>Do you realize how subjective this is and how impossible it is to prove that today there are no other influences at play than biology
He never claims there are no other influences at play -
From the memo; note the works "in part" and "may explain" - Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
> And that we've maxed on the number of woman in this field and we're now at an equilibrium determined by biology?
There is no such claim of this whatsoever. Your comment is a great example of the problems with this debate.
What am I missing? This is the topic he explores the most in his memo and I don't see anything analyzing social effects.
While his paper is nuanced, he basically only focuses on the biological argument and seeks to change company policy as a result of this.
One of these being... to end the diversity goals. Yes I did read the memo.
He argued to change their diversity goals and implementation, with an intention to do a better job of getting a _more_ not less diverse company, including more woman and minorities. He did not argue to end all diversity goals outright, again that appears to be a mischaracterization.
No time was spent exploring inherent biases in history or how they may affecting things today. This is why those policies were put into place so why not make it the meat of the discussion.
Though the implication may be that his approach will create a setup in which there will be more diversity that is highly debatable... again the reason why these policies are there in the first place. I don't feel the argument was so strong.
Does he have other examples in history when a minority group allowed the free market to dictate things after a long period of bias and things quickly adjusted overnight?
From the memo: I hope it’s clear that I'm not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that we shouldn't try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority.
He's saying that the inability to get to a 50/50% split on gender lines may be unrealistic. He makes no comment on if the 20/80 split that currently exists is fair or not. Just because he doesn't go into the history of all bias that did exist in the past, doesn't mean he discounts it and unworthy to be addressed. Further, at what point does a society atone for past biases? If you are even trying to correct the injustice in the past, should you not have an idea on what normalization might be like? Perhaps and this is his question, an exact 50/50 is not what a idealistic lack of bias would create in the first place. And the thesis is that it would not be created in that fashion because women self-select to enter different professions for biologically based reasons. Now all those items might be false - its a hypothesis, not a universal truth - but it appears the research from social psychologists backs up his claims as valid. Now perhaps they still want to argue between themselves, and fine I'm ok with that go for it - but it appears he's done with with good faith.
And even if you think his arguments are poor, or he's naive, or anything else, that's fine too. The problem is - and this is where my main issue and the root of all of this - is that he should not have been fired for this. This appears to be a betrayal of liberal free speech values that many people claim to support.
Sure that's fair. I say that as a woman - I have no expectation to reach 50/50. However it's debatable if these policies are not useful yet. My mothers generation had some crazy stories to tell and that wasn't that long ago.
"And the thesis is that it would not be created in that fashion because women self-select to enter different professions for biologically based reasons."
This may be partly true but I disagree that it forms a substantial influence given my personal experience. I would give it a 1% weight anecdotally but much more if you count that many women want to be full time mothers.
The much bigger picture in my personal experience is a slew of other things including poor information, societal and parental expectations and visions for their daughters, engrained belief systems, intimidation due to biases, sticking to comfort zones or what is more familiar and so on.
I totally agree this is a discussion worth having and at some point this policies will need to be phased out. I think here the channel in which it was broadcast to the entire company was pretty uncomfortable given its such a touchy and controversial topic.
Thanks for the discussion
First of all, the original memo said nothing of the sort.
Secondly, I'm pretty sure GP is not saying the reaction to this memo is anti-science merely because it opposes the position taken in the memo. Rather, it's anti-science because they threw all rational debate out the window and fired the guy without even trying to address the points he made.
They did not fire him because they didn't believe in the studies he linked. Obviously that's very much mischaracterizing things. This is a complicated issue with ample studies to link to from both sides. And anyway, I truly question studies on such broad topics.
Because that portion of the essay was meant to counter what the author perceived to be Google's current position on the matter: that societal factors are the _only_ factor resulting in a lower percentage of women in tech.
From the memo:
> For the rest of this document, I’ll concentrate on the extreme stance that all differences in outcome are due to differential treatment and the authoritarian element that’s required to actually discriminate to create equal representation.
Followed by a section titled:
> Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech
The author isn't saying that biological differences are the _only_ factor; only that that they are _a_ factor, and that Google has been completely neglecting that factor with the current implementation of their efforts to improve diversity within the company.
This is true, but as /u/taysic pointed out elsewhere, Damore dedicates the majority of his memo on this this one factor and wishes to change corporate policy because of it.
> ... and that Google has been completely neglecting that factor with the current implementation of their efforts to improve diversity within the company
Perhaps Google is evaluating more factors than Damore? Perhaps Google concluded that social issues and gender bias play a larger role in workforce disparity than biological issues, and therefore decided to prioritize attacking the larger problem over the smaller problem?
Right. I explained why that was in the previous part of my comment.
> Perhaps Google is evaluating more factors than Damore? [...]
Perhaps so. They made no such claim in their response to Damore's essay though. In fact, they didn't address any of his points at all; they just fired him, thus proving the main point of his essay:
> People generally have good intentions, but we all have biases which are invisible to us. Thankfully, open and honest discussion with those who disagree can highlight our blind spots and help us grow, which is why I wrote this document. Google has several biases and honest discussion about these biases is being silenced by the dominant ideology. [...]
> Only facts and reason can shed light on these biases, but when it comes to diversity and inclusion, Google’s left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence.
Google's firing should be seen in the context of how it affects their workplace. This notion of "anyone can say anything" does not stick in a social gathering like a workplace. Free speech is relative, in this case relative to the workplace. This memo challenges that and that was addressed by google. This is similar to firing someone making a "I will gut you if you send me a poorly constructed pull request" threat. That is not free speech. That is unsettling a social gathering. The person making the threat may be right on his intentions, but context and how he puts across matters.
If Google has done the research on it, I'd really like to see because it is likely to be much more extensive than what this one guy has collected in his free time. That said, I suspect bias was simply assumed as the major factor by default, since that has historically been true in lots of professions (some of which are now dominated by women).
Anti-science way? Do you realize how subjective this is and how impossible it is to prove that today there are no other influences at play than biology? And that we've maxed on the number of woman in this field and we're now at an equilibrium determined by biology?
I would have been far more convinced if he noted a dwindling amount of harassment and reported bias using studies.