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hedgew ◴[] No.15021772[source]
Many of the more reasonable criticisms of the memo say that it wasn't written well enough; it could've been more considerate, it should have used better language, or better presentation. In this particular link, Scott Alexander is used as an example of better writing, and he certainly is one of the best and most persuasive modern writers I've found. However, I can not imagine ever matching his talent and output, even if I practiced for years to try and catch up.

I do not think that anyone's ability to write should disbar them from discussion. We can not expect perfection from others. Instead we should try to understand them as human beings, and interpret them with generosity and kindness.

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ryanbrunner ◴[] No.15021858[source]
I think one thing that struck me from the linked article was the point that the memo wasn't structured to invite discussion. It wasn't "let's have a chat", it was "here's an evidence bomb of how you're all wrong".

I think advancing points is fine, but if you're after productive discussion rather than an adversarial debate, you need to proactively invite discussion. And if an adversarial debate was what he was after, that does strike me as inappropriate work communication.

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nicolashahn ◴[] No.15022073[source]
Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem). Plenty of far more aggressive articles and essays have been written from the opposite side that have not been criticized in the same way.

And for the record, I did not get any aggressive tone from his paper. I thought he was as polite as he needed to be and made the necessary caveats. I think many people were just so unprepared to hear any argument from an opposing viewpoint that they read into it what they wanted to.

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Blackthorn ◴[] No.15022166[source]
> Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem).

This was addressed in the article. This burden has fallen on women since they were teenagers. To expect them to do it yet again, to have to defend themselves at work this time, is ridiculous.

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nicolashahn ◴[] No.15022376[source]
I'm not talking about a woman having to prove her technical ability to her male coworkers at work because of their prejudices. I know that that's bullshit and I'm sorry they have to do so.

I'm talking about handling what Damore claimed in an intellectually honest way. You can't dismiss his points just because you're tired of talking about them (or what you think are the same points you've always been talking about, but I think Damore's comments on each gender's preference and pressures for picking careers had something worth discussing). What he said had at least some spark of originality and insight, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten nearly the attention it did. Consider, would we be talking about the memo if it were about how he thought Sundar Pichai was a lizard man?

Those who disagreed with Damore already won the battle. They kicked him out of Google and doubled down on their diversity initiatives/echo chamber. We should be able to talk about his arguments honestly and rationally without falling back on gendered reasons at this point at least.

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richmarr ◴[] No.15022864[source]
> You can't dismiss his points just because you're tired of talking about them

You can, and some people have, and that's okay. It's not clear whether you're making the implication here, but commonly it's implied that "if you walk away from the debate therefore you are wrong", which is fallacious. Nobody owes you a debate.

> I'm talking about handling what Damore claimed in an intellectually honest way

Then the initial argument needs to start from a place of "intellectual honesty".

Damore presented evidence to support his claim that women are on average less able than men in areas relevant to engineering. He didn't discuss veracity, or contradictory evidence. That's textbook confirmation bias, not intellectual honesty.

Damore then started making HR policy proposals. We use a 50/50 gender ratio as an indicator that a particular field is free from bias. It's one thing to propose that 50/50 is not the natural ratio to end up with, but until Damore can propose a model that predicts another number then proposing HR policy changes put the cart before the horse. This indicates that the policy changes are what James in interested in, not the evidence. More confirmation bias.

Further, Damore's proposals discuss diversity as a whole (race not just gender) without a single word of justification, let alone evidence. That's either more confirmation bias or conscious sleight-of-hand, either way, it's certainly not intellectual honesty.

I don't bear Damore any ill will, he should be forgiven, but this memo was a mistake and showed poor judgement and more than a little bias. These studies may be good science, but stringing them together to confirm a conclusion you'd already set your sights in making is bad science.

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1. Houshalter ◴[] No.15023583[source]
>Damore presented evidence to support his claim that women are on average less able than men in areas relevant to engineering.

His claim was that women are statistically less likely to be interested in computer science. He said nothing about ability.

>It's one thing to propose that 50/50 is not the natural ratio to end up with, but until Damore can propose a model that predicts another number then proposing HR policy changes put the cart before the horse.

He gave lots of numbers. 20% is about the percentage of female computer science graduates. Targeting anything above that would necessarily require discriminating against men.

>Damore's proposals discuss diversity as a whole (race not just gender) without a single word of justification

I don't see any mention of race in the memo. When Damore is talking about "diversity" he always is talking about gender diversity.

>>He didn't discuss veracity, or contradictory evidence. That's textbook confirmation bias, not intellectual honesty.

>This indicates that the policy changes are what James in interested in, not the evidence. More confirmation bias.

>it's certainly not intellectual honesty...

>stringing them together to confirm a conclusion you'd already set your sights in making is bad science.

I've been asked to edit my comment to make it less argumentative. Could you do the same for yours? Calling someone you disagree with "intellectually dishonest", etc, is not good taste.

It's very easy to learn about biases like confirmation bias, and fall into the trap of only applying that knowledge to other people. "He only disagrees with me because of confirmation bias. He's just intellectually dishonest."

You can't possibly know the thought process behind another person. As far as we know Damore did the research and found these facts convincing and developed his view. Not the other way around. Or at least someone presented these facts to him and then he developed the view he has.

In any case, this is how all debates work. People present evidence for their beliefs and the other side responds with refutations and evidence for theirs. There is nothing wrong or intellectually dishonest about this.

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2. dang ◴[] No.15023758[source]
Your comments have been crossing into incivility and flamewar. Would you please make a u-turn and fix that? These threads are divisive enough without careless commenting.
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3. Houshalter ◴[] No.15023827[source]
I don't think my original comment was very uncivl. But I edited it to be less confrontational. Please tell me if that is not enough.
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4. dang ◴[] No.15023858{3}[source]
Tons better and much appreciated, thanks! The only remaining bit I see is "Did you even read the memo" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15023485) which is a common-enough insult to have its own HN guideline (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
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5. Houshalter ◴[] No.15023895{4}[source]
Fixed.
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6. drewmate ◴[] No.15024276{5}[source]
This exchange is likely to get lost in the noise, but I just want to tell both of you how much I appreciate your willingness to give and receive this kind of feedback. It is so hard to get messaging just right when text is your only medium. This kind of back and forth makes it easier to focus on what we mean rather than what was perceived.
7. imron ◴[] No.15024442[source]
> I don't see any mention of race in the memo

The memo is mostly about women, but race is mentioned several times in the memo - mostly in terms of training programs at Google that are only open to people of certain races.

8. salvar ◴[] No.15025259[source]
The memo stated that women have a harder time leading than men. How is that not saying something about ability?
9. richmarr ◴[] No.15034926[source]
> His claim was that women are statistically less likely to be interested in computer science. He said nothing about ability.

Sorry, you're mistaken here. (1) Damore said "I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes". (2) Damore made references to women being less able to cope with leadership positions due to anxiety (3) Studies show ability, interest, motivation and external environment are not mutually exclusive independent things like you might think. Read some of Carol Dweck's research on this for more.

> He gave lots of numbers. 20% is about the percentage of female computer science graduates. Targeting anything above that would necessarily require discriminating against men.

'in the USA' is missing from your sentence.

In China, 40% of faculty are women, and graduate numbers are similar. The largest democracy in the world, India, also has a similar story, close to 50% of graduates.

Google hires across the world, not just in the USA.

> I don't see any mention of race in the memo. When Damore is talking about "diversity" he always is talking about gender diversity.

It's there, look again. And you don't get the unique right to interpret the true meaning behind Damore's words. He specifically references race-related hiring policies as unfair off the back of a discussion about gender.

> I've been asked to edit my comment to make it less argumentative. Could you do the same for yours? Calling someone you disagree with "intellectually dishonest", etc, is not good taste.

I consider my comment pretty factual. Intellectual honesty has a specific meaning; the 'intellectual' isn't just there as filling. It's a method of problem solving that among other things explicitly disconnects your personal beliefs from the pursuit of the facts. I was explaining that Damore's actions were not consistent with intellectual honesty, as implied by the commenter I replied to.

Damore leapt over a vast chasm to get from 'biological' differences to HR policy. He could be right about every single thing in his memo and it still wouldn't be intellectually honest because the evidence provided doesn't explain the observable facts.

Why did representation of women in computing drop suddenly in the 1980s? Why does the USA have 20% (and falling) women CS graduates and India have closer to 50%? Why are 10% of US CS faculty women and in China 40% CS faculty are women? Why do girls interested in computers during childhood suddenly drop their interest?

It ultimately doesn't matter what his thought process is, perhaps I should have left that aspect out. Until Damore can answer those kinds of questions, leaping straight to HR policy is intellectual dishonesty. Unless I'm missing something that's an indisputable fact.

...and we haven't even opened the Pandora's Box that is less biased hiring techniques, but perhaps that's for another time.

[Edit: missed a bit:]

> In any case, this is how all debates work. People present evidence for their beliefs and the other side responds with refutations and evidence for theirs. There is nothing wrong or intellectually dishonest about this.

This is how debates work on topics that aren't emotive. In this case, Damore promoted stereotypes of lower ability (yes, ability), and explicitly claimed that Google is lowering the "bar" to allow diversity candidates in.

That effectively tells his colleagues hired through those programs that they don't deserve to be there, and that he wants fewer people like them hired in future.

That's never going to happen like a discussion of whether the button should be #4285F4 or #3285F4. It's a threat to peoples future prosperity, and the prosperity of their familes, daughters, etc. That conversation requires empathy and trust. Instead, Damore came out guns blazing, with accusations of bias and extremism. He triggered a threat a response.

Nothing he's done makes him inherently a bad person, he had some mistaken views and was clumsy about engaging, but he made a big mistake and left no alternative for this to be a disciplinary matter. I hope he learned this lesson, but given his engagement with MRAs and his new "Fired for Truth" branding I suspect he hasn't.