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Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

(blog.ycombinator.com)
1080 points cbcowans | 1 comments | 15 Aug 17 19:19 UTC | HN request time: 0.332s | source
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hedgew ◴[15 Aug 17 19:57 UTC] 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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ianmiers ◴[15 Aug 17 21:37 UTC] No.15022883[source]▶
It's not the quality, it's the intent. He went for an adversarial debate, not a discussion.

The memo reads as him knowingly and intentionally starting a fight. My assumption, from reading the memo, was that he was expressing an opinion he knew to be controversial, knew would upset people, but wanted to make a point of proving he was right anyway in the face of those upset people. It reads a lot like the vaguely provocative way people write about such things on twitter/reddit/here.

In a work environment, that approach can and will get you fired. It should cause you career problems even if you do it for mundane things like type theory, or memory management, or distributed systems. Do it on something controversial and cause a huge problem for the company, and of course they are going to fire you. Especially since in this context adversarial = hostile work environment.

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nsnick ◴[15 Aug 17 21:44 UTC] No.15022954[source]▶
Why is a debate worse than a discussion? We strive for debate on all other topics? If you actually want to challenge assumptions you must debate and evaluate the merits of someone else's argument. A discussion would just be you think x and I think y. A debate puts warrants behind the claims in those beliefs.
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throwawayjava ◴[16 Aug 17 02:08 UTC] No.15024435[source]▶
> Why is a debate worse than a discussion?

Debate works really well in two situations:

1. All parties are experienced with debates and enjoy debates. In particular, they can partake in a debate and then, afterward, dispassionately evaluate the arc of the debate; OR

2. The setting is inherently adversarial and there is a third party who will ultimately decide the outcome.

Almost all workplace conversations -- and indeed almost all life conversations -- do not fall into one of these two buckets. In particular:

1. Making use of debate in a search for truth is a difficult and non-universal skill.

For individual debaters to get something out of a debate, they need to know how to disengage from their advocacy and evaluate the arc of the debate from an objective vantage point. This is a skill that requires training. Discussions, on the other hand, allow people to perform this switching between viewpoints as the discussion unfolds. This is much more natural.

2. Adversarial settings create emotional attachment. In debates, people very often become emotionally attached to their arguments and advocacy, causing ego to get in the way of a search for truth. In contrast, discussions do not require a stable advocacy, they are non-adversarial, and no one "wins". These characteristics de-emphasize ego and place the emphasis on whatever actually important issue is at hand.

3. Debates often end up confusing quality of argument with ground truth.

It's always important to remember that constructing arguments is a skill and is time-consuming. It's certainly possible to "win" a debate and still be dead wrong about ground truths -- either by refining debating skill or by throwing more resources into argument construction.

4. Most people don't enjoy debates. I don't have any evidence here, but I think it's probably true. And in a work place, keeping your co-workers happy is probably a lot more important to achieving the company's goals than whatever epsilon benefit debate has over discussion.

Maybe if universities looked more like The Academy everyone would be competent and comfortable in debates, and also understand their inherent limitations as a mechanism in the search for truth. But that's not the world we live in.

So, although I enjoy a good debate as much as the next person, I've found that debates are a truly terrible method for making decisions in most professional settings.

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nsnick ◴[16 Aug 17 14:44 UTC] No.15027840[source]▶
You are actually trying to stifle debate on a topic you think is so self evident that it does not need any... and you are doing it by debating.
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1. throwawayjava ◴[16 Aug 17 15:58 UTC] No.15028514[source]▶
I'd say that this conversation fits under the first criteria I listed for circumstances where debate makes sense. Do you disagree?

If you read my post, it's immediately apparent -- from the very first sentence!!! -- that I am not stating that debate is always worse than discussion. I'm providing a list of reasons why debate is often not preferable to discussion, and particularly in workplaces (e.g., bullet point 4).

So I'm not trying to stifle this debate at all. In fact, exactly the opposite. I explicitly identified one class of circumstances -- which encapsulates this thread -- where debate actually works very well.

Rather, I'm explaining why debate is an objectively bad communication mechanism in many circumstances, and particularly in typical work places.

> stifle debate

Return to your original comment.

WHY is stifling debate bad? Basically, because debate forces us to substantiate our beliefs+. Why is substantiating our beliefs good? Presumably because we're interested in truth. So debate is not some inherent good; it's a useful and indeed sometimes indispensable tool for finding truth.

But I've claimed (points 1-4) that debate, in some circumstances, actually actively harms our search for truth. Again, not all circumstances, but some.

So it's very unclear to me why you would claim that stifling debate is a bad thing without responding to my four critiques of debate as a mechanism for finding truth.

Is having debates more important than finding truth? Is robust debate more important than getting things done? ++

> you think is so self evident that it does not need any

Oh cool, now I get to yell at you about dubious unwarranted claims ;-)

--

+ It's possible to have non-argumentative discussions in which everyone is forced to substantiate their claims; this is about good communication and critical thinking, not debate vs. discussion. Backing off from a combative tone is only equivalent to "stifling" when your communication skills are sub-par.

++ Finally, on a personal note, this realization that debate is often counter-productive was a huge turning point in my career and in my personal life. Identifying when debates are and are not appropriate is an important professional and life skill. E.g., I never, ever start a debate when I'm trying to convince someone to change a workplace policy. It's totally and completely unsurprising to me that doing so backfired in a big way, because the same thing has happened to me.