Comment by astrocat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by astrocat | Hacker News Reader

> Edith: I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs. Interest in certain jobs, certainly.

This is, I think, the key. We can all recognize that there are REAL, average differences in interests between men and women, DEFINITELY driven by society/culture, and maybe by biology/genetics... BUT, this has absolutely no correlation with performance. If fewer women are, on average, interested in software engineering, this absolutely does NOT mean that women software engineers are, on average, worse at their jobs.

The error so many "Team-Damore" men make is that they zealously stand behind the argument that "Better-performing men are being overlooked in favor of worse-performing women/minorities." And yet there is absolutely no way to possibly back up that claim: can anyone clearly demonstrate over the course of a statistically significant number of hirings that most of the women candidates who were hired were A)chosen from a candidate pool that included at least one equivalently-or-more talented man; and B) that those men who were not picked would have been both better performing as individuals and better employees for the team/company as a whole? No. Nobody has shown this because it is, essentially, impossible to demonstrate. Citing studies of character traits or interests of men and women "on average" does absolutely nothing to support claims A and B. And so all these men end up doing is simply implying: "well, I BELIEVE that all these real women coworkers of mine are worse than the hypothetical male candidate that wasn't hired... on average." Which is clearly an insult to your existing coworkers and toxic to your work environment.

I can't speak to Google's hiring policy, but affirmative action indeed gives preference to underrepresented minorities at the expense of more qualified people on the basis of gender/race. If you want quantitative data, just look at test scores of underrepresented minorities vs white/Asian men at competitive high schools and universities.

You can sugar coat it all you want, but it's still discrimination on the basis of gender/race.

Sure, specifically race-related Affirmative Action programs may often (but not always) provide entrance to a minority who would on paper test lower than a non-minority. And this is intentional AND desirable. Consider it a long-term investment, or a direct attempt to break out of a feedback-loop. The historical shadow of racism is long, and even though the individual actors today (you, me) may not be explicitly racist, the trends are still there, hiding in our institutional practices, in our disparity of opportunity for the poor, and in our subconscious assessments of things that are different from us. Programs like Affirmative Action are conscious-level programs to battle subsconscious problems in our society. It's like making a chrome extension to block HN and Reddit during work hours because our subconscious habit of wanting to browse hurts our overall productivity. So we make a conscious-level decision to implement a practice that causes pain (deprivation of pleasure) in pursuit of a long-term goal (not being addicted to instant-internet-gratification and higher productivity). Affirmative Action will deprive some well qualified white students of positions at a single institution, (but not EVERY institution) and that may cause pain for an individual, but is beneficial for the society as a whole.

Diversity hiring practices may sometimes have a similar outcome, but I suspect the reality at most major employers is more often "these candidates are equivalent, give preference to the minority so our team can benefit from greater diversity." Because teams CAN have real tangible productivity/quality benefits from being diverse. It's not just black and white pure individual performance. By having a team with a broader set of backgrounds and experiences it may produce more thoughtful products/services for the diverse population of users who will ultimately consume them.

I won't ever argue that explicit programs like Affirmative Action and diversity hiring don't ever disadvantage any single individual - clearly, candidates get rejected. But I'm not going to join anyone's pity party over it either: there is real benefit for companies and society; in all cases, the party that gets rejected due to these policies is explicitly the party that statistically has the most opportunity in the ecosystem at large.

> in all cases, the party that gets rejected due to these policies is explicitly the party that statistically has the most opportunity in the ecosystem at large.

You are possibly discriminating people unfairly. The evidence on causes of the representation gap is not conclusive - i.e. we don't know beyond reasonable doubt it's nothing but white male privilege. Difference in interests - be it due to nature or nurture - seem to exist and could at least partially explain the gap.

I'm opposed to all discrimination - and as long as you can't prove beyond reasonable doubt that the enacted discrimination only counters privilege and nothing more you don't have a leg to stand on if your overall position is equality.

> But I'm not going to join anyone's pity party over it either

You dismiss a group speaking up against discrimination as whiners even though the evidence that would allow you to do so is inconclusive. This seems like an unreasonable position to take.

Any effort to hire more people with trait X where X is unrelated to performance on the job will lead to lowering the bar for people with X trait. Once you start hiring disproportionately from the smaller pool then that pool becomes less qualified on average. The more you "look for qualified candidates while not lowering the bar" the more you need to overlook qualified candidates from the other, bigger and more more qualified on average pool.

To see it clearly substitute women with race (for example white) and see how immediately racist the policy becomes.

> "Better-performing men are being overlooked in favor of worse-performing women/minorities."

That sentence is backed if there is a correlation between genetics and skills.

> this has absolutely no correlation with performance

if gender does not have correlation with performance, why do we split sports into male and female? Why physical strength, endurance is related with biology and the mind is not? when the brain is the most important organ in our bodies and in charge of controlling all the hormones which gives us more or less strength. In what facts do you support that claim?

The physical is different from the mental. Are you saying women are less mentally capable? I can't tell but this is basically exactly why women feel legitimizing this line of discussion is unproductive.

> The physical is different from the mental.

Why? Can you probe it? Most researchers I read says the opposite.

Not sure what you mean here?

Women and men are different: agree.

Physical is different than mental: yes

Example of a sport that takes really strong mental skills and where women compete alongside men: competitive shooting.

> Physical is different than mental: yes

If you say that there is no relation between our biological features (like genes or hormones) and our mental capabilities, I have to disagree completely. And I want someone to support that affirmation with facts and research studies. As far as I know there are a lot of mental illness treated with chemicals and hormones and a lot of studies that link malformations in genes with mental capabilities. There are also philosophical studies that link the mind to the body and that claim that there cannot be intelligence without embodiment. So all this things and other papers lead me to think that biological traits are linked to mental skills.

At one point you're talking about malformations and in the next you're talking about perfectly healthy people. Academically, we see that women excel up to college with no barriers in their mental capabilities. What other evidence do you need?

I can tell you as a women in tech, there is absolutely nothing about tech that is that difficult to understand or comprehend. Nothing more than the many other professions women excel in and are equally represented.

you are having bias with the word malformation. It is not something bad per se, it only means it is not what you find in most people and that is have bad consequences (or what we want to classify as bad).

> we see that women excel up to college with no barriers in their mental capabilities

This doesn't mean anything. Performance is not only about mental capabilities but also in effort. There are mentally disabled people who can pass college, but it is so hard for them and they have to strive a lot to succeed, and this is why you don't see so many of them in college. So this argument doesn't probe anything.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com