That has everything to do with politics.

Go take a look at the various declarations of secession when the slaveholding US states tried to quit and form the Confederacy. A number of them explicitly mention that a system of racial slavery is fine because black people were naturally inferior, which is how in the 1850s one would have said "biological differences". That was very obviously politics.

Further, there's an enormous history of explaining why people on the short end of a power differential truly deserve it because of their inferiority. You could look at all the talk around the time a century ago when men were deciding whether women should be allowed to vote. Women's "biological differences" were a huge reason they supposedly couldn't handle political power.

For those interested in the history, Kendi's "Stamped from the Beginning" is an excellent history of how ideas about "biological differences" have, since the ancient Greeks at least, been used politically. The particular "biological differences" change, of course. E.g., the Slavs, from whom we get the word slave, were considered naturally inferior by the Greeks because they came from a colder place. When enslaving Africans became an industry for people from the north, suddenly the problem was Africa's hotter climate. The "science" keeps changing, but what doesn't is the result: "inferior" people deserve less social or economic power.

So what are you trying to say, we shouldn't be allowed to talk about gender differences?

There's an enormous difference between the references you made because they are all trying to rationalize treating a race/gender as inferior. On top of that, there is no real scientific evidence backing anything up and it all basically amounts to inferring causation from correlation (ie. they are inferior because they are poor).

James' memo does not in any form attempt to rationalize why women should not become engineers (the analogue to your comparisons), rather it tries to explain why women do not pursue careers in tech at the frequency with which men do.

Women are not "discriminated against" when it comes to signing up for computer science classes in high school or choosing to major in computer science in university, yet significantly less of them sign up for these classes then men. There is no discrimination going on here since any women can sign up for any class of their choosing in high school. Clearly something is causing this gender imbalance, what might that be? That is what the memo tries to investigate. There is nothing "sexist" about asking or attempting to answer this real life phenomenon.

In terms of gender differences, the author lists points such as "women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things" , "women on average are more cooperative", and "Women on average look for more work-life balance while men have a higher drive for status on average", hardly statements that anyone can consider as insinuating female inferiority.

I'm guessing that the most contentious part of the memo is where the author states that women tend to have higher degrees of neuroticism, but he did cite Wikipedia which states "Research in large samples has shown that levels of neuroticism are higher in women than men." and references a research paper [1]. I'm no biology/psychology/gender expert and have no opinion on the authority of the source, but the legitimacy of the paper is certainly not a question of "politics", but of science.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01497...

> Women are not "discriminated against" when it comes to signing up for computer science classes in high school or choosing to major in computer science in university, yet significantly less of them sign up for these classes then men. There is no discrimination going on here since any women can sign up for any class of their choosing in high school. Clearly something is causing this gender imbalance, what might that be?

Gee, that must be some sort of biological factor! Certainly not related to social aspects outside of signing up for a high school computer science class.

That is not in fact what I'm trying to say. Sorry you wasted so much time replying to a point I wasn't making.

Practically every comment I've made in this thread I'd consider a waste of time since no one calling the memo "sexist" has made any serious argument, thus proving my point.

I always thought Reddit was a better platform for people more interested in a echo chamber safe space where they can post low-effort 1-2 sentence comments and be patted on the back with other similar comments all saying the same thing.

One, I didn't say that, so I'm not sure why you think it's my job to argue the point. Two, you are not coming across as a guy who's seriously looking to understand why people might reasonably see something as sexist. You can't really be surprised that nobody's willing to take the time to educate somebody who doesn't want to learn.

Exactly, and he went on to offer more ways by which they could get women into tech based on that study. But I guess that makes you a misogynist

The trouble is that there are well known physical[1] and psychological[2] differences between the sexes. The same isn't true between races. It may still be political, but the arguments against it shouldn't be the same.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans?wpro...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology?...

You're missing the point. America has seen 5 centuries of bogus arguments of the form, "the unequal status quo is in fact fine because biology". As I said right in the comment you're replying to, this happened with gender just as much as with race.

Given that these arguments have been consistently proven wrong but always come back in a different form, the 21st-century versions should be carefully scrutinized to see if they're the same politically motivated reasoning. And we should never pretend that they're not political, however much they're cloaked in objectivity. Indeed, people who value science should especially object to political argument wrapping itself in a lab coat.

attributing underrepresentation of woman in STEM probably needs a significantly higher level of evidence than just "biological differences"

There are more progressive leftists in power in tech than ever, yet female representation hasn't gone up. How much evidence do you need before you think they might be wrong? I'm from Sweden which initiated these kinds of programs 30 years ago, and it didn't do anything at all except alienate men who were excluded from the programs. There aren't more women now than back then in tech and engineering.

The only things that really worked was to create softer versions of degrees. Like make computer science program with a focus on UX or design, then you get a lot of women applying. You still wont get more women into the more technical roles, but at least you get more women's perspective into the industry. Also you know how so many say that communication skills is the most important part of their job as a software engineer? Why not just make a degree related to that directly? Women would flock to such programs.

The nazis claimed that jews had biological differences. Slaveowners claimed that black people had biological differences. Heck, denying women the right to vote was justified by claimed biological differences.

Oppressors don’t exactly have a history of saying “yeah we are doing this for evil reasons.” Instead they hide behind bogus arguments to justify why their behavior is actually good for those they harm.

“We should change how we hire women because of structural differences between men and women” is not only a political statement but one that comes with centuries of baggage attached.

The thing is, they were all right. Everyone does have differences. They just weren't right about the consequences of those differences.

If you look at how we hire women today, it's clear that your quote accurately describes current reality. Men and women are attracted and hired differently today. If you disagree with this, you are choosing to ignore the biases every human possesses.

Here's my response to a similar sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23126109

Please tell me which of Damore's recommendations amounted to opression. I see "we can make software engineering more people-oriented" and "allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive". Nowhere do I see anything even remotely comparable to Nazi treatment of jews or denying women the right to vote. In fact his suggestions attempt to improve the workplace satisfaction of women.

Biology has become politicized like climate science did.

With each side discarding the inconvenient truths of science whenever it clashes with their tribal narrative. It's an absolute disaster.

That's a fantastic analogy.

Climate science is no more political than quantum mechanics or Einstein's theory of relativity. 97% of climate scientists agree that global warming is real and that humans are causing it, and 9 of the 10 warmest years in recorded history have occured since 2005. Yet oil corporations and polluting factories with ulterior motives have managed to convince the politicians and the public that there is a debate, that some layman with no scientific background is as equally entitled to speak to the matter as a professional climate scientist who's spent their whole life studying the discipline, and that it is a question of politics.

Once it becomes a "political debate", all logic and science goes out the window, and the individuals/institutions with the vested interest in muddying the debate win out while the public loses out, and everyone just ends up dumber. You're not even allowed to debate or talk about it anymore because now it's "politics", and in America politics is super-sensitive and you shouldn't talk about it because everyone is entitled to their own dumb opinions.

That's why I'm such an advocate of freedom of speech, and not just in the legal sense. So long as you can support your view with facts and evidence, anyone should be allowed to speak, including in the workplace. Unless you're failing to perform your job's duties, one should not be fired simply for having a contrarian political viewpoint (so long as it's not openly hostile, like being racist). The second we censor people based on their views, we lead towards this totalitarian dystopian state of society where nobody feels comfortable talking about anything remotely controversial or interesting (unless it's about some Game of Thrones episode). Politics in the U.S. has become extremely partisan because people don't talk to others with differing viewpoints anymore and everyone retreats to their echo chamber safe spaces.

> “The key element of social control is the strategy of distraction that is to divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by political and economic elites, through the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information.” -Noam Chomsky

There is little hope that one day we could speak about the willful blindspots on both sides of such debates. Global warming is a major crisis with a hard tradeoff between two deeply negative outcomes: poverty now vs. climate disaster in the medium future. Judging by the covid19 response, humanity is unable to handle such tradeoffs with any degree of maturity. Society will polarize, each side never mentioning one half of the tradeoff and blaming the other side for all the negative impact of the other half of the tradeoff.

This is a sad truth

I think that’s extremely short sighted. Gender politics is politics; anything that comes close to the subject is either already political or will become political extremely quickly.

But that's surely not true. Programs to encourage women in software engineering are generally seen as apolitical. (And that's not a judo move or anything - they get broad bipartisan support whenever it comes up in Congress.)

They’re just popular politics.

Also, if Congress weighs in on something, isn’t it de-facto political?

> Gender politics is politics

I don't understand how that statement discredits anything I said.

Politics is peoples' opinions and is subjective/normative (eg. things "ought" to be this way). Science attempts to explain how nature works (eg. this is why things are this way), and is objective. That memo was not political.

Politics is about how resources should be spent, not how things “ought” to be. Posting a disagreement about policy is inherently political, especially about something as charged as gender, no matter how much science you may cite.

> Politics is about how resources should be spent

> how things “ought” to be

Those are the same thing.

> Posting a disagreement about policy is inherently political

Yes if his memo was a paragraph saying "We should change our gender policy to X, Y, and Z", then yes it would be political.

Instead it is a 10 page document explaining how biological differences may explain gender imbalances, and the implications of this.

But sure if you want to dismiss it as "politics", then I guess there's no reasoning with you.

I don’t dismiss things by calling them political, although apparently you do. I just think it’s insanely naive to believe that you can write a 10 page document on a gender related company policy and not have it become political quickly.

You can’t post a 10 document article in response to a corporate policy about gender in hiring and not expect that to be interpreted as an argument against said policy. Whether or not that was his original intent doesn’t really matter, the interpretation of his post was both predictable and understandable. He should’ve seen that coming, and to argue that he was just apolitically interested in the science of gender is disingenuous.

> You can’t post a 10 document article in response to a corporate policy about gender in hiring and not expect that to be interpreted as an argument against said policy.

The memo certainly challenged Google's corporate policy. So what? You think anyone who has an opposing view on a corporate policy and can back their view up with facts and evidence should be fired?

Personally I'm not big on authoritarianism/totalitarianism, but maybe that's just me.

You’re absolutely making up my point, which is extremely annoying.

All I’m saying is that arguing about policy is politics. That’s it.

Decisions about resources make no sense except in the context of trying to achieve some effect. Political issues are almost always implicitly about how things "ought" to be; the resource decisions are in service of those goals.

Resource allocation is more concrete and direct than discussions about how society ought to be arranged, although you’re right that you allocate resources in order to achieve a desired social outcome.

Discussions about how society ought to be tend to be vague and aspirational: “society ought to be more just” is more vague than “we should spend more money on these programs”. The latter might serve the former, but it’s also specific and actionable, which is why I draw the distinction where I do.

I don’t see what’s wrong with calling it political... it surely isn’t scientific. The opinions he expressed seem like naive political theories based on his understanding of gender and society, which is an extremely nuanced topic.

In what way is the Damore memo not scientific? It cites academic research, presents evidence, I think the claims it makes are actually the mainstream ones.

I realize asking you to debunk the whole memo may be a bit much, so can you just point to the single most consequential unscientific part of it?

I read the memo and was horrified by how badly people treated him because of it. To me it seems like a rational and well evidenced document.

Citing research is fine. If his memo had been a list of papers with no commentary it would have just been weird and blown over.

The problem is when you synthesize ideas from research without expertise. The problem wasn’t his citations. It was the conclusions he drew from the citations and the policy proposals that he made in his document.

“It has citations” is not a valid reason to consider something well argued and scientific. Even flat earthers include citations.

Damore was explicitly asked for his feedback on a subject. He provided it supported by academic research and was fired for it. If Damore had provided an unconnected list of papers that would have been ignored, yes, because nobody would have known what he meant. Instead, he put together a document that connected different research findings with his own suggestions.

A recurring pattern in this debate is that people criticize Damore for a lack of expertise. Which is odd given that Damore, a Harvard Masters Degree holder in Systems Biology, is clearly conversant with the research and the context he is giving advice in. Furthermore, I have yet to see anyone point out a substantive specific error that Damore made, its just general things like "he lacks expertise."

Tell me, what is the most obvious or least controversial example of Damore's lack of expertise in terms of his argument?

> A recurring pattern in this debate is that people criticize Damore for a lack of expertise. Which is odd given that Damore, a Harvard Masters Degree holder in Systems Biology, is clearly conversant with the research and the context he is giving advice in.

Oh boy. I've got a PhD in CS from one of the best programs in the world. I'm wildly unqualified to synthesize research in another field and would surely make terrible errors if I tried to connect the dots between citations, especially if I started with my connections and went looking for associated citations. Having a familiarity with research is absolutely not evidence that his conclusions will be strongly considered.

This discussion has been had a thousand times. People he cited have responded to his writing. There can be no productive discussion about "were his conclusions correct or not" at this point.

Do you genuinely believe that you are unqualified to read research papers and come up with an opinion about them with sufficient rigor to merit responding to a request for a feedback from a training program you attended at work?

Yes absolutely. I'm barely even qualified to synthesize conclusions from CS papers outside of my subfield. Drawing broader conclusions from a slice of the literature requires immense context.

If you aren't able to read research papers and synthesize an opinion on them then by your own standards it seems you shouldn't have an opinion here. You can't tell whether Damore was right or wrong because you can't read papers from different fields and reach conclusions.

You think the authors Damore cited rejected him. Perhaps you have an example of that. I haven't seen anything beyond the authors agreeing with Damore's interpretation of the facts and saying they don't know about the conclusions. It's obviously not very compelling given that Damore was metaphorically tarred on feathered on social media and fired, so researchers saying they "don't know" about the conclusions might be because they genuinely don't know or might be because they don't want to invite backlash of their own.

> If you aren't able to read research papers and synthesize an opinion on them then by your own standards it seems you shouldn't have an opinion here. You can't tell whether Damore was right or wrong because you can't read papers from different fields and reach conclusions.

I cannot personally derive a conclusion about Damore from the literature. What I can do is ask world experts about their thoughts. In general, this is an effective way of developing reasonable opinions about the state of research. I'm friends with a few social psych faculty who study workplaces and let's just say that they don't hold Damore in high regard.

I'm super uninterested in having an argument about the merits of his essay since that discussion has been had thousands of times and no progress can be made. But "well he has a master's degree from harvard" is among the least compelling arguments in his favor.

Sure, his master's degree isn't the most compelling argument. It's somewhat more compelling an argument than "My unnamed expert friends don't hold Damore in high regard".

If world experts have weighed in on Damore, link to their opinions. I'm happy to discuss those.

Like I said, I'm uninterested in trying to convince other people about Damore. It isn't productive at this point. This is just how I personally came to my conclusions.

> The problem wasn’t his citations. It was the conclusions he drew from the citations and the policy proposals that he made in his document.

Right, so you personally disagree with his conclusions, thus it must be "problematic".

Unless you're going to elaborate as to what specifically you find problematic, there's not really much to discuss here and this is a pretty useless discussion.

For example, claiming that “women have higher rates of neuroticism” is debatable.

IMO, that kind of discussion is frankly uninteresting and unhelpful.

No, it really isn't debatable. That's the widespread consensus view. Personality traits are judged based on responses to surveys. When you ask large groups of people the same surveys and evaluate them the same way you consistently find women score higher on neuroticism than men. This is a widely repeated finding that is consistent across generations.

A paper on neuroticism in older women compared to older men - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2031866/

"testing gender differences at the level of latent traits revealed higher levels of Neuroticism (d = .52) and Agreeableness (d = .35) in older women than older men. The consistency of these findings with prior work in younger samples attests to the stability of gender differentiation on Neuroticism and Agreeableness across the lifespan."

A paper trying to asses the genetic component to personality traits - http://midus.wisc.edu/findings/pdfs/1779.pdf

"Research has found observed phenotypic sex differences in the BFM. Women, for instance, tend to have higher mean levels of Agreeableness and Neuroticism than men (Chapman, Duberstein, Sörensen, & Lyness, 2007; Costa, Terracciano, & McCrae, 2001; Feingold, 1994)."

A paper looking at personality trait differences across the world and in other cultures - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ijop.12265

"In terms of the personality traits known as the Big Five, men tend to score lower than women in neuroticism and agreeableness"

A paper looking at gender differences in neuroticism and extraversion across 30 different countries - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/14018323_Gender_Dif...

"Women obtained higher means than men on neuroticism in all countries, and men obtained higher means than women on psychoticism in 34 countries and on extraversion in 30 countries."

A paper on neuroticism differences in men and women among college students - http://mpsi.umm.ac.id/files/file/723%20-%20728%20Djudiyah%20...

"Table 1 showed that there was significant difference of neuroticism level between males and females (t-test = 2.138, df =49, P<0.05). Males tended to have lower neuroticism personality level (Mean=111,833) than females (Mean=127.303). Thus the hypothesis that males have less neuroticism level than females was accepted."

I could go on for a long time just finding different studies on this topic and quoting their results, but there is no need to. That women have higher rates of neuroticism is likely the least debatable and most scientific thing Damore asserted. Can you find a single study or paper where it was concluded that women had anything but higher levels of neuroticism?

I trust that you will either have one or more such references, or you will admit that this claim is scientific and not really debatable. If you admit that, I would expect some revision of your general opinion given that this is an example of one of what you believed to be one of the more significant things Damore got wrong.

Genuine question: What actually is neuroticism? I'm broadly familiar with the term in a colloquial sense, but not a scientific sense. Wikipedia says:

>Neuroticism is one of the Big Five higher-order personality traits in the study of psychology. Individuals who score high on neuroticism are more likely than average to be moody and to experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness.[1] People who are neurotic respond worse to stressors and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening and minor frustrations as hopelessly difficult. They are often self-conscious and shy, and they may have trouble controlling urges and delaying gratification.

Is there truly a common thread between these various emotions that ties them all together as neuroticism, or is neuroticism an arbitrarily chosen set of emotions? It's far from clear to me that these listed emotions have much to do with each other in the general case. If I'm feeling fear or worry because the sidewalk I'm walking on is covered in ice, that's not related in any way to anger or envy. Does it only count when these emotions are irrational? What then does it mean for these emotions to be irrational? If I am alone and feel lonely, is that irrational? Is loneliness only indicative of neuroticism when you're actually surrounded by your friends? Maybe you'd feel lonely in such a situation because none of your friends can related to you about something you've been worrying about. Is there any truly objective measure of the rationality of an emotion? I don't think so.

Wikipedia goes on to say that there's a lot of disagreement over what this term means:

> Neuroticism is a trait in many models within personality theory, but there is a lot of disagreement on its definition. Some define it as a tendency for quick arousal when stimulated and slow relaxation from arousal, especially in concern to negative emotional arousal; others define it as emotional instability and negativity or maladjustment, in contrast to emotional stability and positivity, or good adjustment. Others yet define it as lack of self-control, poor ability to manage psychological stress, and a tendency to complain.[6]

It says that 'personality theory' is a scientific study, but I'm a bit skeptical of that.

> Is there truly a common thread between these various emotions that ties them all together as neuroticism, or is neuroticism an arbitrarily chosen set of emotions?

Yes. It's something that shows up in one specific factor analysis as one of five dimensions (i.e. parameters) that effectively summarize your answers to a bunch of questions about personality. Different analyses/models come up with different parameterizations, e.g. the HEXACO model has six parameters, with the Emotionality factor picking up the bulk of "Neuroticism" from the Big 5, but some ending up under Honesty-Humility (reversed) or even under Agreeableness (reversed)!

Am I correct in thinking that the rationality or lack-thereof of the emotions is considered a factor? And if so, how can that be evaluated through questionnaires asking people about themselves?

Suppose for example a woman lives in an environment that's dangerous for her but not so for men. On the questionnaire, she reports that she often feels afraid. Is that answer considered evidence of neuroticism? It seems to me that it shouldn't be, but you'd need to examine the individual circumstances on a case-by-case basis to tease out the difference between rational fear and neurotic fear. From a logistics standpoint I don't see how that analysis could be done at scale, hence my skepticism that any of this is actually scientific.

Thanks for the links, however I think the misrepresentation of information here is women have higher rates of neuroticism, but is that true within sample present at Google? Not every possible women is more neurotic than every possible man.

Additionally, dealing with discrimination can lead to self-esteem issues, which are tied to neuroticism.

If Damore suspected that women at Google were, on average, shorter than men at Google would you doubt that too, because there is no study on gender differences in height among Google employees?

When thinking about this you should ask what your priors are. If neuroticism is widely, across ages and cultures, found to be higher in women and men, and it is, then wouldn't your prior, without a Google specific personality survey, be that Google women likely have higher neuroticism than men?

To me it seems like an impossibly high standard to expect Damore to do a personality survey of Google to figure out if this oft repeated neuroticism result also holds true for Google employees.

Depends what the implications of that statement were. I think assuming that women at Google have higher levels of neuroticism is fair, but once you start to posit that as an actionable truth is when real information is needed.

Please note the shifting goal posts. At the start of this comment thread you were saying that Damore's memo was certainly unscientific, and now you are arguing that there needs to be a higher bar for action than the fair assumptions that Damore made.

Keep in mind that Damore is a single person giving feedback to a diversity course. He doesn't have the resources, time, or mandate to survey Google's employees to test whether or not this general trend holds. Perhaps, before acting on Damore's recommendations it would be a good idea to do some tests on Google's employees to see if general trends hold true in their specific subset - but that is a really different claim than the initial claim that Damore was unscientific.

If Damore had written that smoking causes lung problems and therefore Google should start taking some actions to stop employees from smoking, it might be merited to do further tests to see if the link between smoking and lung problems holds true for Google employees as it does for people in general. It would not be merited to call Damore unscientific because he had not yet done that research prior to making his suggestion.

It seems like he was cherry-picking studies that fit a personal theory he held before the feedback was ever requested. I would consider that to be unscientific.

If he was cherry-picking studies then for each study he cited there would be multiple conflicting studies. Do you have examples of those?

The fact is that the same study says that men express more psychoticism than women. Do you think he would have been equally railed against if he brought that up in his paper?

Women on average are more socially aware and exhibit higher emotional intelligence than women. There is scientific research to suggest this, and for me anecdotally it also rings true (as a man, but again key word = on average).

Do you find this statement offensive? Should I not say this because it might hurt men's feelings?

Or is it only wrong to say something negative about a race/gender if it implies something negative about certain underrepresented genders and races?

I’m not concerned about being offended or what one should or shouldn’t say. But in general saying I don’t find saying those kinds of sweeping statements to be very constructive, including the positive example.

I'm guessing if you read the memo you only read a version with sources and data omitted. The original version was very much science-based, even if you disagree with the science or think it incomplete/biased.

Citing papers doesn’t make an opinion piece “scientific” or unpolitical. It just means the author did enough research to prop their opinion up. It’s a particular failing of self described rationalists that seeing citations means the goal was objective truth rather than supporting a pre-existing bias or opinion. Particularly when dealing with papers in harder to study fields that have been at the centre of the replication crisis.

As with the SRE who tried to play epidemiologist the other day it pays to be skeptical about the evidence and opinions presented even if they are delivered with citations and in an academic tone. Especially when both are playing far outside their fields of expertise.

I don't care what his pre-existing biases were, and that's not really the point. He wrote a paper and supported it with facts and sources. If you disagree with something, then dispute the facts/sources.

I haven't seen a single comment in this post disagreeing with the memo that actually critiques any specific points in the memo. Every single criticism I've seen is more along the lines of "but he was being sexist". Ok, can't argue with that I guess.

If you don’t care about the context the memo was written in you are just engaging in what I described. Essentially trying to veneer your preconceptions with the appearance of “science” and attempting to shift the burden of proof.

It's absurd but, by and large, people don't actually care about science, let alone understand it. They may occasionally appreciate the rewards of science, but only when it makes them happy. When it sends a negative signal, people are quick to ignore science, or only pay attention to tidbits of science that reinforces their world view. It's not even a question of intelligence. Smart people all the time, including on this very site, fall prey to both anti-science and "scientism" at about the same rate. The only difference between a smart human and a dumb human in this space is the smart human has a bigger vocabulary and knows how to cherry-pick data.

Damore might have been granted some more understanding if he had presented his memo to some scientists. Even then, there would have been a high probability that he would have been told to hush-hush or be asked to leave.

> Damore might have been granted some more understanding if he had presented his memo to some scientists. Even then, there would have been a high probability that he would have been told to hush-hush or be asked to leave.

FYI, here are responses to Damore's memo from a few different scientists with relevant expertise: https://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists...

That's a dismissive viewpoint. To be consistent with your view, nobody should be commenting in this thread.

Moreover, a person's field of expertise doesn't have any bearing on whether their ideas are correct. It may go to explain why their views are the way they are, but it doesn't necessarily follow that a person is wrong about something scientific because they aren't a scientist, for instance.

>Moreover, a person's field of expertise doesn't have any bearing on whether their ideas are correct

Nor does their expertise preclude them from succumbing to personal or institutional biases.

Nor does it resign them to said biases.

You should really read a little more history. There's a long, long tradition of "patently obvious" "science" that just happens to justify the continued dominance of whatever group is top at the moment. As I mentioned elsewhere, Kendi's "Stamped from the Beginning" is an excellent examination of the racial aspect of that.

I have my own opinions, which happen to be different from yours!

Except people are by default being told their opinions are incorrect because they disagree with the so called experts.

Experts in a soft, non experimental, survey based scientific discipline. Soft sciences are institutional dogma because by and large there is no way to experimentally verify anything. This is a particular debate in which the establishment is clearly in the wrong to anyone who isn't determined to believe in a nonexistent equality.

> Damore doesn’t strike me as an expert in the field. Just a typical engineer who thinks he knows everything.

FWIW, Damore has a masters in systems biology. This fact was fairly widely reported. So, you can fall back on the facts instead of your own biases (what "strikes" you).

I'm not sure how that makes him any more qualified on the topic of diversity issues at Google

I just told you why it isn't political, you literally just ignored my comment. The whole point of the memo is to attempt to explain a phenomenon that exists, thus it is not political. You can disagree with the contents of the memo, but that doesn't make it "political", or an expression of "opinions".

I just told you why I disagree

The memo was undoubtedly political; it claimed that Google has an inherent left-leaning bias and that this blinds it to the facts.

Is this what conservatism actually is, now? I'm just wondering because, although I agree that nothing Damore said was conservative in a traditional sense, maybe conservatism has just been made more broad in recent years.

For instance, I don't believe that I'm conservative at all, but my liberal friends and family tend to classify me as "conservative". I find it baffling because most of my beliefs are pretty permissive. Ask me about any individual stance, and I can assure you that the answer will most likely be a liberal one. But I'm considered "conservative" because my ideas are not all Liberal(with a capital-L). For instance, there's nothing particularly conservative about believing that biological sex has a determining(or at least predicting) factor on a person's behavior and preferences, yet because this is a stance that today's Liberalism looks down upon, it's considered de facto conservative merely on that basis. The same goes for things like libertarianism and having negative conclusions about socialism. They don't really have anything to do with being conservative in isolation, but if they aren't Liberal then they can only be conservative, in accordance with how the establishment media judge these things.

There needs to be a different word than conservatism for having positions that aren't part of the Liberal platform, but "conservative" works well from an optics perspective because it's been effectively vilified.

EDIT: LOL Am I being downvoted because I said people think I'm conservative? One of you people please tell me.

> There needs to be a different word than conservatism for having positions that aren't part of the Liberal platform

It feels like in many circles the most accurate word would be “heretic”. (and the same is true in many conservative circles - if you don’t hold the right beliefs in the right way you are a “liberal” - in this context, meaning “heretic”). It’s fucking exhausting to get into politics with anyone at all because it’s all just witch hunts and inquisitions.

This is tribal politics. If you're not with us, you must be in the other tribe.

Reasoned ideology has long ago left the room.

This goes for both tribes, of course. With some exceptions on both sides.

I think the modern conservative movement largely is explained by "a group of people that oppose liberalism." That's why you have such a weird coalition of religious groups, older intellectual conservatives, young Republicans, business people, trolls. They really don't have a ton in common, but frankly I get it. I live in the Midwest and while I consider myself an independent, most of my views are moderate or left-wing. But I went to grad school on the East Coast and I felt like an outsider and the most conservative person in class just for holding somewhat moderate views.

This is speculation but it seems like we should inevitably see political factions in the US being defined in this way (and it happens in the Democratic Party too, maybe not in as obvious or extreme a way) as a result of the well-known two-party endgame of our voting system. If your faction isn’t one of the two, your choices are to join one or be irrelevant.

So you jump on the bandwagon with whoever you hate least, and pretty soon you find out that’s almost all you have in common with the rest of the riders.

It may also be specific to conservative movements, given that by definition they oppose some change in society and so would naturally be diverse in their reason for opposing it (possibly more so than the supporters would be diverse in their reasons for supporting it).

That would explain why in our current system the conservative faction is more like this than the liberal faction. But what I was getting at is the reason that the conservative faction is essentially singular. In a less broken system, there could be multiple conservative factions and multiple liberal factions without the sub-factions feeling needing to choose whether to band together on every single issue or be irrelevant.

They could dynamically band together on a per-issue basis and have more reasoned discussions focusing on those issues instead of making sure to pronounce “shibboleth” correctly.

> and it happens in the Democratic Party too, maybe not in as obvious or extreme a way

Democrats is just as extreme. You have the science part of Democrats who vote for them since Republicans largely rejects science for religious reasons (see evolution etc). Then you have the identity politics part of the Democrats. I am 100% certain that a majority of software engineers doesn't agree with the identity politics parts of the Democrats platform, yet they still vote Democrats since they at least doesn't have the religious fanatics on their side which are even worse.

In countries where you can vote right wing without voting for science denial software engineers tend to vote right wing since it gets them lower taxes. Left wing parties are mostly for people with less money.

> "For instance, I don't believe that I'm conservative at all, but my liberal friends and family tend to classify me as "conservative"."

Rather than the old paradigm where political left == liberalism, I think there needs to be a distinction between the new progressive left and classical liberalism since both hold some views and philosophies that are incompatible with each other.

It may well be that, like me, it is not you that has changed necessarily but more that what is considered the left nowadays has drifted away from old school liberalism and you find yourself as alienated by progressives as you are by conservatives?

The en-US usage of the word "liberal" is really confusing to people outside of the USA.

Liberalism doesn't, and has never, meant "left-wing" except for in America.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23125450 This comment explains it very well. Biological differences used to explain keeping people in lower status is a traditional idea and long wielded by conservatives. Explaining that lower status with oppression that needs to be changed is a liberal idea.

The right wing science deniers focus on global warming and evolution denial.

The left is nuclear power and biology denial.

Overlap on antivax.

Welcome to being hated by both sides of you actually use science to form your opinions, rather than justify preconceived beliefs.

Evolution seems to be gaining traction in some ultra right wing circles, albeit in support of other distasteful ideas...

That can be kind of a good thing, though, right? Gay marriage and evolution are already arguments that are falling off the conservative map at a rapid place. In another 20 years, will "conservatives" effectively be just liberals who don't like socialism? That seems to be the way that politics have been boiling down to: socialism vs capitalism. Everything else is kind of adjacent, but as laws get passed or ideas get effectively mocked on the internet, they drop off because they aren't core to those two fundamental ideas.

Yea I'm about the farthest left on the political spectrum as one can get without being outright communist, so it's hilarious if anyone calls me "conservative" for thinking that maybe just maybe biology influences our life choices, and that people should have the freedom to express their opinions and debate issues without being censored or shamed for having contrarian viewpoints (kind of like what the memo, which is titled "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber", talks about, and which ironically got the author fired).

Well, it is political. A number of people and groups have staked a position that is directly contrary to the views expressed in that document. They cannot afford to be proven wrong. When people feel threatened in that way, they attack.

It really doesn't matter how much evidence backs his view or not. It doesn't matter how much logic he mustered or didn't.