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Comment by richmarr | Hacker News Reader

> You can't dismiss his points just because you're tired of talking about them

You can, and some people have, and that's okay. It's not clear whether you're making the implication here, but commonly it's implied that "if you walk away from the debate therefore you are wrong", which is fallacious. Nobody owes you a debate.

> I'm talking about handling what Damore claimed in an intellectually honest way

Then the initial argument needs to start from a place of "intellectual honesty".

Damore presented evidence to support his claim that women are on average less able than men in areas relevant to engineering. He didn't discuss veracity, or contradictory evidence. That's textbook confirmation bias, not intellectual honesty.

Damore then started making HR policy proposals. We use a 50/50 gender ratio as an indicator that a particular field is free from bias. It's one thing to propose that 50/50 is not the natural ratio to end up with, but until Damore can propose a model that predicts another number then proposing HR policy changes put the cart before the horse. This indicates that the policy changes are what James in interested in, not the evidence. More confirmation bias.

Further, Damore's proposals discuss diversity as a whole (race not just gender) without a single word of justification, let alone evidence. That's either more confirmation bias or conscious sleight-of-hand, either way, it's certainly not intellectual honesty.

I don't bear Damore any ill will, he should be forgiven, but this memo was a mistake and showed poor judgement and more than a little bias. These studies may be good science, but stringing them together to confirm a conclusion you'd already set your sights in making is bad science.

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I deeply disagree with this approach. You're essentially saying that unless you can come up with an alternative scientific theory, complete with predictions, it's not possible to criticise an existing theory about the world.

There's many plausible explanations why an absence of a 50:50 gender representation could be caused for reasons other than bias or average ability. That's enough to put a nail in that model of discovering bias. Coming up with a way of predicting what the right ratio is, isn't necessary to discard that metric.

I agree with your statement, but...

I think part of the problem is what the memo says and what it doesn’t say. It’s entirely plausible that the ‘natural’ ratio is not exactly 50:50. But as of last year, among Google tech workers, the ratio was 81:19, and that’s with all the affirmative-actiony programs Damore wanted to back off on; in the past it was higher. It’s quite a bit less plausible that intrinsic differences could explain all or even most of that big a discrepancy, especially combined with the many anecdotes of discrimination we hear about. Now, to be fair, the memo never explicitly claims that it does; indeed, at one point it specifically says “in part”. But the tone of the memo, the relative lack of time spent acknowledging the large role played by cultural factors, makes it sound like Damore thinks the natural ratio is at least pretty close to the current one. And that’s simply wrong.

How do you know it's wrong? If the ratio among CS graduates is 80-20 then it's natural it's still 80-20 when hiring at Google (not taking into account other factors which may tilt it even more in direction of men).

You may ask why it's 80-20 among CS graduates. One hypothesis is that women are just less interested in tech and in presence of many other choices they choose different paths. In the past there weren't as many choices that's why women were forced to go into programming (that's why there were more women in programming several decades ago).

> I deeply disagree with this approach. You're essentially saying that unless you can come up with an alternative scientific theory, complete with predictions, it's not possible to criticise an existing theory about the world.

That's a straw man. You're suggesting I disapprove of criticism, which is not so. I disapprove of demands for policy change when you don't even have a hypothesis for what your target should be.

Unless Damore (or someone else) can reasonably estimate whether their theory around 'biological' differences result in a natural 10/90 ratio or a natural 49.9/51.1 ratio then there isn't really a case to be made to change actual real-world HR policies on that basis.

Being able to reasonably estimate that 'natural' ratio is a massive task. You'd need to account for parenting, education, popular culture, socio-economic group, dozens of biasing factors. I'd expect that model to go well beyond what's possible.

Yes, that may impose a high hurdle on criticism of HR policy via this argument, but that's also the intellectual leap that Damore has claimed to have made from the evidence presented. How exactly he's managed that leap is problematic. He certainly hasn't demonstrated full knowledge of all of the factors involved.

> There's many plausible explanations why an absence of a 50:50 gender representation could be caused for reasons other than bias or average ability. That's enough to put a nail in that model of discovering bias. Coming up with a way of predicting what the right ratio is, isn't necessary to discard that metric.

Of course, and it's certain to be a combination of factors, some historical, some current that pushes representation away from 50:50. I don't think anyone is pretending that bias alone is responsible. But there's a mountain of direct evidence that bias is a significant problem. On the other hand the chasm between this biological source evidence and an actual hypothesised effect on representation is vast.

It was pointed out in this thread many times: one good way to approximate what the ratio should be at the point of hire is the ratio among CS graduates. It's 80-20 so it's natural it's also 80-20 among Google employees. If you force it to be say 70-30 then you are discriminating against men based on sex.

> It was pointed out in this thread many times: one good way to approximate what the ratio should be at the point of hire is the ratio among CS graduates.

While this sounds reasonable on the face of it the reality is different.

Where are you sourcing these graduates from? In the USA computer science departments are barely above 10% women faculty, in China it's closer to 40%. Student numbers tell a similar story... so it matters where your graduates are coming from. For a multinational like Google this is a real question.

> If you force it to be say 70-30 then you are discriminating against men based on sex.

This is a loaded statement, based on the assumpions that (a) hiring if left alone is broadly meritocratic and (b) quotas are the only game in town. There's enough evidence to say that neither of those assumptions is true.

First of all, it's been proven many times that bias in hiring is a real problem and has a large effect. Hiring is not meritocratic. Second, Google doesn't use quotas, no bar-lowering occurs (Damore hinted at this but gave no specifics and no evidence... we have to reasonably discount it unless someone can prove otherwise). Instead diversity programs mainly exist around sourcing and trying to avoid false negatives in order to counteract systemic biases.

(Disclaimer, I work in this field and have written on this topic before: https://medium.com/finding-needles-in-haystacks/we-need-to-t...)

[edited to remove some text from parent post accidentally left at the end]

> Unless Damore (or someone else) can reasonably estimate whether their theory around 'biological' differences result in a natural 10/90 ratio or a natural 49.9/51.1 ratio then there isn't really a case to be made to change actual real-world HR policies on that basis.

I agree with your argument but fail to see how it allows you to defend a discriminating policy. It's the other way around: You can't discriminate people without evidence that what you are doing is reasonable. You're the sexist in this case.

You can't defend a discriminatory policy by saying you understand it's discriminatory but to keep it because no one can tell how much.

This line of reasoning is inconsistent unless you are only opposed to discrimination of some groups. In that case I think we sadly have to agree to disagree.

You're putting words in my mouth, rudely I might add. I don't have time to correct you, read my other posts or my blog post about it.

I'm sorry to hear you feel that way, that was not my intention. Could you explain when you find the time? I reread your posts and don't see where i am putting words in your mouth.

Do you agree with my argument apart from whether it applies to you or not?

> I'm sorry to hear you feel that way

I'm not a fan of the trend for sorry-you-feel-that-way apologies. On the other hand it's possible I let this seemingly-unending argument get to me and got defensive, thanks for not taking it badly. Suggest we move on. For reference (no need to explain) the trigger was "You're the sexist in this case" which I now assume was hypothetical rather than accusatory.

The words you're putting in my mouth is defence of specific policies. I'm not aware that I'm defending any specific policies.

One policy that's come up (not sure which thread, I've lost track and can't be bothered to reorient) is Google's policy (as I understand it) of ensuring 'diversity' candidates get considered, reducing the false negative rate. This was inaccurately described by Damore as lowering "the bar", which is quite inflammatory. That policy is designed to specifically redress two things; (a) decreased confidence in under-represented groups resulting in low numbers of applicants, and (b) unconscious bias in hiring processes resulting in fewer under-represented groups getting through.

While there are more elegant solutions (vested interest disclaimer here) this type of policy tries to address measurable issues and does not reduce quality of hires.

Perhaps it leaves fewer roles open for others, but ultimately you have to make a choice between Hire A benefitting from a diversity program or Hire B benefitting from hiring bias in their favour.

Is there a different policy you want to discuss?

More background on my post on this topic if you can be bothered: https://medium.com/finding-needles-in-haystacks/we-need-to-t...

You're right, I assumed you defend the type of policies I disagree with without clarifying whether that is the case - I'm sorry for doing that, you were right.

Regarding your reply: I agree with most of your reply and enjoyed reading your blog post. I feel I understand your position much better now and can see where you are coming from.

> Is there a different policy you want to discuss?

I'd like to clarify whether we agree or disagree on the original argument - hypothetically, regardless of any specific policy. I hope I don't misrepresent your views in the following.

In your blog post you seem to argue that feelings of unfairness by the over-represented group in response to positive discrimination are built on a misconception [1]. My original reply to you was in the same vein and I'd like to understand where exactly we disagree on that.

I believe discrimination based on group membership is not justifiable. The only way in which positive discrimination can be justified is therefore if its application does not actually cause discrimination but only corrects for existing discrimination.

As we don't know for sure yet how much of the representation gap can be attributed to discrimination, we should not use positive discrimination to correct for it as we potentially do more than correcting for it but actually discriminate.

Hypothetically, if the split would be 45/55 in a perfectly just world, aiming for 50/50 through positive discrimination would in practice discriminate and not just correct for discrimination.

Please note that I agree with the outcomes of positive discrimination until the effect of the original discrimination is canceled out - I just don't feel we can distinguish both cases and should not dismiss feelings of injustice in response to that as "built on a misconception".

[1]

> In any discussion of positive discrimination there’s a risk that the overrepresented group (usually white men) may feel threatened. Unsafe. People aren’t born aware of their comparative advantage or disadvantage, and sometimes never see it, so when other groups seem to be given a leg up it can feel unfair.

> Feelings of injustice may be built on a misconception, but they still exist and are natural

> Damore then started making HR policy proposals. We use a 50/50 gender ratio as an indicator that a particular field is free from bias. It's one thing to propose that 50/50 is not the natural ratio to end up with, but until Damore can propose a model that predicts another number then proposing HR policy changes put the cart before the horse.

This seems to assume that the only way to measure or achieve equitable hiring is to measure the representation of identity groups across a given position and make sure it tracks their makeup in the general population. It's not clear to me that there aren't other acceptable methods of trying to make things equitable.

For example, you could check that applicants from different identity groups succeed in being hired at about the same rate. That's a practice that should direct an organization towards equitable results whether the reality is that women are underrepresented because of sexism in hiring or the reality is that women are represented in different proportion because of the endeavors they tend to prefer. And also for a reality that's a mix of both (which I suspect is the way of things).

Also: if the primary accepted standard becomes to match representation in a position with an identity's representation in the population, it seems pretty likely that over time it would become more difficult over time to predict a "natural" ratio.

Or just make the entirely hiring process completely gender and race blind by hiding the name and salient biographical details of the applicant.

This solves two problems: 1) the hiring process is blinded and 2) you can demonstrate to the whole world that it's blinded.

As a side bonus, you get to eliminate other implicit biases that are part of the hiring process, like people preferring people who act like them.

But you don't get to account for systematic bias, such as who has had opportunities and encouragement to even apply in the first place.

But practically speaking, the hiring process is not the right place to rectify those disparities.

Fix problems at the source, don't apply hack after hack to route around it.

Which source? Systematic problems have no current source; the causal graph is densely connected, so fixing those issues has to happen at all fronts.

I completely agree, which is precisely why I think believe the role of the employment process ought to be to screen everyone by fair (in a way that everyone agrees on) and transparent metrics. 'All fronts' hopefully means fixing every issue encountered simultaneously at the local level.

If instead we're adding a 'fudge factor' based on race, gender, or other measure of 'privilege', we're just hoping that fudge factor in hiring makes up for problems elsewhere, and it can paradoxically make things even worse.

Think about a lot of the (often very well justified) complaints that minority and other hires have with the current situation: they feel like, or they feel that other people believe, that they are simply a 'diversity hire' that doesn't deserve to be there. They feel constantly pressured to 'prove themselves' under the suspicion that the bar was 'lowered to let them in'. And the entire structure of un-blinded affirmative action exacerbates the situation, because nobody is allowed to know how big the fudge factors are, neither the minorities nor the dominant group. Under that situation, how can there anything but suspicion and mutual distrust?

Under a provably blinded hiring process, none of those should be an issue, because the process is completely transparent and agreed to ahead of time.

Other people have said this much more eloquently than me:

https://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/05/12/the-amazing-1969-pro...

'Fair & transparent' and 'blind' are two different things, and neither are subsets of each other.

A 'blind' hiring process _can_ be akin to, faced with a densely connected graph, focusing only on the most immediate causal relationships.

I do agree that 'fudge factor's are clumsy at best, where all candidates are hired, and then an arbitrary number is added to candidates based on race/gender/etc.

However, 'fudge factors' have already existed in history. For a completely different example outside of hiring practices: redlining[1] was an explicit practice of denying services/mortgages to city neighborhood based on its racial makeup.

So, what now? There have been decades of racist 'fudge-factoring' in real estate and urban development. Is the right approach to fudge-factor the other way? Or is it to be 'blind' and to look purely at the financials of each individual/organization?

Obviously this is a different scenario than hiring, and cannot necessarily be directly applied back onto hiring practices. However, we can separate out a) one way to correct for historical/systematic 'fudge factors' from b) whether or not this can apply to hiring.

I would argue that yes, you need fudge factors to correct previous problems.

It should be fair and transparent, I agree, but it will not be very clear-cut. In complex systems (densely connected graphs of causality), the only clear-cut processes are creating problems, or ignoring them. Fixing complex problems are always messy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

> 'Fair & transparent' and 'blind' are two different things, and neither are subsets of each other.

This is true if you consider a single subject, but no longer true if you consider different stakeholders and their needs separately.

(Disclaimer, this describes part of a service we provide)

Specific to your point, in a hiring system modelled like ours:

* Employees assessing a particular hire can operate blind (or near-blind in the case of interviews).

* Hiring managers can have access to identifying information (but by default just see aggregated scoring data).

* D&I managers can see aggregated demographic stats.

* Candidates see their own data & scoring info

As many people have pointed out before, making the hiring process blind doesn't do what you seem to think it'll do. There was a famous study (can't find it right this second on mobile) where researchers found that the ratio of black hires to white hires decreased when their resumes were submitted with all identifying information scrubbed.

Well, orchestras introduced blinded auditions in the 1970s, when there very few women, and now women are the majority in most orchestras.

So why do you think there is such a disparity in outcome?

I don't know the answer but if I cared to guess, it might be because the talent pool for orchestra performers had significantly more gender parity than the talent pool competing for elite engineering jobs at Google.

Edit: Google says that their diversity platform is non-discriminatory because they're not changing their standards, but rather looking harder for qualified diversity candidates (paraphrasing). This makes the gargantuan and probably unwarranted assumption that there are a lot of these candidates not applying and that 'looking harder' will find them.

Maybe there is pressure to hire from minority groups then. It makes sense that minority candidates are on average less qualified objectively if there is an affirmative action earlier in the process (for example at school admission level).

The results of studies like this depend strongly on the context... both the method used, and the existing hiring environment you're comparing to.

We've run a similar study and for the company we were hiring into we found blinding in that specific case had no effect on race or gender but drastically improved socio-economic diversity. The hiring company already had equitable hiring on gender & the candidate group wasn't racially diverse enough to make a conclusion.

Would I generalise that result to all organisations? No way, and neither should you.

If you can find the study you're thinking of I'd be interested to look at it.

Google's hiring rate between men and women does seem to match the relative rates that men and women graduate with CS degrees, which suggests that they're at least not discriminating at that level.

There are still arguments to be made that either more aggressively recruiting women (fattening their pipeline, even if it's zero-sum versus other players in the field) or accepting a higher rate (yes, "lowering the bar", which most colleges do quite aggressively and people seem mostly okay with) could be positive moves on many axes.

More productive overall measures involve equalizing the educational pipeline, which IMO is the real solution. Google invests heavily in that, too, though, so I'm pretty happy with their multi-pronged approach.

Damore presented evidence to support his claim that women are on average less able than men in areas relevant to engineering.

He didn't. He just claimed that they are on average less interested in those areas. There is no mention at all of ability in the memo, only in the manipulated press pieces.

He did not state that women had a harder time leading than men? That seems like a mention of ability.

Google apparently already had a women-only program that was predicated on the assumption that women have a harder time leading than men. So it doesn't seem like Damore's claim was particularly unusual within Google.

My comment was to refute the statement that Damore never mentioned ability in his memo.

He did:

> I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.

"but this memo was a mistake and showed poor judgement and more than a little bias"

"openness" and "freedom" are core values of Google. Even in a scenario where someone made effective arguments refuting all of James' key points, a "one strike and you're out" policy seems antithetical to Google's culture. Or any healthy culture for that matter.

If James wrote what you said he did above (I think you mischaracterize him greatly), and if his ideas are as poorly constructed as you suggest they are, surely Google employs someone intelligent enough to go point by point through his memo and really school him. Such a response would do more to build a case for the worldview you appear to espouse than the lazy, generalized retorts being lobbed his way.

> If James wrote what you said he did above, (I think you mischaracterize him greatly)...

By all means ignore the part relating to honesty/competence, I'd probably apologise to him for that if I met him so probably shouldn't have written it.

Most of my comments however speak to his actions so are not a matter of characterisation.

> ...surely Google employs someone intelligent enough to go point by point through his memo and really school him

They do. They have. However, Damore violated Google's code of conduct and by extension his conditions of employment. That's not a line any employer of thousands can play coy with in the name of educating one individual.

> Such a response would do more to build a case for the worldview you appear to espouse than the lazy, generalized retorts being lobbed his way.

Who's mischaracterising now?

Sorry boss, you haven't read the right responses. I link to some better ones from mine: https://medium.com/finding-needles-in-haystacks/we-need-to-t...

Yes you can walk away but no you can't say "you're {{}}phobe and then walk away.

Take my example. I have not read the memo. I shouldn't say the memo is unscientific and homophobic because I have no clue what it says.

> You can, and some people have, and that's okay.

Ok, no one owes anyone a debate, unless you're going to call it wrong, sexist, harmful, etc. Then in that case, I'd like some reasoning behind it. Either don't debate, or do and do it right.

> women are on average less able

Please don't do this. What he claimed was that women have less inclination to go into tech due to various pressures, some biological. If you're referring to his referencing the 'big five' personality traits, you'll note that he addresses both positively and negatively associated traits of both men and women in regards to working with software. He never stated that the combination of differences makes one gender better than the other.

>until Damore can propose a model that predicts another number

Why? All he did was put forth evidence and suggest that 50/50 might not be ideal, why must another number be presented in order to have a discussion on the subject? Speculation on my part, but is it because it's an easier target to shoot down if you can point to an exact number and claim it's wrong for your own variety of reasons?

Obviously, policy changes are going to be a goal if Damore's evidence is proved right (Policy is at the root of the problem according to Damore). Why are you presenting them like two separate things? You're not even considering the fact that the evidence might support his conclusions.

>diversity as a whole(race not just gender)

Because whenever diversity is discussed, it is almost done so as a whole. Obviously Damore wanted to focus on gender, but diversity initiatives virtually always include both. It would seem awkward to avoid race entirely. And he never made any claims on just race, go to the memo and ctrl-f "race". Every time it appears, it's accompanied by "and/or gender". In several of these cases, it's because a study he's citing mentions both. I would call that being thorough, not intellectually dishonest.

>These studies may be good science, but stringing them together to confirm a conclusion you'd already set your sights in making is bad science.

You can make this claim about any paper that claims something not trivially arguable from scientific studies. To say this, you have to go through piecewise and show why the connections he's making from solid scientific studies don't apply to his arguments.

> Ok, no one owes anyone a debate, unless... I'd like...

This is still just about what you'd like to happen. The rest of that argument is circular.

> Please don't do this. What he claimed was that women have less inclination...

Damore specifically mentions "abilities" although others have debated his exact intention in that line. I don't see value in reopening that.

Regardless, what you're missing is that interest, ability and environment are far from mutually exclusive traits. See my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15026234

> Why? All he did was put forth evidence and suggest that 50/50 might not be ideal...

Because Damore went as far as policy changes. To make an HR policy you need objectives, or at least direction... to know whether you should be aiming for a 49:51 gender ratio or a 10:90 gender ratio. If there's no proposed effect size how does Google's HR team know if they're heading in the right direction?

Some people may not want employers like Google to get into 'social engineering' as Damore puts it, but the reality is that there's a mountain of evidence that hiring bias has a large effect, so the idea that a company like Google wouldn't try to measure and optimise in that area is clearly not going to fly.

Having unconscious bias or otherwise being incorrect doesn't make you intellectually dishonest. Whether or not his claims are true, Damore presented a much more metered and reasonable argument than virtually all of his detractors or even published social pundits.

> Having unconscious bias or otherwise being incorrect doesn't make you intellectually dishonest.

If you purport to be a (competent) scientist in the 21st century then personally I expected you to be highly aware of biases such as publication bias & confirmation bias and act accordingly. That speaks either to his discipline/understanding or his honesty, I don't know which.

> Whether or not his claims are true, Damore presented a much more metered and reasonable argument than virtually all of his detractors or even published social pundits.

Damore was metered, but understandably triggered a threat response in the people who his memo targeted as being below "the bar".

You may have read a selection of counter-arguments, some of which will be less "metered and reasonable" than his. Unfortunately the emotional tenor of an argument is not the measure of its merit.

>That speaks either to his discipline/understanding or his honesty, I don't know which.

You're holding him to an unbelievably high standard that is never applied to those making the case that gender disparities are due to societal discrimination.

I can't imagine you're being driven to apply this standard to him by anything other than a preconceived notion that women are underrepresented in engineering due to sexism and that anyone that disagrees is a misogynist.

>Damore was metered, but understandably triggered a threat response in the people who his memo targeted as being below "the bar".

Damore did not target anyone as below the bar. He made a statistical observation about the distribution of personality types among gender groups and how that would play out in gender representation in various occupations, to counter the discrimination-as-cause-of-disparity narrative. No individual was cast as below the bar due to their gender. The threat response was immature.

> You're holding him to an unbelievably high standard that is never applied to those making the case that gender disparities are due to societal discrimination.

No, this is wrong. Societal discrimination is directly measurable at the point of hiring. There are a mountain of studies measuring this. It simply doesn't require modelling the effect as it propagates through society.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, nobody is claiming that bias is the only factor involved, but it's one we can measure and act on.

> Damore did not target anyone as below the bar... The threat response was immature

Aside from explicitly saying "lowers the bar", explicitly saying "I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes" and making multiple references to lower drive, mathematical ability, etc. Please.

As you know, threat responses aren't driven by 'maturity' they're driven by percieved threat. Damore's clumsy language caused people at Google to be afraid, and justifiably so. He may have intended to spark a dialog but his words are confrontational. Don't confront people on this topic because you'll often get a fight/flight response. Instead you must engage and build trust.

As I understand it, the data about discrimination in hiring are mixed, but I'm interested in learning more.

Your threat response point seems like dressing up a group's overreaction to make it justifiable. It's also another example of different standards being applied to liberal groups vs conservatives groups (offending conservative groups is basically a sacrament, but saying anything that can be remotely twisted into an offensive statement toward a liberal group is nearly criminal). I've never seen anyone make any sort of threat-response/justifiable-offense argument when conservatives are upset about, say, "blasphemy day" or just the constant misrepresentation in the media. In particular though, there's nothing which should remotely cause offense, even in the selection of quotes you shared (but good on you for quoting and not taking offense at strawman--very few of Damore's critics have been so kind). Damore's arguments (however factual) were better than I could make, but it's ridiculous that the criticism is that he didn't successfully prevent everyone from taking offense. He couldn't have done more to prevent offense without damaging his own case. I think this is another case of the left refusing to be pacified by anything less than complete political capitulation. Meanwhile any sort of expression from liberal groups, even defamation or riots, are defended, and any one who criticizes them have impossible standards. The double standards here should be unbelievable.

> As I understand it, the data about discrimination in hiring are mixed, but I'm interested in learning more.

Great, do that.

> Your threat response point seems like dressing up a group's overreaction to make it justifiable.

Your overreaction point seems like dressing up a group's threat response to make it seem unreasonable.

There are threat responses and irrational behaviour on both sides (whichever side you naturally agree with) and failing to recognise that means that you're not empowering yourself to engage with this topic on any useful level.

I wrote about threat response in my post on this: https://medium.com/finding-needles-in-haystacks/we-need-to-t...

> Great, do that.

I plan on it.

> Your overreaction point seems like dressing up a group's threat response to make it seem unreasonable.

I think it is unreasonable. Damore took every precaution to avoid offense without changing his position. Perhaps more importantly, we go so far as to censor someone who makes any statement that can possibly be spun as a criticism of women, yet we permit and even encourage all manner of absurd, anti-male speech.

> There are threat responses and irrational behaviour on both sides (whichever side you naturally agree with) and failing to recognise that means that you're not empowering yourself to engage with this topic on any useful level.

First of all, I'd like not to use "threat-response" as a synonym for "taking offense", because the former could be easily conflated with an actual threat (damage to person or property vs damage to hubris). That said, Damore went to every conceivable length to avoid causing offense; I think you and his other critics are effectively asking him not to criticize at all. Not speaking about a sensitive topic at all is hardly empowering oneself to "engage this topic on any useful level".

I think it's also worth pointing out that the left has nurtured a culture in which some groups are encouraged to take offense, and this is used to silence and shame other groups. I think that's what's happening here--a lot of people have been relentlessly fed propaganda about privilege and patriarchy and oppression have been trained to see it everywhere. I think this is a better explanation for the events that transpired than "Damore is evil/insensitive/etc".

> Damore took every precaution to avoid offense without changing his position

Perhaps every precaution within his ability. Unfortunately he made plenty of provocative mistakes. I highlighted some in the Medium post I linked to.

> First of all, I'd like not to use "threat-response" as a synonym for "taking offense"...

If you think that's what I'm doing then you're mistaken. I'm talking about stress hormones, cortisol, fight or flight.

There are probably better [primary] sources, but Tania Singer & her team at the MPI in Leipzig do a lot of work with stress responses caused by things other than "damage to person or property".

When you use the language that Damore used, in a confrontational way as opposed to a collaborative way, that reaction can be the result. Threat responses are caused by threats, including threats to identity groups, or to future prosperity (something that significantly affects the life chances of any offspring).

Whether you consider it "unreasonable" or not is irrelevant. My advice is to approach the debate in a collaborative way, instead of being confrontational like Damore, and you'll more likely avoid that outcome.

Maybe being a world class communicator could have helped Damore avoid some of the ire, but it's plainly wrong to attribute this drama to him instead of the reactionaries who were so giddy at the opportunity to take offense that they needed to invent content and context to be outraged about. Seems like blaming the woman in the full burqa for being raped--if only she had better covered herself, she might not have caused this response in her rapist.

Damore did everything right here. Whatever you think, his post was collaborative, not confrontational (he remained focused on what Google could do to improve, repeatedly affirmed his commitment to the common goal, etc).

> Maybe being a world class communicator could have helped Damore avoid some of the ire...

So, women are a portion of society who've spent hundreds of years fighting for equal treatment, a portion of society who weren't allowed credit cards until the 1970s, who have been told their brains were too small for serious things like voting... a portion of society who still face discrimination today (although today it's usually more nuanced and less overt). Damore said openly that Google were lowering the bar to let them in and amplified ideas that make it harder for the women (and other 'diversity' hires) already in Google, and you're surprised people got cross. Really? That surprises you?

Damore did the equivalent of walking into Jerusalem, picking a side, then immediately spouting policy changes he wanted to see... then acting all hurt when he got punched in the face and kicked out of Israel for causing trouble.

This isn't about being a world-class communicator, this is about an adequate communicator for the problem he was trying to solve.

How would you react if I told you your views were biased and extreme? Even if I think they are, telling you that in the introduction of my memo (like Damore did) is not going to get the reaction I want.

> ...but it's plainly wrong to attribute this drama to him instead of the reactionaries who were so giddy at the opportunity to take offense that they needed to invent content and context to be outraged about.

Not so plain as you think.

A scientific approach to determining the 'natural' gender balance would require a lot more 'biological' data and be able to combine it in a model with cultural factors and understanding of biases. Damore does not have that evidence, and doesn't indicate that he understands it.

A model like that would need to be able to predict why womens participation in computing dropped in the 80s. It would be able to explain why women are only 10% of computer science faculty in the USA, but 40% in China.

Without that model, leaping to conclusions about how many women to expect in a company like Google is bad science, and making HR policy changes on the back of this would be bad management.

No such model exists, but Damore leapt past that stage and in doing so abandoned any hope of scientific support.

He used inflammatory terms like lowering the "bar", accused Google of bias and fostering extreme views, talking about womens biological interests and abilities, and spoke in absolutist language rather than collaborative language.

Damore wanted to effectively reduce the number of women in the workplace, that's a threat. And he used inflammatory language while doing it, so the threat was as clear as day. I find it amazing that you're surprised by the reaction.

> Seems like blaming the woman in the full burqa for being raped--if only she had better covered herself, she might not have caused this response in her rapist.

I'm not going to respond to that, but I consider that comment both inaccurate and inappropriate.

> Damore said openly that Google were lowering the bar to let them in and amplified ideas that make it harder for the women (and other 'diversity' hires) already in Google, and you're surprised people got cross. Really? That surprises you?

So you agree it was the content and not the presentation? At any rate, Damore didn't say that Google lowered the bar, he said that diversity policies can devolve into that, but some people are addicted to outrage and will hear what they want.

> Damore did the equivalent of walking into Jerusalem, picking a side, then immediately spouting policy changes he wanted to see... then acting all hurt when he got punched in the face and kicked out of Israel for causing trouble.

No, Damore worked at Google; his everyday life is affected by Google's policies and rhetoric and general ideological-bubble-ness. He didn't "walk in and start espousing policies". It's also worth noting that he posted in response to a request for opinions on a skeptics message board; he didn't shout it from a mountain. Your analogy is completely divorced from reality.

> This isn't about being a world-class communicator, this is about an adequate communicator for the problem he was trying to solve.

This still sounds like victim blaming. Maybe we shouldn't be critiquing the guy who pointed out a few injustices and maybe we should look at the people who feigned outrage to silence him.

> Without that model, leaping to conclusions about how many women to expect in a company like Google is bad science, and making HR policy changes on the back of this would be bad management.

Yes, but he wasn't "doing science", he was posting on a message board. Besides, his point isn't "Here's a model that explains the disparity"; it's "the current model--discrimination hypothesis--has inconsistencies". Finally, being wrong (even about a contentious topic) doesn't merit public damnation, slander, excommunication, etc. That his model is incomplete is a red herring; he wasn't at fault, Google, Gizmodo, and the hoard of slanderous SJWs here and across the Internet are at fault.

> He used inflammatory terms like lowering the "bar", accused Google of bias and fostering extreme views, talking about womens biological interests and abilities, and spoke in absolutist language rather than collaborative language.

Sorry, none of this remotely merits the response he received. In fact, if anyone else spoke in this manner about any other topic, it would be a significant improvement. If the discrimination-theory folks were held to this standard, it would be a massive improvement. I'm not going to punch a guy for being in the 98th percentile of communicators instead of the 99th, especially when his critics and opponents are largely shouting lies and profanity.

> I'm not going to respond to that, but I consider that comment both inaccurate and inappropriate.

That's fine, but that's basically what's happening here. Damore went far above and beyond what was reasonable, and you're blaming him for not doing more. This is inappropriate.

> So you agree it was the content and not the presentation?

No... I don't agree.

Both Damore's content and the way it was communicated contain serious flaws. The content contained conclusions unsupported by evidence, and the communication (amongst other problems) contained pointlessly divisive and inflammatory comments that he really didn't need to make to address his concerns.

> At any rate, Damore didn't say that Google lowered the bar, he said that diversity policies can devolve into that, but some people are addicted to outrage and will hear what they want.

Oh please. Damore literally used those exact words.

He said Google policies "effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate".

The most generous interpretation of that statement is that a greater percentage of candidates from under-represented demographics are hired, but that bends the word "bar" to mean something other than its actual meaning... i.e. turns an otherwise weak point into inflammatory rhetoric.

> ... the people who feigned outrage to silence him.

I'm curious. So you think a large group of people is pretending to be outraged about something they're not actually outraged about? Does this behaviour require coordination or happen naturally? If it's coordinated, where is the evidence of collusion, is there an email list? If this collective outrage-feigning happens naturally then under what other human circumstances do humans exhibit this group mock-outrage behaviour, other than when the 'right' complaints about the 'left'? How do you know this outrage is "feigned" and not real?

Why should I believe this is more than just partisan bias on your part? Outgroup biases are well documented, after all, and your use of 'SJW' seem to put you in or near one of the right/alt-right/gamergate/white-supramacist camps, no idea which.

> Sorry, none of this remotely merits the response he received.

What do you mean by the response he received?

If you mean the loss of his job... then in no other context would someone be able to retain their job after undermining so many of their own colleagues or causing so many negative news headlines for their company... let alone both.

If you mean something else then I don't feel a need to be part of that discussion.

Yeah, the outrage is fake or they wouldn't have to invent statements he didn't make. Fake outrage is pervasive among progressives. It mostly spreads as ideology. It seems to be attractive to exaggerate one's hardships to amplify the perceptions of one's accomplishments while diminishing the accomplishments of those you hate.

Regarding the response received, I was talking about the firing and public flogging. And Google created the headlines for firing him so questionably.

> If you purport to be a (competent) scientist in the 21st century then personally I expected you to be highly aware of biases such as publication bias & confirmation bias and act accordingly. That speaks either to his discipline/understanding or his honesty, I don't know which.

I've never been on a discussion board where this was the norm. More importantly, and to repeat my earlier point, this isn't even the norm for well-regarded, published content on the subject. It appears the standards are very high for dissenting opinions.

> You may have read a selection of counter-arguments, some of which will be less "metered and reasonable" than his. Unfortunately the emotional tenor of an argument is not the measure of its merit.

Maybe, but given that Damore's memo is largely criticized for causing offense (despite doing more than what is reasonable to avoid it), it certainly seems pertinent that other points of view aren't held to the same scrutiny.

> Damore was metered, but understandably triggered a threat response in the people who his memo targeted as being below "the bar".

Probably, but he did a much better job of mitigating it than I could have, and we never, ever hold liberal viewpoints to this standard. In particular, it's positively mainstream to publish absolutely brutal criticisms of men; we don't even feign sensitivity.

You may well have a point that people too readily make scathing assessments of 'men' as a group.

Bad Thing A doesn't justify Bad Thing B though, does it.

As for the high burden of proof, I invite you to suggest a model that estimates the effect size we should observe in gender representation in tech companies based on Damore's 'biological' differences

>Bad Thing A doesn't justify Bad Thing B though, does it.

No, but I don't think stating an observation about a group as politely as possible is a bad thing. It's not like saying "women may be less interested in tech" or "diversity quotas can lead to bar-lowering" are even unflattering or absolute observations. We just live in a culture of professional victims who are ever-primed to take offense at anything. The moral thing isn't to critique Damore's communication--better communication wouldn't have helped; only capitulation. The moral thing to do is to oppose the victimhood culture.

> As for the high burden of proof, I invite you to suggest a model that estimates the effect size we should observe in gender representation in tech companies based on Damore's 'biological' differences

I don't have that model, and I never claimed to. Moreover, no one needs a model to point out inconsistencies in the current model, especially inconsistencies which are mutually harmful.

> I don't have that model...

No. Nobody else does either.

Scott Alexander has a pretty good one in the link referenced in the post. But why spend time investigating when challenging the discrimination hypothesis can cost you your job, reputation, etc.

> Scott Alexander has a pretty good one in the link referenced in the post.

I must have missed where he proposes a model. By all means point that out. Specifically one that can predict how many women should work at Google in California, and in Boulder, and in New York, and in London, and in Mumbai... year by year.

> *But why spend time investigating when challenging the discrimination hypothesis can cost you your job, reputation, etc.

Challenging a hypothesis didn't cost Damore his job. Undermining his own colleagues by promoting negative stereotypes cost Damore his job. That was totally unnecessary to his argument... he could have just based it on CS graduate numbers and left the 'biology' out of it.

>Damore presented evidence to support his claim that women are on average less able than men in areas relevant to engineering.

His claim was that women are statistically less likely to be interested in computer science. He said nothing about ability.

>It's one thing to propose that 50/50 is not the natural ratio to end up with, but until Damore can propose a model that predicts another number then proposing HR policy changes put the cart before the horse.

He gave lots of numbers. 20% is about the percentage of female computer science graduates. Targeting anything above that would necessarily require discriminating against men.

>Damore's proposals discuss diversity as a whole (race not just gender) without a single word of justification

I don't see any mention of race in the memo. When Damore is talking about "diversity" he always is talking about gender diversity.

>>He didn't discuss veracity, or contradictory evidence. That's textbook confirmation bias, not intellectual honesty.

>This indicates that the policy changes are what James in interested in, not the evidence. More confirmation bias.

>it's certainly not intellectual honesty...

>stringing them together to confirm a conclusion you'd already set your sights in making is bad science.

I've been asked to edit my comment to make it less argumentative. Could you do the same for yours? Calling someone you disagree with "intellectually dishonest", etc, is not good taste.

It's very easy to learn about biases like confirmation bias, and fall into the trap of only applying that knowledge to other people. "He only disagrees with me because of confirmation bias. He's just intellectually dishonest."

You can't possibly know the thought process behind another person. As far as we know Damore did the research and found these facts convincing and developed his view. Not the other way around. Or at least someone presented these facts to him and then he developed the view he has.

In any case, this is how all debates work. People present evidence for their beliefs and the other side responds with refutations and evidence for theirs. There is nothing wrong or intellectually dishonest about this.

Your comments have been crossing into incivility and flamewar. Would you please make a u-turn and fix that? These threads are divisive enough without careless commenting.

I don't think my original comment was very uncivl. But I edited it to be less confrontational. Please tell me if that is not enough.

Tons better and much appreciated, thanks! The only remaining bit I see is "Did you even read the memo" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15023485) which is a common-enough insult to have its own HN guideline (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

Fixed.

This exchange is likely to get lost in the noise, but I just want to tell both of you how much I appreciate your willingness to give and receive this kind of feedback. It is so hard to get messaging just right when text is your only medium. This kind of back and forth makes it easier to focus on what we mean rather than what was perceived.

> I don't see any mention of race in the memo

The memo is mostly about women, but race is mentioned several times in the memo - mostly in terms of training programs at Google that are only open to people of certain races.

The memo stated that women have a harder time leading than men. How is that not saying something about ability?

> His claim was that women are statistically less likely to be interested in computer science. He said nothing about ability.

Sorry, you're mistaken here. (1) Damore said "I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes". (2) Damore made references to women being less able to cope with leadership positions due to anxiety (3) Studies show ability, interest, motivation and external environment are not mutually exclusive independent things like you might think. Read some of Carol Dweck's research on this for more.

> He gave lots of numbers. 20% is about the percentage of female computer science graduates. Targeting anything above that would necessarily require discriminating against men.

'in the USA' is missing from your sentence.

In China, 40% of faculty are women, and graduate numbers are similar. The largest democracy in the world, India, also has a similar story, close to 50% of graduates.

Google hires across the world, not just in the USA.

> I don't see any mention of race in the memo. When Damore is talking about "diversity" he always is talking about gender diversity.

It's there, look again. And you don't get the unique right to interpret the true meaning behind Damore's words. He specifically references race-related hiring policies as unfair off the back of a discussion about gender.

> I've been asked to edit my comment to make it less argumentative. Could you do the same for yours? Calling someone you disagree with "intellectually dishonest", etc, is not good taste.

I consider my comment pretty factual. Intellectual honesty has a specific meaning; the 'intellectual' isn't just there as filling. It's a method of problem solving that among other things explicitly disconnects your personal beliefs from the pursuit of the facts. I was explaining that Damore's actions were not consistent with intellectual honesty, as implied by the commenter I replied to.

Damore leapt over a vast chasm to get from 'biological' differences to HR policy. He could be right about every single thing in his memo and it still wouldn't be intellectually honest because the evidence provided doesn't explain the observable facts.

Why did representation of women in computing drop suddenly in the 1980s? Why does the USA have 20% (and falling) women CS graduates and India have closer to 50%? Why are 10% of US CS faculty women and in China 40% CS faculty are women? Why do girls interested in computers during childhood suddenly drop their interest?

It ultimately doesn't matter what his thought process is, perhaps I should have left that aspect out. Until Damore can answer those kinds of questions, leaping straight to HR policy is intellectual dishonesty. Unless I'm missing something that's an indisputable fact.

...and we haven't even opened the Pandora's Box that is less biased hiring techniques, but perhaps that's for another time.

[Edit: missed a bit:]

> In any case, this is how all debates work. People present evidence for their beliefs and the other side responds with refutations and evidence for theirs. There is nothing wrong or intellectually dishonest about this.

This is how debates work on topics that aren't emotive. In this case, Damore promoted stereotypes of lower ability (yes, ability), and explicitly claimed that Google is lowering the "bar" to allow diversity candidates in.

That effectively tells his colleagues hired through those programs that they don't deserve to be there, and that he wants fewer people like them hired in future.

That's never going to happen like a discussion of whether the button should be #4285F4 or #3285F4. It's a threat to peoples future prosperity, and the prosperity of their familes, daughters, etc. That conversation requires empathy and trust. Instead, Damore came out guns blazing, with accusations of bias and extremism. He triggered a threat a response.

Nothing he's done makes him inherently a bad person, he had some mistaken views and was clumsy about engaging, but he made a big mistake and left no alternative for this to be a disciplinary matter. I hope he learned this lesson, but given his engagement with MRAs and his new "Fired for Truth" branding I suspect he hasn't.

> commonly it's implied that "if you walk away from the debate therefore you are wrong", which is fallacious. Nobody owes you a debate.

You might be wrong, you might be right, either way that does mean forfeiting the debate. It's like folding in poker -- yeah, you might have great cards, but you folded, and nobody owes you any of the money on the table.

> Then the initial argument needs to start from a place of "intellectual honesty".

Uhm, no. Might as well say assuming a 50/50 ratio to be free of bias is not intellectually honest, so "they started it". And then those could in turn point to someone else, and so on.

> ...you might have great cards, but you folded, and nobody owes you any of the money on the table.

No. Damore had to win. His opponents just had to not lose.

Google has invested massive resources and thought into their hiring process. The debate for change was started clumsily. Damore triggered a threat response that caused a good portion of one side to walk away from the debate, but he was pushed out too.

So the status quo persists.

His opponents have egg on their faces, and they just keep spreading it around more. Like that cartoon dog reading sitting in a burning house saying "this is fine". That's what I see. They painted themselves into a corner they're now too cowardly to get out of, and other cowards is all they now have. Damore on the other hand is still a bright young (and cute) guy with his integrity intact.

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