Bias In Media

[gourimoko]

No, women aren’t inferior intellectually. Furthermore, nobody here nor google guy made that claimed that.

The Google guy actually is claiming this TyGuy..

This is where the argument breaks down.. Because he's clearly saying that women lack the same ability to independently act as software developers due to biological differences that relate to their intellect and their intellectual capability to act in that capacity.

There are biological differences though, and I don’t see why differences is a bad thing.

Biological differences in their capacity to reason with respect to abstract thought and logic? Are men more intellectually capable than women in these areas?

This isn't about right or wrong, or ethics; I'm just trying to understand if people are willing to be upfront and honest about this topic, or are we going to beat around the bush talking about unspecified, opaque, and obfuscated "differences."

Given free choice men and women pick different fields.

But that has nothing to do with Damore's argument. He's specifically talking about people in the same field and why he thinks men excel and are more productive than women.

Google guy to me wrote that as a way to increase the so called diversity for which Google is desperately trying to achieve.

That's only one part of Damore's manifesto, Ty; I'm talking about the part that he actually got fired for -- which relates to his claims about female programmers and their ability to do their jobs..

Google is too concerned with equality of outcome when in reality all there should be is equality of opportunity.

Huh? I'm not sure what you mean here?

 

[Cavatt]

Talking about the makeup of the genders and how it applies to google is a non-starter as the people that work there are undoubtedly outliers in the first place. I imagine most of the people there are highly driven, highly intelligent and in no way resemble an average slice of demographic anyway.

Also any tech nerd that has such an ax to grind with women must report his dating history and ratio of relationships he ended vs gf ended before we can even start the conversation.

 

[David.]

Talking about the makeup of the genders and how it applies to google is a non-starter as the people that work there are undoubtedly outliers in the first place. I imagine most of the people there are highly driven, highly intelligent and in no way resemble an average slice of demographic anyway.

Also any tech nerd that has such an ax to grind with women must report his dating history and ratio of relationships he ended vs gf ended before we can even start the conversation.

I don't think k there's an axe anyone's grinding. He's examining why there's a pay gap and providing explanation. There's no animus towards women in there at all. Everything he wrote was scientifically evidenced.

You can be good at your job and still have higher neuroticism, which women will have more often than men. This could explain part of the pay gap as discussed in the memo. There is nothing controversial about that. It's not sexist and it's scientific consensus.

 

[gourimoko]

I don't think k there's an axe anyone's grinding. He's examining why there's a pay gap and providing explanation. There's no animus towards women in there at all. Everything he wrote was scientifically evidenced.

But none of that is true.

1) He's not actually providing an evidenced explanation.

2) Arguing someone is less intellectual as a product of their gender without any credible evidence to back it up or reason for arguing so is demonstrable animus; no matter how one decides to mask their intent.

3) Nothing of what he wrote was scientifically evidenced. Simply saying it is and slapping some excel charts on a word doc doesn't make for a scientifically evidenced argument.

You don't need to take my word for it, numerous people in the field have commented on this; including a former Google exec. You can also read a pretty good summary at Wired:
https://www.wired.com/story/the-pernicious-science-of-james-damores-google-memo/

And although this write-up is not technical and doesn't get into the fine details about Damore's claims for Google female engineers, it does detail how/why he fails to make an actual scientific argument...

Instead, what Damore is doing is what many YouTubers tend to do, which is to take cherry-picked factoids and try to construct a rationalization for their personal worldviews. That is not science... That's not how you draw scientific conclusions. That's actually the opposite of the scientific method.

You can be good at your job and still have higher neuroticism, which women will have more often than men. This could explain part of the pay gap as discussed in the memo. There is nothing controversial about that. It's not sexist and it's scientific consensus.

"This could explain part of the pay gap as discussed in the memo."

But how? This is a generalization, a jumping to conclusions without doing the hard work, the actual science to get there.... Simply acknowledging that women rate higher than men in neuroticism doesn't say anything about how Google female engineers will perform in their highly specified, highly technical, and highly skilled jobs.

"There is nothing controversial about that."

There absolutely is something controversial about that statement because it's seemingly not based in science, and yet could have very serious ramifications for female STEM workers. Damore's suggestions would mean female employees would be far less desirable for small and mid-sized development operations with tight margins; and extremely undesirable for remote-location software development teams that rely on developer independence and individual productivity.

So there are very real world, non-abstract consequences to this kind of imagining up politically-motivated rationalizations to potential social problems.

"It's not sexist and it's scientific consensus."

That's simply not true... not remotely.

The claim: "women and men think differently" is scientific consensus.

The claim: "women are less suitable than men for software development" is both (1) controversial, and (2) unscientific, in that there is no scientific basis for the claim whatsoever.

 

[Cavatt]

I don't think k there's an axe anyone's grinding. He's examining why there's a pay gap and providing explanation. There's no animus towards women in there at all. Everything he wrote was scientifically evidenced.

You can be good at your job and still have higher neuroticism, which women will have more often than men. This could explain part of the pay gap as discussed in the memo. There is nothing controversial about that. It's not sexist and it's scientific consensus.

Stereotypes are better than other biases was one of his conclusions. It isn't women that he is advocating for, it is conservatives. He is suggesting that Conservatives are the ones getting the short end of the stick because too much time and effort is spent on racial and gender inequalities. He is arguing that biases against conservatives and/or men are the real problem. Their point of view is diverse is his conclusion, therefore they are more deserving of promotions and extra mentoring?

He says they are too afraid to speak up. What about exactly? I'm not sure you can point to what his goal is besides say that the biases that keep women out of programming is just the way it is. We have to disregard countless accounts of sexual harassment and boys culture that women point to as reasons they leave tech. The accounts that came out of Uber that many women say is typical is a good starting point if you would like to research it.

Is it his job to decide what Google's mission is or how they promote people? Really, this is something you talk to your boss about, not something you send to everyone in the company.

 

[Cavatt]

This is one of the best paragraph's from the wired article

All these things change as culture changes. In 1990, Hyde published a meta-analysis on sex differences in mathematical performance among high school students and found significant deficits in girls’ abilities. When she did the same analysis in 2008, the difference had disappeared. In the 1980s, “girls in high school didn’t take as many years of math as boys did,” Hyde says. “Today that gap in course taking has closed. Girls take as many classes as boys do, and they’re scoring as well. What we once thought was a serious difference has disappeared.”

Meaning you can't just look at what is and determine that it is that way because of sex differences. Why didn't he include this study in his memo?

 

[David.]

Stereotypes are better than other biases was one of his conclusions.

which statement are you looking at?

It isn't women that he is advocating for, it is conservatives. He is suggesting that Conservatives are the ones getting the short end of the stick because too much time and effort is spent on racial and gender inequalities.

it isn't quite arguing that unless I'm missing a part. He's arguing AGAINST a progressive ideology that has been incorporated by Google. He's saying there are some drawbacks to this and because they have committed to it they aren't seeing the whole picture, rather an segmented picture through a certain lens, and there are negative reprocussions.

 

[Whittaker]

Everybody's words are hate speech to someone sufficiently distant in ideology.
Silencing the non-violent solely because their ideas are distasteful to the majority is a sign of a weak and fearful society.
It is also futile. Ideas will always be heard and the rightness or wrongness of those ideas will be determined in the secrecy of millions of minds, independent of the censors.
If anything, the banning of ideas makes those ideas more attractive.
"Why don't they want me to hear it?" the people wonder.

Don't trust anyone who seeks to limit your access to political ideas. Be your own censor.

 

[Cavatt]

which statement are you looking at?


it isn't quite arguing that unless I'm missing a part. He's arguing AGAINST a progressive ideology that has been incorporated by Google. He's saying there are some drawbacks to this and because they have committed to it they aren't seeing the whole picture, rather an segmented picture through a certain lens, and there are negative reprocussions.

• Spend more time on the many other types of biases besides stereotypes. Stereotypes are much more accurate and responsive to new information than the training suggests (I’m not advocating for using stereotypes, I [sic] just pointing out the factual inaccuracy of what’s said in the training).

He's not advocating for it, but stereotypes are real.

 

[Sebastian]

I don't know if it is animus or some awkward-as-fuck nerd with borderline Aspergers not realizing that he is being offensive.

Guy was a PhD student at Harvard so he is really smart. A lot of really smart people can't communicate socially. Or take cues.

 

[David.]

• Spend more time on the many other types of biases besides stereotypes. Stereotypes are much more accurate and responsive to new information than the training suggests (I’m not advocating for using stereotypes, I [sic] just pointing out the factual inaccuracy of what’s said in the training).

He's not advocating for it, but stereotypes are real.

I think he probably has a meaning of stereotype worth exploring.

Like, it's a stereotype that women, generally, want more work life balance than men, which you can certainly make an argument for. It's hardly incendiary. But if people want it to be, they'll see it that way.

 

[gourimoko]

I think he probably has a meaning of stereotype worth exploring.

Like, it's a stereotype that women, generally, want more work life balance than men, which you can certainly make an argument for. It's hardly incendiary. But if people want it to be, they'll see it that way.

Wanting more work life balance than men has nothing to do with punching a clock for 40 hours at Google and being a successful programmer...

Again, there's no specificity, no science, nothing actual empirical, measured or tested or even falsifiable about these generalizations.

Why rely on calling this kind of conjecture .. "science?"

 

[Cavatt]

I think he probably has a meaning of stereotype worth exploring.

Like, it's a stereotype that women, generally, want more work life balance than men, which you can certainly make an argument for. It's hardly incendiary. But if people want it to be, they'll see it that way.

Check this out

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/12/women-considered-better-coders-hide-gender-github

WTF I thought men were clearly better at jobs that deal with things?

 

[Cavatt]

Wanting more work life balance than men has nothing to do with punching a clock for 40 hours at Google and being a successful programmer...

Again, there's no specificity, no science, nothing actual empirical, measured or tested or even falsifiable about these generalizations.

Why rely on calling this kind of conjecture .. "science?"

I mean this is the problem. He is literally extrapolating studies done with Monkeys to say that addressing gender Biases is a waste of time. The application of the science would not even be entertained by those that performed the studies.

 

[David.]

Check this out

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/12/women-considered-better-coders-hide-gender-github

WTF I thought men were clearly better at jobs that deal with things?

Did he claim men are better at coding than women?

He did say men are more interested in systems, which is supported by mountains of evidence. But these aren't the same things.