I'm sure observable differences exist and I suspect mechanisms for these differences are at play in my personal experience of gender.

What's "broscience observation" is attempting to use these studies to suggest (as he absolutely did) that the current crop of googlers has a problem and this problem is caused by the proposed proclivities as a way to shape the experiences of women at Google. Almost by definition, women at Google are precisely the people who wouldn't fall into this category and therefore are mostly asking for simple consideration for their unique needs in the services provided. James's complaint is that any special treatment is "discriminatory" towards him, but that's a somewhat absurd claim that when reduced to its elements actually somewhat deflates his own points.

I'm not sure what "practices" he's specifically talking about, but he alludes to leadership and mentorship programs that are primarily focused on specific groups. Giving him access to those would probably be about as valuable to him as putting a sanitary napkin dispenser in his cubicle, but he seems to take great offense at the idea that of the many leadership and mentorship opportunities afforded to him, one a small handful are not targeted specifically at him.

Biological essentialialism is a very difficult subject to discuss because it's so easy to become prescriptive with it and such prescriptions often greatly damage even modest outliers in the population. And for what? I'm fairly certain google saves money in the long run by attempting to improve employee retention and increase the supply of technical talent they can hire.

No rebuttals to your arguments here, just an observation. You seem like the exact kind of person that I would never want to interact with in person. Perhaps modulating your rhetoric just a tad would make people more inclined to have a reasonable debate with you.

It's an unreasonable reading. If you read past the tl;dr you see that none of the differences in traits he talks about are about ability, just interest, so interpreting it as "women aren't as good" is wrong.

Can you explain why hiring women who are just as good as, if not better than, men at the job, but who would prefer (on average) to work elsewhere, perhaps somewhere with more women employees, would make the business do worse?

And can we note that I replied to someone saying "he didn't say that", suggested a place where he did and got replies from different people saying "yes he did say that, and he's correct" and replies saying "no, you're misreading what he said as it's explained in more detail later".

So it appears at the very least (and I feel I'm being generous here), that his words can be misread by people on both sides of the issue, which might be worth bearing in mind for those trying to paint his detractors as a hysterical mob who haven't even read the memo.

In the section you quoted, he doesn't say that hiring more women is bad for business, he said that doing so via discriminatory hiring practices, and if you hadn't ellipsized that line, there would have been an explanation for why right there. The full bullet point reads "Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business." So he says that unequal representation is partially explained by gender differences in interests, and then that trying to eliminate the differences, specifically via the method of discriminatory hiring, is bad for business because it's unfair and divisive.

To be clear, the reason I'm interpreting the "differences" he refers to as differences in interest as opposed to competence is because of the content in the "Personality differences" section of the memo, which is the only place he addresses specific gender differences. In that section he says that women are less interested on average in tasks which focus mainly on systemizing, and are less interested in high-stress jobs, as well as that they are less likely to advocate for their own promotions.

I replied to someone saying "he didn't say that", suggested a place where he did

No, you replied to someone saying "he didn't say that" and suggested a place where he said something ambiguous — the tl;dr, which is necessarily ambiguous.

So it appears at the very least (and I feel I'm being generous here), that his words can be misread by people on both sides of the issue

Who do you think is misinterpreting what? I've pointed out what I think you're misinterpreting and offered an alternative interpretation. You don't get to simply assert that other people are misinterpreting the memo, you've got to offer some evidence of that.

He didn't say "unfair and divisive, and therefore bad for business", he said "unfair, divisive and bad for business". My ellipsis doesn't change the meaning, unless we are, once again, falling back on him presenting his ideas in an ambiguous manner. Which, even if true, makes misinterpretations his responsibility.

In the memo he literally asks for changes to make Google more welcoming for conservatives. He even claims this will be good for business. How do you square this with your contention that any kind of discrimination, even for positive purposes, will lead to negative outcomes due to it being unfair and divisive.

Does it make sense for him to be claiming both these things? I'm not sure that he is even saying that (though it seems tone deaf at the least to present both ideas in the same document).

Also, I'm really not sure that saying women score higher on neuroticism and therefore can't handle stressful jobs as well, or are introverts and so have trouble leading is purely about interest. I'm not sure where this defence about "only talking about interests" comes from, I don't get that from the document. It's certainly not explicitly spelled out.

I'm coming to the conclusion that people aren't just misinterpreting but have actually invented a totally fictitious memo that they find easier to defend than the real one.

You cannot forcibly hire someone who would prefer to work elsewhere (if that someone can really work elsewhere, e.g. not be worried with matters of survival and quality of life). This is probably a reason that in a lot of developing countries (e.g. India) gender gap in IT is much smaller than in developed ones (e.g. Norway, #1 gender equal country)- salary is choosen over comfort.

Now, imagine a situation: 100 persons (80 men, 20 women - ratio observed by actual HR) are looking for a job in Google, which has 10 open positions for them. Google wants to hire the best possible candidate - and hires 8 men and 2 women; both genders are choosed from top 10% of candidates of a same gender (Assuming their skill does not correlate with their gender). That hiring policy does not reduces observed gender gap between candidates at all. So let's introduce positive discrimination (so called affirmative action), and say, that Google wants to hire 5 men and 5 women (1:1 ratio, but even 7:3 will suffice to show worsening effect, albeit in weaker proportions). Now men are choosed from top 6.25%, and women - just from top 25%. The is no gender gap anymore, but now there is a considerable skill gap - top 6.25% men are having considerable advantage over 25% women. More to that: men are not happy because they think they have struggled much more for the same position than women; women are not happy because they think they were hired not for their skills, but for their gender. Also,both men and women being paid based on their performance alone will result if considerable wage gap.

The original memo stated the same, albeit in less transparent form: personal skills cannot be measured with 100% accuracy, so there is always a chance to hire underperforming person (false-positive) or not to hire well performing person (false-negative). Positive discrimination radically reduces false-negatives, which inevitabely magnifies number of false-positives (see Type I and Type II errors in statistics and Neyman-Pearson criterion). Author proposed not to fight on-enter gender gap with discrimination, which would result in negative effect for company's performance, but to make company's environment to be a more attractive (which may reduce on-enter gender gap, reduce number or women leaving industry permanently and won't compromise performance)

>Can you explain why hiring women who are just as good as, if not better than, men at the job, but who would prefer (on average) to work elsewhere, perhaps somewhere with more women employees, would make the business do worse?

The issue is in the act of finding them. This is where statistics and discrimination comes into play. Lets say that ratio of women vs men that are interested in working at google (and capable of being hired) is 20% to 80%. Then if your goal is to reach gender parity, you must do one of three things: (1) test significantly more women vs men to find those 20% at a higher rate (which involves active discrimination against men), (2) lower the standards specifically for women so that the pass rate for women is higher, or (3) active intervention along gender lines to increase the percentage of women that are interested and capable of passing a google screening. It should be obvious that 1&2 leads to worse outcomes for Google. (3) doesn't directly lead to worse outcomes, but it could be seen as divisive to discriminate against men in these outreach programs, which could indirectly lead to worse outcomes for Google. Now, one could argue that these gender-based outreach programs are just to counter cultural sexism that have kept women from being more interested in engineering jobs at Google. But if the stats in the memo are accurate, at least some portion of the disparity is not due to external factors but individual choices based on inherent (dis)interest. If this is true then such outreach will largely be unsuccessful for the cost in money and resentment.

Definitely unreasonable reading. Could you explain how you got from the two quoted propositions to your interpretation?

The first bullet point exemplified: Let's say there's a job that requires trait openness / empathy to a certain degree (e.g. early education). Now, some given statistics show that e.g. 40% of the female population and 20% of the male population have this manifestation of the trait to the required degree. Would you still expect a 50/50 male/female representation in the field? The author makes the argument that, if the statistics he found are correct, he wouldn't expect a 50/50 split.

The second bullet point just says that discrimination for the sole sake of said equal representation is bad for business, because given the above it would have to be necessarily unmeritocratic. I would contest this point in a sense that individual merit is not the sole factor at which to look, because it is only a single factor in group success, where the availability of diverse ways of thinking and social compatibility also play major roles.

Very unreasonable. It doesn't say that at all. There are simply far fewer women in the candidate pool.

If google showed that their retention of women in tech was similar to men (it isn't), that their pay scales isolated for grade tended to equal outcomes for men and women (ongoing lawsuit says it doesn't in all cases), and that their proportion of women employed was close to the candidate pool?

I think that'd be a fantastic outcome. Then we really could think about "the pipeline problem."

> This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading.

That is, he's saying explicitly that women find leadership roles more difficult. Generally if somebody finds something more difficult they're not as good at it as people who find it easier. As a result I'm not sure how this could be taken any other way than stating that men are better managers simply because they're men.

He says women will benefit from making coding more social. Pair programming.

Remember?

Whether we agree with the memo or not, there was a very good point that guy made and that we should keep in mind, it's the paragraph with the two overlapping distributions.

Even if you admit that all genders, races, any way you want to segment the population, do not have the same distribution, that doesn't mean anything to a person as an individual.

For instance I think it's fair to say that black people are better at athleticism/running than white people (a disproportionate number olympic champions are black), i.e. the tail of the distribution is fatter for black people than white people. It doesn't mean anything to a random individual in that group. I am white, I shouldn't feel offended that another category of the population has a different distribution than my category. And it doesn't mean that no white people can become an olympic athlete either. Just that there will be a natural race imbalance among athletes. And it doesn't mean that a random black man will be better than a random white man at athletism.

So I don't agree with the way you read this memo: In this memo's case, perhaps you're mad at someone for saying you're genetically predisposed to be less capable of individual action. The memo doesn't say that an individual woman will be less capable. What it claims instead is that women have a different distribution for certain skills than men, which you might agree with or not. But it's a very different point.

This ignores the fact that countries like Jamaica recruit their best athletes into track and field, whereas Australia or China would push those kids into something else. A more accurate statement would be black countries have better track and field coaching infrastructure considering Usain Bolt routinely washed out of race finals until he was picked up by pro coaching staff. It's the same reason Canada usually wins the winter Olympics in Hockey, it's not because Canadians are genetically better at skating and handling sticks, it's because of the coaching, infrastructure to get kids into the national program, funding priorities, ect. Same reason why Germany wins the world cup, it's a financial priority for that country to ensure they do so they can build a national infrastructure of success, they don't have genetically superior athletics for Soccer.

For certain sports, it is in fact mostly genetics:

https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2016/08/14/kenyans-sweep-...

It's interesting how introducing certain attributes into a conversation can disable parts of the human brain, I wonder if a study has ever been done on this.

An important difference is that in the olympics, a fair and objective qualification system exists. Kenyans are disproportionate in the RANKINGS but not the POPULATION.

In Google's case, women fare poorly in botrh (with rankings expressed in the axis of pay or leadership positions). That's a significant difference.

My point was moreso about how prevalent the phenomenon of ignoring obvious objective reality is when certain topics are involved, the key ones off the top of my head being: race, gender, sexuality.

Threads such as this are chock full of examples of people who are normally very logical and scientific, but once the subject turns to one of the above, suddenly everything's different, nothing can be determined, observed, or measured, the entire world is completely random with no patterns whatsoever, etc.

I wonder if all cultures are like this or only us in the west.

> My point was moreso about how prevalent the phenomenon of ignoring obvious objective reality is when certain topics are involved, the key ones off the top of my head being: race, gender, sexuality.

Fair. I just wanted to add that it's not terribly applicable to the specifics of the memo and article. People are upset about systemic total representation and undervaluation rather than a lack of singular genius.

But I agree that there are people who find any conversation about statistics as it regards this subject as a form of heresy.

> I just wanted to add that it's not terribly applicable to the specifics of the memo and article. People are upset about systemic total representation and undervaluation rather than a lack of singular genius.

It's applicable in that (in my opinion) the majority of the people aren't - rather they are interested in a fantasy version of the situation that exists only in their imagination. This is why even on forums like HN where people are far more logical than the average person, there is no shortage of bickering over obvious misinterpretations, moving of goalposts, etc. For example, how many of the outraged people here are angry about things that literally aren't even in the article, and even when this is pointed out to them, still they aren't able to wake up and realize how their brain is playing tricks on them.

The older I get, and the longer I see the very same arguments over and over again over decades, the more I am coming around to the idea that a massive portion of the human population possibly can't even see reality. Maybe I am one of them!

> The older I get, and the longer I see the very same arguments over and over again over decades, the more I am coming around to the idea that a massive portion of the human population possibly can't even see reality. Maybe I am one of them!

All we can do is dedicate ourselves to following the evidence where we can and avoiding judgement when possible.

> I've met him in passing, he didn't strike me as worth considering, then or now.

That seems fairly judgemental to me.

Edit: To clarify, you are making a value judgement of a person based on some unspecified happening when you met then in passing. That seems to indicate you didn't give much chance in the way to understand that person or the reasoning behind their thoughts.

If Jamaica does better than USA in track and field they must be doing something right, but what do you mean by generalizing to "black countries"?

There might be a bias towards track and field programs and careers in poor/small countries, thanks to cheap infrastructure and sustainability with very few athletes, and expensive sports that are practically reserved for relatively privileged people, e.g. swimming and horse riding, but confusing an athlete's race and their available opportunities is silly.

> fair to say that black people are better at athleticism/running

Is it fair though? Is it supported by metrics of muscle strength and length etc? And does it take into account the differences between blacks (Africans?), west vs south vs central (pygmies!).

Also, there's the possibility that whites of equivalent athleticism find better options for their life than being a professional sportsmen, the bottom 80% [1] of whom end their career at 30 with little to show for it but lifelong injuries.

[1] made up statistic.

It seems to be supported by the results at the Olympics and many other sporting events that can be viewed publicly.

And I think that's probably what the OP meant by "better at running". The vast majority of people can run to some extent, so the assumption is that someone is "better" at it usually means "faster". And the obvious place to look for evidence of that would be in sporting competitions, rather than trying to look up metrics that you have described. Obviously its a simplification, but if you don't do that then life would be far to complicated and detailed to navigate.

Right, it "seems to be supported." There's a lot of just-so storytelling going on here. Take a look at American football in 1940. No black players! Hm. Black people must be bad at football, perhaps more suited to being airmen (pilots). Seems to have held up perfectly over the last 77 years, eh?

Do people have no sense of history here? The internet lets you look up all sorts of things, like how the racial composition of US track and field has changed over the 20th century, or how Paavo Nurmi (a poor guy from an underdeveloped country) dominated distance running in the 1920s, challenged only by another couple poor guys from underdeveloped Scandinavian countries. It was clear from publicly viewable sporting events in the 1920s that Scandinavians are really the best at running; east Africans really didn't figure into the competition.

Yes, it's all well supported by genetics and biology.

That argument applies to the general population maybe, but that doesn't mean it also applies to the population of Google employees. Everyone there passed their hiring standards, so everyone has proved their individual merit already.

The population of Google technical employees is I think the equivalent to the population of Olympic athletes in my example. If the general population has a different distribution (again whether you agree or not with that assumption), then there should be a natural imbalance among the cream of the top that made it to Google. And as you said, those who made it are all "Olympic athletes" (in theory, they should have been recruited based on individual merit) so these distributions do not mean that a female google employee would be more or less capable than a male, but it will result in less female google employees than male employees.

> If the general population has a different distribution (again whether you agree or not with that assumption), then there should be a natural imbalance among the cream of the top that made it to Google.

Your conclusion does not follow from the premise. It's not hard to come up with a distribution that is identical for the top x% but differs for the general population. Or one where the difference in top x% is in the opposite direction of the general population (e.g. two normal distributions where mu1 < mu2, and sigma1 > sigma2).

> but it will result in less female google employees than male employees.

Well, again, the Google memo started by arguing Google's technical standard was being hurt so James doesn't seem to believe his colleagues all got the same interviews he did.

I'd be more inclicned to this sort of argument for racial and gender diveristy if Google & others didn't have such abysmly skewed distributions towards white men. Go look at Google's diveristy report and then do some Bayes Rule hacking with it.

Well, is Google's diversity profile really different from the diversity profile of the computer science departments it recruits from?

Incorrect question: you want the graduate rates. Not the staff rates.

Google's diversity rates are worse than the graduate rates for most schools I've checked. I have not found a composite data source to compare a larger average to.

It actually beats them.

No.

First, the section is "Non-discrimnatory ways to reduce the gender gap".

You cannot reduce the "gap" by aiming at the women who are already at Google. This should be obvious. They are already there. To make a dent in the gap, you need to attract more women who currently do not choose to work in tech or not at Google. So nothing he writes is about his colleagues at Google, or by extension women who are already in or interested in tech. It is about potentially attracting those who are not currently interested in that career.

Second, this is about subtle differences in the distribution of preferences in populations with huge overlaps. So when you have an individual in front of you, you simply cannot tell whether they will exhibit this trait more or less by inference from the population statistic. And you certainly can't say "all X have more of this property than all Y". He even has a nice graph for this.

Third, it's not about ability, but about preference. "Women on average show a higher interest in people..." How do you get from "preference" to "ability"?

Fourth, you are assuming a symmetry where "higher X" implies "lower Y that's complementary to X". This would probably be true for interests (if I a am more interested in working alone, I am probably less interested in working in groups). But it does not translate to abilities.

In fact, one of the documented areas where gender differences in ability do show up is exactly a case of this lack of symmetry: you've probably heard that tend to score higher on the math SATs and women higher on the verbals. This is apparently not the whole story: men with high math scores do tend to not also have high verbal scores (and therefore prefer STEM). However, for women the two are correlated, not anti-correlated: those with high math scores tend to also have high verbal scores, so they have more options. And people with more options tend to prefer non-STEM options, regardless of gender.

Fifth, I thought pair programming was a Good Thing™?

> You cannot reduce the "gap" by aiming at the women who are already at Google. This should be obvious.

That is far from obvious. Everything else being equal, you would increase the proportion of women if you reduced their turnover.

Only if you reduce their turnover to be below turnover for men. Which at first thought seems to be worse than discriminating only during the hiring phase.

Can we agree that it is obvious as long as we're not talking about retention/turnover?

Well, maybe not "obvious", but "clear that it can't be any other way once you think about it".

Sure, if you explicitly exclude any way that the "gap" could be reduced by aiming at the women who are already at Google it is clear that you can not reduce the "gap" by aiming at the women who are already at Google.

> You cannot reduce the "gap" by aiming at the women who are already at Google. This should be obvious. They are already there. To make a dent in the gap, you need to attract more women who currently do not choose to work in tech or not at Google. So nothing he writes is about his colleagues at Google, or by extension women who are already in or interested in tech. It is about potentially attracting those who are not currently interested in that career.

If that were the case then he would not lead his essay implying that the current hiring policies were hurting Google. He seems to imply standards have somehow been damaged, but right now that's not what Google does.

> Third, it's not about ability, but about preference.

There are so many potential sources of preference, from negative experience to personal ability. It seems very suspect to point to gender stereotypes that a large number of women have been arguing against for decades are in fact the root cause here.

> you've probably heard that tend to score higher on the math SATs and women higher on the verbals. This is apparently not the whole story: men with high math scores do tend to not also have high verbal scores (and therefore prefer STEM). However, for women the two are correlated, not anti-correlated: those with high math scores tend to also have high verbal scores, so they have more options

Sources, please.

> Fifth, I thought pair programming was a Good Thing™?

That depends. If I told you the only way you're going to be competitive and not drag down the standard of my organization is by pairing up with another person, should you take that as a compliment?

> That depends. If I told you the only way you're going to be competitive and not drag down the standard of my organization is by pairing up with another person, should you take that as a compliment?

This is factualy not what was said in the memo.

https://diversitymemo.com/#reduce-gender-gap

> Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things

> We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration.

That was literally the only mention of pair programming the the entire memo and it was as a suggestion to make positions more appealing to women who were more interested in people and more social. Not once does he equate pair programming as some remedial for your perceived statement of lower quality ability. The guy was trying to suggest ways to attract more women and you flip it around to demonize him. Do you not see that you are large part of the problem? Instead of trying to engage and explain to him why his points are perhaps wrong or misguided, you instead twist his words to simply eviscerate him instead.

> current hiring policies

And he made it clear that he didn't think they were producing "false positives", so every woman hired was qualified.

> There are so many potential sources of preference

Yes. Biology is one.

> gender stereotypes

http://www.spsp.org/blog/stereotype-accuracy-response

[Stereotype Accuracy Is One Of The Largest And Most Replicable Effects In All Of Social Psychology]

> [verbal/math scores correlate for women] Sources

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/wh...

> the only way you're going to be competitive

> and not drag down the standard of my organization

> is by pairing up with another person

Huh??? Where did you get that from? Pleaaze.

Please excuse the delay. I'll get to breaking your links down shortly. You're asking me to source papers during my commute hour and on mobile it's difficult to grab and source the resources I'll cite.

At this point I would like to see an itemised list of James Damore's points on gender and women's interpretations of them.

This is the pair programming text in full:

> Below I'll go over some of the differences in distribution of traits between men and women that I

> outlined in the previous section and suggest ways to address them to increase women's

> representation in tech without resorting to discrimination. Google is already making strides in

> many of these areas, but I think it's still instructive to list them

>> Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things

>>> We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming

>>> and more collaboration. Unfortunately, there may be limits to how

>>> people-oriented certain roles at Google can be and we shouldn't deceive

>>> ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get

>>> female students into coding might be doing this)

My understanding is: if we increase pair programming to make it more of a team activity, more women will enjoy programming, and more women will become programmers.

We don't have to agree with the suggestion. But you've just shown us that our interpretations are wildly different. So, why?

Edit: formatting

Pair Programming is not a technique to improve social contact in software. It's a technique to improve product reliability and give more practical mentorship opportunities.

We might argue James says women are asking for good mentorship opportunities herr. So why do women benefit from this specifically (and that's okay) but other mentorship program are considered unfair in this rubric?

You say "we need pair programming" when reliability is difficult to gaurantee. Not because you're feeling lonely. It seems an awful lot like he's suggesting that women are especially in need of experienced minders.

That's a wholly uncharitable reading of what he's saying. A way more good faith interpretation would be the very simple equation of "working with just computer - more thing oriented, working with computer + partner - more people oriented".

This may be wrong(I don't have any evidence to back it up, and neither did Damore), but it is wholly different from the sinister undertones you are seeing.

(In fact, taking your "mentorship" interpretation, it is entirely possible that the women would be the one doing the mentoring, if their skill at engineering was hampered by a disinterest towards purely thing-oriented pursuits).

> That's a wholly uncharitable reading of what he's saying.

I'm sorry, what?

> A way more good faith interpretation would be the very simple equation of "working with just computer - more thing oriented, working with computer + partner - more people oriented".

Except that women entering the field now have no such expectations but he is still complaining about special treatment.

If you impose social contact, people are going to practice social contact and improve at social contact. It might not be what some relatively antisocial people want, but it seems like an important improvement for the whole team.

I'm not sure why "pair programming" is the go-to tool here. It certainly implies something different to a lot of people, myself included.

Pair programming is not a "social" outlet. It's collaborative, but "social?" That's quite a stretch of the word from where I think James used it.

Like I said, I am not seeking agreement on the merit of his idea.

You specifically said that the suggestion of Pair Programming, was due to James thinking that women are "less capable of individual action".

But you also said "It's a technique to improve product reliability and give more practical mentorship opportunities." Which is also my understanding. I know at least one shop where everybody pair programs. It has nothing to do with programmers being inferior. I also agree that paring is more sociable since every day I will have to greet my team mate, talk about stuff, have a coffee, then get to work.

I'm just trying to understand how "Pair Programming" changes meaning so much just because some dude wrote a manifesto. We can't even have a discussion if our understanding of the same document is so wildly different.

Schoolteachers are trained to provide just this type of variety for just this type of reason. For example, they're supposed to have competitive classes because boys are generally more motivated by competition than cooperation. It's uncontroversially seen as a good and wholesome thing for teachers to do it. Why is it demon spawn for programmers?

So now sociability is a negative trait? I for one would be delighted to find an efficient way to make coding more social. Many a reason why software design is so hard is exactly because most programmers are autistic nerds that tend to produce opinionated, hard to maintain code. Pair programming with someone that tends to think more in breadth than in depth sounds like one way of improving that situation.

That's not the same thing as telling an individual they're less capable.

Why?

What positive connotation could be drawn from it?

the context of that suggestion was to make the activity more appealing in order to entice more candidates, not to compensate for a skill deficiency.

My interpretation of this point should not be taken as an endorsement of it or the document as a whole

> My interpretation of this point should not be taken as an endorsement of it or the document as a whole

I was hoping not to discuss the document as a whole myself. I largely avoided the last pseudoscientific cesspool of a thread.

Women are better at pair programming?

Evidence, please.

> He says women will benefit from making coding more social. Pair programming.

> What positive connotation could be drawn from it?

I'm not claiming that women are better at pair programming, but that is a positive connotation that can be drawn.

You: Suggesting pair programming is an insult because you think I'm less capable.

Author: Pair programming may be one possible way to bring more social women into programming by appealing to their interest in people vs. things

He wrote one thing, your read another. Who's the one with a problem here exactly? The author or the reader?

> What positive connotation could be drawn from it?

IMHO that is the wrong question. Connotations aren't something anyone can argue for or against - one can have bad connotations for all sorts of words. Actual example: my ex hated the word "negotiate" in any personal discussion as she saw negotiations as something where you tried to screw the other person over (she was a lawyer). This was to the point where she refused to negotiate anything - including where we would have dinner. How can anyone live without negotiating? Hence, ex :)

I think a better question than one about connotations would be:

If we accept that women have a preference for people over things, what would encourage women to want to do a "things" job? The memo's answer: more peer programming i.e. adding a people element to a things/systems job. That is internally consistent, I think, with the evidence presented on average female preference.

Honestly, I find all this inferior/superior talk really troubling. Different != inferior, or superior, it is just DIFFERENT. Is a hammer a better tool than a saw? Depends what I want to do... I find it even more troubling that people against labelling others superior/inferior see everything that way. Personally, I think vive la difference!

The "different = inferior argument" is strongly implied.

If you accept the premise that there's such a thing as a male-dominated work culture with stereotypically male values, then attitudes and actions that match those values are considered better ("normative") by default.

Anyone who has different requirements or interests will always be considered an outsider who will to have allowances made for them while receiving special treatment.

This would also be true of hypothetical female-dominated cultures with stereotypical female values where men would be considered the inferior outsiders who need special treatment. (Do such cultures exist? At work - sometimes, but not often. Outside of work - perhaps.)

The topic is an unholy mess because there are so many implications and assumptions on both sides, and so much outright ranting and bullying too, that useful debate is practically impossible.

My view is that corporate culture isn't stereotypically "male" so much as stereotypically totalitarian. More women won't change that. It might rein in some of the more obvious abuses, while running the risk of replacing them with some new ones.

But real economic and political freedom could only come from equal opportunity at a scale that most (tacitly neoliberal) feminists seem uninterested in.

> The "different = inferior argument" is strongly implied.

Is it?

For the average person working at a big company it is much more important to have a good fun team than a productive team.

After all a fun happy team benefits me on a day to day level whereas if company profit jumps 20% I'm unlikely to see any benefit.

The exceptions are a few tech giants who hand out lots of stock.

> Is it?

Yes. In the memo, at least.

Where? How? In what words?

Implication means not explicit. Thus it's up to your interpretation. The context also can affect the implications, including the author's actions after the publication (his interviews on YouTube).

So I should prefer your interpretation over my own because...?

I wouldn't expect you to. Inference of tone and context is often quite subjective. I won't bother arguing it beyond pointing out that there can be reasonable differences if opinion.

> If you accept the premise that there's such a thing as a male-dominated work culture with stereotypically male values, then attitudes and actions that match those values are considered better ("normative") by default.

You've just said that if you accept male-dominated work culture exists, males are considered better by default.

Ergo either males are considered better by default or such a culture doesn't exist. You deny the latter, so clearly you are claiming the former.

You just made that claim, not the guy who was fired.

> It's mysterious to me how literally every action a feminist takes is somehow directly responsibile for all problems that befall them, with every action that might possibly hurt a man being somehow a catastrophe in the making.

As I read it, the grandparent's sole argument was one of unintended consequences, specifically that censorship only intensifies certain problems instead of alleviating them.

I don't see how this can be interpreted as to hold feminists responsible for something -- I don't even see the relationship to feminists at all. Could you please expand on that?

>Mad at someone for touching your bum? Speak up.

Where is this being said? People will not take your position seriously if you're not using context, because you're misrepresenting what is happening. This is something thats done in other places, but as far as I know, has nothing to do with the memo, and nothing to do with the parent post you're responding to. Therefore, you're using a strawman.

I'm referring to a Hacker News thread not even 3 weeks old.

In that specific paragraph I'm commenting on Hacker News, not the memo.

A random HN thread from possibly several weeks ago to which you don't provide a link.

Are you surprised that some (most?) people couldn't make a connection?

I did without even having read that particular thread. But I know all too well the types of arguments getting thrown around.

I think it is a question of awareness and beliefs. If you firmly don't think there is an issue then you simply don't notice. I've been at the other side of the fence so I know what it is like ;-)

So it's a myth.

"I saw the topic a week ago, I will not link to it, I didn't even read it, but I'm sure of what was in it"

insert snarky wink face

If you ask nicely, I'll provide a link.

"Not 3 weeks ago we had a thread here where a woman spoke up about harassment and people said it was exactly the wrong thing."

Not sure I can follow,

so the guy is wrong that he spoke up but the feminist is right? Or is the guy right and the feminist wrong? Or are both wrong? Or people who speak up against the guy are right and the guy speaking up is wrong? Or HN is wrong because we discuss this?

Can't follow your argument in the slightest.

> You spoke up?

There's more than one way to "speak up", so there's isn't just two options. In any case, who's opinion are you talking about? A specific subset of HN that sticks in your mind?

> pretty basic corporate policy

by basic, do you mean "vague and unevenly applied"?

> is taken without a critical eye

It isn't, but the conversation was cut short, suggesting that the opposite happened; it was assumed to be false/incorrect.

Is the brain exempt from being affected by genetics? All humans are genetically pre-disposed to be less capable of being racecar drivers or olympic athletes or physicists. Inherrantly what is it about being a programmer, that necessitates we assume that biology plays no part whatsoever? Note the use of the word biology as opposed to gender, because limiting the context to gender needlessly pits people against each other.

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