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

The nub of the matter for me is even if the paper is completely incorrect, and he got the science a wrong (which overall I don't believe he has) I think there is something very worrying about someone offering feedback he was requested to offer in good faith, backed up by numerous scientific references. and assumed would remain internal to Google and getting fired for it. Fired as a cult would shun someone for heresy.

People are assuming he is some alt right sexist. I just see an engineer applying logic to a problem and suggesting some possible solutions. This guy got stellar reviews at Google for his work so he is no idiot. And I'm willing to bet he happily works with women every day, and judges them the same as men, on ability, not, gender, race, religion etc.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/08/17/a-level-results-2017-first-rise-top-grades-six-years-despite/

Here it is, Ladies and Gentlemen, from this year's A level stats broken down by gender. Computing looks about 10% girls and Performing / Expressive Arts is about 90% girls. This is of course somehow due to rampant sexism. Nothing to do with their actual interests.

Also interesting is that boys are slightly ahead of girls for the first time since 2000 - tellingly they have placed less emphasis on coursework and more on the actual exam, which would advantage boys if they are worse communicators than girls on average.

Exactly what you would expect if James Damore's paper is accurate.

Also the 10% of girls that studied Computing probably did just as well or better than the 90% of boys. As did the 10% of boys that studied Performing / Expressive Arts.

If James had been working for a theatre company and suggested women were more suited on average to Performing / Expressive Arts but otherwise written the exact same paper and left out the word Neuroticism (which is one of the 5 big psychological traits, not some disease) there would have been zero argument.

Also there is no big push to get men into the Performing / Expressive Arts. Why is this I wonder?

Just read this on the Indo this morning. Blatantly sexist article with zero scientific references, and nonsense conclusions, yet this will be celebrated rather than getting the author fired.

http://m.independent.ie/irish-news/education/exams/girls-top-class-but-system-biased-towards-boys-who-do-sums-better-36043860.html

professore wrote: »

Just read this on the Indo this morning. Blatantly sexist article with zero scientific references, and nonsense conclusions, yet this will be celebrated rather than getting the author fired.

http://m.independent.ie/irish-news/education/exams/girls-top-class-but-system-biased-towards-boys-who-do-sums-better-36043860.html

I suppose a source of the problem here is that people have a "boys vs girls" mindset at all.

The article talks about kids exam results saying that girls are "winners" and that they are "leaving the boys trailing".

I never understood that mentality, really. A single mother with a young son surely would not be celebrating a "win" for women if the girls in the class are all outperforming her boy?

The thing about the artists and writers that the author mentions is that these types of careers are mostly freelance or self employed. For every artist who is wildly successful there are 1,000s who never get past the stage of doing art for enjoyment because they can't make any money from it.

"How and when did Pythagoras's theorem become more important than Hamlet's soliloquy, for instance? Who decided algebra is more vital to life success than Seamus Heaney's allusions?"

Nobody "decided" that these were more important. The fact is that when most people leave education they need to get a job. To get a job you need to have relevant and applicable skills.

I would have loved to do art or music or literature for a living but when I left school my parents couldn't afford to pay for my lifestyle so I had to get a job that brought in a stable and steady salary.

Even if we did "reward girls for better results" what would that look like?

Employers are generally looking for skills that can be applied to the job and recent graduates are usually entering companies at the entry level jobs where there will be a lot of practical work to be done. It's great if someone can recite Shakespeare but how can they turn that into a steady income?

I wonder if these writers are out of touch with the reality that most people face. The majority of the kids getting their results now will really just be looking for a job, any job, so that they can get some money.

Bambi wrote: »

"But there are more biological similarities than differences, and more gender overlaps than discontinuities, between males and females—we are the same species after all."

okaaay...that's a cogent argument.

TBH I didn't really get past the the early paragraphs where he starts on about Dramores choice of words being "code for this" and "implies that"

If its not responding to the actual content then you're looking at a straw man argument being built

Whats interesting is that he doesn't refute this statement with evidence

Damore claims that 95% of the social sciences and humanities are left-leaning

Rather he dismisses it despite there being evidence from a number of peer reviewed papers that there is a very very strong bias in those fields.

For the other stuff I'm not going to write loads about it as I've only got limited experience of this stuff compared to an active Researcher in the area, I will say though that he is carrying out selective sourcing to a high degree in relation to the questions on violence, also he appears to be (deliberately?) muddying the water, talking about hominids as early as he is and ones not directly in our evolutionary path, that stuff is not really that relevant to the discussion thats occurring, a neurological evolutionary change 100,000BP for example is something that could have occurred.

He also seems to be pushing the idea that because humans have less sexual difference than very many other mammals this means that the possibility of the biological/neurological differences mention in the memo are definitely not true, he admits it himself however that 25,000 years ago we can see differentiation in tool types.

Anthropology is split on a lot of topics and the author is firmly on one side of a debate that is very much not settled, something thats completely my opinion rather than something backed up by data is that Anthropology doesn't tend to reward "good science" and is subject to loads of bias (this also applies to the more fanatic/dogmatic proponents of evolutionary psychology too), he is obviously a serious researcher but he is also a popular writer in the selling books business too.

Finally the last line says it all about the author,

In fact, let’s heed Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s suggestion that society “eliminate structural biases in education, health care, housing, and salaries that favor white men and see if we [women and everyone else] fail. Run the experiment. Be a scientist about it.

Salaries for younger college educated white woman already outstrip all other groups and in relation to healthcare for decades there has been a structural bias in favour of womens healthcare investment and research. This blog post isn't an academic rebuttal (it would have direct links to studies and papers if it was) its a moral refutation.

Whats interesting is one of the works the author replies to with a comment on the originally blog post is actually fairly mixed in terms of the memo's claims.
https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what-does-the-research-say-about-gender-differences/

I am personally very hesitant about the memo's claims being in general correct (I feel the memo definitely stretches the argument) however if this was feedback sought in what was meant to be an open dialogue the fact that what he states could potentially be true or at least could be a legitimate belief that has not been reached from a point of misogyny means that firing him does seem to prove him right.

* I also have a pet hate for academic people deliberately reference books (without page numbers) rather than papers when the point to the actual paper, in fact looking through the post again I noticed something interesting, he cites his own new book twice, neither time indicating which section is relevant and uses the published page once and google books once, thats a weird thing to do unless your pushing your book.

bluewolf wrote: »

There's generally a correlation between when men enter an industry, the pay goes up. I'll try find the link on my computer. Similar to what happened when women used to dominate IT, i think it wasn't well paid. Then men entered the profession and up it went.
So it might happen with nursing

We're talking about the 50s/60s. These jobs were viewed (short-sightedly) as "women's work"; similar to phone switchboard operators or secretaries. I'd bet there were very few women designing the systems themselves, which was probably viewed as "men's work".

I think it was more complex than simply "...it wasn't well paid. Then men entered the profession and up it went". I would imagine that it gradually became apparent that programming can be a difficult technical skill. As this happened, there were a few effects; because it was accepted that it required real skill and focus, pay started rising. The awareness of its highly technical nature made it more attractive to men. As did the rising pay.

You do seem to accept though that men and women act in statistically different ways. ("...Then men entered the profession...") That's not to say that any one individual can't/won't succeed in a particular role. But from a high level, we'll see differing patterns. E.g. from a recent Irish survey:
"Women were more willing than men to take a pay cut for a role with a high level of job satisfaction. Almost two-thirds of women said they would be willing to do this, compared with roughly half of men."

So men are statistically more likely to pursue high-paying jobs. Presumably at some cost; e.g. to work/life balance. IT jobs would have a reputation for high pay, but at the cost of long hours, extended periods of high focus/concentration, and limited social status.

Taking these differences into account, it's not valid to be putting measures in place to obtain equality of outcome. What's more important is equality of opportunity. The core point of the memo is to criticise a number of Google's measures that could be categorised as the former:

- Programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender or race [5]
- A high priority queue and special treatment for “diversity” candidates
- Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate
- Reconsidering any set of people if it’s not “diverse” enough, but not showing that same scrutiny in the reverse direction (clear confirmation bias)
- Setting org level OKRs for increased representation which can incentivize illegal discrimination [6]

While much of his reasoning was at best debatable/clumsy/simplistic, I think this core point has validity.

It seems we might find out after all why Damore dropped his case.

10 house democrats in the US have signed a letter petitioning google for answers on why their diversity programs were cut.

I hope they get their answers! Especially number 1

1. Why were the previous diversity programs scaled back and/or cut entirely?
2. What diversity initiatives does Google currently provide for new hires?
3. Does google plan to create one uniform diversity and inclusion program or culturally competant programs for different countries and regions?
4. What does Google plan to do to address the lack of diversity and inclusion at Google?
5. Do employees working in artificial intelligence undergo this training?

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6893818-FILE-2942.html