Comment by bduerst | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bduerst | Hacker News Reader

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Ability != Preference

You claimed his argument was limited to preference, I am showing you that Damore was talking about preference and ability. Splitting hairs over distribution is a red herring. Nobody here is assuming that Damore is referring to women the individual, but women as a whole.

> Nowhere does he say that women have less ability than men.

Damore does, in several places: [emphasis added]

>Women, on average, have more:

> - Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness. This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. Note that these are just average differences and there’s overlap between men and women, but this is seen solely as a women’s issue.

> - Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.

Note that the data he used here is cherry picked from a 90's study that used the Big5 method, which has since been debunked for use in biological differentiation.

> You claimed his argument was limited to preference, I'm merely showing that Damore was talking about preference and ability. Arguing distribution is a red herring. Nobody is assuming that Damore is referring to women the individual, but women as a whole.

If this was your takeaway, then I did not explain it well enough. Every individual has a distribution of ability. Some are better at math, some are better at sports, some are better at reading, etc. 2/3rds of boys are better at math than they are at reading. 2/3rds of girls are better at reading than they are at math. However, girls are actually better than boys at both reading and math - it's just that they score better at an even bigger margin at reading.

Is it inconceivable to think that the fact that girls are better at reading than math 2/3rds of the time makes girls more likely to prefer reading as compared to math (and vice versa for boys)? That's the point that Damore was making: the distribution in ability affects boys' and girls' preferences. It does not say that the average girl has less ability than the average boy.

If you want to split hairs, you could say that making this argument is sexist because it says girls score better than the boys on average in both reading and in math. But I get the sense that this isn't the angle you're making.

> Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness. This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. Note that these are just average differences and there’s overlap between men and women, but this is seen solely as a women’s issue.

> - Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.

Both of these points have to do with specific parts of the job (salary negotiation, asking for promotion, dealing with stress). These factors exist in all jobs, not just tech. Furthermore he later offers suggestions to try and mitigate this - he brought these things up because he wanted to offer positive changes.

The point remains: Damore did not write that women "aren't physically suited" (~~your words~~) to tech work.

>The point remains: Damore did not write that women "aren't physically suited" (your words) to tech work.

Where exactly did I say that??

> Both of these points have to do with specific parts of the job (salary negotiation, asking for promotion, dealing with stress) not that women are less suited for tech work.

Yes, yes, Damore is saying that women lack the ability to lead due to their extraversion, empathy, and neuroticism (anxiety) inhibiting them, because those are specific parts of the job that require abilities. Also, you're ignoring now that he said both tech and leadership, and you are now focusing on just "tech work". This is more splitting hairs on semantics to apologize for Damore.

>And he later offers suggestions to try and mitigate this.

Of course he does. He cherry picked data to wrongly fit his hypothesis from the start. Naturally he would conclude with his own ideas on how to mitigate a problem that he misused data to create.

The previous commenter wrote, "And so if you take that personal decision and instead make it about some gender stereotype e.g. they aren't physically suited then it discourages women from entering IT." I had mistaken this as your comment.

But you did make similar statement s: "He's saying that women lack the ability to work in engineering and leadership because they are biologically different." You did claim that damore wrote that women lack ability to work in engineering.

> Yes, yes, Damore is saying that women lack the ability to lead due to their extraversion, empathy, and neuroticism inhibiting them, because those are specific parts of the job that require abilities. This is more splitting hairs on semantics to apologize for Damore.

These are factors that affect all industries. Saying that this is evidence that Damore argued that women are worse at tech than men is not valid. And again, he brought this up in the context of suggesting improvements to try and make tech more welcoming to women.

> Of course he does. He cherry picked data to wrongly fit his hypothesis from the start. Naturally he would conclude with his own ideas on how to mitigate a problem that he misused data to create.

Let me get this straight: somebody does their best to try and investigate why women have a hard time in a certain field, and proposes ways to make this better. And this is a bad thing?

Even more ironic is that Google and other companies actually have used this research to establish practices that are better for women:

> Allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive. Recent updates to Perf [Google's performance reviews] may be doing this to an extent, but maybe there’s more we can do, especially in our interviews.

So he's saying, "women are more cooperative. We should make policies that help cooperative people thrive." He's not saying that women are worse at tech because they're more cooperative or more neurotic. He's saying that Google should be more welcoming to people with these traits and help them reach their full potential.

Your comments have devolved into into a gish gallop. You claimed that his paper was based solely on preference, nothing else.

- Damore said that underrepresentation of women in tech and leadership is because of their differing preferences and abilities due to biological causation.

- He misrepresents Big5 data to list neuroticism, extraversion, and empathy as biological reasons why women "have a hard time" in leadership. These are not preferences.

- He claims that women have more anxiety, and as such Google should cater to women's anxiety more to help them with tech leadership. That is not "women prefer".

This isn't the memo of someone who says that women just prefer other jobs, this is someone who misused data to try to fit his hypothesis that women's biological differences mean they are not as capable in tech and leadership.

> Your comments have devolved into into a gish gallop. You claimed that his paper was based solely on preference, nothing else.

Wrong. Now you're not just putting words in Damore's mouth, you're putting words in mine as well.

What I wrote was, "The memo did not claim this. The references to innate differences were only in reference to women's choices. At no point did the author claim they women "aren't physically suited" to IT."

He offers a variety of explanation as to why women have different preferences such as attraction to things vs. people, and the distribution (but not aggregate difference) in ability. The point remains, though, his claims were limited to women's preferences. He used differences in the distribution of ability to explain why this difference in preference exist, but his claim is exclusively about women's preferences.

If if you do insist on focusing in on the mere use of the word "ability" absent the context, Damore did not write that women are any worse than men.

> - Damore said that underrepresentation of women in tech and leadership is because of their differing preferences and abilities due to biological causation.

No, the distribution of ability affects preference. This comment explains this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20782914

> - He misrepresents Big5 data to list neuroticism, extraversion, and empathy as biological reasons why women "have a hard time" in leadership - i.e. lack some of the ability requisite for the job.

But crucially, he does not say that this make them worse at tech. Quite the opposite, he says that Google should better recognize extroversion expressed as cooperation in performance reviews. This only hampers them insofar as Google is not creating a good environment, and he's asking google to change that environment.

> - He claims that women have more anxiety, and as such Google should cater to women's anxiety more to help them with tech leadership.

Aagain this is not saying that women are worse at tech. Anxiety can be detrimental if the company does not accommodate it, but it is not a barrier to success if tech if the company does. And he is asking Google to be accommodating.

> This isn't the memo of someone who says that women just prefer other jobs, this is someone who misused data to try to fit his hypothesis that women's biological differences mean they are not as capable in tech and leadership.

False. At no point did Damore write that "women's biological differences mean they are not as capable in tech", and it only hampers them in leadership insofar as Google does not appropriately recognize the way women display extroversion (and he subsequently offers suggestions to address this). You're trying to portray calls for Google to make its environment more friendly to women as saying that women are biologically worse at tech. This is absurd. It also makes people adverse to offering any suggestions to improve the experience of women in tech. Have an idea that you think will make things better for women in tech? Well, you better keep it to yourself otherwise you'll be branded a sexist.

The incorrect statements you are making about the memo are characteristic of someone that read the misleading (and at times outright false) media coverage of the memo. People who read the memo without being primed to see it as sexist do not make these errors. Make no mistake. Damore was not fired for the words he actually wrote. Remember his memo was circulated for about a month without causing a storm. It was only after the media's misrepresentation coverage that he was fired.

> Note that the data he used here is cherry picked from a 90's study that used the Big5 method, which has since been debunked for use in biological differentiation.

Can you expand on this please, cite some references or something?

Wikipedia echoes exactly what you claim Damore wrote:

> For example, women consistently report higher Neuroticism, Agreeableness, warmth (an extraversion facet) and openness to feelings, and men often report higher assertiveness (a facet of extraversion) and openness to ideas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Ge...

(And the study cited is from 2001.)

Wikipedia has your answer right there in the critique section of your own link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Cr...

This peer-reviewed journal article elaborates on it more:

>In other words, the Big Five was developed based on research that used subjective selection of lexical descriptors, and self- and peer assessment of correspondence between (only these) descriptors and observable behavior. And that is what the Big Five represents: a consistent model of how humans reflect individuality using language, no more. There were no considerations of findings in neuroanatomy, neurochemistry, experimental psychology, observations of behavior of people or animals in real situations – none of this was used at the research stage leading to the development of the Big Five. In this sense we can say that the Big Five does not represent the structure of temperament or the structure of biologically based traits, even though lexical perception reflects some elements of it.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3903487/

Basically Damore cherry picked a Big5 study to support his hypothesis that it is biological cause, not bias, being the differentiating factor in gender underrepresentation, but the data doesn't scientifically support that.

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