Really? Do people (who actually read the study) really think it was sexist? It stated the obvious - that there are differences in interests in men compared to women by aggregate.
We are now living in an age where it is simply not possible to discuss some topics without someone twisting the discussion into one of the various deadly sins, and everyone who engages becomes guilty of it by association.
For example, in the USA if you are in favor of less immigration, the assumption is that you are operating from a place of xenophobia and racism, because there is no other possible explanation in the universe from having those views. If you state your views coherently, demonstrated that the concerns are rooted in other factors entirely - then the bogeymen of subconscious and unconscious biases and inability to confront deeply rooted bigotry and revealed as the causes, much like the spirits of evil who possessed you when you said things to criticize orthodoxy in the past.
Likewise if one wants to discuss topics like representation across groups, one is inevitably branded a heretic for a heterodox view, regardless of the reasoning.
It's really terrible that this kind of attitude is so widespread in the west.
I think the main issue with his memo is the implication that diversity efforts were, at the time, problematic. The truth is, with such low diversity numbers even with the diversity programs, it's likely that any subpar candidates admitted probably equaled the subpar candidates admitted into Google at large. The numbers for gender diversity are even more skewed when viewed through the lens of the engineering department (which is the one relevant to the memo), which is unfortunately not available from the google diversity site like it used to be.
You can see the diversity breakdown for yourself here: https://diversity.google/annual-report/representation/
You can also see a longer analysis Damore's liberal assumptions here: https://www.wired.com/story/the-pernicious-science-of-james-...
Whats more, this has had progressives crawling all over it with arguments including "Just allow the slander to go on unanswered", "its someone else's definition of sexist so he's sexist", "I heard he does other evil things" and attempts to distract from the point.
At this stage vaguery without clear examples can be dismissed as nothing at best or marked as evidence of bad faith debate driven by religious compulsion at worst.
Go on... Demonstrate.
You go check the statistics so you don't accuse me of cherry picking or anything:
Go right ahead and look at all scientific studies you can find. See if men and women score exactly the same or if there are sometimes huge differences.
Assume for a minute we all agree that there are observable iq differences and observable differences in likelyhood one ventures into computer science.
Then what? You've claimed that this is due to biolgical factors not social ones. Prove it.
We're talking about biological differences in either cognitive ability or interest in engineering/CS.
The well understood answer to your question is that there was a split in gender roles at about the time agriculture was adopted, with men working outside and women doing indoor tasks. This led to a breadwinner/homemaker split across gender lines which impacted the way genders were conventionally taught.
This extended to higher education opportunities, which in the US for example only really began to be open to women in the mid to late 1800s.
Note how none of this has anything to do with any cognitive ability that women might have had. It extends from the fact that men were superior agricultural fieldworkers thousands of years ago.
A) You start out with "either cognitive ability or interest in engineering/CS", but by your last paragraph you're down to "cognitive ability" alone. Damore's thesis was, AFAICR, mainly about the "interest" bit. Does this divergence in what you are talking about vs what he was mean anything, and if so what?
B) > The well understood answer to your question is that there was a split in gender roles at about the time agriculture was adopted, with men working outside and women doing indoor tasks.
And this split... Just happened? Or was it maybe due to differences in, well, how interested people of different sexes on average were/are in different kinds of tasks? Or why else were men "superior agricultural fieldworkers thousands of years ago"?
Well, ok, fair enough, but if that's the case then the correct response was, "I can see why you think that, but have you considered..." not immediate banishment.
I don’t recall hearing about this at the time. Do you have any links to what this was about. I tried to Google, but just got results related to more recent Google removals.
The goal was to find how to make the job more attractive to female developers. If the difference exists, then in this context the distinction does not matter.
But why should that be a goal? Is there any inherent value in having all jobs be equally attractive to everybody? If so, where are all the efforts to make jobs like garbage collection less male-dominated?
This guy either didn't read it or he's easily influenced by cancel mobs.
In other words, if enough people feel something is sexist then it's in a company's best interest to agree with them.
It just demonstrates a collective insanity at the organisation in question.
They're welcome to put their heads in the sand and claim whatever irrational bs they desire is "unhelpful" and "sexist" but that doesn't make it so.
I think firing Damore for an opinion shows what cowards they are and everything that is wrong with the current woke movement: don't talk about new ideas or possible solutions, don't open up uncomfortable discussions, only bow to mob led slogans otherwise you're burned at the stake.
My new accountant agrees that $1+$1=$3, creating a much less hostile work environment. S/He even practises intersectionality wrt profit vs debt - me and my employees have never been happier!
That's to say: This isn't just the chaotic whisperings of twitter, but many complicit media outlets repeating this.
At that stage if you can't reflect on your behaviour and that of those on your side, well there either is no hope for you or you're just further lying along with your fellow ideologues.
I said "our tribe" isn't saying this, where "our tribe" is a quote of the original comment.
This is consistent with any of these statements:
- our tribe say the opposite
- our tribe say something different entirely
- our tribe have no consensus on the issue / there is no "our tribe"
It's difficult not to make such errors because those of our tribal ancestors who did not immediately and unconditionally support the tribe died. Those who did, lived.
If you want to help, pointing out which faction is making the error is not as helpful as insisting on the principled truth no matter which faction is correct. It's a dangerous road, because humans are scary, genocidal apes.
* > - our tribe have no consensus on the issue / there is no "our tribe"
Agreed. If one can lift one's perceptions out of partisanship, there is only a unified group of people who all (with a few psychopathic exceptions) want the best for themselves, their families, and society as a whole, whose only disagreement is as to method of getting there. And nevertheless, these small disagreements can easily magnify and become physically violent, because humans are scary apes who will elevate tribal affiliation even above literal perception. So, for some people, they absolutely have a tribe, and if you disagree with it, you are them.
Which also doesn't work, precisely because of the "tribal error" being made, that removes all nuance of principle.
> whose only disagreement is as to method of getting there
This isn't really true. as a group of people, our circumstances are different, and hence we are motivated towards different, non-unified goals. It's hard to fight zero-sum instincts.
> The text preemptively claims that people will reject it because they are too politically correct.
The text was right.
> From the beginning it was a slanted criticism of Google’s hiring practices.
Yes, how does this relate to the original point?
Weird how a lot of academics don't agree.
Even in the legal system "expert testimony" can be a dubious process - in the court of press-media there is no bar to cherry-picking.
Yeah, so? You say that as if the fact that a lot of people did exactly that for exactly that reason somehow shows some flaw with the text.
It wasn't a study, it was basically a MGTOW chain letter. Anyone who has experience in science knows that the arguments it purported to show were cherry picked nonsense. A conclusion looking for evidence.
And yes, obviously people read it that way. He was fired because he wouldn't stop arguing about it, remember?
People acting like sharing a "study" that [minorities] are intellectually inferior is just normal behavior for an engineer. Who the hell does that?
Various people keep claiming that but there doesn't appear to be any proof of it.
> People acting like sharing a "study" that [minorities] are intellectually inferior is just normal behavior for an engineer.
Quote the part where he says this.
I don't need to read it for you. If you walked away from that and didn't notice that the entire thesis is that [minorities] are worse engineers than [majority] then you just didn't read it
And beyond that, it's a moot point, because even if you don't see it, plenty of other people read it that way. Enough people read it that way that he was fired for it. It doesn't matter which citation I make. It's been dissected by hundreds of people in excruciating detail. Go read one of those ready analyses for the gory details and citations. It will be more intellectually fulfilling than rehashing it here again
> And beyond that, it's a moot point, because even if you don't see it, plenty of other people read it that way. Enough people read it that way that he was fired for it.
Well you personally are absolutely certain that a document definitely contains racist statements despite being completely incapable of quoting even one. Seems this is an affliction that can affect quite a few people. Well seeing as that's the "logic" you can muster perhaps we should put some sort of protections in place to the shipping industry. After all quite a few people are adamant the world is flat and we don't want to see cruise liners falling off the edge of the world now do we.
Cause there are never culture-wide delusions?
If this is being "rehash[ed] here again" it should be easy enough to find a quote from the previous it was "hashed", no?
I don't think he's evil or sexist for writing what he did, but I strongly disagree with what he wrote and even more disappointed he went on to become a poster child for Fox News
Here is the original memo for your convenience: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...