Slashdot Mirror
Critics Debate Autism's Role in James Damore's Google Memo (themarysue.com)
James Damore "wants you to know he isn't using autism as an excuse," reports a Silicon Valley newspaper, commenting on the fired Google engineer's new interview with the Guardian. But they also note that "he says being on the spectrum means he 'sees things differently'," and the weekend editor at the entertainment and "geek culture" site The Mary Sue sees a problem in the way that interview was framed.
It's the author of this Guardian article, not James Damore himself, who makes the harmful suggestion that Damore's infamous Google memo and subsequent doubling-down are somehow caused by his autism... It frames autism as some sort of basic decency deficiency, rather than a neurological condition shared by millions of people.... This whole article is peppered with weird suggestions like this, suggestions which detract from an otherwise interesting piece.. All these weird suggestions that autism and misogyny/bigotry are somehow tied (as if autistic feminists didn't exist) do unfortunately detract from one of the article's great points.
Having worked at a number of companies large and small, I can at least anecdotally confirm that their diversity training rarely includes a discussion of neurodiversity, and when it does, it's not particularly empathetic or helpful... Many corporate cultures are plainly designed for neurotypical extroverts and no one else -- and that should change. I really do think Lewis meant well in pointing that out. But the other thing that should change? The way the media scapegoats autism as a source of anti-social behavior.
Having worked at a number of companies large and small, I can at least anecdotally confirm that their diversity training rarely includes a discussion of neurodiversity, and when it does, it's not particularly empathetic or helpful... Many corporate cultures are plainly designed for neurotypical extroverts and no one else -- and that should change. I really do think Lewis meant well in pointing that out. But the other thing that should change? The way the media scapegoats autism as a source of anti-social behavior.
that is all.
It's the latest millennial buzzword for "disorders" which can't be reliably diagnosed and get treated by unlicensed therapists with no actual training. They're especially sought out by the weekend seminar trained, unlicensed "psychotherapists" from the "Center for Self Leadership".
They call for tolerance on all views on life except when it doesn't suit their own agenda. I call BS.
The point of the (well written) original article was that Damore had handled things poorly due to his condition, not that his opinions arose due to his condition. E.g. he describes how he was associated with people he had never supported following the media backlash, and his poor social skills prevented him from being able to properly articulate his true position. Also he described how aspects of the wording in his memo could have been improved if he had been able to better predict the reactions of those around him.
It seems to me that this Mary Sue article has an axe to grind, perhaps not surprising given the source.
...also has autism.
I think some aspects of Aspergers or other Autism spectrum disorders have it RIGHT in that emotion has no place in decision making. Do the right things for quantifiable reasons and don't expect everyone to read between the lines and come to same conclusions because people are too chicken shit to say what they mean.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
It's an iteration of "immature women playing dollhouse into their adulthood". Reasonable people disregard it immediately.
The media "broke coverage" of Autism with Rain Man in 1988, and other than a few brief echos on Oprah and such it didn't say much again until the new millennium.
Would you think that with 17 years of practice, they'd have it down to a graceful sensitive socially correct science by now? I wouldn't. There was 10 years of "AWARENESS" beating the drum as loudly as possible while the "diagnosed" rates climbed from 1:10,000 through 1:150 and settled down around 1:68. Now that everybody is AWARE, there's been scant attempt to teach the nuance between Aspergers' and the various levels of dysfunctionality.
Give it another generation, when people who were AWARE in elementary school start framing the message it might take on a more human tone. For now, we're still getting our stories from the barely clued in.
... because I read Damore's memo and found it to be perfectly reasonable.
James Damore was asked to provide feedback after attending a diversity event at Google; he provided feedback, and then like the crazy nutcases of the Communist Revolution in China, the "feminist" SJWs used that feedback to identify Damore as a prime candidate for destruction in their Cultural Revolution.
Seriously. If you've spent any time reading about the timeline of Damore's internal document, or listening to Damore speak, you'd realize that he was very badly mistreated by an insidious group of harpies who have zero interest in improving our world.
It is one of the first rules that AS people need to learn.
Don't be a dick and that includes treating people how you expect to be treated. If you act like a dick, then expect to be treated like a dick.
Damore's arguments are exactly the same ones Google is going to use to defend itself from sexual discrimination claims levied against it by women working there who don't get paid as much as men.
Google really stepped in it when they claimed Damore was full of shit, and then doubled down on the SJW bullshit that all pay differences between men and women are the result of discrimination.
Well, now Google has to defend itself from the women who work at Google and get paid less than the men there.
Google is screwed either way. If Damore is wrong, Google owes a lot of women a shitload of back pay. And if Google uses anything like Damore's arguments to defend themselves from sexual discrimination claims, they wrongfully fired Damore and owe him both money and likely some serious punitive damages.
Couldn't happen to a better bunch of SJWs.
His mistake was to speak up. Autism doesn't turn people into idiots, often quite the opposite, but it makes it difficult to predict how other people will react. Social customs are highly illogical and usually not codified, but they govern everyday life to a high degree. Autists often speak their mind and offend without intent to offend. It is difficult to understand that it could be wrong to say what you truly believe and can corroborate with facts. It's not a "basic decency" deficiency. Autists are typically honest people, simply because they are bad at deceiving other people. An honest person who doesn't know when to shut up can be quite exhausting however.
Damore's memo is the only thing in this whole debacle that is explicitly based on well established research.
What is wrong with you people? Have you even read his memo, or did you just take some "properly" interpreted version from leftist rags like Salon?
Wel duuuhh
Which part of the memo suggests that he was cognitively impaired?
Boy, it's really telling that our reaction is, "They asked that man for his honest opinion about how they could get better, and DAMN he was an idiot to answer honestly! What was he thinking!?"
You can tell who is really in charge these days by saying "women are good X, men are good at Y, women are bad at Z, men are bad at Q" and the only part people care about is that you said women are bad at something.
He said many women were not as drawn to the current work environment that tends to exist around software engineering. He even suggested changing that environment to better suit women so more would be more interested in working there. You can argue against the science, but you cannot say that that is a misogynistic viewpoint. But that's exactly what he was fired for. It's sad, Google used to be such an awesome company before they went evil. I used to really cheer for them when they succeeded. Now, Google just like all the rest of the corporate bastards, I just want them to lose.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The Guardian was last good ca. '07. Since then they've faithfully tiptoed around matters like income inequality (also known as the distribution of wealth), socioeconomic mobility, the new serf class, economic stagnation due to the infallible derivatives market, and the knee-jerk cancer that controls discussion to prevent debate on these topics and others.
In a nutshell, the Guardian has been a "hip left" alternative to the BBC for over a decade now.
Another place where everyone dissenting with the obvious glorious achievements of the glorious revolution were labeled insane. I mean, you have to be insane to not realize you're living in the best of all possible worlds!
(I wish I was kidding)
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Autists usually believe you when you tell them something and they will respond honestly. So if you tell them that you want an "open and frank discussion", they will give you one. And they will of course not understand when you react in a hostile way because all they did was to give you what you wanted.
In other words, never ask an Autist for something you don't want because you WILL get it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You realize that people have been saying the same thing about you and deliberately trying to misdirect people. In all of the stories related to this, I've seen you or other posters dismiss Damore's memo as nonsense, state that it makes claims that aren't backed up by the research he cited, or claim that the studies are basically pseudoscience, but I think I've only seen one person actually post something that even began citing scientific literature to refute something in Damore's memo.
If there's this 100 years of research on the subject that shows everything that he said was utter nonsense, please start telling us where to find it. Even climate change skeptics around here have a better record of citing something. All you've done is to try to bury your head in the sand and try to convince everyone else that none of this can possibly be true because you don't like the conclusion. I don't really expect anyone here to change your mind because it already seems quite made up, but I'd ask you to actually try to back up some of your assertions.
I disagree. We live in a culture that highly encourages freedom of speech and at one time used to respect it. Google, in particular, had a reputation for this sort of behaviour and apparently set up tools to act as safe spaces within the company to exchange ideas freely. Using this to express ideas in an area where you have some formal training but that many people might disagree with and think are wrong perhaps shows a certain naivety in actually believing your employer and society but I think stops well short of cognitive impairment.
Arguably, though, the worst example fo cognitive impairment is in those at Google carefully constructing their own thought echo chamber. If you cannot abide to have your own beliefs challenged in a polite, reasoned manner either you already are mentally impaired or soon will be. The correct response to him would have been an equally reasoned reply pointing out studies which contradict his claims that way he, and others, could have learnt something.
He was probably told the "this is an open environment encouraging frank discussion of points of view" bullshit. And if he's a HFA he probably believed it, considered it and wrote his statement accordingly, honestly believing that there is actual interest in creating a "better" working environment instead of pushing an agenda.
It's a bit like Luther and his 95 theses. That man, too, believed that he could have an academic discussion with the Pope over his main income source...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Are you talking about his use of the word 'hysteria'? That's a technical term used in the Meyers Briggs types. He did not come up with that term on his own. Granted, he could have been a lot more careful at introducing his ideas, but he wasn't sharing that paper with thousands of people, he wasn't twitting it out like some people we know, he was just sharing it with seven other Googlers.
Those seven other Googlers should have discussed that paper with him, helped him refine it, not send it out to the World. I don't know about that guy's cognitive abilities, but he certainly wasn't hired for his ability to write papers, nor was he hired for his social intelligence either. But anybody who thinks there isn't a kernel of truth into what he was trying to say is lying to themselves and to the entire world.
And yes, Marie Sue magazine, you can find high functioning women with autism, you can even find women who are colorblind and who stutter, I can even dig up some statistics for you if you like, like you said, they do exist, but women with autism are much rarer than men with autism, and they do have the same issues with expressing themselves well in writing and pissing off others (both males and females). I've seen it first-hand.
Now, you may not have met any of those women at your magazine, in fact, your magazine probably wouldn't hire any of them, but in my field, which is technology, there are definitely a number of them, and they tend to thrive in my field even if they occasionally piss off their colleagues once in a while.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
First, let's spin the time-o-meter back a bit and remember that Damore's original premise was impaired based on technical factors ALONE. This was a deficit of analysis, nothing psychological. He tried to mis-apply population and sub-group statistics without quantifying any null hypothesis or larger context.
Technical issues aside, the specific wording and tone used in his note is a separate issue. I'm no linguist or lit-crit person, but he seemed to be very abstract, as if he had no direct, personal involvement with the subject aside from investigating it and writing about it. Yet he was clearly trying to write a persuasion piece, which is what made the language disconnect apparent to me in the first place.
I read this as an effort to put forth and justify an opinion clad in flimsy technical garb, without the spine to clearly label it as a personal opinion. Weasel-words in the nether-world between a solid technical discussion and an opinion piece.
Then we get to when, how and why the piece was distributed. He had shared at least one earlier draft with several others within Google, with apparently no significant push-back. I've seen similar things happen in other organizations, when fringe opinions are shared within a small group with minimal reaction. Most often, it's "Oh, there he goes again.", and nobody takes it seriously, and may not even bother to read it. Or it is taken as a thought experiment, with no concerns about wider distribution. I have heard nothing about what any of the folks though about Damore's screed before it was widely shared.
We can see how Damore could have made bad assumptions about his general audience: First, he may have interpreted the earlier lack of push-back as approval. Second, he may have assumed the earlier readers were representative of the wider audience. Neither of these have anything to do with "the Autism Spectrum". These are common mistakes any of us can make with our generalizations and assumptions.
However, claiming involvement of "the Spectrum" in these errors without first showing that other factors weren't involved smells to me like excuse-making rather than a serious explanation, much less a mea culpa.
why is anyone paying any attention to this? at all?
i remember back when the whole point of so-called "nerd culture" was to, you know, avoid sensationalistic tabloid culture bullshit.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
I'm starting to think the same thing as well. He seems unaware of both the last 100 years of research on the subject and that people would assume that not addressing it is a deliberate attempt to misdirect the reader, in the way that anti-diversity activists have also been doing for the last 100 years.
The initial assumption was that he must have done it deliberately, but perhaps it is possible that he really didn't mean to.
You constantly call all the egalitarians "anti-diversity", "racist", "misogynist", etc.
It doesn't take much for an idea to take off. People read something that makes sense and they repeat it - my constant assertions that there is a correlation between weak rights for women and high female CS enrollment is getting repeated everywhere (saw it repeatedly on Quora, for example). Another thought that got repeated a lot was the list of objective "privileges" enjoyed by western women (higher avg salary, better health, etc)
Here's another idea that I wish to gain traction: there are two separate concepts -
1. We must treat everyone equally
2. We must fix the injustices of the past (affirmative action)
You, and people like you, are trying to convince the rest of the world that those two separate concepts are the same. That is not true. For example, most people will get behind the concept of "Lets treat everyone equally", but not support affirmative action.
What you are doing, and what you (and the rest of the peanut gallery) always do is try to convince us that ignoring injustices of the past is the same as not treating everyone equally.. That is not true.
We all agree to treat everyone equally. We do not agree with affirmative action.
Disagreeing with affirmative action is not agreement with bigotry!
Disagreeing with affirmative action is not support for racism!
Disagreeing with affirmative action is not support for sexism!
We disagree with your methods because they are discriminatory.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
If not for double standards, the left would have no standards at all.
He "self identifies" as autistic. According to the left's rules, that's good enough for him to qualify as a woman or black. But not autistic?
See that "Preview" button?
I can't speak for other posters, only myself. Please try not to lump us together.
There are two issues here, and I have been consistent about this. Firstly, while the studies he cites do have some interesting and valid results, he interprets them in a way that isn't justified in order to make his argument. For example, David Schmitt, the author of the "Why Canâ(TM)t a Man Be More Like a Woman? Sex Difference in Big Five Personality Traits Across 55 Cultures" paper that Damore cites, states that the biological differences account for 10% of the variance, and the other 90% is due to non-biological. Damore greatly over-values the biological component here.
The other issue is that he ignores the successes of attempts to address non-biological factors, except to complain that they make conservatives uncomfortable and to state that they should end (without real explanation of why, other than the implication that he thinks the issue is entirely biological).
He has had opportunities to expand on this and clarify, but instead stuck to his original biological essentialism. For example, in an interview he repeated the claim that pre-natal testosterone exposure has a big influence on career choice, but there is no scientific consensus for that at all. In fact, scientists had largely moved on from the entire nature vs. nurture argument 15+ years ago.
Please stop mis-characterising my arguments and instead make some of your own. We have an opportunity to discuss the details of the memo, rather than fling accusations of bad faith around.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You constantly call all the egalitarians "anti-diversity", "racist", "misogynist", etc.
I do not. I am an egalitarian.
1. We must treat everyone equally
2. We must fix the injustices of the past (affirmative action)
You, and people like you, are trying to convince the rest of the world that those two separate concepts are the same. That is not true. For example, most people will get behind the concept of "Lets treat everyone equally", but not support affirmative action.
Simply treating everyone equally has been tried, in fact it has been law for decades in many places, but it hasn't addressed the inequalities. That's because the issues are often entrenched in systems and in the starting positions of all the players. It's like saying that a game of chess treats both players equally because the rules are the same for everyone, even though white doesn't start with a queen.
Having said that, I fully appreciate that affirmative action is highly controversial. To be absolutely clear I don't think everyone who opposes it is a bigot, that's silly. And sometimes affirmative action can be wrong, it can have unintended negative consequences, or even be malicious. But blanket rejection of it is also wrong, because it ignores reality and evidence in pursuit of some pure philosophical ideal.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
No, autism would tend to be asocial or socially neutral. Anti-social is when you actually harm society, and that's less prevalent in autistics than the general population (even moreso when you account for the degree of bullying autistics are recipients of).
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
This is incredibly troubling, because it takes a legitimate if somewhat controversial statement, and wonders what mental disease or syndrome the speaker might have, as a cause, rather than dealing with the arguments directly.
In other words, it's a fancy way of saying, "All right-minded people would never even consider that, so something must be wrong with him."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The idea that we must tolerate the intolerant is a laughable argument. You can have any belief you want, but when you act on them is when you lose that right.
You never have the right to treat someone like shit just because you think you should have the right to do so, since that is your "belief"
I mean, yeah, it's a problem for people who can't tolerate reality. But society blaming autism for speaking the truth seems a little odd...
This is so true. My son and I are both on the spectrum and both have trouble lying. He will try to lie, but is horrible at it and crumbles on even the most basic questioning. Personally, I find lying extremely hard to do. I can do it if it's a small lie like "No, honey, I didn't buy you a birthday present" when I really did and am keeping it as a surprise, they're fine. If it's something bigger like trading in a car for a new one and I think the old car's transmission is shot, the truth will come blurting out before I can stop it. (Yes, this happened and yes I suspect it affected my trade-in value.) Over the years, I've learned how to tell white lies to not hurt people's feelings needlessly, but big lying is always a huge challenge for me.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Nobody wants to hear that he might have autism. Not because it may or may not be true, but it forces people to recognize this is a complex issue with valid points from many sides. It makes it harder for people to vilify someone with black and white logic, and people who have already made up their minds hate that kind of thing.
I agree that no censorship can be a double-edged sword. I'll post in Reddit a lot. One of the good things is that there are subreddits for all opinions so "deplorables" can go to their own subreddit instead of flooding the ones I frequent. The bad thing is that this results in an echo chamber where everyone you interact with agrees with you (both on my side and on the side of the "deplorables"). It's almost a no-win situation: If you moderate too much, you create an echo chamber and punish people for their opinions, but if you don't moderate enough, members with radical opinions might drive away moderate members who don't want to deal with constantly replying to crazy or infantile opinions. It's a narrow path to follow and it's nearly impossible to get right all the time.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
>Simply treating everyone equally has been tried, in fact it has been law for decades in many places, but it hasn't addressed the inequalities. That's because the issues are often entrenched in systems and in the starting positions of all the players.
It hasn't addressed the inequalities because people aren't equal. But even if they were, the pools are not equal and so there is not enough women or blacks or whatevers to balance out the liberal progressive equation of proper employment ratios. I swear, people are idiotic on this. They take a flawed assumption (that all people have the same potential and preferences regardless of their genitalia or "race") on inputs, look at the outputs, and see the outputs are different across genders and races, and assume that the only logical explanation is structural and systemic discrimination.
Not even accounting for potential genetic differences or the active impact of men having active testorone levels that are 15-30x higher than women and the impact of testosterone on aggression, risk taking, and criminality (among other things), or the effect of estrogen on mood swings and emotionality, or other ancillary impacts of the Y chromosome vs. an extra X chromosome, there is the simple fact that there are 10 times as many men that major in computer science or computer engineering as women. Even assuming the candidate pools are exactly identical in medians and distributions across gender - there will be more men who are >1 std deviation better than the median than women computer science graduates in total. That means your aspirational goal of having a 50:50 sex ratio of men to women who code is only realistically achievable by one of 2 mechanisms: either you are willing to hire grossly deficient computer programmers to satisfy a gender quota, or you are willing to pay substantially above market rates (for a similarly qualified male) in order to hire women who are scarce and thus will come at a premium (because, presumably, other progressive organizations are trying to do the same thing).
In this context, measuring outcomes and assuming racism or sexism ignores the very reality of the situation which prevents realistic rectifying this at a company or industry level because the target candidates don't exist in the numbers necessary to balance out the equation.
>Google used to be such an awesome company before they went evil.
It's not that Google is evil per se, it's that their definition of good and evil is very, very different than yours. Hint: you are evil to them.
Read a little further down the article and they address that point. It's actually Damore's memo that conflates preference and ability, and those two statements are addressing parts of it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
When most people talk about inequality they mean inequality of opportunity, not that everyone is literally equal to everyone else in every measurable way.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Regarding your car trade-in. Don't beat yourself up too bad over that. The dealer is most likely just going to send it to a wholesale auction and make it some BHPH lot's problem. Your minimum trade value was determined before you even walked in the door by a database. Very rarely does the trade value go down from there. It goes up because the customer plays hardball.
When the left talks about inequality, they specifically talk about inequality in outcomes, not inequality in opportunity. For them, it's axiomatic that an unequal outcome can only be due to an unequal opportunity and/or a discriminatory process.
For example, the EEOC will look at hiring aptitude tests and if the distribution curve for black or female candidates is different than white or male candidates, it's presumed to be discriminatory. Additionally, even though the Affirmative Action law is proscriptive against hiring quotas, the EEOC specifically enforces the law like there is a quota. For example, if you have a large enough employee pool, and have only 6% blacks in technology vs. their 13% representation in the population as a whole, that's often treated as being indicative of a pattern of discrimination regardless of what the pool of candidates looks like (and blacks account for 6% of computer science majors).
... and the totalitarian climate that comes with it.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
A trusted source of unbiased news if ever there was never one. HA HA HA!
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
so they're terrified of a work environment that's not conducive to women. Every single HR rep and tech CEO is salivating over the prospect of getting women into tech in mass. I'm not going to debate if they're better or worse than men taking as a statistical whole, but there's plenty of them that are superb at it and staying out because the work environment stinks. Getting them in would cause wages to plummet as the workforce increases by anywhere from 10-50%.
Anything that upsets that growing apple cart is going to be brushed aside. It's not SJWism, it's good 'ole capitalism.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
>You have decided that I am part of "the left"
I never once said "you" in my reply.
You don't have to be a member of the left to agree with what I wrote, but the difference between the left and say, a moderate, is the left treats it as incontrovertible dogma and the only ones who would dispute that are mysoginists or racists.
As an aside, I'm not sure what you think about my assertion(s) is ridiculous. Care to clarify so I can clarify or back off the ledge if I stepped onto one?
If you haven't seen this essay by Clay Shirky, you might find it interesting.
When the left talks about inequality, they specifically talk about inequality in outcomes, not inequality in opportunity. For them, it's axiomatic that an unequal outcome can only be due to an unequal opportunity and/or a discriminatory process.
Outcome is the product of opportunity and ability.
Given a normal (gaussian) distribution of ability, and a uniform (equal) distribution of opportunity, we would expect a normal distribution of outcomes (most people doing average, few people doing exceptionally well or poorly).
We tend to see a highly abnormal distribution of outcomes (worse outcomes are way more common than better ones), which means either ability is not normally distributed, or opportunity is not uniformly distributed.
Ability is generally observed to be normally distributed: most people are average, few are exceptionally good or bad.
Therefore we can conclude that opportunity is not uniformly distributed.
TL;DR: Statistically abnormal inequality of outcome is evidence of inequality of opportunity.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
>Ability is generally observed to be normally distributed: most people are average, few are exceptionally good or bad.
Ability is generally observed to be normally distributed, but the group median varies depending on the groups and the quality being measured. There is a reason why whites are not competitive at neither Olympic marathons or sprints and why XX women are not competitive with XY men in any sport where strength, speed, or endurance is a primary factor. Presumably you don't think bias is evidence of inequality in opportunity here?
>Ability is generally observed to be normally distributed: most people are average, few are exceptionally good or bad.
Additional note, in population sub groups, the tails also vary considerably. For example, women are more tightly clustered around the mean than men are when it comes to IQ, meaning for a given population size, there will be more men below 2 std devs and above 2 std devs than women, and outliers drive envy. No one cares about perfectly average Bob in accounting who has been promoted twice in 20 years.
Ability is generally observed to be normally distributed: most people are average, few are exceptionally good or bad.
Therefore we can conclude that opportunity is not uniformly distributed.
TL;DR: Statistically abnormal inequality of outcome is evidence of inequality of opportunity.
So wouldn't that mean we have some sort of bias is used to create more black Olympic runners? Or that we need to force more white and "other-than-black" ethnicitys into Basketball? I mean, American runners must have the best opportunity since we spend so much money in this country on training and technology for improving our athletes. But the outcome is not equal, and we must assume that the ability is, so it can only be opportunity that is ruining it all!
This ignores the science that shows why certain body shapes are very good for running or swimming, for example. Length of the lower leg for runners and trunk to leg ratio for swimmers.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
including the learning step. Remember, once you get past trig it's a sausage fest. And it's all very, very socially awkward guys who have a hard time not making fools of themselves around women either intentionally or by design. It's just a plain uncomfortable situation to be in. If anything it's worse when they're younger since you've got hormone addled teenagers. Given the choice bright woman go into medical, accounting, general management, etc.
It doesn't help that modern education is so competitive that you pretty much have to start planing for your profession in your freshmen year of high school...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
That's unusually hard to read for Scott Alexander. But insightful, as always.
The obvious retort though is: just because you say someone is being a dick, doesn't mean that you're wrong.
>PS, you should care about Bob from Accounting.
It's not that I don't care about Bob from Accounting - most of us are Bob. The problem is, none of the lynchpins of the arguments against current society hinge upon Bob. The poster child for the benefactor of the supposed oppression rooted firmly in our system is the white male, with someone like Donald Trump as the current poster boy for unearned or unfairly earned wealth and power - and by proxy melanin content and genitalia, all white men are guilty, including Bob from accounting. But Bob isn't really holding up the system nor is he tangibly benefitting from the system. He didn't get a secret decoder ring for figuring out how to get backroom deals by the white male patriarchy. He's not getting promoted on the backs of his harder working women and minority peers. In short, he's a convenient witch when people are going on a witch hunt and looking for a witch to burn.
Umm... not really.
Before I understood that you threatening me to kick me hard enough to send me to the moon was not meant literally, I would probably have questioned your ability to kick hard enough for me to reach escape velocity, since our bodies would both rather disintegrate from the required force, and even if we ignored that you would have to absorb the energy required to send me on an escape trajectory due to the third Newtonian law, atmospheric friction alone would ensure that I would not even leave the atmosphere and burn up before reaching even the stratosphere.
Usually I didn't get that far, though...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What the fuck are you calling 'real'? Just because 80% of the population have the same fucked up emotional instability doesn't make the rest of us wrong.
Wow, today's first winner in the reading comprehension test.
I'll do you further honour by not even awarding you a gold star, which you would humbly decline in any case, recognizing that this "amazing" feat of yours was merely degree of difficulty 1.0 (had Slashdot not degenerated into some kind of Special Olympic group hug for the reading impaired).
Pinker vs. Spelke — 2005
This entire debate just seems fated to devolve into Plastafarianism.
Plastafarianism is a religious order that believes that human behaviour is so infinitely malleable, that no observed human behaviour whatsoever can't be adequately (and preferably) explained by environmental cues or conditioning.
Failure to share the perspective that such explanations are universally adequate, complete, satisfactory, and decisively preferable in all discourse dimensions will get your balls cut off.
Plastafarianism believes that whatever evolutionary biology brought to the male/female table has already undergone so many cultural face lifts, it's surpassed the 3.0 emjay* threshold of utterly obscured, obliterated, and eradicated (UOOE).
[*] An exponential scale where 0.5 emjays is defined as precisely fifty M.J. years (The Evolution Of Michael Jackson's Face 1958 FROM 2009).
Earnest discussion of effects above and beyond the 3.0 emjay threshold is either a form of cultural psychosis or culpable gullibility (at which point, the though police arrive in their giant white hats, bearing shrink-wrap David Byrne white suits, and powerful white heat guns).
One of the old tenets of feminism is that once we kick all the old hidebound alpha males out of political office, the world will become a kinder and gentler place—because the women who will slot in to replace these males really are wired differently, biologically. Unfortunately, the XX chromosome test hasn't proved much better at screening out assholes than your mother's tired, old Y chromosome test.
Why Some Teams Are Smarter Than Others — 18 January 2015
Huh, women might perform better than men in some corporate settings due to a possibly innate biological advantage (though Plastifarianism would deny that any such biological factor—even a relatively strong effect*—could withstand the lawfully established 3.0 emjay UOOE social pertinence filter).
[*] Plastifarians are presently hard at work reha
Okay, so he's on the spectrum. Yay.
People on the spectrum say and do all kinds of strange things. I heard of a guy who would pause eating, and suddenly start stabbing himself in the eyeball with his fork.
You know what used to happen to people like that? Bad things. Really BAD things, like involuntary incarceration in a nightmare institution where things like rape were tame in comparison to the other stuff that went on.
But despite all the truly horrible things that happened, something good did come out of it?
They didn't breed.
So while this person isn't likely to be going to a mental hospital any time soon, he has clearly demonstrated the inferiority of his genetic material through his behavior, and subsequent job loss. Which means he isn't likely to have children, and pass on his defective genetic material.
And I don't have a problem with that.
[End Of Line]
He must have got someone else in to do it, because I can see one right in the middle.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It doesn't matter because none of the arguments matter.
Google has created a hostile politically charged corporate culture that will drive talent away. The full scope of the problem may ultimately be fatal in time. So any defense of their behavior doesn't really matter. I mean, who cares if it does that? That sits on top of the real estate problem in SV that is making even the sky high tech job salaries irrelevant because all the money goes to rent.
James' argument doesn't matter because no one that disagrees with him is listening and no one that agrees with him needs to be told. The politicos are going do what they want and consequences are going to happen. This DoL dispute is interesting, he may win a lawsuit. But winning the lawsuit won't change anything unless the fines get very high. Absent getting fined a couple hundred MILLION minimum... google just won't care. Given that that seems unlikely... the market will have an effect, not James... whatever his intentions or the validity of his arguments. It just doesn't matter.
The Mary Sue's position also doesn't matter... the whole Rad Fem perspective is not even widely embraced by most women much less the general population. Its the pink haired fat chick with an eyebrow ring. Sorry if the stereotype seems "insensitive" but statistically that is the demographic that takes this seriously. And those sorts of people generally excel at whining and little else. They don't write books people care about. They don't create companies people care about. They don't invent anything. I can go on... they don't matter. They excel at making a nuisance of themselves.
And me saying this here and now... doesn't matter. Everyone that agrees with me doesn't need to be told. Everyone that disagrees won't be persuaded. And everything that was going to happen before will still happen that way whatever I said here...
This is all just... noise.
And that is what most of this political shit is... it is pointless bullshit.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Well golly gee what a surprise!
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
There are two issues here, and I have been consistent about this. Firstly, while the studies he cites do have some interesting and valid results, he interprets them in a way that isn't justified in order to make his argument. For example, David Schmitt, the author of the "Why Canâ(TM)t a Man Be More Like a Woman? Sex Difference in Big Five Personality Traits Across 55 Cultures" paper that Damore cites, states that the biological differences account for 10% of the variance, and the other 90% is due to non-biological [wired.com]. Damore greatly over-values the biological component here.
I think you don't really have any understanding of the literature or haven't bothered to read it. If you read the article you cite carefully, the statistic doesn't come from the article mentioned itself, but rather from one of the authors. I don't know where he gets that number, but I'll assume it's not made up. Also, the statement is qualified to refer to a single dimension (only one of the five factors) of personality and may be lacking other information. If you actually bother to read the research paper attributed to that author, it shows that sex-based variation of that trait increases in more egalitarian and prosperous societies.
That may seem odd, but it makes sense when you stop to consider that if you were able to create a perfect and ideal society that treated everyone the same, then the amount of variance in any trait becomes almost entirely genetic factors. It's a bit like giving two plants as much sunlight and water as they want to create an ideal environment. If one grows taller than the other, it's going to come down to biological causes. We also see this result in the tech world where in countries that are less well off such as India there are a greater percentage of women in tech, likely because it pays well. Schmitt doesn't say (or the article excludes) whether this 10% variance for the trait in general, for populations such as western democracies, or groups that do not have high levels of prosperity.
Also, I think you may be trying to conflate the percentage of the variance for that single trait with other ideas. First it would be necessary to determine if neuroticism has any impact on willingness to go into tech fields. I believe that in Damore's memo that he mainly linked neuroticism with a tendency to avoid managerial or authority positions rather than technology in general. Even assuming that it does have some impact and partially explains some of the disparity in the number of women in tech, it is only one of the five factors so it is still necessary to account for the others and their effects.
If you want to claim that the difference doesn't have a large biological explanation, it really becomes necessary to not only propose an alternative hypothesis, but to actually put it to a few tests. First I would ask what the percentage of women in technology should be. If you don't know that, I'm not sure how you can argue that its too low currently. Even a ball park estimate would be fine. I think it then also becomes necessary to explain why technology is somehow different from a large number of other fields, where in some of which women have overtaken men to form a majority. This even includes fields such as veterinary medicine which at one point was a field that was almost exclusively men. Dentistry is an even more extreme example where the gender imbalance is even greater than it is in technology. What makes technology special in that it somehow keeps women out when they have been able to go into other fields and in some cases no make up the strong majority of people in that vocation.
How do you measure opportunity ?
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
The same way you measure success.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Which is ?
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
With a variety of factors.
Imagine you start a game of chess without a queen. How would you measure your opportunity to win? You could count the number of pieces that each side has, but the queen is one of the most powerful so it would need to be weighted. Determining the weights is tricky, it needs you to study and understand the nature of the game and current trends in tactics and style.
A better question is if you really need to measure it to that extent at all.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
What is the extent to which you need to measure this opportunity ?
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
You tell me, you are the one who asked how it was measured... What do you want to use this measurement for?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
No, it is in the context of your statement.
1. You say : Simply treating everyone equally has been tried, in fact it has been law for decades in many places, but it hasn't addressed the inequalities.
2. Then you clarify : that by inequality, you mean "inequality of opportunity". Or at least "most people" mean - one has to guess a lot when communicating with you. I guess you put yourself in the category of "most people".
So if you can make a statement that the "addressing the inequalities" hasn't happened, you must have a way to measure the inequalities of opportunities and thus prove that it has not been "addressed" ? Or is it turtles all the way down for you ?
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
I see what you mean. Well, it depends on the opportunity. For example, take access to education. Clearly getting a good education is extremely beneficial. Unfortunately some people don't have access to good schools, because of where they live or their social status or a variety of other factors.
I suppose you could argue that we are measuring the quality of the school by the achievements of its pupils, e.g. exam results. But the actual opportunity is pretty much binary. Those kids can go to a well performing school or not, and the gulf between the good and not so good ones tends to be so big that it doesn't need extremely accurate quantification.
Do you have a specific concern here? Like an example of an improperly measured lack of opportunity?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I'm still not sure based on what measurement you call the inequality of opportunity unaddressed , by means of treating everyone equally.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
To use the schooling example again, some people would argue that to be equal all schools must get the same level of funding per pupil. The problem with that is that it ignores that some schools have higher costs than others. A good local library can reduce the cost of running the school's library. A large number of poorer students can mean a higher cost of providing them with food. Some areas are more expensive to live in, so teacher salaries have to be higher to compensate. In some areas the school bus needs to do more miles every day.
Another example might be a wheelchair ramp. Some people complain that it is unfair and discriminatory to spend extra money providing a ramp for people who need it. I'd argue that it gives those people an equal opportunity to access the venue.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
OK. Anything about the actual topic surrounding Damore's article ? Opportunity for men vs that for women in the field of software in particular, and/or technology in general ?
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
>Marx certainly discussed the issue at length
And that pretty much disqualifies anything else you might have said.
So you are essentially a kind of troll ? Deviate from the subject as long as possible, and then when the other person will have none of it, you run away ?
I suspected most SJWS like you were like that, but I wanted to give one a benefit of doubt. Doesn't seem to allay my suspicions at all.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.