The most popular stories on Slashdot are the ones that attract lots of conservatives to moan about them. Based on that a machine learning system trained to get the most clicks would simply start trolling readers with things that make them angry.
That's a proven technique, widely adopted by low grade news outlets such as Fox and the Daily Mail. Rage sells.
You want to mitigate the risk of an extremely rare type of accident that a machine might not be able to handle, by increasing the risk of more common accidents caused by human error.
You are much more likely to be killed by the pilot than saved by them.
On the flip side, most air accidents are due to human error these days. Often it's due to not following procedure or poor communication making the pilots get confused and take the wrong action. So having a backup human might actually make things worse, when they get confused and take over unnecessarily.
All modern CPUs run microcode that is updated on boot by the BIOS. So fixing this will just be a microcode update, i.e. a BIOS update. AMD has been quite good at getting vendors to ship such updates for their motherboards and systems, but if for some reason they don't you could load it via a driver under Linux too.
The reason for all the fuss is that what he said has real-world negative consequences for other people working at Google. That in itself isn't enough to be a problem, as there are lots of things which are true or at least genuinely open to debate which cause people problems.
But combine that with the fact that his arguments are old and largely dealt with...
The real problem here is that it wasn't done anonymously, or he wasn't able to remain anonymous, it's unclear what exactly happened. Speech can have consequences, especially in a workplace where there are some necessary rules on behaviour.
You make a fair point, his arguments could have merit. I don't think they do, but they are still worthy of consideration. My point was that they have been considered already and he doesn't bring anything new to the table.
It really is a lot like climate change. It's worth considering alternative explanations and theories. The problem is that we have, and just bringing them up again and again with the additional complaint that those ideas are being suppressed now.
Just look at the moderation on Slashdot for counter-evidence. Systematic down-modding by conservatives against anyone who presents a wrongthink opinion.
TL;DR asshats are gonna be asshats, no matter the political persuasion.
He won't get a penny, because Google will just point to all the screaming conservatives who were emboldened to express their belief that women are inferior as evidence of creating a toxic environment.
He wasn't just reporting statistical trivia. He was saying that a relatively small difference (check the numbers, it's somewhere between zero and very small depending on the country) is the reason why women do worse in their programming careers.
Consider similar arguments that are made about race. "Black people have smaller skulls, that's why they are less intelligent and poorer on average". Ignoring how valid or otherwise that statement is, what is the point of making it? It's usually to excuse or dismiss all the other reasons. That's the issue here.
He claims that women being more neurotic and less analytical, combined with a desire for a reasonable work/life balance makes them progress more slowly in programming careers and get paid less.
Aside from saying that women are less suited to the job, it's always saying that toxic ideas like rewarding people who put in unhealthy hours is the standard by which everyone should be measured.
That's obviously not what he means. Let's dispense with the straw man arguments, okay?
The memo claims that women are more neurotic. It claims that this is biological. The real-world result of statements like that is that people question women's behaviour through a lens of "is she just being neurotic?" The same way they might dismiss a child's behaviour as a childish tantrum, or men as thinking with the dicks.
What shockingly ignorant, backward thinking set of concepts.
The problem seems to have been specifically the stuff about some people being less biologically suited to the job, or having more undesirable traits like being "neurotic".
He says women are less inclined to negotiate for higher salaries. Studies show that when they do, they are often punished for being "bossy" or "shrill", rather than it being some biological imperative.
He says women prefer a better work/life balance, but attributes it to biology. There seem to be other reasons though, like the fact that they tend to do more of the unpaid labour (chores, child care etc.) and are judged more harshly for putting in long hours that neglect their families and friends. And he doesn't seem to think that men would benefit from not working longer hours either, it's implied to be a positive trait that justifiably results in rewards.
He claims that women are more neurotic and less able to deal with stress. In fact we know that women are simply more likely to speak up when they are under heavy stress and seek support for it, rather than bottling it up, rather than being less able to cope.
Is there some dialect of English where one of the words I wrote means "you must think"? Because in the language I speak that sentence doesn't mean what you think it means.
So tell us how exactly his free speech has been negatively affected here.
Note that freedom of speech is not freedom from people reacting to that speech. You can't expect to silence others just because their criticism or differing opinions make you uncomfortable.
the man's opinions are perfectly reasonable and well-argued.
They are well-argued, I'll give you that. And they certainly sound reasonable if you have only a superficial understanding of the issues. And that's the problem.
It's all old, tired arguments that have been comprehensively refuted before. For example, he states that women are more neurotic and less able to deal with stress. We know that isn't true, because we have studied it in great detail.
Women sometimes can't do X. For example, it's pretty unlikely that a woman will ever beat the men's 100m sprint world record.
What is being argued is two things:
1) Just because women are different does not mean they are lesser, and in fact having diverse perspectives is beneficial.
2) The gender gap in tech is largely unrelated to biological differences, it's mostly social. There is a very large amount of evidence to support this.
The frustration here is, as ShanghaiBill points out, it's become a lot like climate change. Most people who looked at the evidence seriously came to the same conclusion, but some people keep insisting that we do it all again from scratch and occasionally one of them puts out a well written, reasonable sounding document that people who want to believe those things latch on to.
I suppose this can't really be helped, but it's still frustrating.
Suppose you have a culture that hires based on personal referral. (It's usually one of the best ways to go.)
Only if you are trying to build a monoculture, the very thing that this guy is complaining about.
One can't argue that failing to take active measures automatically incriminates your starting point as gender discriminatory.
This is a very common misunderstanding. It's institutionally biased. It's not that the individuals involved are sexists or deliberately trying to build a monoculture, it's that the model they are using, the common model of hiring by personal recommendation for example, creates bias. Bias that creates a monoculture and hurts the business.
It's not about blaming people for this, it's about recognizing that there are better systems and putting them into place.
So far most of the "conservative" responses I've seen have been to simply call anyone criticising him autistic and accuse of them of being emotional. It's very rare for them to actually engage in the debate by trying to support the arguments he makes or refute the counter-arguments.
Instead to tackling the deep issues of PC culture they are trying to kill the messenger.
Unlike you, who definitely did not just attack the messenger.
I do wonder why he or someone else hasn't posted it with all the original links and references, if they really do make a difference.
To be honest though, I really doubt that they add much to his arguments. They are all old and well debunked, so it seems unlikely that he has found some new well of insight to draw from.
The guy had his say. He wasn't doxxed, he didn't lose his job, and there is a healthy debate over his document. In fact the only people not taking about the content of the document are the conservatives complaining that people aren't taking about the content of the document.
And this is at Google, a workplace, not a public debating space. It seems like some people just don't like any real debate where views they support get criticised.
I suppose it's a combination of you knowing that they are there because you need to go slowly for safety reasons, and other drivers who are less familiar with the are slowing down and forcing all other traffic to move more slowly.
Maybe it's a bit like when they remove road markings. The road is the same but seems more dangerous so people slow down... The paint on the road adds details that make the brain work a bit harder to spot potential dangers or something.
I don't fully understand the psychology, but it appears to keep working indefinitely from the available data.
Okay, you inserted this submissive/dominant thing, not me. Then I said that I didn't write that, and you just carried on assuming that I am viewing this whole thing in the same terms that you are.
I don't really see how this "submissive/dominant" axis is relevant here. If a girl chooses to play mother with a doll, that doesn't seem very submissive, for example. How does being "dominant" make a child favour the colour blue today but pink 100 years ago?
I don't accept the basic premise which you are trying to force my statements into, that's why they seem contradictory to you.
Slashdot Mirror
The most popular stories on Slashdot are the ones that attract lots of conservatives to moan about them. Based on that a machine learning system trained to get the most clicks would simply start trolling readers with things that make them angry.
That's a proven technique, widely adopted by low grade news outlets such as Fox and the Daily Mail. Rage sells.
You want to mitigate the risk of an extremely rare type of accident that a machine might not be able to handle, by increasing the risk of more common accidents caused by human error.
You are much more likely to be killed by the pilot than saved by them.
On the flip side, most air accidents are due to human error these days. Often it's due to not following procedure or poor communication making the pilots get confused and take the wrong action. So having a backup human might actually make things worse, when they get confused and take over unnecessarily.
All modern CPUs run microcode that is updated on boot by the BIOS. So fixing this will just be a microcode update, i.e. a BIOS update. AMD has been quite good at getting vendors to ship such updates for their motherboards and systems, but if for some reason they don't you could load it via a driver under Linux too.
The reason for all the fuss is that what he said has real-world negative consequences for other people working at Google. That in itself isn't enough to be a problem, as there are lots of things which are true or at least genuinely open to debate which cause people problems.
But combine that with the fact that his arguments are old and largely dealt with...
The real problem here is that it wasn't done anonymously, or he wasn't able to remain anonymous, it's unclear what exactly happened. Speech can have consequences, especially in a workplace where there are some necessary rules on behaviour.
You make a fair point, his arguments could have merit. I don't think they do, but they are still worthy of consideration. My point was that they have been considered already and he doesn't bring anything new to the table.
It really is a lot like climate change. It's worth considering alternative explanations and theories. The problem is that we have, and just bringing them up again and again with the additional complaint that those ideas are being suppressed now.
Just look at the moderation on Slashdot for counter-evidence. Systematic down-modding by conservatives against anyone who presents a wrongthink opinion.
TL;DR asshats are gonna be asshats, no matter the political persuasion.
He won't get a penny, because Google will just point to all the screaming conservatives who were emboldened to express their belief that women are inferior as evidence of creating a toxic environment.
He wasn't just reporting statistical trivia. He was saying that a relatively small difference (check the numbers, it's somewhere between zero and very small depending on the country) is the reason why women do worse in their programming careers.
Consider similar arguments that are made about race. "Black people have smaller skulls, that's why they are less intelligent and poorer on average". Ignoring how valid or otherwise that statement is, what is the point of making it? It's usually to excuse or dismiss all the other reasons. That's the issue here.
He claims that women being more neurotic and less analytical, combined with a desire for a reasonable work/life balance makes them progress more slowly in programming careers and get paid less.
Aside from saying that women are less suited to the job, it's always saying that toxic ideas like rewarding people who put in unhealthy hours is the standard by which everyone should be measured.
Words do not equate to violence
That's obviously not what he means. Let's dispense with the straw man arguments, okay?
The memo claims that women are more neurotic. It claims that this is biological. The real-world result of statements like that is that people question women's behaviour through a lens of "is she just being neurotic?" The same way they might dismiss a child's behaviour as a childish tantrum, or men as thinking with the dicks.
What shockingly ignorant, backward thinking set of concepts.
The problem seems to have been specifically the stuff about some people being less biologically suited to the job, or having more undesirable traits like being "neurotic".
Please, criticize a single one of his arguments.
Okay.
He says women are less inclined to negotiate for higher salaries. Studies show that when they do, they are often punished for being "bossy" or "shrill", rather than it being some biological imperative.
He says women prefer a better work/life balance, but attributes it to biology. There seem to be other reasons though, like the fact that they tend to do more of the unpaid labour (chores, child care etc.) and are judged more harshly for putting in long hours that neglect their families and friends. And he doesn't seem to think that men would benefit from not working longer hours either, it's implied to be a positive trait that justifiably results in rewards.
He claims that women are more neurotic and less able to deal with stress. In fact we know that women are simply more likely to speak up when they are under heavy stress and seek support for it, rather than bottling it up, rather than being less able to cope.
Three for the price of one.
Is there some dialect of English where one of the words I wrote means "you must think"? Because in the language I speak that sentence doesn't mean what you think it means.
So tell us how exactly his free speech has been negatively affected here.
Note that freedom of speech is not freedom from people reacting to that speech. You can't expect to silence others just because their criticism or differing opinions make you uncomfortable.
the man's opinions are perfectly reasonable and well-argued.
They are well-argued, I'll give you that. And they certainly sound reasonable if you have only a superficial understanding of the issues. And that's the problem.
It's all old, tired arguments that have been comprehensively refuted before. For example, he states that women are more neurotic and less able to deal with stress. We know that isn't true, because we have studied it in great detail.
When this is pointed out, people are accused of being "autistic" and "screeching".
Women sometimes can't do X. For example, it's pretty unlikely that a woman will ever beat the men's 100m sprint world record.
What is being argued is two things:
1) Just because women are different does not mean they are lesser, and in fact having diverse perspectives is beneficial.
2) The gender gap in tech is largely unrelated to biological differences, it's mostly social. There is a very large amount of evidence to support this.
The frustration here is, as ShanghaiBill points out, it's become a lot like climate change. Most people who looked at the evidence seriously came to the same conclusion, but some people keep insisting that we do it all again from scratch and occasionally one of them puts out a well written, reasonable sounding document that people who want to believe those things latch on to.
I suppose this can't really be helped, but it's still frustrating.
Suppose you have a culture that hires based on personal referral. (It's usually one of the best ways to go.)
Only if you are trying to build a monoculture, the very thing that this guy is complaining about.
One can't argue that failing to take active measures automatically incriminates your starting point as gender discriminatory.
This is a very common misunderstanding. It's institutionally biased. It's not that the individuals involved are sexists or deliberately trying to build a monoculture, it's that the model they are using, the common model of hiring by personal recommendation for example, creates bias. Bias that creates a monoculture and hurts the business.
It's not about blaming people for this, it's about recognizing that there are better systems and putting them into place.
So far most of the "conservative" responses I've seen have been to simply call anyone criticising him autistic and accuse of them of being emotional. It's very rare for them to actually engage in the debate by trying to support the arguments he makes or refute the counter-arguments.
Instead to tackling the deep issues of PC culture they are trying to kill the messenger.
Unlike you, who definitely did not just attack the messenger.
I do wonder why he or someone else hasn't posted it with all the original links and references, if they really do make a difference.
To be honest though, I really doubt that they add much to his arguments. They are all old and well debunked, so it seems unlikely that he has found some new well of insight to draw from.
How is that being negatively affected?
The guy had his say. He wasn't doxxed, he didn't lose his job, and there is a healthy debate over his document. In fact the only people not taking about the content of the document are the conservatives complaining that people aren't taking about the content of the document.
And this is at Google, a workplace, not a public debating space. It seems like some people just don't like any real debate where views they support get criticised.
People criticise his arguments and he is "shamed" because he now looks foolish or illiberal or whatever.
How would you propose preventing this "shaming" without limiting people's freedom of speech?
I'm not saying it's one thing or the other like you are, I'm saying it's a complex combination of things.
I already wrote that. And you seem to have ignored it. Again. I give up.
I suppose it's a combination of you knowing that they are there because you need to go slowly for safety reasons, and other drivers who are less familiar with the are slowing down and forcing all other traffic to move more slowly.
Maybe it's a bit like when they remove road markings. The road is the same but seems more dangerous so people slow down... The paint on the road adds details that make the brain work a bit harder to spot potential dangers or something.
I don't fully understand the psychology, but it appears to keep working indefinitely from the available data.
Okay, you inserted this submissive/dominant thing, not me. Then I said that I didn't write that, and you just carried on assuming that I am viewing this whole thing in the same terms that you are.
I don't really see how this "submissive/dominant" axis is relevant here. If a girl chooses to play mother with a doll, that doesn't seem very submissive, for example. How does being "dominant" make a child favour the colour blue today but pink 100 years ago?
I don't accept the basic premise which you are trying to force my statements into, that's why they seem contradictory to you.