“Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber” memo goes viral, usual suspects outraged

RDM_83 again · 12-08-2017 03:36PM

In relation to the idea that the Social Sciences are extremely non-politically diverse this is a factual statement.

For instance, recent surveys find that 58–66%
of social science professors in the United States identify
as liberals, while only 5–8% identify as conservatives, and
that self-identified Democrats outnumber Republicans by
ratios of at least 8 to 1 (Gross & Simmons 2007; Klein &
Stern 2009; Rothman & Lichter 2008). A similar situation
is found in the humanities where surveys find that 52–
77% of humanities professors identify as liberals, while
only 4–8% identify as conservatives, and that self-identified
Democrats outnumber Republicans by ratios of at least 5:1
(Gross & Simmons 2007; Rothman & Lichter 2008). In
psychology, the imbalance is slightly stronger: 84% identify
as liberal, whereas only 8% identify as conservative. That is
a ratio of 10.5 to 1.

http://rhodesdiversity.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Haidt-Diversity-2015.pdf

Third, conservatives fear negative consequences of revealing their political beliefs to their colleagues. Finally, they are right to do so: In decisions ranging from paper reviews to hiring, many social and personality psychologists said that they would discriminate against openly conservative colleagues. The more liberal respondents were, the more they said they would discriminate.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1745691612448792?journalCode=ppsa

The first paper might highlight part of the reason this current thread is occurring

There are many academic fields in which surveys find
self-identified conservatives to be about as numerous as self-identified liberals: typically business, computer science, engineering, health sciences, and technical/vocational fields

Companies like Google appear to be applying the philosophy, theories and experts from fields that are have a high degree of political/philisophical "group think" to staff that have had their academic experiences within ironically (considering how STEM/IT/Eng is often viewed) a more open and diverse environment to different opinions.

A lot of the time this type of expert opinion is brought to bear upon groups that are disadvantaged in terms of social cachet, education or wealth, whats happening here is kickback from persons that have equal (but different focussed) educations who do have an understand of methodology, theory and evidence based processes.

Knex* · 12-08-2017 03:46PM

Bob24 wrote: »

Apparently those are also popping up around Google offices in the US. Very bad PR sequence for them.

"I'm feeling fucked" is a nice touch

Sand · 12-08-2017 04:50PM

Wibbs wrote: »

It kinda has, though not such a surprise. I'd still think they were sensible to fire him. They'd have been slaughtered in the media if they hadn't for a start. Plus his work relationships would have been strained.

They're still getting slaughtered, and sued on top of it. Its one of those situations where people are going to be unhappy no matter what is done, so they might as well get attacked for doing the right thing and not fire him.

Macha wrote: »

Er, what exactly was he hoping to achieve with the memo? He works in an industry that is already dominated by men, and in a company that has a track record for discriminating against women? What was the point?

He has made it clear. He attended a diversity course. He didn't agree with the positions taken by the presenters. He was invited to provide feedback, he wrote up the memo as feed back and sent it back to the presenters. There was little or no response, so a few weeks later he forwarded it on to an internal 'Sceptics' group asking them to evaluate and disprove his arguments.

The 'Sceptics' group were the ones who decided to make the memo viral, as part of Googles internal culture of bullying.

How do you think it makes the women working in Google, or thinking of applying to Google feel? He calls women neurotic for God's sake.

Distressed? Anxious? Worried?

You're presenting women as neurotic. You're claiming they cant handle the stress of working with someone who holds different views to them. I'd say most women can handle a memo that references publicly available studies on populations, much in the same way as men can handle the knowledge that 80% of people diagnosed with autistic disorders are male, and therefore men are more prone to autism.

Do you disagree?

professore wrote: »

It's clear many of the responders on here either didn't read the memo, or if they did, completely misunderstood it.

JMNolan wrote: »

Literally absolutely no one has said this, where are you getting this rubbish from?

Yes, its incredible how media have misrepresented the memo and the author. Its practically Goebblels style propaganda - lie often enough, loudly enough, brazenly enough.

Its very clear the vast majority of critics of the memo haven't read it.

Samaris wrote: »

I read the article with Word open and typed six pages of commentary on his points. In the interests of not boring everyone to death I might just includes bits of it. My take-home points are more or less as follows;

Difficult without knowing exactly what the “high priority queue” and “special treatment” is.

Again, needs more explanation.

His suggestions are a bit unhelpful as they are not generally explained.

Just as a general point, its worth noting that he wrote the memo for a small target audience who were delivering the diversity training in Google. He never intended it for widespread distribution inside Google let alone outside it. Therefore he is going to assume the Google diversity trainers are familiar with many of the items he is raising. Its not fair (imo) to criticise him for not making it understandable for an audience it was not intended for.

Uhm, how. What does that mean? I assume it is along the lines of “don’t treat diversity as the most important factor”. Fair enough. What is he actually suggesting doing though – get rid of classes that assist those with various obstacles against them? Or introduce those classes for everyone that may need them? Bring everyone up to the same level, or knock the supports out from under those that have more obvious ones? He complains about the results of having problems with the policies, but does not really suggest an alternative.

When he says de-moralise diversity, I took it to mean to stop thinking about diversity in subjective/moralistic terms but instead in objective terms: as a benefit to the company, to be measured against a cost, whilst accepting certain realities about different preferences.

'Diversity' is a bit like 'innovation' in corporate culture these days. Its become a good thing to sprinkle into presentations, press releases and training courses. Everyone is for it. Everyone wants to have it on their CV and be associated with it. Nobody thinks about it.

Bob24 · 12-08-2017 04:55PM

I was quite surprised to see the NYT publishing a very critical opinion piece on the way Google handled this (as another poster mentioned before, this incident is just one event amongst others but the ideological impact of these things shouldn't be underestimated as it seems to bring slightly more variety to the tune coming out of media which would not have allowed it just a year ago): https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/opinion/sundar-pichai-google-memo-diversity.html

Sundar Pichai is taking the hardest hit:

The New York Times wrote:

"Which brings us to Pichai, the supposed grown-up in the room. He could have wrestled with the tension between population-level research and individual experience. He could have stood up for the free flow of information. Instead he joined the mob. He fired Damore and wrote, “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not O.K.”

That is a blatantly dishonest characterization of the memo. Damore wrote nothing like that about his Google colleagues. Either Pichai is unprepared to understand the research (unlikely), is not capable of handling complex data flows (a bad trait in a C.E.O.) or was simply too afraid to stand up to a mob.

Regardless which weakness applies, this episode suggests he should seek a nonleadership position. We are at a moment when mobs on the left and the right ignore evidence and destroy scapegoats. That’s when we need good leaders most."

fash · 12-08-2017 05:01PM

Academic wrote: »

wes wrote: »

He finally removed the claims of having a PhD from LinkedIn, as per wired:

Wow. In addition to his other problems he's a fraud.

I understand that he started but didn't complete the PhD and had the information up on LinkedIn as soon as he started the course (it was Harvard after all). He was just slow to remove the information when he dropped out ( whether unintentionally or not). Fraud sounds rather harsh in the context.

Samaris · 12-08-2017 05:35PM

Yeah, that's quite true and why I wasn't commenting on the bits that I could not know about.

He has some points, but he has an awful lot of guesswork and opinions that he rather wants to be acted on. He made it clear that his biggest suggestion that could actively help was already implemented, and the rest was more "this is a problem" without that much indication of how to solve it, based on rather dodgily applied science. I am not saying that he is -wrong-, per se, but there isn't really the research out there to indicate one way or another just how different men and women, all other factors being controlled for, are. The resources to research that don't exist yet because there has not yet been a long enough period of actual equality - we are still prodding the tail-ends of it. His approach felt like a step backwards, tbh, relying on factors that could have several different causes and indicating that they are down to X cause and therefore issues should be solved with that in mind. Problem is, he has no actual proof of his preferred cause.

I more or less agree that he wasn't attempting to denigrate his colleagues, just look for help for his own cohort. It is unfortunate that he chose to spend so much time talking about the perceived differences between men and women in his examples, as well as actually a bit irrelevant in the end, at least in terms of how much of his argument he devoted to it.

In short, while it may have been innocent on his part, it wasn't very well handled. He had some decent starting points, but he followed a bit of a wild rabbit chase that didn't really help his argument. It shouldn't have gone viral though, that was never going to go well for anyone involved.

hatrickpatrick · 12-08-2017 05:50PM

I can foresee a time in the not too distant future in which there is a fight over expanding the First Amendment to cover censorship and coercion by private entities as well as governmental ones. That's ultimately what this entire saga and those which preceded it are all about. In a world in which so many publicly accessible platforms are controlled by private corporations, the idea that only the government can engage in meaningful censorship and therefore people don't need protection from censorship by private companies is rapidly becoming farcically obsolete.

Bob24 · 12-08-2017 05:58PM

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

I can foresee a time in the not too distant future in which there is a fight over expanding the First Amendment to cover censorship and coercion by private entities as well as governmental ones. That's ultimately what this entire saga and those which preceded it are all about. In a world in which so many publicly accessible platforms are controlled by private corporations, the idea that only the government can engage in meaningful censorship and therefore people don't need protection from censorship by private companies is rapidly becoming farcically obsolete.

Totally agree. But then the problem will be to define what censorship is.

Delete something because it is labeled as "fake news", "offensive content", or "hate speech" and you can claim it is not censorship. But while there will be indisputable cases of fake news or hate speech, in many cases that label will be a subjective decision not everyone agrees with.

Also when you have huge quantity of information available, the portail you use to sort that information for you and make sense out of it has huge control over what you see or not. Not deleting anything but always presenting you with similar content while burying another type of content is not technically censorship but can have a huge influence on what information you are accessing.

Samaris · 12-08-2017 06:24PM

Bob24 wrote: »

Totally agree. But them the problem will be to define what censors it. Delete something because it is labeled as "fake news" or "hate speech" and you can claim it is not censorship. But while there will be indisputable case of fake news or hate speech, in many cases it will be a subjective decision not everyone agrees with.

Yeah, that will be a major issue. Although one thing that does drive me into a bit of a frothing rage at the moment is the whole concept of facts and opinions being the same thing and worth as much as each other. Alternative facts.../twitch.

Definitely something that can very easily go too far in either direction.

odyssey06 · 12-08-2017 06:29PM

Just in the act of which facts your report and which facts you do not report there is a whole world of subjectivity and bias.
Whether I run a story about homelessness or crime on the front page, for example.

Taken further, I can say that a man died because the platform he was standing on gave way.
This is a fact.
The truth is that the man was hanged.

Samaris · 12-08-2017 06:56PM

odyssey06 wrote: »

Just in the act of which facts your report and which facts you do not report there is a whole world of subjectivity and bias.
Whether I run a story about homelessness or crime on the front page, for example.

Taken further, I can say that a man died because the platform he was standing on gave way.
This is a fact.
The truth is that the man was hanged.

That example has given me the urge to try write a full "newspaper-style" article about someone being hanged while trying to convey accidental and tragic death due to a platform giving way.

Bob24 · 12-08-2017 07:04PM

Samaris wrote: »

Definitely something that can very easily go too far in either direction.

Yes agree it can be either way. And in both cases it need to be watched closely.

One example of practical thing which is already there and worries me is Youtube's latest and fairly sneaky "hate speech" policy (our friend Google again): even if it is not in breach of their terms of use they now reserve the right to de-monetise and de-emphasise content which they feel is "hate speech" (with no clear definition of what hate speech means, no clear justification given when they do it, and *I think* no notification to content publisher when it happens).

So in short they don't want to take the responsibility of deleting content and having to explain why, so they give themselves an arbitrary right to make it more difficult to find and to not pay its producer for it as they would do for every other popular video. Is that censorship is a difficult question to answer and they will provide justifications related to the video being unsuitable for monetisation due to concerned advertisers, but for sure it will tend to reduce the influence and financial ressources of whichever content provider is targeted compared to others (and once you think that Youtube is pretty much the de-facto universal platform for self published video content, that is a lot of unsupervised power in Google's hands).

Dyr · 12-08-2017 07:13PM

While we're on about echo chambers It's worth noting that most of the big modern technology companies,( Google, Facebook, Apple, Pintrest etc) are based in the most ultra liberal region of the US. They actually exist in a massive echo chamber it's not really surprising that they've become susceptible to group think.

Bob24 · 12-08-2017 07:17PM

Bambi wrote: »

While we're on about echo chambers It's worth noting that most of the big modern technology companies,( Google, Facebook, Apple, Pintrest etc) are based in the most ultra liberal region of the US. They actually exist in a massive echo chamber it's not really surprising that they've become susceptible to group think.

For sure their homes base plays a role. And actually it is worth noting that companies like Dell or Microsoft don't have the exact same political and corporate culture which is dominent in Silicon Valley companies (you could also argue that they are different because they are more mature and "old fashion" which his partly true, but Apple is not a young company in technology terms and it's culture is closer to Google's than to Dell's).

Annasopra · 12-08-2017 08:08PM

professore wrote: »

His main point is if you have a random sample of 100 men and 100 women, 50 of the men would be INTERESTED (not CAPABLE - INTERESTED) in a STEM career as opposed to 5 of the women. (Disclaimer: I made up these ratios. I'd say for programming you would be doing well to get 2 women who are interested )

This is not solely down to cultural reasons - biology plays a role. Therefore expecting a 50/50 split of men to women in STEM is not reasonable or sensible. He DOES NOT say that women are biologically incapable or anything of the sort, in fact he goes to great pains to say the opposite.

If anyone said we need a 50/50 split in nursing, garbage collection or primary school teaching they would be ridiculed. Why is the same position not taken with STEM?

People want the careers they want. This does have a biological component whether people like it or not.

You are saying that a woman is not interested in certain careers for biological reasons. What biological reasons? Please explain this more.

Sand · 12-08-2017 08:25PM

Joeytheparrot wrote: »

You are saying that a woman is not interested in certain careers for biological reasons. What biological reasons? Please explain this more.

Have you read the memo?

Grayson · 12-08-2017 08:39PM

Sand wrote: »

Have you read the memo?

He asked someone a question. You could try answering it and stating what the biological reasons are that women don't want to do programming.

Bob24 · 12-08-2017 08:49PM

Grayson wrote: »

He asked someone a question. You could try answering it and stating what the biological reasons are that women don't want to do programming.

To be fair it is getting a bit infuriating to have people repetitively making comments and asking questions which show they haven't read the document which is at the core of everything discussed on the thread. Fair enough Joeytheparrot seems new to the thread, but there is a long history of this happening for posters who have been following it from the start.

In case people can't find the full document, here it is: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf

(actually if a mod or the OP could edit the first post to add a link it might help - what's currently linked on the first post is only the partial copy which was initially leaked by Gizmodo)

odyssey06 · 12-08-2017 08:50PM

Grayson wrote: »

He asked someone a question. You could try answering it and stating what the biological reasons are that women don't want to do programming.

Indirectly... there might be very good reasons why someone who thinks they will be dropping out of the workforce for long periods intermittently would gravitate away from a fast changing role like software development, and into roles where softer skills \ core qualifications are more important.

Disclaimer: Some of the finest programmers in my graduating class were female - but the majority in numbers were male; and if I was picking a software development team, experience would be a determining factor, not gender; and I don't think I have ever seen a development team where the majority of programmers were female.

Hastentoadd · 12-08-2017 08:54PM

Grayson wrote: »

He asked someone a question. You could try answering it and stating what the biological reasons are that women don't want to do programming.

I think what you suggest is really the problem. It is just utter laziness. Read the pdf. It was a long pdf. It seems folks got bored without reading it. His opinion was absolutely valid. I really wish folks would spend the time to read an opinion before sharing their abhorrance

Sand · 12-08-2017 09:00PM

Grayson wrote: »

He asked someone a question. You could try answering it and stating what the biological reasons are that women don't want to do programming.

If only someone had already written a memo addressing that particular topic...

Sweetemotion · 12-08-2017 09:10PM

Joeytheparrot wrote: »

You are saying that a woman is not interested in certain careers for biological reasons. What biological reasons? Please explain this more.

That is just stupid.

12-08-2017 09:53PM

Equality means equal opportunity, not equal outcome. Everyone should have the same chances as anyone else...... From working in Tech/Studying in tech for years I do think that mean have more of a natural interest in tech. Women do better than men in the leaving cert for a long time now and they simply just dont apply for tech courses that much, men seem to just have more of an interest in this area...... that is not saying that women can't be brilliant in tech. I just think gender quoatas are bs.

Lately people are pushing the idea that the Male and Female brains are wired the same. I think womens and mens brains are wired differently and this makes men better at some things and women better at some things. Differences should be celebrated...not hidden.

Bob24 · 14-08-2017 11:31AM

Public Q&A session he held on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesDamore/comments/6thcy3/im_james_damore_ama/

Wombatman · 14-08-2017 11:52AM

Bambi wrote: »

While we're on about echo chambers It's worth noting that most of the big modern technology companies,( Google, Facebook, Apple, Pintrest etc) are based in the most ultra liberal region of the US. They actually exist in a massive echo chamber it's not really surprising that they've become susceptible to group think.

Clinton...... ultra liberal....LOL. At least these ultras could have voted for Stein or Bernie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_California,_2016

Dyr · 14-08-2017 12:25PM

Wombatman wrote: »

Clinton...... ultra liberal....LOL. At least these ultras could have voted for Stein or Bernie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_California,_2016

All those companies are based around San Francisco, are you claiming SF is not a bastion of liberal America?

In the first place, why do you think the presidential election results for California is somehow relevant to this?

Why do you think liberals in California would vote for sanders when he didn't run for president and endorsed Clinton?

kylith · 14-08-2017 12:41PM

Grayson wrote: »

He asked someone a question. You could try answering it and stating what the biological reasons are that women don't want to do programming.

I'm with Joey.

No, I haven't read the memo. I don't particularly want to read it.

I would like proffessore to explain to me why he thinks women biologically aren't interested in programming. Because otherwise you're just piggybacking on someone else's idea without giving it any thought yourself.

CruelCoin · 14-08-2017 12:45PM

Grayson wrote: »

He asked someone a question. You could try answering it and stating what the biological reasons are that women don't want to do programming.

Apart from mens minds being more logic orientated in an extremely logic orientated field?

Wombatman · 14-08-2017 01:19PM

Bambi wrote: »

All those companies are based around San Francisco, are you claiming SF is not a bastion of liberal America?

There is no bastion of liberal America. America is a bastion of conservatism.
Are we not talking about ultra liberal America in any case?

In the first place, why do you think the presidential election results for California is somehow relevant to this?

Am .... how a region votes, left vs. right is a good indicator of how conservative or ultra liberal it is.

Why do you think liberals in California would vote for sanders when he didn't run for president and endorsed Clinton?

They voted for Clinton. Surly all these ultra liberals would have voted for Bernie?

Any more questions?

Knex* · 14-08-2017 01:59PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Equality means equal opportunity, not equal outcome. Everyone should have the same chances as anyone else...... From working in Tech/Studying in tech for years I do think that mean have more of a natural interest in tech. Women do better than men in the leaving cert for a long time now and they simply just dont apply for tech courses that much, men seem to just have more of an interest in this area...... that is not saying that women can't be brilliant in tech. I just think gender quoatas are bs.

Lately people are pushing the idea that the Male and Female brains are wired the same. I think womens and mens brains are wired differently and this makes men better at some things and women better at some things. Differences should be celebrated...not hidden.

Might be time to write an article highlighting the discrimination males face in this country when applying for third level education in a system set up to make them fail.

“Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber” memo goes viral, usual suspects outraged

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