I haven't seen a single criticism of the paper that even recognizes the author is referencing large-scale incontrovertible research involving the Big-5 personality model (the giveaway is the use of terms "agreeability", "conscienciousness", "neuroticism"). Instead we get what you offer: off-hand casual assertions that there must exist research which runs against large-n and replicable science-driven studies using the only mainstream and empirically-supported model of personality that seems to work.

Basically, this makes criticisms like yours on-par with climate change denial in the sense that they either fail to grasp the point being made or offer personal observations on irrelevant points as rebuttal. It is bad news for Google either way, since the author is correct to point out among many other things that high levels of "agreeability" are demonstrably bad for anyone to have in corporate environments, and if this affects men in the same way it affects women then why are the solutions gender-excluding? Anyway, perhaps you should research the Big-5 model if you aren't familiar with it: very interesting new research coming out on it continually.

Because it isn't relevant. The major weakness of the paper isn't that there are studies suggesting some differences between men and women, but that it doesn't convincingly argue why these difference are relevant to what is being suggested.

"The major weakness of the paper isn't that there are studies suggesting climate change exists, but it doesn't convincingly argue why these difference are relevant to environmental policy."

The author doesn't need to "prove" the science he references is real any more than I have to "prove" that climate change exists in order to discuss it. At a certain point, people are either educated or ignorant. And ignorance may be bliss, but there is zero reason for anyone grounded in rational skepticism to take the people attacking this guy on science any more seriously than they would take climate change deniers or anti-vaxxers, etc.

There's also no support for his conclusion that Google therefore doesn't have an obligation to improve diversity measures (which, as a normative claim, can't be negated by citing scientific research).

And above all, there's zero support for his positive claim that Google has a real obligation to adopt a definition of diversity that benefits him and not women, nor that Google has an obligation to defend and make accommodations for his (abhorrent) opinions.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042812... https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/201...

As for the rest of your comment, it perfectly illustrates my comment above about critics having no clue what this guy is saying. At the very minimum, you are dead wrong to claim the author does not say that diversity is important and that Google should not address it. He simply says it should be addressed in non-discriminatory ways, something any sensible reader should have noticed had they read the ENTIRE SECTION he included titled "Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap".

And with that, I'm jumping out of this discussion: it pollutes the HN discussion section to have to repeatedly state what the article under discussion actually says.

> There's nothing in his evidence about women's personality traits that can lead you to the conclusion that they're necessarily underrepresented in STEM and in computer science.

Please explain where in either of your sources it says that women should be underrepresented in STEM and computer science - at all (why not the other way around?), let alone to anywhere near the extent seen today.

Hint: nowhere. Getting to there from personality quizzes is the unsubstantiated logical leap the parent was talking about.

Where does he do that? If I recall correctly, he mostly wanted to discuss the company culture. There were policies that were mentioned, but only to support his position that the company culture was supported by company policy.

I think if you want your argument to be more convincing, it would be nice to spend less effort on trying to brand the opponents "climate change denier", which sounds like a thinly veiled attempt to capitalize on a tribal thought-terminating cliche - basically a highbrow structural equivalent of calling someone a Nazi - if you're in any way like a Nazi, you can't win an argument, whatever the argument is about, because that would mean being a Nazi is good, and we all agree it can't be true! Addressing the argument directly instead of trying to affix the killer label is what should distinguish a reasoned rational discussion from a televised political debate.

> but there is zero reason for anyone grounded in rational skepticism to take the people attacking this guy on science any more seriously than they would take climate change deniers or anti-vaxxers, etc.

There is also zero reason to consider comparing somebody do anti-vaxxers or any other outgroup a rational argument. You have many good points here, you don't have to boost them with irrational appeals to tribal cliches (even if you assume everybody is in the same tribe as you, it's still not rational argument). Pleading the rational arguments is better than pounding the table.

I took it as an argument by analogy. A more analytical approach like listing logical errors and fallacies wouldn't go over well either. I'm curious how someone else would phrase those points without neutering them.

“The major weakness of the paper isn’t that there are studies showing a natural variability in Earth temperatures over time, but it doesn’t convincingly argue why that variability is the cause of recent sharp temperature increases.”

Well, the grammar of the sentence doesn’t really make sense (even in the original), but you get the point.

Intrinsic gender differences exist, like natural temperature changes exist. But in both cases, they do not explain all or even most of the observed variation; the rest is caused by society.

Likewise, biological arguments are irrelevant to the overall conversation about diversity in tech. And I'm speaking as someone who thinks that there are a lot of flaws with the current attempts to solve these problems. I think diversity policies are often misguided and lead to suboptimal solutions. But I think this is a hard problem, and there are not going to be any easy solutions. The argument that women aren't biologically suited for working in tech is the lazy and stupid solution. All it does is draw lines between us and them and give newspapers a bunch of trash to print.

This is not what the writer says.

> I think... there are not going to be any easy solutions.

The article suggests a number of non-discriminatory solutions Google could easily implement.

I've seen that research. What conclusions do you think you can draw from it?

That might be wrong. I think using emotions as a guide reason can work, sometimes very well. It doesn't link anything to women - women can be disengaged and men can be emotional in the ordinary course of their day.

That surely sucks and should not happen to you, or anybody. However, it happens - and it happens to many people that tend to be introverted, shy or just tend to be conflict-avoidant. You'd be surprised how many such people are among males. Not every male is a stereotypical hyper-aggressive alpha.

> if you are female, you are basically screwed if you want to do something engineering like because even Engineers don't act analytically but emotionally based on prejudices.

I find it somewhat disappointing that you just made judgement about millions of people working in certain area because you've had some bad experiences in one place with a handful of people - most of which probably didn't even realize their behavior is counter-productive and would be ready to accommodate given proper tools - such as meeting setup with explicit way of ensuring everybody has an opportunity to participate and somebody who is more extroverted and verbal does not hog the scene. There are many known methods to do this and many people who are trained in doing it, one only needs to be willing to look it up and use it. I would think it's much more productive approach then rendering a wholesale judgement on the whole field and declaring it hopeless.

I would say approach of "if you're female and want to Engineering, you should be ready to overcome some challenges, and here are the tools for doing so and for those wanting to help in this" is a much more productive approach.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/wh...

It seems there's good evidence that on average, biology affects career preferences to an extent. (Preference differences were even shown in 2-day old infants and (with a rather large standard deviation & n=41, iirc) primates.

The OOP's argument, to me, seemed to be primarily against institutionalized discrimination (e.g. affirmative action), which seems reasonable to me.

Not that status quo is OK. But there are probably better ways to help -- like programs aimed at introducing girls to computer programming, for example.

I think you should brush up on the meaning of the word "proves".