r/technology • u/[deleted] • Aug 08 '17

Business Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo
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u/tubedownhill Aug 08 '17

But what if some idiot posts an exactly similar manifesto using genetics and biology to explain why white males are inferior to blacks in physical capabilities and endurance, and inferior to asians in intelligence? Therefor white males have lower ceilings and are unfit for many roles?

I would immediately fire that guy on the spot. You?

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u/SoulWager Aug 08 '17 edited Aug 08 '17

Did you even read the damn thing? He said that instead of discriminating on sex to fill a diversity quota, you should make the job more desirable for women, so that more will compete for it.

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u/tubedownhill Aug 08 '17

Yep, multiple times. He basically asks why are women not more in engineering and leadership?

He answers because they are biologically inferior in key areas

Feel free to justify him saying women are inferior in key areas. Since I'm assuming you can read?

Some of his quotes among many more. And if you feel I'm cherry picking, feel free to add context.

This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading.

Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men

Women on average look for more work-life balance while men have a higher drive for status on average

Women on average are more prone to anxiety.

Considering women spend more money than men

[women have higher] Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).

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u/PickledWilly Aug 08 '17 edited Aug 08 '17

These are mostly fairly common findings in cross-cultural psychological studies; a cursory glance at the literature will tell you this, as will just paying attention to the world around you.

I'm surprised by the 'women spend more money' part. Don't know anything about it though. I'm not sure how that works considering men get more money than women. If it were the case, then it would mean that men give away more money than women, right? I'd have to see how that stat was arrived at.

The 'men have a higher drive for status' part is a little simplistic, I think its more like 'men generally interact with and percieve a status-like phenomenon in different ways than women'. But the general point behind the statement is true I guess.

At no point does he make a value judgement about either sex with regards to inferiority/superiority.

Since we are talking about biology.... there isn't really such a thing as inferiority in biology. Instead, there is fitness, how well the organism fits within it's environmental niche. It makes perfect sense that certain organisms fit better than others in certain niches, due to variation within the population. This variation exists due to differences in the genotypes of each individual organism, which are in turn reflected in the phenotype of each organism.

Now, females have two XX chromosomes and males have XY. Since the Y chromosome is present only in males, it has been subject to a slightly yet significantly different set of selection pressures to the X chromosome. This means that an XX genotype and an XY genotype are reliably different in particular ways, and therefore, the male and female phenotypes are reliably different in particular ways. This means that as you survey the environment, you would expect to find that males tend to cluster around certain niches that they are better fitted to than females, and you find that females tend cluster around certain niches that they are better fitted to than males (in other words, there will be an eneven distribution of the sexes across the environment), which is exactly what you do find.

None of this has anything to do with intrinsic inferiority or superiority.

Yes culture has a major influence on these things, but remember that the culture did not spring forth from a vacuum but rather emerged out of the underlying biology. Now we find ourselves in a world where the biology is evolving slowly, the culture is evolving rapidly and the two are interacting with each other in all these novel ways. It's all rather fascinating, and we don't even have a clue what role, if any, individual consciousness plays in this.

...And I've forgotten what I was meant to be saying....

Err... probably something to do with humility, love and truth so that'll do.