
Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore - ZoeZoeBee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEDuVF7kiPU&t=43s
======
where_do_i_live
I watched this interview just a bit ago, and it gave me a better understanding
of what James' was trying to articulate. After like 5 days of confusion about
the memo, the outrage, and now the firing - I think I can come to a conclusion
that he is firstly, not sexist, and secondly is a proponent of equal treatment
of both men an women. And thirdly wanted an honest discussion on this topic.

I do think it will come to pass that Google will lose a unlawful termination
lawsuit (or settle)

This engineer was further, exploring the question in what appears to be a very
scientific manner based on the latest academic research into these questions,
as best as I can discern that appears accurate.

This entire conversation is tainted by so many numerous other items that it is
almost impossible to discuss without bringing in emotion, tangential
arguments, anecdotes, and just random statements. This really is a category 5
hurricane of our current political/cultural battles brought to light.

I'm coming from a very liberal perspective, and I found it really hard to
agree with others on how this is a very sexist memo. It appears that this
young man is truly trying to explore the nature of these issues, and how it
applied to his former company - who ostensibly wanted to encourage curiosity
and a range of discussion.

I often find myself very upset at the fringe right for many of their ideas,
but I've usually treated the far left (are they fringe now?) as more just
annoying and irrelevant and harmless (the anti-vaxxers(maybe not harmless
here), safe space, microaggression proponents) I really think the loose
liberal group - that I self select to be a member of - really screwed the
pooch on this one. This whole debacle does appear to be a rush to judgement
and virtue-signaling. Ugh - I'm not usually on the side of the alt-
right/conservatives, but on the merits of this issue - there is a point they
are making that is important. HOWEVER and this is important - all the other
awful truly sexist and misogynist things that is part of the alt-right is
detestable, but as famously said elsewhere - This is not the droid you are
looking for.

~~~
cSoze
If only he was "exploring the question in what appears to be a very scientific
manner based on the latest academic research into these questions". The FIRST
warning sign to anyone reading his manifesto should have been how woefully
undercited it was. He revealed that he really doesn't understand, much less
has read, the science.

[http://www.epi.org/publication/womens-work-and-the-gender-
pa...](http://www.epi.org/publication/womens-work-and-the-gender-pay-gap-how-
discrimination-societal-norms-and-other-forces-affect-womens-occupational-
choices-and-their-pay/)

~~~
galacticpony2
Given how strongly he's had his view misrepresented, I don't think giving
references would've helped him. He was very careful to pick his words, to no
avail.

It's _the science itself_ that these people don't want to accept, if it
doesn't support their idea that people and society are malleable enough to
solve all these unequal distributions.

You probably heard of research that shows that the female population clusters
towards to the mean in various features, IQ being one:
[http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2017/06/why-a...](http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2017/06/why-
are-there-so-few-women-in-sciences.html)

If we suppose that being successful in STEM correlates strongly with a high
IQ, the mere fact that there exist fewer females with a high IQ would be one
reason why there would be fewer females in STEM. That's just an objective,
logical conclusion. Another logical conclusion would be that no diversity
program could change this discrepancy.

The sound way to challenge this would be to challenge the research here, i.e.
the foundation of the argument, instead of persecuting a person making such an
argument. In other words: "Don't shoot the messenger".

~~~
tptacek
This attempt at summarizing the research is innumerate, disconnected from
empirical data, and offensive. Research on gender and IQ does not show that
"there exist fewer females with high IQ" \--- even stipulating the validity of
the research Damore is leaning on, that's now how the statistics work. And
there are an enormous number of women in STEM: the concern is that there are
few of them in _computer science_.

Before you attempt to reason from basic principals to a defense of the status
quo, you should attempt to fully understand those principles.

~~~
galacticpony2
> This attempt at summarizing the research is innumerate, disconnected from
> empirical data, and offensive.

Maybe you should elaborate on _why_ it is innumerate and disconnected. As for
calling it "offensive", that's entirely irrelevant. It outs you as somebody
who is more interested in silencing people than debating them on more
objective merits.

> Research on gender and IQ does not show that "there exist fewer females with
> high IQ"

Research _does_ show that there exist fewer females at either ends of the
distribution and more towards the center, compared to males.

[http://www.aei.org/publication/statistical-tests-shows-
great...](http://www.aei.org/publication/statistical-tests-shows-greater-male-
variance/)

This _does_ mean that there exist fewer female individuals with exceptionally
high or exceptionally low IQs. That is indeed how statistics work.

If you want to contest that the research is flawed and that the result is
wrong, do that. If we suppose the data is valid, then my conclusion is sound.

> And there are an enormous number of women in STEM: the concern is that there
> are few of them in computer science.

The broader concern is STEM, not just computer science. Sure, there's an
enormous amount of women in STEM, there's also an enormous amount of men in
STEM and if you put both in relation, the relative amount of women in STEM is
quite low (compared to other fields).

The only real argument here is how much (if any) of that is due to causes that
aren't social.

~~~
pcwalton
> The only real argument here is how much (if any) of that is due to causes
> that aren't social.

Negligible, based on the statistics. The differences, if they even exist, are
minuscule, while the gender disparity is enormous. It strains credibility to
imagine that the root cause of the gender disparity in STEM employment is
innate, especially since the disparity varies across cultures and subfields.

~~~
tptacek
I think it's also worth pointing out that their argument just changed
dramatically, and that what they said in their followup can't readily be
reconciled with their original claim that studies showed "fewer high IQ
women".

~~~
galacticpony2
How so? You're evading supporting _your_ argument. You just make claims.

~~~
tptacek
I'm not sure you even realized you changed arguments when you switched from
"there aren't as many high-IQ women" to "there is a higher variance in the
distribution of male intelligence as there is in women". I'm curious to see
how you'll rebut, and, if you do, will use your rebuttal to gauge how detailed
my response will be.

(Obviously, there is a [weak] rebuttal that preserves the original claim with
the new distributional argument).

~~~
blahblah3
If M ~ N(u,v_m) and W ~ N(u,v_w) [where N refers to the normal distribution],
with v_m > v_w, then P(M > T) > P(W > T) for all T > u. I.e if the trait is
approximately normally distributed with equal means among two groups, the
group with the higher variance will exhibit more extreme values. Why is this a
change in argument?

------
slackstation
Everyone thinks that in the case of Galileo vs the Church, they would have had
the reason to see that Galileo was right and the Church was wrong because they
objectively looked at the facts.

The reality is that most people go with the majority opinion even when the
facts go against them.

The memo was lambasted in the media and I didn't really read it and I myself
thought that it was hair-brained and while it might have some kernels of facts
or link to some sources, it was highly opinionated and the screed of a
misogynist. I believed this because EVERYONE was saying this.

Watching this video, I was wrong, way wrong. The only way to know for sure was
to read the thing. If I had, I would have seen it and had my opinion changed.

So few people actually read the memo. The science used to back it's claims is
roughly and mainly solid evidence. It asks for a conversation.

Any time you have people using morality to object to repeatable scientific
literature and shut down a conversation even before it can start, you have to
notice and question it. The people against even discussing this topic are more
like the Anti-Vaxxers than they would like to admit. The see their kids with
incurable, terrible afflictions and are looking for something, anything to
blame.

Human nature took millions of years to evolve to what we see today in an
environment that was far different from our own. We accept that humans sitting
and typing all day will get backpain and maybe carpal-tunnel syndrome. Yet, we
somehow thing that millions of years of sexual selection for different
features between the genders would yield different biology, that could lead to
different biases toward occupations and reaction to stimuli?

I don't presume to have an answer but, I think it's a perfectly reasonable
line of questioning, especially if there is relevant, well regarded research
on the topic. What people are afraid of is the outcome.

Google specifically and tech in general tend to select for the top percentile
in specific dimensions. If there is any differences between groups, that top
percentile will show it to an extreme degree. It isn't hard to imagine that
might be partially the cause of what is going on. Furthermore, societies and
social norms form around patterns that are in the environment already. Social
norms and competition in the environment that those social norms create can
reinforce those social norms to work against outside or atypical competitors
in those social environments.

------
Aron
Maybe it's one thing that the more concerning elements of the left are
aggregated into certain universities, but it is something else to also exist
in the services and companies most everyone relies on (and that has control
over their information flow).

I'd like to see more of what Google is learning from this incident from either
the 'diversity director' or the CEO directly. Getting employee culture all
together and efficiently cooperating is theoretically one of the highest
priorities of the top management and why they get paid ridiculous sums of
money. Although I guess it's fine they do most of that work out of public eye,
the very public perception is a big part of it (and recruiting and customer
relations etc).

Also, I was glad to find I was right that James Damore had been listening a
lot to Jordan Peterson but I had to wait until the end of the interview just
to get my 'I WAS RIGHT!' moment.

~~~
galacticpony2
> Maybe it's one thing that the more concerning elements of the left are
> aggregated into certain universities, but it is something else to also exist
> in the services and companies most everyone relies on (and that has control
> over their information flow).

Well, where do you suppose all these students go to, once they leave college?
Many of them end up in leading positions of HR, management, marketing and
media. They are a cultural elite.

Meanwhile, the STEM people end up mostly as cogs in the machine. They
generally don't become influencers beyond the confines of their particular
field.

Ironically, the same people arguing for freedom of enterprise might be the
ones needing worker protection laws for freedom of conscience.

~~~
Aron
> Ironically, the same people arguing for freedom of enterprise might be the
> ones needing worker protection laws for freedom of conscience.

Can you spell that out for me? I think you mean that the 'keep business free
from government' leaning types might need protection from government from
those businesses to avoid being punished for their very work-related ideas. I
suspect if this was your argument that most of such people would continue to
believe that the workplace was where to fight it out, likely by efforts to get
themselves into better positions of power or otherwise simply winning.

~~~
galacticpony2
I'm not saying they'd need to change their beliefs, I'm just pointing out the
irony.

------
galacticpony2
Of course Google throws their employees under the bus for the sake of
defending their "diversity" facade.

Thanks James, for being the canary in the goldmine.

------
pottersbasilisk
This should be a forced watch before people are allowed to comment on James
and the google memo!

------
manbearpigg
Why is Google pandering to the social justice left? I thought they were a loud
and insane minority. Is fake racism, sexism etc mainstream now on the left?
Was Trump's election not a big enough wake up call?

