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Comment by maehwasu | Hacker News Reader

> However, his overall claim that there exist personality differences between genders that differentially affect men’s and women’s interest in and aptitude for tech jobs, is what people are mostly getting mad at. And that’s a claim that seems plausibly true. Not obviously true, but also not a claim you would be justified in emphatically dismissing as false, as many people have, including Google, who called them “incorrect assumptions.”

This is quite well-put, and gets at the heart of what pisses people off.

There exists a large set of hypotheses which are plausible, and not just "spaghetti-monster God" plausible, but "> 20% chance this is the case" plausible.

Many of those hypotheses, however, are shouted down as "racist", "sexist", or some other "ist" when they come up, and all of their possible costs are then listed in a litany, with all possible benefits ignored.

It's intellectually stifling, and I'm no longer interested in enabling people who use that kind of rhetoric.

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Hear! hear!

It's very sad to me that we as a society are not.. 'evolved' enough to discuss stuff like this as rational adults - it turns into a very personal argument very very quickly because people feel you are attacking their identity - rather than say, discussing things they have no control over because of the weird mix of nature and nurture that guides us into adulthood.

I'm hoping sincerely that the era of identity politics ends soon - we as individuals are much more than the things that could lead to an "-ism" or lead to someone being branded an "-ist".

These "facts" are used in harmful ways against individuals. Stereotypes are harmful. Unless a stereotype applies to literally 100 percent of a population then they ARE going to hurt those people who do not fit it.

This is a great example of only examining costs of a hypothesis without examining the benefits.

Literally ANY opinion/fact/belief set looks like pure evil if you only examine costs.

The question in this particular case is, what exactly the benefits?

The costs are quite clear. An entire generation or more of about half the population feeling demolarized and incapable of doing certain tasks as well as their peers is a pretty huge cost.

It's an unpopular opinion, but I'm convinced that the reason women are under represented in tech has more to do with an inherent disinterest in it, than structural barriers to it.

We can do more/better to ensure that the women who do find their way to technology face less barriers though, ending the 'brogrammer' culture, making sure women are paid a fair and equal salary, and honestly some sensitivity training (on both sides) to help improve us geeks with poor social skills, getting rid of predatory leadership is also a required element.

I'd also suggest not framing this as "incapable", that's a gross disservice to everyone, different should never be treated as inferior - and also, there is no universality here.

There is no reason for feeling that way though, as Julia points out in her text. The memo wasn't about the individual abilities. We are looking here at very intelligent types of persons. Shouldn't they be able to actually grasp the difference (and realize that in fact the conclusions from the memo even do allow for a hypthetical outcome of women as the qualitatively better coders -> i tried to explain this here https://medium.com/@martinweigert/misunderstanding-probabili...).

But yes, let's say it's inevitable that many individuals nontheless respond the way you describe, considering that this was how the memo was summarized by most.

It's harder to speculate about the costs as they are less concrete in comparison, however migth be more far-reaching in the grand scheme of things. My suggestions:

- a bunch of people who share the core goals (diversity, equality) are being alienated because they disagree with the means that are being used to get there due to too big collateral damage. This is a problem if it keeps happening frequently, and that's at least my impression. One needs more allies, not less. more consensus, no less.

- a bunch of people are being pushed over the edge towards the right which gets more confirmed in their assumptions.

- general radicalization & division - which brought trump. this division will also cause massive internal trouble within the large tech companies. you don't want to have a crowd there which is terrified to bring up an opposing viewpoint.

- science is being weaponized and loses its trust, as people try to use science to prove, not to disprove ideology. i've had some discussions over the past days that clearly were in the realm of alternative realities. so far i was under the impression that this would not happen among the more educated and "well-rounded" groups of society. this realization actually shocked me, as it suggested to me that really nothing is "safe" from being lost.

- the principle that afaik was in place since the enlightenment, that more knowledge and open debates lead to better societies than the active limitation of knowledge and debates, is being sacrificed.

- to me, it is unclear how a democratic, free society can operate properly when a debate that is mostly about science is discussed mostly on an emotional and ideological level. everyone can see the erosion of the democracy rigth now, yet it seems that too few realize how this is connected to the directions discourse takes nowadays.

Agree in total.

People seem to forget (of late) that consensus requires discussion and cannot be achieved by fiat.

I have a thing related to this.

i firmly believe that people are not reading books. At least not the old books on important subjects. I rarely meet 'educated' people who read books.

I believe that the liberals in particular have lost their way intellectually post-World War II. There used to be Great Intellectuals and widespread public debates e.g. Isaiah Berlin. Today there is nothing. Maybe in place of that there is a smug contentment that we've the right answers, that probably is real.

In my internet travels I've seen that people will vehemently defend the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Yet they have not read it. It is a single page of text. It is easy to mythologize a text that you haven't read. I feel like modern Liberals are becoming like the folk who didn't know Latin but received audience from the priest.

If you can't read a single page but stick up for Human Rights, then you are an idiot in the most literal sense (the original meaning of the word 'idiot' from the Greeks). These people certainly won't have read J.S Mill's On Liberty, or the counter arguments.

tldr; Read more old books.

I don't think its just liberals - I've met as many conservatives who repeat whatever nostrums and slogans the talking heads tell them to - but cant justify or explain why they are the correct answer - and just like liberals, they're certain of the righteousness and justness of their cause.

In my humble opinion, the problem is authoritarianism - left or right doesnt matter - its dangerous - the big concern I see, is historically liberals are rather effective at governing, so a left wing authoritarian movement has teeth, when a right wing one may not.

You're quite correct on the dogmatism, but I didn't mean 'Democrat' when I said 'Liberal'. I meant 'Liberal' in the old sense which is in a nutshell the politics of the upper middle class.

In my view Authoritarian is something in demand because of poor rulership. People sense that cracks are opening up in society and then they become more authoritarian because they sense that aggressive actions may be required to reverse the trend or prevent cracks from widening. If we have good rulers, we have reduced demand for it. We don't, the governing of Europe and the United States is shockingly bad in comparison to the past. That's not a reference to Trump, it's been a slow rot and it's been systemic. Thiel has been talking about this in his videos on Youtube, there is a basic decline in the ability of government to, putting it bluntly: get shit done.

I didn't mention the benefits because I don't think there are any of significance, and definitely not any that offset the cost.

I don't get this obsession with negating biology, rather than celebrating it. That men and women are biologically different is a 100% fact. Why do we have to try and make them equal?

The equality doctrines I learned growing up in India always came down to this: celebrate people as individuals. Give them freedom to do what they want and love.

Am I wrong in holding this belief to still be true?

If you are wrong then so am I because I feel the same way.

I love how you can talk about "celebrating individuals" while pointing to statistics that only talk about the population as a whole.

Unfortunately for you, no company I can think of does their hiring by uniform random sampling. If you're seeing unevenness the success of self-selected populations you're probably not dealing with issues of biology (since, if that was true those individuals never would have gone into, and succeeded in, CS in the first place).

Also, literally everything humans do is a celebration in negating biology. We fly, we go to space, we communicate at the speed of light through fibers buried deep under the ocean, we extend our lives through medicine and our cities through technology. If biology were "king" in human development we'd still be living in the jungle eating bugs.

> That men and women are biologically different is a 100% fact.

For anything that's biological, that's perfectly fine. You won't see anyone suggest men to go to a gynecologist either ;).

> Why do we have to try and make them equal?

Which inequality make sense to you?

> celebrate people as individuals

The goal is to help individuals be who they want to be and not be judged for the sex they were born with or their nationalities.

You are from India right? Perfect example, because of outsourcing, many people believe that Indian people aren't as good in development. You are probably really good, I don't doubt that. However, there may be some people that see on your CV that you are from India and quickly decide that because you are from there, you are less qualified than someone else. Maybe the stats does prove it to be right in general, mostly because outsourcing was a great way to boost India economy, but as an individual for you, they are wrong.

The thing is, changing theses bias are extremely hard and theses bias had a pretty negative repercussion over the years. We need to hire more of them to make sure that theses bias disappear and create an environment that won't make them fear it.

We need to be careful though not to lower the hiring requirement though in the process. We need qualified people that won't create worst bias with time.

> but as an individual for you, they are wrong

This is why I firmly believe this is a case where actions speak louder than words. Pontificating about whether men are biologically predisposed to be software engineers is not a bad thing, marginalizing qualified female engineers because they are female is.

>It's intellectually stifling, and I'm no longer interested in enabling people who use that kind of rhetoric.

Not only is it stifling, it is tearing our society apart. If a person believes one of these "forbidden hypotheses" they sudden find themselves to be the target of irrational hatred and hostile actions.

Everyone must understand that demonizing people creates demons who may one day seek violent revenge.

> violent revenge

If not violent, we're creating the next generation of bigots.

The current people identifying with James Damore (=men who were promised they would be selected on skills) are as young as 15 years old. Do we expect them to be inclusive during the remaining 45 years before their retirement?

I don't even understand how I should adapt my expectations for career. If competence isn't the criteria anymore, what is, then? Do opportunities now depend on our ethnicity, gender and religion? "Sorry, we know the situation is unfair for males, we're only looking for males who don't mind never being promoted and who know how to shut up." Should I choose an education based on the male/female balance in that sector? In which direction should a white male adapt?

Accomplished Diplomacy is the skill of choice. If you can manipulate all those political warriors and fanatics to support propelling you on - against there own interests, you may have a career still.

Think of it, less like a race of skilled people- and more, like rising through the ranks of a political party.

But I chose computers because I like clear cut solutions and the lack of bullshit......

The fundamental problem is- you where to succesfull. Society moved into your flat, and with society came the priest-caste and the various lords of various thiefdoms.

Competence was never the criteria for success in tech. At least as long as I've been around, so maybe we'll say certainly not in the 21st century. It's all about being male, preferably white, with a piece of paper from a good school that knows the right words to beat the culture fit.

So far in my career the only people I've see wax poetic about competence are the incompetent ones desperately stroking their own egos.

> "demonizing people creates demons"

I had exactly the same impression with racism a couple decades ago in France: I met a few young guys saying on purpose a lot of racist clichés. I do not think they were really racists, just fed up with the hardcore demonization we had then.

By for some topics such as racism, I'm under the impression that the demonizing pressure is a bit lower than before, at least in France. So there is hope.

For what's happening in the US, it seems to be very frightening -- this guy has been fired for talking about some hypothesis! I wonder why the pressure is so high. Maybe because the "deep american society" remains much more sexist than in Europe, thus justifying a much stronger defense from feminists?

Also, “Google memo” threads seem to be buried very quickly on HN, which is the only place I imagine where this discussion can be held between consenting adults, how come?

The flamewar detector and flags from people who are fed up with the constant barrage of threads about the same topic. The threads about widespread sexism at Uber were treated similarly.

It'd be great if you yuropoors would just stop jumping to the conclusion that you're better than us as your default reaction.

> Maybe because the "deep american society" remains much more sexist than in Europe, thus justifying a much stronger defense from feminists?

No my theory is that the USA is the home of these hyperleftist utopians. The US installed these uptopians as rulers in Europe after WWII.

The host always has the most immunity to the disease. The strongest critics and detractors of the uptopians also live in the US, and they are more visible as TV and movie villians in US media.

> they sudden find themselves to be the target of irrational hatred and hostile actions.

So who exactly is being doxxed and threatened over this? Who is doing the doxxing and threatening? Yes, the debate is being stifled by hatred and hostile actions. We should all oppose that, but some seem to be withholding their condemnation because the results suit them.

James Damore was summarily fired for honestly writing about the problems he saw with Google's personnel policies, backed with evidence. That is pretty threatening in my book.

Biology isn't a simple 1-to-1 match. Nor is it merely an n-to-m mach either. Biology is really, really messy. Whether it's secondary and primary sexual traits or the color of your eyes it's mostly a statistically driven result and not one driven by a deterministic engine. DNA for all of its structure doesn't seem to give way to an easily structured expression of genes. I think this is the critical thing lost on folks (it was lost on me for years) because we're always working with something that seems very regular and systematic but when you break it down into smaller components it becomes clear how little of that is regular and systematic. So, to say that biology magically creates our minds as a whole or even in part doesn't work out. I'm not arguing for dualism but I am arguing that biology isn't so easy to model. And that we should, James Damore included, accept that our conclusions are easily overturned when we dig a bit deeper.

If society is being torn apart, then the era of peak togetherness was vanishingly small. I mean, we had our first non-white male president less than a decade ago. That's a really hyperbolic sentiment when a lot of sizable minorities have never or only very recently felt resonably included in society.

What does any of that have to do with the demonization of people who summarize empirical evidence about psychology and human behavior?

Psychologically, men and men are way more different than women and men are different between each other as groups (on the average, as tendencies), so this whole debate is ill-conceived. The reason why there is still a 'debate' and perceived 'fight' between men and women has to do with human reproduction drives (aka "sex") and its tabooing, and not with any kind of meaningful differences that would allow you to draw conclusions about particular cases.

We could just as well discuss whether short employees should be treated on a par with taller employees, or brown-eyed on a par with blue-eyed, and so forth. It's a spurious debate.

The problem is that there still are strong systemic biases at work. Once we get that fixed, maybe we can move on to the nitty gritty statistics of exactly what is nature/nurture etc. At this moment it's pointless.

It reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7ihNLEDiuM

1. The goalposts for how much systemic biases have been "fixed" are moved constantly and predictably.

2. Much of the argument for the existence of systemic biases comes from willful, repeated ignoring of the already extant evidence for nature/nurture.

3. When ignoring evidence no longer suffices, proponents of the systemic bias theory move immediately to unpersoning their opponents as racist/sexist bigots.

> Much of the argument for the existence of systemic biases comes from willful, repeated ignoring of the already extant evidence for nature/nurture.

I feel it is important to point out that this is an important consideration with regards to sex, not race. There is evidence of sexual dimorphism and hormonal differences between the sexes worldwide, but as far as I know there are no such trends between races. From what I understand, genetic diversity differs more within the races than between them.

There's an underlying assumption in this: more freely discussing those topics would hinder progress in overcoming those strong systemic biases.

I'm deeply sceptical of that assumption.

What about things like Stereotype Threat? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat

If someone knows that people who are similar to them are less likely to have an aptitude for something, they may assume that they also aren't going to be good at that thing. It doesn't matter if the stereotype is true or not.

How do you think that relates to the issue of the strong systemic biases that my comment concerned? I don't see any particular connection.

I suppose you might say that freely discussing certain topics might bring this effect into play. That would be a downside. But as with everything there are certain positives and certain negatives. The question is what is the balance of these for a given option (suppress/not-suppress).

In my comment I was saying that I'm deeply sceptical that the balance of suppressing certain talk brings you out on top. Pointing out a single benefit (avoiding that effect) doesn't really tell us anything concerning the answer to that larger question.

> Many of those hypotheses, however, are shouted down as "racist", "sexist", or some other "ist" when they come up, and all of their possible costs are then listed in a litany, with all possible benefits ignored.

The research he alludes to isn't crazy. The policy changes he advocates for aren't crazy (although I disagree with many of them). What's nefarious is that they exist in the same document. Connecting the dots would indeed be sexist. So he doesn't, and leaves it as an exercise for the reader.

Let's not pretend that "just having the conversation" is a neutral thing. It's not. He doesn't bring up these gender differences for fun..

What I find frustrating is that so few people on either side of that one point seem able to separate that from the rest of the memo. There only seem to be two camps here.

(1) The biological-differences part is wrong, therefore everything else based on that is invalid.

(2) The biological-differences part is right, therefore everything else in the memo is also right.

Why do so many people who condemn (1) as unscientific then resort to (2) which is illogical? Conflating one part of Damore's argument with the whole is fallacious, and just as stifling as anything being done on the other side.

Sure that is true. But any public debate always reduces a topic to its least complex form.

The core question really is: do meaningful biologist differences exist?

I see this as a scientific question, it has metrics, and we already have the answer. It is yes.

From there you can have a discussion about the nuances, but in regard to those people who do not believe the answer is Yes, there's no more point in validating their arguments than those of creationists or communists. Sometimes they'll bring up interesting perspectives maybe, but they are basically just wrong.

If somebody brings up six points, addressing points two through six doesn't validate anyone's point on one. Refusing to engage on those is just way of running away from parts of the debate where you're less sure. Damore said far more than that there are biological differences. He made unfounded assumptions about how those differences apply to software engineering, and further about how they apply to software engineering at Google which is pretty obviously a special case. He made false claims about the motivations behind existing policies, and proposed alternative policies for which there is either no evidence or strong contrary evidence. And more. But nobody wants to talk about those flaws, because they know they can't. It's better for the anti-diversity agenda to keep the focus on the one part that they can hope to defend. Unfortunately, too many pro-diversity advocates are playing right into that.

I know I'm probably late to the party on this one but has gender become a synonym for sex? I keep seeing the word gender thrown around in relation to the topic but if genetics are being discussed then it seems like the meat of the argument is that social constructions like gender can influence behavior but not enough, when considered across a large population, to overcome the genetic predispositions that arise as a result of a person's sex.

Also well put.

Where are you getting that 20% from?

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