Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber [UPDATE] Author Fired

[Misanthrope]

22 minutes ago, mr moose said:

I am not talking about preferences.  The issue is the author of the memo is trying to insinuate the there is a specific gender difference (that would be physiological because all other differences are environmental and thus not gender specific) as a reason for the difference:

 

Quote

 

On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed because:

They’re universal across human cultures

They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone

Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still identify and act like males

The underlying traits are highly heritable

They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective

 

 

These statements are not supported by any research.  I'm sure I'm not the only person who questions someones motives when they make such statements.

 

A simple Google search reveals plenty of research on the subject:

 

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2016/06/brain-activity-during-cooperation-differs-by-sex.html

 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/men-women-brains-difference-1.3473154

 

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/04/heres-the-biggest-study-yet-on-sex-based-brain-differences.html

 

In fairness to your points, I did find articles making completely opposite claims however at best you can say this is a contested subject as of yet. More over we already know there are hormonal differences that also influence behavior. I think it is fair to say that, as I said in my original post, The tone of the author was fairly dismissive and politically charged and I called that out right out of the gate.

 

However, it doesn't means that this differences in behavior and choices definitively do not exist. There's gonna be plenty of overlap and this is in all likelihood a very wide and varying spectrum of behaviors but the differences are there and the candidate pool is directly affected by it. 

 

Who knows? Maybe in a couple of decades a lot of the influence from societal factors will balance this scale even further but I seriously doubt it will really disappear completely: we are a sexual dimorphic species so I'd be silly to expect differences can be completely erased. We just need to act without the prejudice a lot of people (in both sides of the political spectrum, yes this includes the author but also a lot of the people quote mining it to really exploit it) still have.

[mr moose]

3 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

 

A simple Google search reveals plenty of research on the subject:

 

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2016/06/brain-activity-during-cooperation-differs-by-sex.html

 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/men-women-brains-difference-1.3473154

 

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/04/heres-the-biggest-study-yet-on-sex-based-brain-differences.html

 

In fairness to your points, I did find articles making completely opposite claims however at best you can say this is a contested subject as of yet. More over we already know there are hormonal differences that also influence behavior. I think it is fair to say that, as I said in my original post, The tone of the author was fairly dismissive and politically charged and I called that out right out of the gate.

 

However, it doesn't means that this differences in behavior and choices definitively do not exist. There's gonna be plenty of overlap and this is in all likelihood a very wide and varying spectrum of behaviors but the differences are there and the candidate pool is directly affected by it. 

 

Who knows? Maybe in a couple of decades a lot of the influence from societal factors will balance this scale even further but I seriously doubt it will really disappear completely: we are a sexual dimorphic species so I'd be silly to expect differences can be completely erased. We just need to act without the prejudice a lot of people (in both sides of the political spectrum, yes this includes the author but also a lot of the people quote mining it to really exploit it) still have.

In nearly every field of research there are opposing studies,  This is why scientific consensus is important.  It is also why opinions must be treated as such.

 

Which is why I said in my very first post:

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

Depends on what you define as forced diversity,  The problem is giving the job to the best person, if it happens to be a woman the men cry forced diversity, if it happens to be a man the woman cry discrimination.    Personally anyone who thinks there is a gender gap when it comes to technology and academic intelligence can summarily have their opinion dismissed.  Ignorance is no substitute for a genuine complaint. 

 

I genuinely hold that if a persons ideals are important enough, then sticking to the facts is enough to make the point.  Lying about it only invalidates ones position.  

[Misanthrope]

5 minutes ago, mr moose said:

In nearly every field of research there are opposing studies,  This is why scientific consensus is important.  It is also why opinions must be treated as such.

 

Which is why I said in my very first post:

 

I genuinely hold that if a persons ideals are important enough, then sticking to the facts is enough to make the point.  Lying about it only invalidates ones position.  

Dismissing an opinion different than yours as someone "lying" even when not all of the facts are squarely on your side is not helping your cause. I'm not sure if you want to help your cause, you do you.

 

I however, would like to point out that while the way he went about it was incorrect there is legitimate arguments to be made against affirmative hiring practices which is the entire point of the memo.

[mr moose]

6 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Dismissing an opinion different than yours as someone "lying" even when not all of the facts are squarely on your side is not helping your cause. I'm not sure if you want to help your cause, you do you.

 

I however, would like to point out that while the way he went about it was incorrect there is legitimate arguments to be made against affirmative hiring practices which is the entire point of the memo.

I am not dismissing him because his opinions are different to mine,  I am dismissing him because he is using disingenuous arguments.  As I said, if his argument is real it will stand on it's own merits, if he has to embellish and lie about some of it then his motive becomes questionable.  I hold every presentation to the same standard.  Especially actions that actually have no hard evidence to support them, like affirmative action hire,  and passing off wave height as radiation spread when being all anti-nuclear.  That sort of thing. 

[Crossbred]

My school has a democrat club, feminist club, stay woke (blm) club, gsa, and various other leftist clubs.

A file to make a conservative club was "misplaced" twice and then flat out rejected.

Its sad how the concept of inclusiveness is nothing but hypocrisy in these days.

[AshleyAshes]

I mean, what possible reasons or forces could there be to make the tech industry less attractive to women?

 

I mean, it's not like when a woman appears in LTT videos, viewers have decided to make threads asking for as much information as possible on them...

 

What reasonable women could possibly be creeped out by something like this?

 

On 4/9/2017 at 5:15 PM, airstrike said:

a blue haired caucasian Asian mixture, my perfect mixture))))) she's super hot 

 

And we've certainly never users assume by default that the freakin' company's CFO is a stay at home mom who's just part of a tax scam...

 

On 7/20/2017 at 5:47 PM, yathis said:

Yeah being a stay at home mom, she could easily be a consultant and earn an income favorable to their tax bracket.

 

I mean, with no possible examples close to view... How can we possibly believe that any such problematic and discouraging attitudes exist elsewhere in the tech industry.  Right!?

[rcelt]

3 hours ago, spartaman64 said:

i sort of agree with both? there are biases involved that can hinder a woman from getting into positions and people who say they dont exist are delusional but at the same time i agree that 50/50 split shouldn't be the goal as there are psychological differences between the average man and woman. 

People should be hired to a company like this based and technical knowledge and skill not on whether an alt left company thinks that it needs more diversity, its better to do gender blind hiring.

[Jito463]

I'm all for hiring the best person for the job, regardless of their gender or ethnicity.  However, it's completely accurate to state there are physiological and psychological differences between men and women.  No matter how much the regressives would love to make us all believe men and women are identical and that gender is fluid (just a "social construct"), it simply isn't true.  Men aren't inferior to women, nor are women inferior to men, but there are distinct biological differences between men and women that we should acknowledge and even celebrate.

 

In all this murmuring about inclusiveness and diversity in the workplace, is it really that much of a stretch to consider that the reason there are fewer women in the tech field, is because not as many of them are interested in it?

[kasugatei]

1 minute ago, Jito463 said:

I'm all for hiring the best person for the job, regardless of their gender or ethnicity.

Exactly. I believe that it is utter nonsense to force hiring diverse people just to have "nice numbers". That is IMHO utter BS and it is bad for a company productivity. If I were in a position to hire someone, I would make a job ad first and select people regarding their skills not gender, race, sexuality etc. I would hire a goat FFS in case it would be the best candidate, but I would never hire anybody just to have nice diversity distribution - that's BS.

[Starberyl]

I generally have zero interest in gender equality or forced inclusiveness. What I do care about is the personality of the individual and their ability to follow with the company's direction not their racial background. If an employee despite what race they are, is able to priortize the company's goals and perspective over their religious practice, cultural background and personal politics, that individual is truly an effective candidate for any position. Discriminative hiring should be applied strictly to one's personality and employment centers especially in Canada are pushing for a "based-on-personality" type hiring procedures where only the name and age is visible. In my honest opinion, companies and large corporates like google shouldn't be attempting to advance the political voice of society, they should rather be focus on generating more avenue and creating employment for all.

 

Diversity is a huge waste of time and resources. Rather, I find that creativity and new perspectives that could improve technology and productivity along side educated investments should be the foundation of a company, not social justice. That being said, while others see this political division as a bad thing, I see this division as a great opportunity for conservative milennials to capitalize on this passionate partisanship by creating new competitions in the market. Rather than complaining and being reactive, they should channel such passion into developing new ideological spaces for conservatives. I must also admit that I'm currently a conservative of a very young generation. Unlike other conservatives however, I value adaptive practicality over traditional aspects of conservatism. I hope I can succeed and develop more productive spaces for those who share a passion for success, revenue and monetary gain through teamwork and a mix of qualitative as well as quantitative thinking. To other fellow conservatives, let us cease our "whining" and focus on generating resources and opportunity for ourselves. 

[DutchTexan]

Is anyone really proud of Google for going to the same organization that deemed 'pepe the frog' a hate symbol to censor filter YouTube's content? 

[Curufinwe_wins]

So... interesting perspective here.... Suppose at this point the vast majority of differences are entrance into STEM fields (which is in fact fairly well agreed upon by people on both ends...) If that is the case... then clearly "forced inclusiveness" is at LEAST semi-misguided...

 

The question becomes now what? One school of thought is that the issue stems with younger women being culturally shoved away from STEM before they are even aware of their choices... You know the whole Barbie vs Lego debate. Which probably isn't completely wrong. So how do you change the culture self-selecting against girls in STEM at a young age? Well you show them more and more women (more social acceptance and prevalence) of women already in STEM.

 

You give your daughter legos anyways... etc etc.

 

And maybe... to reinforce that cultural shift as effectively and quickly as reasonably possible, you do continue to hire "more women than representative" in Engineering.

 

Maybe. **shurgs**

[Misanthrope]

22 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

So... interesting perspective here.... Suppose at this point the vast majority of differences are entrance into STEM fields (which is in fact fairly well agreed upon by people on both ends...) If that is the case... then clearly "forced inclusiveness" is at LEAST semi-misguided...

 

The question becomes now what? One school of thought is that the issue stems with younger women being culturally shoved away from STEM before they are even aware of their choices... You know the whole Barbie vs Lego debate. Which probably isn't completely wrong. So how do you change the culture self-selecting against girls in STEM at a young age? Well you show them more and more women (more social acceptance and prevalence) of women already in STEM.

 

You give your daughter legos anyways... etc etc.

 

And maybe... to reinforce that cultural shift as effectively and quickly as reasonably possible, you do continue to hire "more women than representative" in Engineering.

 

Maybe. **shurgs**

Correcting intentionally runs the risk of over-correcting or railroading people into things they might not want to do. I agree that society does shapes a lot of this expectations however I don't believe we really need to take overt actions to correct this: after we establish equality and work towards showing how gender roles are optional and not strict guidelines this will eventually change and normalize towards a distribution that's both fair to individuals while also having the collective not be as slanted to the traditional roles.

[Curufinwe_wins]

2 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Correcting intentionally runs the risk of over-correcting or railroading people into things they might not want to do. I agree that society does shapes a lot of this expectations however I don't believe we really need to take overt actions to correct this: after we establish equality and work towards showing how gender roles are optional and not strict guidelines this will eventually change and normalize towards a distribution that's both fair to individuals while also having the collective not be as slanted to the traditional roles.

I mean... my conclusion was "maybe. **shrugs**" So it isn't like I am open to many possibilities)

[Kamina]

What a bunch of authoritarian, cultural marxists. 

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

So... interesting perspective here.... Suppose at this point the vast majority of differences are entrance into STEM fields (which is in fact fairly well agreed upon by people on both ends...) If that is the case... then clearly "forced inclusiveness" is at LEAST semi-misguided...

 

The question becomes now what? One school of thought is that the issue stems with younger women being culturally shoved away from STEM before they are even aware of their choices... You know the whole Barbie vs Lego debate. Which probably isn't completely wrong. So how do you change the culture self-selecting against girls in STEM at a young age? Well you show them more and more women (more social acceptance and prevalence) of women already in STEM.

 

You give your daughter legos anyways... etc etc.

 

And maybe... to reinforce that cultural shift as effectively and quickly as reasonably possible, you do continue to hire "more women than representative" in Engineering.

 

Maybe. **shurgs**

 

The real question is: why is it like this in the first place?  People generally only point back as far as needed to get an answer they like.   E.G some will blame the company for being sexists, some will go one step back and blame the difference on gender itself calling woman disinterested, some will go back one step further and claim woman are disinterested because society has raised them to be, others will go one step back from that again claiming society is the end result of people being themselves and thus shaped by genetics anyway.

 

You can see how easy it is to muddy the water and find evidence to support any position you wish to take.  

 

2 hours ago, Crossbred said:

My school has a democrat club, feminist club, stay woke (blm) club, gsa, and various other leftist clubs.

A file to make a conservative club was "misplaced" twice and then flat out rejected.

Its sad how the concept of inclusiveness is nothing but hypocrisy in these days.

So call it something different.  Like:  "the ethical corporate affairs".

 

[Curufinwe_wins]

Just now, mr moose said:

 

The real question is: why is it like this in the first place?  People generally only point back as far as needed to get an answer they like.   E.G some will blame the company for being sexists, some will go one step back and blame the difference on gender itself calling woman disinterested, some will go back one step further and claim woman are disinterested because society has raised them to be, others will go one step back from that again claiming society is the end result of people being themselves and thus shaped by genetics anyway.

 

You can see how easy it is to muddy the water and find evidence to support any position you wish to take.  

 

So call it something different.  Like:  "the ethical corporate affairs".

 

Societal standards are pretty heavily self-perpetuating... Requiring dramatic impetus to shift moral grounds... Just because of the way we ourselves are humans are shaped...

 

I am willing to bet actual money if you surveyed the hyper majority of psychology/biology/genetics/sociology experts worldwide, they would say that the gender gap in various jobs is almost exclusively a "nurture" issue, not a "nature" one... The question is "does that make it wrong?". 

 

Society is absolutely not the end result of genetics... There isn't anywhere close to sufficient genetic differences to account for societal norm disruptions even within the same generation, let alone culture to culture.

 

But again... I'm not saying I think this is right... or wrong... I don't know the answer, and I'm not afraid to admit that. I'm just saying, if you align your values in this direction... it may actually be a coherent and rational argument to actually keep these practices in place regardless of them obviously being "not really right".

[mr moose]

4 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Society is absolutely not the end result of genetics... There isn't anywhere close to sufficient genetic differences to account for societal norm disruptions even within the same generation, let alone culture to culture.

 

Not to sure what you mean by that.   Society has been evolving along side genetics the whole time.  Studies of late even indicate that early connection between a mother and her baby will physically change the genetics of the baby as it develops.  So if society has the power to change the way a mother behaves then it has the potential to change genetics as well. 

 

 

[Curufinwe_wins]

1 minute ago, mr moose said:

Not to sure what you mean by that.   Society has been evolving along side genetics the whole time.  Studies of late even indicate that early connection between a mother and her baby will physically change the genetics of the baby as it develops.  So if society has the power to change the way a mother behaves then it has the potential to change genetics as well. 

 

 

Epigenetics is not the same thing... It isn't even close...

 

Affecting expression, not alteration... But I mean yes... there are some non-trivial epi-genetic effects in the development of children. And yes... hypothetically some of the gap expression can be linked to epigenetic effects... But arguably Epigenetics is a nurture feature anyways (and or requires extreme intervention in mixed nature/nuture pairs...)

 

Human genetic creep is hilariously slow... Not even remotely comparable to societal changes. Technology itself is a great example of this... Because the hyper majority of technological changes don't introduce any significant phenotypic selection.  

 

Arguably the last societal change in the general human population that has exhibited any significant genetic pressure was the introduction of agriculture (the Neolithic Revolution), and even then... in the grand schemes of genetics... things just move too slow for selection pressure to be relevant in society (esp as for example... education tends to be strongly inversely proportional to birth rates, and thus selection pressure. Which if it mattered "at all" would suggest that societal forces moved by the sorts of genetics that self-selects into education would be rapidly self-defeating. Which doesn't seem to be the case of course.)

 

 

[mr moose]

7 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Epigenetics is not the same thing... It isn't even close...

 

Affecting expression, not alteration... But I mean yes... there are some non-trivial epi-genetic effects in the development of children. And yes... hypothetically some of the gap expression can be linked to epigenetic effects... But arguably Epigenetics is a nurture feature anyways (and or requires extreme intervention in mixed nature/nuture pairs...)

 

Human genetic creep is hilariously slow... Not even remotely comparable to societal changes. Technology itself is a great example of this... Because the hyper majority of technological changes don't introduce any significant phenotypic selection.  

 

Arguably the last societal change in the general human population that has exhibited any significant genetic pressure was the introduction of agriculture (the Neolithic Revolution), and even then... in the grand schemes of genetics... things just move too slow for selection pressure to be relevant in society (esp as for example... education tends to be strongly inversely proportional to birth rates, and thus selection pressure. Which if it mattered "at all" would suggest that societal forces moved by the sorts of genetics that self-selects into education would be rapidly self-defeating. Which doesn't seem to be the case of course.)

 

 

you propose a chicken egg problem then confidently claim it is the chicken.  

 

Not sure where you're getting your birth rate data from as a correlation to education, but I have yet to see any research that can link genetics to education or even birth rate to education in a causal manner. 

 

 

[Trixanity]

5 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

I mean, what possible reasons or forces could there be to make the tech industry less attractive to women?

 

I mean, it's not like when a woman appears in LTT videos, viewers have decided to make threads asking for as much information as possible on them...

 

What reasonable women could possibly be creeped out by something like this?

 

 

And we've certainly never users assume by default that the freakin' company's CFO is a stay at home mom who's just part of a tax scam...

 

 

I mean, with no possible examples close to view... How can we possibly believe that any such problematic and discouraging attitudes exist elsewhere in the tech industry.  Right!?

That's funny.

 

Anything pertaining to comments on YouTube videos will be cancer and is anecdotal at best. It does not relate to differences in gender distribution in STEM fields

[PineyCreek]

Meh...everyone's different.  Some people can learn things others can't.  That line certainly doesn't fall on top of the gender line.

 

For the memo I think it would depend on Google's code of conduct and who the memo was initially sent to.  If it was an internal memo and sent to people designated to take employee complaints or feedback in an environment where they have stated they welcome different viewpoints, it doesn't change the viewpoint.  That engineer has an oddball opinion, that's for sure.  However, if he was following company policy and someone else leaked that memo, then that in turn is also unethical because it was putting an opinion on blast where the employee was encouraged to be open with his opinions in a safe environment.  Right now his opinion doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, because someone leaked the memo and everyone went absolutely nuts.  Society's already judged the engineer without knowing the facts surrounding the situation.

 

At least the memo isn't a one-liner like Feemails st00pid.

 

Remember kids, the only absolute privacy that exists on this plane of existence right now is if you keep your ideas in your head and your mouth shut.  At least until the FBI van going down the street pulls your thoughts out of your head and sticks them in a storage array somewhere.

[DildorTheDecent]

>Google has an internal meme network.

 

I'm down for any job as long as there's memes involved. 

[IntMD]

At A-Level (16-18) in my high school the split was approx 40% female to 60% male in the IT course. When I went to Uni, out of approximately 350 people doing the various computer/software/networking 1st year courses (they were all basically the same for the 1st year) there were a grand total of 6 females. About 30-40% of the professors I had were female though, and the Uni overall was about 70% female students. Personally, I would just hire who the best person for the job was, as long as they didn't come across as a complete dick on an easily identifiable payscale (e.g. You get X amount basic + if you have X skill you get % more + if your have other X skill/responsibility you get y % more on top of basic).

[Razzy_85]

I love these topics and discussions about genders and work!

 

I myself work for an electricity company and used to be a Pylon worker (done 10yrs of it before various promotions and I now sit in a comfy office). During my time of actually having to tramp the UK do various jobs from maintenance to erecting new ones etc etc I came across two women who done the job, one worked for us and the other for a private company. Now my time of in the office it is all men apart from one women who was brought in externally (which is nearly unheard of due to promoting from within or changing jobs from within to due to people no longer fit for job due to medical injury etc). We have been through all the diversity bullshit of needing more women etc etc but the truth is we just cannot get them! I would hire 50 women if they could do the same job as the average bloke we get through our doors just to cover our diversity code!

I have had in the last 5 yrs without a word of a joke here 5 CV's from females, all of which were trialed ASAP and none cut the mustard for full time work as 3 of them couldn't cut the work load they needed to carry and climb and the other 2 dropped out after 1 day saying it wasn't for them! 

I need to point out we have 300 Pylon workers and another 1000 from various labouring jobs and 2 in 1300 are female for the record. We just don't get the applications for it and i know the same goes for coucil bin workers as I know a few of the Waste managers who are in the same boat but we get a million C.V's for office admin from females so take what you like from it.