
What I believe II - seycombi
http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3389
======
dzdt
One of Scott's commentators (Stacey Jeffery) writes:

 _That’s not because he necessarily said anything actually sexist or actually
racist, but because he said the kinds of things that you usually only hear
from sexist people, and in particular, the kind of sexist people who are also
racist._

That is the big thing I saw as well.

I think there is an analogy to the body's defenses against viruses. The body
recognizes certain shapes from the outside surface of viruses and attacks
anything sharing those shapes. The memo was chock full of ideas and phrases
that match those used by the worst kind of bigots.

If you look at the plain meaning of the words it isn't so bad. But most
people's response is based on the pattern-matched shape evaluation instead.

~~~
cmiles74
Aaronsen mentioned this as well, friends and colleagues warned him about this
"dogwhistling" (a term I've never heard before). The concern was that because
he wasn't clearly stating his position, people would assume the worst.

This was much the same criticism leveled against Donald Trump. Because he did
not clear denounce the racist activities in Charlottesville, he could be
interpreted as implying support.

Personally, I am not seeing the lack of things that are actually sexist in
Damore's memo. His one-sided and dishonest interpretations of his sources
alone make his sexism clear and it's the same kind of dishonest
interpretations we see from the racists and the sexists.

~~~
dragonwriter
“Dogwhistling” isn't failure to clearly state a position, it's using
recognized in-group code to signal one meaning to a target group while hoping
to avoid notice by a different group.

In Trump's case, specifically, echoing the “Unite the Right” marchers call to
respect history _while_ making the “many sides” statement was pointed to as
dog-whistle support for the alt-right groups. (The weak statement itself was
also called out, but it wasn't the weakness or vagueness of the statement that
was the basis of the “dogwhistle” characterization.)

Not sure what the specific alleged dog-whistles were in Damore's memo.

~~~
manyoso
There has been no claim that I have seen that Damore was dog whistling. Scott
said that he was motivated to write this linked post by others who feared his
previous post might be interpreted by others as a dog whistle to the alt-
right.

~~~
clavalle
Damore at one point mentioned in passing IQ as also having statistical truths
that are taboo to talk about.

I took that as a dog whistle reference to 'The Bell Curve' since that is the
most famous treatise for that view and a support of the conclusions that it
made.

Or I could be just reading too much into it and extending Damore's thesis into
race, too, is unfair.

That's the secret sauce of dog whistles...plausible deniability.

~~~
thehardsphere
There's no reason for him to make a dog whistle reference to The Bell Curve.
Even though people don't agree with or like that book, it's not exactly a book
that is so scandalous and horrific that you need to dog whistle about it.

If you're going to dog whistle, it's going to be to something so horrific it
can't even be discussed with any pretense of academic distance or distinction.

The problem with the "dog whistle theory" though is that only dogs can hear
them, so anybody who is not a dog can label anything to be a dog whistle with
no real proof whatsoever.

~~~
matthewbauer
I think among the more intellectual side of the alt-right that book is fairly
important. I'm not sure if Damore's usage could really be considered dog
whistling but I'm pretty sure that's what he's referencing.

------
cmiles74
"... if James Damore deserves to be fired from Google, for treating
evolutionary psychology as potentially relevant to social issues..."

I don't believe that's why James Damore was fired. He was fired for a much
more obvious reason: he was working against their efforts to have a more
gender diverse workforce and he embarrassed the company in a very public way.

"First, let me say that we strongly support the right of Googlers to express
themselves, and much of what was in that memo is fair to debate, regardless of
whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with it."[0]

Google admits that there are some things in the memo that are debatable, even
though Google disagrees with Damore.

"It is contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct, which expects
‘each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of
harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination"[0]

And that is why he was fired: deliberately working against Google's workplace
culture goals. There may be room to argue about what Damore may have meant, in
his heart, when he wrote the memo. However, since the memo is a physical
artifact that we may all inspect, it's clear that the text of the memo is
unabashedly sexist. He clearly states that he believes the gender gap at
Google is not caused by sexism and that's at clear odds with Google's goals.

"We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism."[1]

As if it needs to be said, that is clearly not the case. The primary cause of
the gender gap is very much sexism and it's a real problem that needs to be
dealt with. While we may disagree on which steps will be most effective,
there's no benefit to denying the problem exists.

[0]: [https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/07/google-fires-memo-
author/](https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/07/google-fires-memo-author/)

[1]: [https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-james-damore-memo-
uncenso...](https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-james-damore-memo-uncensored-
memo-with-charts-and-cites-339f3d2d05f)

~~~
mdorazio
Please provide a source for your last statement since that is not at all
clear. By your logic, the primary cause of the gender gap in public school
teaching must also be sexism. Do you believe that as well?

The primary cause of the gender gap is tech is the lack of a gender-balanced
candidate pool for tech jobs. If you're a hiring manager posting developer
jobs and 80% of the applicants are men, is it sexist that you end up hiring
mostly men?

The real sexism problems are happening much earlier in life than when people
start looking for jobs. If you want gender balance in tech jobs, we need to
get more women into tech-focused college degrees, which means we need to get
more girls interested in tech in primary school, which means we need to
encourage teaching and parenting in early development that leads to an
interest in tech later... etc. But wait, prenatal hormone exposure predicts
toy choices in young children [1], so it's not that simple. This is exactly
what Damore was trying to get at.

I think we need to split the gender problem in tech into a few different
categories and tackle each independently rather than throwing everything in
the "tech is sexist" bucket and looking for magic umbrella solutions. At a
minimum, there are problems with getting girls interested in tech, keeping
girls on an education path that leads to a tech career, eliminating
subconscious bias in hiring practices, moving startups away from bro culture,
and retaining women in tech when work-life balance becomes more important. All
of these are important and require different solutions.

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15693771](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15693771)

~~~
matthewbauer
That's an interesting study you link to but I don't think it fits in this
discussion. The underlying problem is not that boys like "boy" toys and girls
like "girl" toys, it's how our culture defines which toys are which. Buying a
sewing machine for a girl and a video game system for a boy is somehow
"normal" but switch those around and it's at least a little weird (at least
20-30 years ago it was). Some sort of quota system for women in tech might
actually have an effect on that (certainly not guaranteed to, though).

~~~
mdorazio
I think you missed the point of the study. "Normal" has nothing to do with it.
Presented with a variety of toys to choose from, girls picked the
stereotypical "girly" toys, even when encouraged to pick the "boy" toys by
their parents. This means that you could give a Lego mindstorms kit to a girl
and there's a good chance she just straight up wouldn't be interested in it,
and would seek some other form of entertainment.

In light of that, we're left with an awkward situation. Should we force kids
to play with certain toys and do certain activities even if they're not
interested just so we can get to gender balance in lucrative fields? Maybe.
Parents certainly do that sort of thing already with piano lessons and
language classes. But if you don't think that's a good way to go, then you
have to be open to the possibility that, left to their own choices, fewer
girls will be interested in things that lead to a tech career than their male
counterparts. Certainly it should be better than the (at best) 70/30 split we
see now, but targeting 50/50 is not realistic.

~~~
matthewbauer
Ok, I misunderstood what the study says. The underlying idea that boy and girl
toys are social constructs could still be true, perhaps? Nothing seems to me
inherently "male" about Lego mindstorms besides how we culturally define it.
Maybe there are hormones involved in that girl's disinterest but more it's
hard to believe that's significant enough. But it's definitely true that it's
not an easy job to change culture.

~~~
mdorazio
Agreed, nothing is inherently male or female about one toy vs. another.
However, there is evidence that preferences that eventually lead to a career
in engineering and/or computer science might at least partially be due to
gender and not to social norms. There's an excellent essay in [1] that sums up
some additional research and also refutes some of the "it's all sexism"
arguments that have been made. I recommend reading it and also the two
comments to get a bit more data on the topic.

[1] [http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-
exagger...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-
differences/)

------
stared
The original "What I believe" was powerful enough that I use it as an opening
quotation for "Dating for Nerds" series (first part here:
[http://p.migdal.pl/2017/07/23/dating-for-
nerds.html](http://p.migdal.pl/2017/07/23/dating-for-nerds.html)). That is:

"How to help all the young male nerds I meet who suffer from [the dating]
problem, in a way that passes feminist muster, and that triggers the world’s
sympathy rather than outrage[?]

I believe that, just as there are shy, nerdy men, there are also shy, nerdy
women, who likewise suffer from feeling unwanted, sexually invisible, or
ashamed to express their desires."

At the same time, from my experience (including my current relationship with a
feminist) that nerds and feminist should be allies. What is a problem is
misunderstanding of each other problems and (often intentional triggering)
both ways.

Also, here are some lessons I've learnt at !!con (a conference by Recurse
Center aka Hacker School alumni):
[http://p.migdal.pl/2017/08/14/bangbangcon.html](http://p.migdal.pl/2017/08/14/bangbangcon.html)

tl;dr: you can get great inclusivity primarily by being welcoming,
accommodating for needs (in an open-ended way, not restricting it to a few
axes) and, crucially, by not shaming or bulling otherwise good-willed
transgressors. And as a male nerd I felt _better_ than on less diverse events,
not worse.

~~~
Tossrock
Not sure why you were downvoted, this seems quite reasonable to me.

------
Lon7
I think the 7 points Scott outlined are fantastic, and I absolutely agree with
him.

This sounds a bit strange to write, but I think Scott, and a lot of people
here and on the web, are almost thinking too logically and critically about
all this. I have no problem with what they are doing, but I also don't think
it is a very effective technique.

Like it or not, this women in tech issue is in the domain of politics, and it
will remain there. I see a whole bunch of really smart people applying the
same problem solving skills they use in their daily engineering work to this
problem. They try to rely on strict evidence, and proof and debate. And
There's nothing wrong with that at all, but it isn't very effective in the
political domain. It takes certain skills and lots of practice to correctly
communicate with this type of purely logical debate. A ten page paper read by
someone without these skills is very likely to be misunderstood. And that's
exactly what happened. I wish that wasn't the case, but that's not the world
we live in.

If you are trying to persuade, you need to know your audience. In cases like
this, your audience is not just your fellow tech community, but a large
percentage of the entire world! It is people who won't follow your carefully
constructed arguments. James Damore's critical mistake is that seemed totally
ignorant to this point. The people reading his paper were not just going to be
fellow googlers who had the skills to take his arguments at face value, it was
everyone. You need to be aware of this when dealing in politics.

~~~
Cthulhu_
The main challenge is reason versus emotion. Damore and this article made a
few points based on reason and science and logical arguments and such, but it
was countered by emotion, if not by values and morals - and those are almost
impossible to counter. That is, "I believe this statement / manifesto is wrong
on a moral level" is very hard to counter with reason alone.

The Charlotteville (?) riots (and by extension the Alt-Right/Nazi vs Antifa
fights) are proof of this - there's loud, violent protestors on both sides,
neither of which is engaging in a debate because they're both strongly opposed
on a moral level.

~~~
throwawayjava
Empirical consequentialism does not have a monopoly on "reason", "science", or
"logical arguments". In fact, computational complexity theory and modern
mathematical logic provide, IMO, some of the most compelling arguments
_against_ the idea that we can make good rational decisions without value
systems and moral codes (aka heuristics for an otherwise intractable problem).

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Tell me, what intractable problem are "value systems" and "moral codes"
heuristics for? The hypothetico-dialectical method of talking about morality,
as if it was simultaneously mathematics and politics, has always confused me.
Plainly there ought to be some observable evidence that we've done the right
thing, or the term "right" has no meaning at all other than "theorem within a
politically fashionable consistent axiom schema."

~~~
throwawayjava
_> Tell me, what intractable problem are "value systems" and "moral codes"
heuristics for?_

Suppose you already have a solution in-hand for determining what the "best
world" is, and everyone agrees on this definition of what is "right" and
"good".

Now, can you calculate with any accuracy what actions each person should take
in order for us all to arrive at that "best world"?

I think it's clear to most people who have taken an algorithms course that
such a calculation -- even with perfect knowledge about the current and future
state of the world -- is completely and totally intractable. (And besides, it
doesn't take an algorithms course to notice _we don 't have that perfect
knowledge_; I don't even know if it will rain this afternoon.)

Value systems and moral codes -- e.g., "no stealing and no murdering except in
X,Y,Z cases" \-- provide us with a set of heuristics that while perhaps not
optimal at least seem to keep us in decently good steady states for a while.

 _> The hypothetico-dialectical method of talking about morality, as if it was
simultaneously mathematics and politics, has always confused me. _

The point is to explore the theoretical limits of what's even possible. If we
can show that something is impossible _even in a highly idealized setting_ ,
then we can probably conclude that the same thing is impossible in more messy
settings.

Of course, "all models are wrong" and all that.

But if pure consequentialism doesn't work well even in the most ideal of
settings, that might be a good indicator that it also doesn't work well in far
more messy settings.

 _> Plainly there ought to be some observable evidence that we've done the
right thing_

Why is that so "plain"? Besides, "what should I do?" is a far more...
timely... question than "did I just do the right thing?"

 _> or the term "right" has no meaning at all other than "theorem within a
politically fashionable consistent axiom schema."_

Outside of religious and spiritual folks, I think most people agree that
morality is socially constructed.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>Suppose you already have a solution in-hand for determining what the "best
world" is, and everyone agrees on this definition of what is "right" and
"good".

It doesn't matter whether people agree with it. It matters whether it's
actually correct, and actually refers to real things.

>Outside of religious and spiritual folks, I think most people agree that
morality is socially constructed.

Then stop talking about morality already. There's no point in spending massive
sums of effort, money, and even military manpower on made-up constructions if
you _know damn well_ they're made up.

(Mind, I _don 't_ think morality is made up: I'm a moral realist. Of course,
religious folks _aren 't_ moral realists, they're usually just plain confused
about what counts as "real", _as are you_ , since you appear to think "real
morality" means "morality enforced by a giant authority figure in the sky".)

~~~
throwawayjava
_> It matters whether it's actually correct, and actually refers to real
things._

You're completely missing my point.

Replace the quoted sentence with "Suppose you already have an actually correct
morality that refers to real things". The computational intractability
argument remains a damning condemnation of consequentialism. Just because you
can state the theorem doesn't mean you can find the witnessing construction.

 _> Then stop talking about morality already_

Just because things are socially constructed doesn't mean they aren't
valuable, and it also doesn't mean that they have no effect on our lives.

 _> There's no point in spending massive sums of effort, money, and even
military manpower on made-up constructions if you know damn well they're made
up._

Why not?

Why can't we just say some things are "self-evident" and worth fighting for?

And if this is true, then why are moral considerations such potent rhetorical
devices? The only possible explanation I can think of is extraordinarily
condescending.

 _> I'm a moral realist_

Now I'm even more confused.

First, the realists play this game all the time; each branch of moral realism
basically corresponds to a different -- usually embarrassingly pseudo-
scientific -- way of justifying a priori ethical concerns.

From my perspective, moral realism isn't an _escape_ from the problem; it's
just a way of ignoring the actually hard problem and playing games that are
completely parametric in the actually hard problems.

Second, the view of morality as a social construction isn't even inconsistent
with moral realism as long as you're willing to go past whatever nice
distinctions make for easy-to-grade multiple choice exams in PHIL 101. E.g.,
one plausible (and, per usual, embarrassingly pseudo-scientific) hypothesis
bridging this divide is that morality is a social construction that
necessarily arises from ethical intuitions that have a physiological basis.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>Why can't we just say some things are "self-evident" and worth fighting for?

Because nothing is actually _self-evident_ in the real world. It's all still
made out of meat, with no convenient teletypes up to Plato's Heaven where the
Self-Evident Propositions, Ideal Forms, and A Prioris live. "Self-evident and
worth fighting for" isn't a factual claim, it's an effort to persuade people
to believe (what you label) a delusion.

>And if this is true, then why are moral considerations such potent rhetorical
devices? The only possible explanation I can think of is extraordinarily
condescending.

Well, there are three possibilities here:

* Typical antirealism. Moral appeals are in fact appeals to ontological delusion. This sounds condescending, but it's the corner you back yourself into by trying to have your moral appeals and your anti-realism at the same time. You're the one saying, "let's appeal to morality, but only ever to _my_ morality, left completely unaccountable to external facts beyond my intuitions." If you tried that in math, physics, sociology, psychology -- you'd be thrown out of the room.

* Moral appeals are used as verbal shortcuts to ultimately nonmoral things. For example, the moral stricture "do not harm the innocent" may ground out in "I feel empathetic pain when I see children get hurt". In this case, the moral appeal has a little bit more actual force, since it grounds out in a real motivation to which we can actually, well, appeal. In fact, if we can manage to talk about the _rational content_ of that empathetic pain (something which antirealists vehemently disavow but which _basically the entire rest of humanity for all of history_ upheld), we can achieve...

* Moral realism: moral appeals work because they appeal to real things that have motivational power. The empathetic pain is a real moral motivation, _pain is bad_ , especially when the damage it accompanies is too permanent for it to be a learning experience. This is the typical view among basically everyone who hasn't been carefully trained to pooh-pooh our innate emotions and motivations as having no normative force, and remains the majority opinion among both professional ethicists and laypeople.

>First, the realists play this game all the time; each branch of moral realism
basically corresponds to a different -- usually embarrassingly pseudo-
scientific -- way of justifying a priori ethical concerns.

Well, I usually don't see the pseudo-scientific ones. I usually see the
pseudo-mathematical ones. But oh well, _my_ ethical concerns are _a
posteriori_ , just like my epistemological, uh, knowledge.

Mind, if I want to be dickishly precise, I'm a realist about value and
interests at the organismic level, and merely observe that moral norms and
imperatives at the social level often have deep anthropological _reasons_ that
ground out in the genuine interests of the individuals involved. Where they
_don 't_, those norms and imperatives tend to get changed over time.

That might be a form of constructivism at the social level, but constructivism
isn't really a form of realism _or_ antirealism (it roughly says, "morality
comes from running _this_ algorithm on _these_ data, but you might need some
nonmoral interest to get someone running the algorithm at all), and it's
actually different from naive social constructionism ("people make up
morality, agree tentatively on things, and then use it to persuade each-other
about stuff").

>From my perspective, moral realism isn't an escape from the problem; it's
just a way of ignoring the actually hard problem and playing games that are
completely parametric in the actually hard problems.

Would you care to pose the actual hard problem, then?

>E.g., one plausible (and, per usual, embarrassingly pseudo-scientific)
hypothesis bridging this divide is that morality is a social construction that
necessarily arises from ethical intuitions that have a physiological basis.

That would still be a typical antirealist view, since it says that morality
arises in a way that has nothing to do with moral facts as such.

(The nasty tricky part is what you're willing to count as a moral or normative
fact _in the first place_. Fix that and the questions get a lot clearer. Make
that slippery and you get hundreds of years of philosophizing instead of
knowing what to do.)

~~~
throwawayjava
_> That might be a form of constructivism at the social level, but
constructivism isn't really a form of realism or antirealism..._

Isn't this exactly my point?

 _> Would you care to pose the actual hard problem, then?_

Where the hell does your moral truth _come from_?

The way I see it, we actually operate in _exactly the same way_. The only
difference is that I don't pretend that arbitrary things aren't arbitrary.

 _> I'm a realist about value and interests at the organismic level, and
merely observe that moral norms and imperatives at the social level often have
deep anthropological reasons that ground out in the genuine interests of the
individuals involved._

This kind of inexact hand waving is exactly what I meant when I said "pseudo-
scientific BS".

~~~
eli_gottlieb
> _Where the hell does your moral truth come from?_

It's built into our everyday physical reality, or it is bullshit.

~~~
throwawayjava
This is my point. Moral realism grounds out the same place that religion does
-- it's real or it isn't. God (some moral truth) exists, and it is this
particular God (moral truth). Or God doesn't exist. The choice is yours, and
it's completely arbitrary. A matter of personal faith, no more and no less.

Moral realism has no epistemic superiority. It's just as "bullshit" as
everything else; the rotten core of bullshit is just hidden under a bunch of
layers of deduction.

I prefer to air the dirty laundry; realists are uncomfortable by stained
underwear and would prefer to play logical games on top of an edifice without
thinking too much about the sand underneath their feet.

But at the core all systems of morality have the same problem. Realism is no
escape. In fact, IMO, it's worse than a mistake because it provides the
illusion of solving an insurmountable problems.

I guess it comes down to this: "I choose to believe in God and I know that
belief is arbitrary" is to me by far the most compelling apology. Things like
Goedel's proof just make me yawn and squint.

------
IIAOPSW
I kind of wish Aaronson didn't do a followup and explicitly tie his Kolmogrov
essay to the Demure controversy. I liked it better when he was self-
referentially taking the Kolmogrov option by virtue of his very writing about
the Kolmogrov option. He said it all so well without saying it. I bet
pedestrian SJWs might have even quoted his original essay thinking it was in
support of _their_ cause.

~~~
striking
He explains why he did it, though.

> However, a few people who I like and respect accused me of “dogwhistling.”
> They warned, in particular, that if I wouldn’t just come out and say what I
> thought about the James Damore Google memo thing, then people would assume
> the very worst[...]

~~~
lackbeard
So he's appeasing the if-you're-not-with-us-you're-against-us bullies? That's
sad, if true...

~~~
striking
I'm glad he decided to do this, though. It's a great piece. Maybe it's not
what the "bullies" would've wanted, but it's something they should read
anyway.

------
andyjohnson0
_"... if James Damore deserves to be fired from Google, for treating
evolutionary psychology as potentially relevant to social issues, then Steven
Pinker deserves to be fired from Harvard for the same offense. Yes, I realize
that a employee of a private company is different from a tenured professor.
But I don’t see why it’s relevant here."_

Its relevant because Damore is employed to develop products to benefit
Google's sharesholders, wheras Pinker is employed by Harvard to do science and
_publicly communicate_ ideas. Pinker's tenure gives him licence to pursue
controversial ideas if that is where the evidence takes him. Damore gets to
write code on an at-will basis.

~~~
js8
I disagree with you and agree with her. And even if I agreed with you, Damore
actually wrote his memo as a response to Google soliciting feedback. So he in
fact got the "license" that you talk about from Google.

~~~
throwawayjava
_> Damore actually wrote his memo as a response to Google soliciting feedback.
So he in fact got the "license" that you talk about from Google._

As an aside, this is an extraordinary dangerous assumption for an employee to
make. Suggestion boxes aren't magical shields from blowback.

Tenure exists for a good reason, and parent's point is well-taken. If you
aren't tenured (or even if you are), you should probably assume that you have
to play a careful political game if you want to stay employed.

(I'm not making any judgement, just stating some IMO facts.)

~~~
js8
That's true. But humans can't have it both ways. If you obfuscate the
language, you are at risk of someone not understanding it and taking it
literally. And then a hypocrisy can be revealed.

In one of the previous discussions, I linked to Charta 77. These guys did the
same thing - they took the Czechoslovak government for the word that it
respects human rights, because it was a signatory of some human rights
agreements. They were persecuted.

The same problem you have with tenure. You are saying professors are protected
with tenure, but are they really? Unless someone tests the boundaries, then
you don't know if it really protects you. So assuming tenure will protect you
is, likewise, a dangerous assumption.

Addendum: I would also like to point out this excellent book:
[https://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-
Not/dp/1491514...](https://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-
Not/dp/1491514132) That's why Google cannot change its mind even if it wanted
to, sadly.

~~~
throwawayjava
Again, I wasn't making any judgement one way or the other.

I'm just observing it's extremely naive to believe that a solicitation for
feedback in an employment setting is somehow an invitation to free speech.

~~~
js8
> Again, I wasn't making any judgement one way or the other.

I wasn't implying you did.

> solicitation for feedback in an employment setting is somehow an invitation
> to free speech

Without further qualification, in a literal sense, it is "invitation to free
speech". That's the problem.

~~~
throwawayjava
_> Without further qualification_

"The society you live in" and "a basic understanding of how the world works"
are always that most important qualifications on any invitation to share your
opinion.

------
dandare
Who wants to play a game of Arguman with me?

I state that "Positive discrimination of disadvantaged groups in employment
and education is immoral"

[http://en.arguman.org/positive-discrimination-at-work-is-
imm...](http://en.arguman.org/positive-discrimination-at-work-is-immoral)

~~~
Diederich
For the topic at hand: sex based discrimination in the technology sector in
the United States in 2017: I won't comment one way or another. I don't feel
qualified to offer a comment here.

Do you think that "Positive discrimination on behalf of former slaves in the
late 1860s in the United States in employment and education was immoral"?

------
settsu
> "Note that, even if men in STEM fields are no more sexist on average than
> men in other fields—or are less sexist, as one might expect from their
> generally socially liberal views and attitudes..."

Sadly, that has not been my experience—not within specific technical
departments nor in wider tech-related events, and certainly not in the broader
workplace context. While this may a reasonable assertion on the coasts of the
USA, it has not been my own in the spaces between them nor in my interactions
with various people from outside the US. No question that these are my own
limited anecdotes, but I like to believe I am reasonably well-read and aware
of global mindsets and I would hesitate to make that statement so flatly.

> "Trust me, my four-year-old daughter Lily wishes I didn’t believe so
> fervently in working with her every day on her math skills"

And there you go. Even by a seemingly forgettable tongue-in-cheek quip, the
author reveals a fundamental misjudgement repeated countless times around the
world for centuries that speaks to the very heart of the issue: correcting
something may require enacting an alternative that has other inherent
negatives that don't have an immediately apparent benefit to the end goal and
might even seem contrary in the short term. In other words, addressing
historical inequalities may necessitate solutions that them self enact brand
new inequalities. It's an unavoidable likelihood in course correction: going
off-course to get back on-course. And teaching math to four-year-old Lily may
require changing the approach to learning it entirely to something
unconventional, or even uncomfortable: the author may be terrible at teaching
math for her.

Maybe the best person for a responsibility is technically less proficient but
ultimately more effective.

~~~
settsu
Or, as pointed out in an article cited, a person is sufficiently, if not
exceptionally, proficient but is simply ill-suited:

"I was in the throes of a brief, doomed romance. I had attended a concert that
Saturday night. I answered the question with an account of both. The guys
stared blankly. Then silence. Then one of them said: “I built a fiber-channel
network in my basement,” and our co-workers fell all over themselves asking
him to describe every step in loving detail.

At that moment I realized that fundamentally, these are not my people. I liked
the work. But I was never going to like it enough to blow a weekend doing more
of it for free. Which meant that I was never going to be as good at that job
as the guys around me." \-
[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-09/as-a-
woma...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-09/as-a-woman-in-
tech-i-realized-these-are-not-my-people)

This is often how I've personally felt.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
That's pretty messed-up. I'm a male who has never felt any impulse to build a
fiber-channel network in my basement. Hell, I don't even have a basement.

------
seycombi
Hacker News discussion on part one:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14966002](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14966002)

------
RodericDay
It's interesting how many tech guys consider this guy some kind of martyr.

People are upset about his odious "Google Memo" because it's not their first
rodeo with a dude who weasels around and justifies his racism/sexism with
pseudoscience, not because they were "misled" by "clickbait media" or
whatever.

They weren't incorrect. The 32 supposedly-critical citation links point
ovewhelmingly to garbage, including 5 wikipedia links, a dozen opinion pieces,
some more "academic" essays, a link to MRA-founder Warren Farrell's blog, and,
perhaps best of all, a link that simply points to a google search for the term
"political correctness" (lol). The "graphs" are made in powerpoint with the
curve tool (one of them the infamous bell curve), and the axes don't even have
ticks on them.

It's evident to anyone familiar with "the scene" that the dude got all his
info from anti-feminist YouTube/Reddit, and this was proven beyond a doubt
when he went on to speak at anti-feminist YouTube channels immediately after
getting fired. he wasn't widely misunderstood, people just saw right through
his multiple disclaimers.

This Quora answer was pretty final for me: [https://www.quora.com/What-do-
scientists-think-about-the-bio...](https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-
think-about-the-biological-claims-made-in-the-document-about-diversity-
written-by-a-Google-employee-in-August-2017)

~~~
algorias
Even if all you say is true and the guy is an odious anti-feminist, the points
he made should be debated and refuted, not silenced.

Even if most people that make similar points are just "weaseling around" and
justifying their racism/sexism, this is not reason enough to assume the worst.
That's how you get thoughtcrime, were the faintest association with unorthodox
thought self-evidently makes you a despicable person who should be punished
and whose ideas should be ignored.

Many tech guys are waking up to the farcical, oppressive way in which some
leftists spread their ideas and silence their opponents, and won't stand for
it any longer.

~~~
throwawayjava
_> Even if all you say is true and the guy is an odious anti-feminist, the
points he made should be debated and refuted, not silenced._

I strongly disagree with your "even if" hypothetical.

Dialectics are a process for arriving at truth, not the source of truth
itself. I think this is something hard-core rationalists often seem to forget.

In terms of time, emotional energy, and so on, evaluating arguments is _very
expensive_.

Ignoring an argument because its source is "odious"ly biased is the political
equivalent of using heuristics to prune a huge search space. It may not always
give you an optimal answer. But then, climbing every ant hill to the bitter
end may not get you to an answer in your lifetime anyways.

And remember, in an argumentative setting, _the search space is adversarially
constructed_. So you can actually be pretty damn certain that without
heuristics, you'll never find the truth.

 _> this is not reason enough to assume the worst_

The degree to which people are "assuming the worst" seems to be one of the
major sources of disagreement.

FWIW I don't think many of Damore's detractors are "assuming the worst" from
the outset. Complaints about the essay tend to identify specific claims,
specific phrases, specific arguments that serve as heuristics for choosing not
to continue evaluating the argument in good faith.

You can argue against those heuristics all you want, but I don't think that
this argument is even possible to have without some heuristics. Case in point:
Damore uses his own set of totally unsound heuristics (see e.g., the
complaining about "political correctness", the graphs that are actually just
pictorial representations of prior assumptions, and so on).

~~~
alphapapa
> Ignoring an argument because its source is "odious"ly biased is the
> political equivalent of using heuristics to prune a huge search space.

You're proving Damore's point. You refuse to consider his arguments because of
your prejudiced, emotional reaction. This is patently irrational.

> It may not always give you an optimal answer. But then, climbing every ant
> hill to the bitter end may not get you to an answer in your lifetime
> anyways.

This is a strawman and an argument to absurdity, i.e. also irrational.

> So you can actually be pretty damn certain that without heuristics, you'll
> never find the truth.

You'll never find the truth if you irrationally dismiss arguments that oppose
your prejudiced opinions--unless, of course, you've already arrived at the
truth. But believing you've already arrived at the truth would be arrogant and
closed-minded, right?

~~~
throwawayjava
_> You refuse to consider his arguments because of your prejudiced, emotional
reaction_

GP gave a hypothetical, and I'm responding to that hypothetical.

In fact, I did not refuse to consider his arguments. I considered them.
They're poorly sourced, terribly reasoned, and not very well communicated.
FWIW I do feel bad that they guy lost his job for what amounts to poor
communication, worse argumentation skills, and a misplaced belief that
engineers are special enough to be exempt from the generally shitty
employee/employer relationship as it exists in the USA.

But that's all beside the point, because _I 'm responding to a hypothetical_.

 _> You'll never find the truth if you irrationally dismiss arguments_

My point is that you'll ALSO never find truth if you climb every adversary-
constructed hill in the state space. Your suggested method for finding truth
is _even worse_ than mine, and what's more, you're claiming the opposite.

I'm at least admitting that I have to use heuristics. You're just watching the
tower of exponentials crank up and claiming "no problem! We can compute that!"

 _> But believing you've already arrived at the truth would be arrogant and
closed-minded, right?_

It's possible to remain open to new ideas _and also_ not waste time on
evaluating or responding to arguments that aren't motivated by a genuine
search for truth. (Again, this comment was in response to a hypothetical.)

I highly doubt you actually disagree with me in practice, because such a life
would surely doom you to misery and unemployment. Do you spend all your free
time reading and/or responding to arguments from flat earthers, BS science
posted on white supremacy forums, and marketing claims made by infomercials
and bill boards? Do you engage with every crank preacher and evangelist who
comes to your door or yells at you on the street? Of course not.

~~~
alphapapa
> In fact, I did not refuse to consider his arguments. I considered them.
> They're poorly sourced, terribly reasoned, and not very well communicated.

There are prominent, respected authorities and experts on both sides of the
political spectrum who disagree with you, ones who have explained in detail
why they disagree with you. What do you think about that?

> My point is that you'll ALSO never find truth if you climb every adversary-
> constructed hill in the state space.

I feel like you didn't read my comment, because you're repeating your previous
argument: "...climbing every ant hill to the bitter end may not get you to an
answer in your lifetime anyways," to which I responded, "This is a strawman
and an argument to absurdity, i.e. also irrational."

> Your suggested method for finding truth is even worse than mine, and what's
> more, you're claiming the opposite.

Again, I feel like you didn't read my comment. Where did I suggest such a
method?

> I'm at least admitting that I have to use heuristics. You're just watching
> the tower of exponentials crank up and claiming "no problem! We can compute
> that!"

Where did I say that?

> It's possible to remain open to new ideas and also not waste time on
> evaluating or responding to arguments that aren't motivated by a genuine
> search for truth.

I agree with this.

However, you are jumping to a conclusion by assuming that he is not interested
in the truth. It is quite arrogant of you, to assume you know what is in his
mind and heart. This is not good faith on your part.

> Do you spend all your free time reading and/or responding to arguments from
> flat earthers, BS science posted on white supremacy forums, and marketing
> claims made by infomercials and bill boards? Do you engage with every crank
> preacher and evangelist who comes to your door or yells at you on the
> street? Of course not.

Once again you prove Damore's point: by equating him with such people, and
equating his memo with such things, you are evincing an emotional, prejudiced
overreaction and stubborn refusal to seriously consider his arguments.

~~~
throwawayjava
_> There are prominent, respected authorities and experts on both sides of the
political spectrum who disagree with you_

Disagree with my about what? I think it would be helpful if you put in words
the claim you think I'm making. I feel that we're talking past one another
because you think I'm talking about Damore when in fact I'm responding to _a
hypothetical_ posited by another commenter.

 _> This is a strawman and an argument to absurdity, i.e. also irrational._

I don't pay attention to Nazi's scientific arguments for racism, anti-
feminist's claims that women are incapable of certain tasks, or infomercials'
claims about how amazing a product is. In each situation the signal-to-noise
ratio is intractable and the arguments are not made from the position of a
genuine search for truth. I'm better off encountering that evidence in other
contexts presented by genuine actors, or simply never seeing it at all. Not
all arguments are helpful. Some are intentionally crafted to distract and
obscure.

If you think that makes me irrational, so be it. Your disagreement strikes me
as hopelessly naive. I'd rather behave irrationally than waste my life chasing
down the errors in arguments made by biased idiots who have no problem with
lying to advance their ideology.

 _> Again, I feel like you didn't read my comment. Where did I suggest such a
method?_

Well if you have no better method then I'm not really sure what I'm supposed
to do. Give up on truth?

 _> However, you are jumping to a conclusion by assuming that he is not
interested in the truth_

Please read the entire thread. I am assuming this because it is posited as a
hypothetical!

I fact, I do not believe this is true in Damore's case. But it is certainly
true in the case of many people who are defending Damore (eg Mike Cernovich),
and I don't think taking their arguments on face value is worth the time or
effort. They are not interested in truth, they are interested in power, so
their arguments are pointless if what you're interested in is truth.

But again, nowhere in this thread have I stated anything about Damore. I was
responding to a hypothetical.

 _> by equating him with such people_

Again, I was responding to a hypothetical!!!

------
craigsmansion
Let's assume there's a new remote tribe discovered which has never had contact
with the outside world.

Now, for reasons unknown, members of this tribe have an uncanny ability to do
mathematics.

Every tech company rushes to enroll these math wizards, and entices them with
English language courses.

Now an employee writes a memo that questions the value of the language courses
because the tribesfolk seem to have no innate interest in linguistics and seem
to have a harder time learning English, enough to turn some away from their
glorious new careers in Silicon Valley. He surmises it's probably because of
their natural gift for mathematics. He also attaches the scientific research
that, up to that moment, supports the notion that members of the tribe indeed
have a superior grasp on mathematics.

Now that we have the argument on neutral ground:

-All the research quoted supports the innate math ability of the tribe, but implies _nothing_ about their linguistic capabilities.

-The reason these tribal members have difficulties picking up English is not really known. The supposition that mathematical skills and linguistic skill are inversely related is dubious and could easily be a product of our existing cultural norms. It could simply be them not even knowing the existence of different languages until very recently.

-Constructing an argument that their linguistic shortcomings might be innate would serve no purpose outside of a very narrow field of neuroscience. It certainly does not detract from their mathematical abilities, and if the whole company needs to learn to speak French, because for some reason the tribe grasps that easily, so be it: whether innate or not, the company cannot afford not to hire them.

Any memo about the innate English abilities of the tribe outside of a (proper)
research paper within the realm of neuroscience is simply speculation. If this
speculation is toxic to those already working there (telling coworkers their
English sucks, but it's not their fault. They were born that way. You're only
trying to help them.), or the hiring process, it is logical to put a stop to
that.

Now substitute "superior mathematicians" with "perfectly capable programmers",
"remote tribe" with "half the population", and "innate linguistic interest"
with "innate technical capability".

TL;DR: even if a trait A that _could_ be related to a more desirable trait B
is more common in one group than in another group, its prevalence in one group
implies nothing about the prevalence of the more desirable trait in the second
group.

To argue about trait A is to argue about nothing until a correlation is
established.

Any argument about trait A in relation to B that mentions genetics is to be
regarded as highly suspicious.

~~~
rplst8
First, I think you meant "Now substitute... 'innate linguistic capability'
with 'innate technical interest'" right? Because it's the "interest in things"
vs. "interest in people" argument that Damore uses, or did I miss the point
entirely?

If I didn't, I simply have the following to offer: there are many, many fields
that are dominated by either women or men. No one really knows why. Simply
saying "sexism" and calling it a day doesn't give enough credence to the
problem. It doesn't identify the root cause. And unless you merely want to
treat symptoms, ignoring the root cause will cause the problem to fester.

