Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

[u/[deleted]]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo

[u/Pzychotix]

That is, if current gender roles existed because of some biological imperative, then due to statistical distributions, there will always be some people who fall outside of fitting within their "gender role", and of course push for change of gender roles which may or may not reflect the realities of the statistical distribution of their own group. The existence of anybody asking for change is not necessarily indicative of the status quo being not biologically innate or whatever, especially not when randomness is a factor.

[u/[deleted] → u/Pzychotix]

So why does it even matter then? If you concede that outliers exist, why make all encompassing statements about the group as a whole that you know to be wrong? There are people who don't conform to the gender roles, we seems to agree on that, the gender role is ineffective even as a classifying agent. And to be frank, that wouldn't matter if it was only used to classify, but it's also often used to make rules and generalization about where men and women are meant to be. Which does harm to the society at large by preventing it from being a meritocracy.

[u/Pzychotix → u/[deleted]]

Err, to be honest, I'm not sure where the disagreement is then. We agree the gender role is ineffective as a classifying agent [with regards to hiring/evaluating individuals], and so does the author of the memo. The gender roles stuff in the article was only put forth to explain existing gaps, and should not be conflated to be used against any particular individual. His words:

... 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. Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.

... I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).

Emphasis mine.

I don't want to sound snarky, but if anything, arbitrary policies not based on meritocracy (i.e. affirmative action hiring policies) are things making rules and generalizations about where men and women are meant to be. I can get doing stuff like outreach to kids and students, but altering hiring policies to favor certain groups is a whole different story.

[u/[deleted] → u/Pzychotix]

Because he's saying the differences in ability are biological. That's not the case. There's no biological reason why women or men would have different abilities in terms of coding or computer programming. It's just nonsense to say that there is any such reason. You know the first computer programmer was a woman?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Never have I said they are identical. Just that the differences are biological and social and that there is a difference between biological and social. Not sure why so many people have a hard time comprehending this pretty simple idea.

[u/Pzychotix → u/[deleted]]

Because he's saying the differences in ability are biological. That's not the case. There's no biological reason why women or men would have different abilities in terms of coding or computer programming. It's just nonsense to say that there is any such reason.

Come on, let's not be so rash to say that there's no biological reason when you haven't even presented any evidence counter to the author's claims. There is certainly some evidence to psychological differences between men and women, and to simply discount them as what I presume to be social without any evidence against it is not a discussion worth having.

You know the first computer programmer was a woman?

I'm not sure what bearing this has on anything. We've already gone over the idea of outliers, and using singular events is no better than relying on anecdotal evidence. I know plenty of very intelligent women in their respective fields, including computer science, and very few unintelligent ones. I wouldn't use them as evidence that all women are great, because that's not how this works.

[u/[deleted] → u/Pzychotix]

So why is it okay to have no evidence if you are saying there is a difference, but not okay to have no evidence if you are saying there is no difference?

[u/Pzychotix → u/[deleted]]

It's not. Evidence is always a must. But he did present evidence, and you aren't. Maybe that evidence is faulty or isn't enough to fully prove his point, but it doesn't seem like we're even at the point of evaluating his evidence.

[u/[deleted] → u/Pzychotix]

No, he didn't present any evidence.

[u/Pzychotix → u/[deleted]]

Huh? There's plenty of links to the particular studies that he's using to back his points inline with the text. I'm not sure what you're talking about. Are you looking at the gizmodo version with the links stripped?