I don’t see what’s wrong with calling it political... it surely isn’t scientific. The opinions he expressed seem like naive political theories based on his understanding of gender and society, which is an extremely nuanced topic.
I realize asking you to debunk the whole memo may be a bit much, so can you just point to the single most consequential unscientific part of it?
I read the memo and was horrified by how badly people treated him because of it. To me it seems like a rational and well evidenced document.
IMO, that kind of discussion is frankly uninteresting and unhelpful.
A paper on neuroticism in older women compared to older men - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2031866/
"testing gender differences at the level of latent traits revealed higher levels of Neuroticism (d = .52) and Agreeableness (d = .35) in older women than older men. The consistency of these findings with prior work in younger samples attests to the stability of gender differentiation on Neuroticism and Agreeableness across the lifespan."
A paper trying to asses the genetic component to personality traits - http://midus.wisc.edu/findings/pdfs/1779.pdf
"Research has found observed phenotypic sex differences in the BFM. Women, for instance, tend to have higher mean levels of Agreeableness and Neuroticism than men (Chapman, Duberstein, Sörensen, & Lyness, 2007; Costa, Terracciano, & McCrae, 2001; Feingold, 1994)."
A paper looking at personality trait differences across the world and in other cultures - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ijop.12265
"In terms of the personality traits known as the Big Five, men tend to score lower than women in neuroticism and agreeableness"
A paper looking at gender differences in neuroticism and extraversion across 30 different countries - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/14018323_Gender_Dif...
"Women obtained higher means than men on neuroticism in all countries, and men obtained higher means than women on psychoticism in 34 countries and on extraversion in 30 countries."
A paper on neuroticism differences in men and women among college students - http://mpsi.umm.ac.id/files/file/723%20-%20728%20Djudiyah%20...
"Table 1 showed that there was significant difference of neuroticism level between males and females (t-test = 2.138, df =49, P<0.05). Males tended to have lower neuroticism personality level (Mean=111,833) than females (Mean=127.303). Thus the hypothesis that males have less neuroticism level than females was accepted."
I could go on for a long time just finding different studies on this topic and quoting their results, but there is no need to. That women have higher rates of neuroticism is likely the least debatable and most scientific thing Damore asserted. Can you find a single study or paper where it was concluded that women had anything but higher levels of neuroticism?
I trust that you will either have one or more such references, or you will admit that this claim is scientific and not really debatable. If you admit that, I would expect some revision of your general opinion given that this is an example of one of what you believed to be one of the more significant things Damore got wrong.
Additionally, dealing with discrimination can lead to self-esteem issues, which are tied to neuroticism.
When thinking about this you should ask what your priors are. If neuroticism is widely, across ages and cultures, found to be higher in women and men, and it is, then wouldn't your prior, without a Google specific personality survey, be that Google women likely have higher neuroticism than men?
To me it seems like an impossibly high standard to expect Damore to do a personality survey of Google to figure out if this oft repeated neuroticism result also holds true for Google employees.
Keep in mind that Damore is a single person giving feedback to a diversity course. He doesn't have the resources, time, or mandate to survey Google's employees to test whether or not this general trend holds. Perhaps, before acting on Damore's recommendations it would be a good idea to do some tests on Google's employees to see if general trends hold true in their specific subset - but that is a really different claim than the initial claim that Damore was unscientific.
If Damore had written that smoking causes lung problems and therefore Google should start taking some actions to stop employees from smoking, it might be merited to do further tests to see if the link between smoking and lung problems holds true for Google employees as it does for people in general. It would not be merited to call Damore unscientific because he had not yet done that research prior to making his suggestion.
Do you find this statement offensive? Should I not say this because it might hurt men's feelings?
Or is it only wrong to say something negative about a race/gender if it implies something negative about certain underrepresented genders and races?
>Neuroticism is one of the Big Five higher-order personality traits in the study of psychology. Individuals who score high on neuroticism are more likely than average to be moody and to experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness.[1] People who are neurotic respond worse to stressors and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening and minor frustrations as hopelessly difficult. They are often self-conscious and shy, and they may have trouble controlling urges and delaying gratification.
Is there truly a common thread between these various emotions that ties them all together as neuroticism, or is neuroticism an arbitrarily chosen set of emotions? It's far from clear to me that these listed emotions have much to do with each other in the general case. If I'm feeling fear or worry because the sidewalk I'm walking on is covered in ice, that's not related in any way to anger or envy. Does it only count when these emotions are irrational? What then does it mean for these emotions to be irrational? If I am alone and feel lonely, is that irrational? Is loneliness only indicative of neuroticism when you're actually surrounded by your friends? Maybe you'd feel lonely in such a situation because none of your friends can related to you about something you've been worrying about. Is there any truly objective measure of the rationality of an emotion? I don't think so.
Wikipedia goes on to say that there's a lot of disagreement over what this term means:
> Neuroticism is a trait in many models within personality theory, but there is a lot of disagreement on its definition. Some define it as a tendency for quick arousal when stimulated and slow relaxation from arousal, especially in concern to negative emotional arousal; others define it as emotional instability and negativity or maladjustment, in contrast to emotional stability and positivity, or good adjustment. Others yet define it as lack of self-control, poor ability to manage psychological stress, and a tendency to complain.[6]
It says that 'personality theory' is a scientific study, but I'm a bit skeptical of that.
Yes. It's something that shows up in one specific factor analysis as one of five dimensions (i.e. parameters) that effectively summarize your answers to a bunch of questions about personality. Different analyses/models come up with different parameterizations, e.g. the HEXACO model has six parameters, with the Emotionality factor picking up the bulk of "Neuroticism" from the Big 5, but some ending up under Honesty-Humility (reversed) or even under Agreeableness (reversed)!
Suppose for example a woman lives in an environment that's dangerous for her but not so for men. On the questionnaire, she reports that she often feels afraid. Is that answer considered evidence of neuroticism? It seems to me that it shouldn't be, but you'd need to examine the individual circumstances on a case-by-case basis to tease out the difference between rational fear and neurotic fear. From a logistics standpoint I don't see how that analysis could be done at scale, hence my skepticism that any of this is actually scientific.
The problem is when you synthesize ideas from research without expertise. The problem wasn’t his citations. It was the conclusions he drew from the citations and the policy proposals that he made in his document.
“It has citations” is not a valid reason to consider something well argued and scientific. Even flat earthers include citations.
A recurring pattern in this debate is that people criticize Damore for a lack of expertise. Which is odd given that Damore, a Harvard Masters Degree holder in Systems Biology, is clearly conversant with the research and the context he is giving advice in. Furthermore, I have yet to see anyone point out a substantive specific error that Damore made, its just general things like "he lacks expertise."
Tell me, what is the most obvious or least controversial example of Damore's lack of expertise in terms of his argument?
Oh boy. I've got a PhD in CS from one of the best programs in the world. I'm wildly unqualified to synthesize research in another field and would surely make terrible errors if I tried to connect the dots between citations, especially if I started with my connections and went looking for associated citations. Having a familiarity with research is absolutely not evidence that his conclusions will be strongly considered.
This discussion has been had a thousand times. People he cited have responded to his writing. There can be no productive discussion about "were his conclusions correct or not" at this point.
You think the authors Damore cited rejected him. Perhaps you have an example of that. I haven't seen anything beyond the authors agreeing with Damore's interpretation of the facts and saying they don't know about the conclusions. It's obviously not very compelling given that Damore was metaphorically tarred on feathered on social media and fired, so researchers saying they "don't know" about the conclusions might be because they genuinely don't know or might be because they don't want to invite backlash of their own.
I cannot personally derive a conclusion about Damore from the literature. What I can do is ask world experts about their thoughts. In general, this is an effective way of developing reasonable opinions about the state of research. I'm friends with a few social psych faculty who study workplaces and let's just say that they don't hold Damore in high regard.
I'm super uninterested in having an argument about the merits of his essay since that discussion has been had thousands of times and no progress can be made. But "well he has a master's degree from harvard" is among the least compelling arguments in his favor.
If world experts have weighed in on Damore, link to their opinions. I'm happy to discuss those.
Right, so you personally disagree with his conclusions, thus it must be "problematic".
Unless you're going to elaborate as to what specifically you find problematic, there's not really much to discuss here and this is a pretty useless discussion.
As with the SRE who tried to play epidemiologist the other day it pays to be skeptical about the evidence and opinions presented even if they are delivered with citations and in an academic tone. Especially when both are playing far outside their fields of expertise.
I haven't seen a single comment in this post disagreeing with the memo that actually critiques any specific points in the memo. Every single criticism I've seen is more along the lines of "but he was being sexist". Ok, can't argue with that I guess.