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Comment by GreaterFool | Hacker News Reader

This is the first fair and balanced article on this topic I've seen.

> In his memo, Damore cites a series of studies, making the case, for example, that men tend to be more interested in things and women more interested in people. (Interest is not the same as ability.)

I've been trying to hammer this point to all my colleagues (in private of course, I wouldn't dare to post it on public channel due to high probability of getting decapitated!): interests/preferences not abilities.

Every time someone says the memo is denigrating women by telling them they are unfit or incapable of working in tech it makes me want to scream! It is not about any individual's ability but about preferences of a group. It might as well be that the arguments don't support the conclusion. But I haven't seen anyone offering a reasonable rebuttal that doesn't involve name-calling and blanket statements like "the author clearly doesn't understand gender".

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I'm finding this to be a fascinating look at how people, as a group, do literary criticism.

I think, if we step back from the actual words on the paper and examine the author's intent, his choice of evidence, and the mere fact that he chose to write this, we can learn just as much as from trying to decide whether or not he was talking about a population effect when talked about women before mentioning Google employees.

This is totally different from wondering about the biology. As a biologist, I think it's preposterous to start to infer biological bases to the types of psychology experiments cited. I do, however, think this could be open to debate. I feel that the undertone to the author's message is likely less unclear.

"examine the author's intent"

That's tricky.

Do we take the author at face value when they make claims about their intent?

Many critics seem to think they can see the author's "true intent", and when they can't substantiate their claim, blame others for failing to see what they see.

I think that's an issue that a lot of science-minded folks disagree with.

I happen to think there's a lot about the author's time/mental state/life circumstances that one can find in the words themselves.

A much more light-hearted example is Quentin Tarrantino's insistence that he hasn't watched the Truffaut film 'And the bride wore black' - even though Kill Bill is an eerily similar remake.

Should I believe the author's product or his rationalization?

> Interest is not the same as ability.

I'll make a subtle point in a discussion that clearly can't handle the subtleties it already has.

Interest is not the same thing as ability, but interest is a great indicator of ability in technology, especially fast moving technology. In fact, I know plenty of people who are underemployed or underpaid that I say, "You, know, with your skills, you'd be great at writing software. Maybe you should develop an interest in coding." Similarly, people ask me, "How do I get a job in software?" and I suggest something very basic (tryruby.org, say) as a way for them to quickly figure out if they are interested. If they don't like problem solving and coding, they might be able to force themselves into qualifying for a job, but I'm not sure that's a good career strategy.

Point being, to some degree, interest is one key component of ability in software and some other kinds of technology work.

First, the author of this article is David Brooks -- a well known, very conservative, commentator. So, it might be fair and balanced in a Fox News sense of the phrase but not fair and balanced as most people would understand the phrase.

And for the general population skew in interests/preferences to make any difference whatsoever to the makeup of Google's technical and leadership staff the argument would have to be that the population that makes up the part of the interest curve on the 'high interest' part of the graph for the underrepresented groups is completely exhausted or would be completely exhausted before parity is reached.

I'd bet big that Google could completely fill their entire company with underrepresented people that rank very high on the interest/preference curve and never make a dent in that population. There are over 7 billion people in the world. That's a big pool. Even the thinner parts of the graph represent huge numbers of people. And Google completely controls their hiring so they can pick and choose -- they are not pulling people at random from that general population. They can easily pick people that compare very favorably with any other colleague on the interest/preference scale.

I take issue with your first point but not your second.

I don't believe that the fact that a commentator is conservative means they are spewing propaganda as Fox News is. Fox News is conservative, and Fox News is unfair and unbalanced. The conservative nature of Fox News is not why it is unfair and unbalanced.

Totally agree on the second part, though. Huge pool of candidates, honestly ridiculous to think that this would explain the imbalance at Google.

So "conservative" is the same as "unfair and/or unbalanced"? The New York Times (not exactly conservative) has considered him worth printing for quite some time now.

Isn't this attitude more or less what Damore was concerned about in his memo?

No, but he has an agenda that he's promoting with this opinion piece, which, as someone who disagrees with him, has some pretty obvious holes which I point out.

Right, but the issue right now is that everyone is pushing an agenda. The only constant is the literal text and the current research which, by accounts from qualified people, don't seem to be in conflict.

In the conversation of this issue the facts, what tribe you belong to, and what ought to be done in response to them have been tied together. Unless we can disconnect those everyone's reality is going to be shaped by the latters rather than the former.

It's strange to me that people don't recognize the disconnect within the memo itself: Basically, it starts off by saying 'Statistics of the general population don't have anything to say about individuals.' Then turns around and says 'Here's a bunch of statistics on the general population that show why there are fewer individuals in various sought after positions.'

It's like a spouse saying "I know being poor doesn't make you a bad person but here's a bunch of statistics showing otherwise which might make you change your mind about your poor friends."

An individual is an individual. Individuals make up a group. You can apply statistics to individuals in a way that you can't apply to an individual.

I'm repeating the word to make a point. Your second quote might say "individuals" but it's talking about a group.

But you can't apply the statistics backward.

Say you have a population of 10,000. You can come to some meaningful statistical conclusions about that group.

If you consciously pick 100 individuals from that original population you also have a group, it's true. But you can't use the conclusions from the first group on the second, much smaller, group.

You can discover some new statically valid facts on the new group -- they may even be similar to the original statistics -- but that is far from a given.

The only thing you can reasonably say is that the new group will fall somewhere in the domain of the original measurements.

Unless, of course, the new group is chosen at random or semi-random in regards to the measured characteristics, in which case you can have some sort of expectation for the new group and even measure (statistically) the amount of randomness.

But when it comes to the question at hand: ability to handle stress, high achievement potential, leadership talent -- these are all things I would assume Google chooses non-randomly from the overall general population pool. So there is no reason to think the relevant characteristics of the small sub set should show any similarity to the general population at all for these characteristics especially when the differences in the general population are relatively small.

The author of the memo didn't argue that the male-female ratio is where it should be. It is almost certainly skewed due to gender biases. However, eliminating gender biases from recruitment is not necessarily the same as forced diversity (forced due to ideology that dictates that anything different than 50-50 is immoral).

If Google were to announce that they will hire 50% women wouldn't that be illegal under Title VII? That would amount to affirmative action which is only allowed in certain limited situations (race can be taken into consideration for university admissions).

I don't think anyone is saying anything different from 50-50 is immoral but that anything different (in this case vastly different) than 50-50 deserves some attention.

I don't think announcing a policy of hiring 50% women is necessary. Like you said, it is 'almost certainly skewed due to gender biases' so the obvious way forward is to try to track down those biases and remove them from the process.

There is also some questions about how to make the workplace more attractive to certain employees and applicants. Putting policies and services in place to cater to those employees goes a bit beyond mere removal of bias but could help as well.

> anything different than 50-50 deserves some attention.

If what these researchers are saying about preferences is true you should be more suspicious of an exact 50-50 split than any other because it suggests that people are pulling the strings behind the scenes to make it so.

Well, the current research only shows weak tendencies that admit to wide variation. It shows what /is/ and /has been/ not what /could be/.

One thing that really bothered me about the memo is how Damore kept repeating that those he was speaking against believe /only/ culture and environment lead to differences. That he was more enlightened and believe that other things like biologically based preferences might have an effect too.

Well, of course, human beings are a complex interplay of biology and ecology and self-determination! The question is one of where the balance is when talking about individuals up to company size groups. I don't think anyone would argue against biology having some effect on behavior. But there are still open questions about where biology stops and environment begins; how much an effect can self-determination within and individual and the group can override those biological and environmental aspects to radically change outcomes (a distinguishing feature of human sapience is the ability to reflect and change, after all.)?

I am not saying Damore is lying but he sure chose what aspect of the truth to show very carefully which, in some ways, can be worse. It gives the veneer of reasonableness and logic but, in only showing part of the picture, hides the greater truths.

Meanwhile there's been an ongoing campaign to discredit Stephen Miller based on his looks.

I found this portrayal shocking: https://youtu.be/ej_5vyDkZgU?t=280

He's been labeled "a creep" for no reason by those who claim to be righteous and politically correct and fighting for the marginalized.

There are plenty of reasons to discredit Stephen Miller on the things he says.

That other people make fun of him for his looks is pretty boring and I'll leave them to their antics - hardly like this type of behavior doesn't happen with _any_ large group.

He's already a creep for his views (Muslim ban, opposition to Hart-Cellar).

His looks (and prior statements) just don't help.

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