The obvious societal question to ask is why it's so embarrassing that one of their employees didn't bother to tow the "diversity is our strength" line and openly mentioned that there are innate cognitive differences between men and women. One would think that many of the published reactions to his writing should be more embarrassing than the memo itself.
"His Agenda"? It was a internal memo outlying his concerns that there was a certain political culture that valued diversity over ability, and that silencing conservative opinions was encouraged. It doesn't sound like a sort of "free and open workplace" that Google seems to pride itself on. You can't do well in the marketplace without people on your team that are skilled, and also have a diverse range of opinions, open debate is how weak arguments are exposed to critique, and how peoples opinions evolve and progress.
Nothing about what he's mentioned about the company's culture, or its reaction to this memo screams "progressive" to me. It seems more akin to Stalinist Russia, where the party line is towed, and dissenters aren't encouraged to air their concerns, but driven into exile or shot.
Last edited by Strangewayes; 2017-08-11 at 01:35 PM.
After running the experiment, we ended up with some rather surprising results. Contrary to what we expected (and probably contrary to what you expected as well!), masking gender had no effect on interview performance with respect to any of the scoring criteria (would advance to next round, technical ability, problem solving ability). If anything, we started to notice some trends in the opposite direction of what we expected: for technical ability, it appeared that men who were modulated to sound like women did a bit better than unmodulated men and that women who were modulated to sound like men did a bit worse than unmodulated women.
We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews. Here’s what happened.
Look I'm not trying to be argumentative but it gets really annoying when people claim they have an unquestionable knowledge on the subject. I just gave you a list of studies that contradict your opinion. Read them if you want, or don't.
I'm just trying to stop misinformation. Lots of people just lead with the emotions on this subject. The science doesn't seem to agree. If you give me studies (not articles) that contradict what I say, I'll gladly look and let them shape my opinion.
- Christopher HitchensPopulists (and "national socialists") look at the supposedly secret deals that run the world "behind the scenes". Child's play. Except that childishness is sinister in adults.
That is really the problem though isn't it? None of this is conclusive. Which is why all of this "majority opinion" is pure dumbshittery. The flat out fanatical response, and those who think said fanatical response is ok, is telling.
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You people should get a load of this horrendous alt right screed!
Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O.
This comment from Brooks shouldn't have made it past a competent editor:
No. Not at all. Conflating "genetic" and "innate" is a sufficiently large mistake as to indicate spectacular naïveté about biology. While gender differences are (perhaps) rooted in the genetic difference involved, this isn't the primary how these differences appear mechanistically - instead, it's primarily hormonal, as shown in individuals with androgen hyper or hyposensitivity. In fact, these sorts of hormonal abnormalities are one of the key ways that we can clearly show that male and female personality and preference differences are substantially biological rather than just cultural.He agreed that there are large cultural biases but also pointed to a genetic component.[emphasis mine]
See this paper, for example:
I realize this isn't the central point Brooks is making, but it is central to the Google memo. Gender difference denialists are absurdly anti-scientific in their insistence on blank slatism as an axiom. Without understanding how ideologically driven this set of beliefs is, it's not possible to address just how absurd the response to Damore's badthink is.There is considerable interest in understanding women’s underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. Career choices have been shown to be driven in part by interests, and gender differences in those interests have generally been considered to result from socialization. We explored the contribution of sex hormones to career-related interests, in particular studying whether prenatal androgens affect interests through psychological orientation to Things versus People. We examined this question in individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), who have atypical exposure to androgens early in development, and their unaffected siblings (total N = 125 aged 9 to 26 years). Females with CAH had more interest in Things versus People than did unaffected females, and variations among females with CAH reflected variations in their degree of androgen exposure. Results provide strong support for hormonal influences on interest in occupations characterized by working with Things versus People.
While I understand the point that you are making I don't entirely agree. You are quibbling over specific definitions that your average layman are not going to understand. Which given the nature of editors, and this oped writer, I doubt that either of them even know the specifics well enough to know why that point should be made. Hell, it is half the reason why so much of the coverage of this issue has been the complete shitshow that it is. It is why we got articles like the "we need to stop equating science with truth" and at least some of the troll posts throughout this thread. Though to be honest I was surprised by the outright admissions to racism.
- Christopher HitchensPopulists (and "national socialists") look at the supposedly secret deals that run the world "behind the scenes". Child's play. Except that childishness is sinister in adults.
Sure, that's exactly what I'm getting at though - nearly everyone commenting on the matter is grossly ignorant of the underlying biology and they don't really even care to begin learning. As a result, the commentary itself just breaks out neatly along tribal lines, with the blue tribe being deeply offended by anti-egalitarian ideas and the red tribe being pissed off that someone was fired for not toeing the diversity line. By not bothering to understand the actual evidence involved, Brooks provides an easy out for critics - he doesn't actually know what he's talking about. Brooks is importantly correct here:
But he's guilty of the same sin! Obviously his guilt isn't as severe since he's not firing anyone, but it's pretty striking that he doesn't really care about the biology here either.Of course subtlety is in hibernation in modern America. The third player in the drama is Google’s diversity officer, Danielle Brown. She didn’t wrestle with any of the evidence behind Damore’s memo. She just wrote his views “advanced incorrect assumptions about gender.” This is ideology obliterating reason.
Anyway, Brooks on the whole looks to be basically right about the human interactions here, I'm just perpetually annoyed by the disregard for knowledge and expertise that's displayed in the media and everything about the Damore incident is a perfect flashpoint for that.
I wouldn't say 'exploited'. As there is still the thread of believers running through 'social science' that fully believe in blank slates and 'making people better'. Even though their models consistently fail to make predictions. It is almost like faith has replaced actual science for many.
All these people saying he is a conservative. He was a liberal. Uninformed slugs.
A (slightly) more charitable interpretation is that they take perfect natural equality of abilities and preferences across all groups as both an axiom and a moral imperative. As such, any observed outcome that's inconsistent with that axiom more or less has to be the result of culture, discrimination, or outright oppression. I think this axiom is obviously wrong, but if it's an axiom that you're filtering all of the available evidence through, the conclusions they reach make much more sense.