“Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber” memo goes viral, usual suspects outraged

conorhal

Well you have your answer from Google regards where they stand on free speech.
Over the last couple of days Youtube 'owned by Google' has a new free speech policy.
Don't bother searching:
new Google free speech policy
new Google censorship policy
Or new youtube censorship rules

None of the results you will get reference it. In fact, anybody that can find a reference to the new youtube policy, with any search keywords they choose and doesn't get a reference to several months old gets a prize!
But if you google hard enough with 'wrong-think' you'll discover:

“If we find that these videos don’t violate our policies but contain controversial religious or supremacist content, they will be placed in a limited state. The videos will remain on YouTube behind an interstitial, won’t be recommended, won’t be monetized, and won’t have key features including comments, suggested videos, and likes.”

What's interesting is the people this has been applied to: like everybody that isn't The Young Turks.

Academic

wes wrote: »

He finally removed the claims of having a PhD from LinkedIn, as per wired:

Wow. In addition to his other problems he's a fraud.

RDM_83 again

Academic wrote: »

wes wrote: »

He finally removed the claims of having a PhD from LinkedIn, as per wired:

Wow. In addition to his other problems he's a fraud.

It's LinkedIn dude it's full of bullsh-t! If Google hired him without checking his qualifications that reflects very badly on them

Academic

RDM_83 again wrote: »

It's LinkedIn dude it's full of bullsh-t! If Google hired him without checking his qualifications that reflects very badly on them

Hmm? It's not Google's responsibility. It's his LinkedIn, not someone else's. He's the one who lied, falsifying his credentials. Frankly, he should have been fired for that. Most academics would have been if they were caught falsifying a CV, for example.

Academic

Hastentoadd wrote: »

I dont do likedin. i do't do facemepeople. i do't do smoogle. OMG and still my career is ok, Shock, horro

This has nothing to do with what we were discussing.

RDM_83 again

Academic wrote: »

RDM_83 again wrote: »

It's LinkedIn dude it's full of bullsh-t! If Google hired him without checking his qualifications that reflects very badly on them

Hmm? It's not Google's responsibility. It's his LinkedIn, not someone else's. He's the one who lied, falsifying his credentials. Frankly, he should have been fired for that. Most academics would have been if they were caught falsifying a CV, for example.

Actually do you understand what LinkedIn is? It's nothing official at all, it is professional Facebook!
If he lied on his CV fire away but we have no idea what he actually put on his CV and he wasn't actively looking for a job.

Bob24

So they had to cancel the all hands meeting they had planned around the controversy due to internal and external tensions: https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2017/8/10/16128518/google-town-hall-meeting-canceled-online-harassment

Google is finding out the hard way that when you get political things turn messy.

They had no problem with some of their employees releasing their anger about the guy on similar company forums to the one he posted his memo on, but when that political violence gets leaked externally and causes internal and external reactions which are sometimes equally violent, only then do they start beeing concerned about verbal and written violence.

I think his point about removing moral judgements from decision making is spot on. Because a good number of people at google think they are morally right (from lower level staff to senior management), they are making irrational decisions in the way they are managing this which end up hurting the company.

Given the mounting controversy, distancing the company from what he wrote made complete business sense (whether he was right or wrong was almost irrelevant to make that decision). Firing him was questionable and there were costs and benefits either way. But elaborating too much on why what he said was wrong from the point of view of Google (for exemple the email from the CEO) with some level of misrepresentation of the source was a mistake as far as the company's business interest is concerned. And they should also have shut down all internal discussions about this as well as equally distancing themselves from people within the company who were attacking him too vehemently (when after silencing and condemning one side of the argument you are letting the other side go full blown on corporate discussion platforms, you are clearly positioning yourself).

Now that they've taken a side in a political/ideological battle, it looks either naive or hypocritical to seem surprised when they get attacked by the other side of the argument. Heated verbal confrontations are an inherent part of healthy politics whereby people are allowed to debate very different points of view, but while this process is useful for society and democracy, it can poisonous for a business. As I mentioned a few pages back, a problem they'll keep having as this moves to the political arena is that while the point of view they picked has a clear majority support within google (but with a significant minority against it), this is absolutely not the case within the US population and they will alienate many of their users which will hurt their brand image.

suicide_circus

Academic wrote: »

Wow. In addition to his other problems he's a fraud.

I'm pretty sure he's the first person ever to have falsified his CV

JRant

suicide_circus wrote: »

I'm pretty sure he's the first person ever to have falsified his CV

Also, nobody has ever, in the history of LinkedIn, been a bit overzealous in describing their personal and/or professional history, no sirry.

Sand

Well, I guess his thesis on the ideological echo chamber at Google has been proven right fairly conclusively.

I've just sat down to read his memo after hearing about it most of the week. Given the reporting, I expected some tirade of hatred and bitterness, and dismissal of colleagues. But its actually a fairly decent piece, evidenced and clearly acknowledging the limits of the data. He specifically and repeatedly rules out applying data on groups against individual's capabilities. He acknowledges his own biases. All he's doing is observing and evidencing that under-representation of groups statistically is not evidence of discrimination against those groups, and that viewing discrimination only through the prism of gender, sexuality and ethnicity leaves people who don't fit the dogma behind. He actually makes some genuinely interesting suggestions for making Google's tech roles more attractive for women without discriminating.

I don't see anything especially controversial about it and I don't see the drooling misogynist painted in the media. His document been hugely misrepresented and I see the Guardian has run an attack piece on him personally. Certainly nothing worth it going on to international news or him being fired. Its a bit too early for snow.

Google have hugely overreacted. I'm actually most surprised by the news coming out of the bullying culture in Google where managers brag about identifying and victimising their colleagues for as little as 'irritating' them. I really cant think how a company can allow such a culture to exist amongst its staff. There is a wider concern as well. Google has access to a huge amount of data on people. It assures people they can be trusted with it, but seeing the arrogant and bullying mindset that seems to be rampant in Google I would question that. If Google encourages an atmosphere where employees are targeted, why would they spare a thought for 'wrongthink' users of their services being targeted by their employees in a similar way?

I think the man himself will be fine. He says he was promoted twice and given a top rating on his most recent feedback, so he should be able to get a job in a more open company easily enough, even without the obvious sympathy his case will draw. Google will probably suffer more - if you're only getting ideas from one place, you're going to suffer.

Bob24

Pretty interesting piece about his potential legal case: http://uk.businessinsider.com/james-damore-may-win-nlra-legal-case-google-2017-8

In summary, an expert in California labor law is saying that he has decent chances of winning because:
1) he filed under a section of the law that deals with protecting statements made by workers' rights activists who have questions about wages and conditions meaning he doesn't fall under the "at-will" scenario and Google will have to provide a clear justification.
2) according to the lawyer, Google may have difficulty establishing that he broke the company's code of conduct as the content of the document doesn't clearly go against its wording and he submitted his feedback using tools provided by the company for that purpose.

Bob24

Also, the picture displayed by Business Insider shows the guy has been working on a PR strategy (that is, a mainstreamish media picking a picture he designed rather than one he doesn't control, which makes him appear better than previous ones and does carry a message):



And he just had a piece publised in the WSJ. Behind a paywall so can't read it but if someone has access and wants to share :-) - https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-i-was-fired-by-google-1502481290

Macha

Er, what exactly was he hoping to achieve with the memo? He works in an industry that is already dominated by men, and in a company that has a track record for discriminating against women? What was the point?

How do you think it makes the women working in Google, or thinking of applying to Google feel? He calls women neurotic for God's sake.

Imagine he wrote the memoabout how black people, as a group, are genetically less suited to STEM. It's incredible that people are defending what he wrote, just because it's about women.

iDave

Hes become another Brett Weinstein. The latest victim picking up the pieces from a dangerous anti free speech anti white male ideology engulfing what we call the west.

Heisenbug

Good article in the NY times on why Pichai should resign:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/opinion/sundar-pichai-google-memo-diversity.html?referer=

Wibbs

Sand wrote: »

Well, I guess his thesis on the ideological echo chamber at Google has been proven right fairly conclusively.

It kinda has, though not such a surprise. I'd still think they were sensible to fire him. They'd have been slaughtered in the media if they hadn't for a start. Plus his work relationships would have been strained.

Macha wrote: »

Er, what exactly was he hoping to achieve with the memo?

I'm still wondering that myself. Though what the memo actually said and what is being reported are two quite different things. That's of concern.

How do you think it makes the women working in Google, or thinking of applying to Google feel?

Well they fired him and distanced themselves from everything he wrote, so surely they'd feel fine?

He calls women neurotic for God's sake.

Well women as a group are more likely to suffer from some mental illnesses and by a fair margin. Men are more likely to be addicts and antisocial and aggressive and again by a fair margin. As a man that doesn't make me flip out. It is what it is. Noting and commenting on trends in groups I have no issue with, where I do have an issue is when that's automatically and prejudicially applied to individuals.

Macha

That's an awful article.

SterlingArcher

Macha wrote: »

. It's incredible that people are defending what he wrote, just because it's about women.

What you are saying is there should be no discussion. It is cut and dry.

OR these people you're suggesting are sexist why? because they have a different view. Maybe they aren't. Who knows. Maybe you're the ignorant person here. Because there is no neat little bow.

Perhaps they actually read the memo and comprehend there is debate to be had.

perhaps because the stuff he noted he only did so because there were scientific studies done into what he was talking about.

By your logic why are you not attacking the " sexist " scientists and doctors that even considered doing such a scientific study. it should've been blasphemous right? Burn the witch.

Macha

Wibbs wrote: »

Well they fired him and distanced themselves from everything he wrote, so surely they'd feel fine?

Fine, probably not, especially given the backlash against Google for how they have handled it. See the above 'good' article calling for the Google CEO to resign over it. Google is also under investigation by the US Department of Labour over its gender pay gap so I wouldn't say things are all rosy for women working in Google.

Wibbs wrote: »

Well women as a group are more likely to suffer from some mental illnesses and by a fair margin. Men are more likely to be addicts and antisocial and aggressive and again by a fair margin. As a man that doesn't make me flip out. It is what it is. Noting and commenting on trends in groups I have no issue with, where I do have an issue is when that's automatically and prejudicially applied to individuals.

He didn't say women are more likely to suffer from some mental illness, he said they're more likely to suffer from neuroticism, without any thought to what societal constructs might be contributing to that, including working with someone like Damore.

Macha

SterlingArcher wrote: »

What you are saying is there should be no discussion. It is cut and dry.

No, I'm questioning why he as a Google employee felt the need to have the discussion via an internal memo to all staff. If he wants to expound on his throughts on evolutionary biology, he can do it on his own time. That's what blogs/chat boards/friends/pubs/cafes/book clubs are for.

SterlingArcher wrote: »

OR these people you're suggesting are sexist why? because they have a different view. Maybe they aren't. Who knows. Maybe you're the ignorant person here. Because there is no neat little bow.

Perhaps they actually read the memo and comprehend there is debate to be had.

perhaps because the stuff he noted he only did so because there were scientific studies done into what he was talking about.

By your logic why are you not attacking the " sexist " scientists and doctors that even considered doing such a scientific study. it should've been blasphemous right? Burn the witch.

Leaving aside the irony that you use the phrase 'burn the witch' to defend a man accused of sexism, let's look at the scientific claims in his memo. Firstly, he excludes all but biological causes for trends that he identifies. Secondly, he ignores the fact that women who work at Google are not averages so even by his own logic he should be looking at averages across women in STEM, not the population in general.

Wibbs

Macha wrote: »

He didn't say women are more likely to suffer from some mental illness, he said they're more likely to suffer from neuroticism,

Well "neurosis" is an outdated medical term, but broadly would cover anxiety, depression and the like. Which women do suffer from more than men. This is a fact. We might debate back and forth why, but it is what it is.

without any thought to what societal constructs might be contributing to that, including working with someone like Damore.

Man, it's always "societal constructs" or "evolutionary biology" these days, another twist on the nature/nurture debate. God forbid there's a middle ground.

B0jangles

If we are going to go down the path of considering it a valid and useful obervation that 'statistically women are more likely to be neurotic' then it would be dishonest to ignore the fact that 'statistically men are far more likely to commit crimes*'. If we are to accept that women are less suited to some roles because they are more likely to be neurotic, then by the same argument all male staff should be monitored using constant CCTV supervison to counteract their greater statistical likelihood of committing criminal acts.

I would contend that neither observation is in the least helpful when it comes to judging an individual's capacity to excel at a given role. In my experience, the use of such extremely broadstroke statements is generally a sign of someone who wants to bolster their own preconceptions, especially when such statistical observations happen to prove that they are themselves ideally suited to do/be whatever they happen to be talking about.

https://books.google.ie/books?id=CJm4AIc4sZEC&pg=PA88&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

JMNolan

B0jangles wrote: »

If we are going to go down the path of considering it a valid and useful obervation that 'statistically women are more likely to be neurotic' then it would be dishonest to ignore the fact that 'statistically men are far more likely to commit crimes*'. If we are to accept that women are less suited to some roles because they are more likely to be neurotic, then by the same argument all male staff should be monitored using constant CCTV supervison to counteract their greater statistical likelihood of committing criminal acts.

I'm a man and I have no issue with this statement. If the stats back it up then it's true.

Same as Damores document. Backed by science and stats and not emotions and feelings, unlike your post.

Wibbs

B0jangles wrote: »

If we are going to go down the path of considering it a valid and useful obervation that 'statistically women are more likely to be neurotic' then it would be dishonest to ignore the fact that 'statistically men are far more likely to commit crimes*'.

It would and I haven't.

Me. Previously. wrote:

Men are more likely to be addicts and antisocial and aggressive and again by a fair margin. As a man that doesn't make me flip out. It is what it is.

I also said: Noting and commenting on trends in groups I have no issue with, where I do have an issue is when that's automatically and prejudicially applied to individuals.

B0jangles

JMNolan wrote: »

I'm a man and I have no issue with this statement. If the stats back it up then it's true.

Same as Damores document. Backed by science and stats and not emotions and feelings, unlike your post.

So if you accept that statistically men are far more likely to commit crimes, and also accept the validity of using very broad statistical data as a tool to decide whether or not an individual should be hired for a specific role, do you agree that it would be perfectly logical and valid for companies to simply refuse to hire men because they are statistically more likely to commit crimes?



I'd better sit down now, lest I get an attack of the vapours, eh?

Bob24

B0jangles wrote: »

If we are going to go down the path of considering it a valid and useful obervation that 'statistically women are more likely to be neurotic' then it would be dishonest to ignore the fact that 'statistically men are far more likely to commit crimes*'.

It would be dishonest indeed, in both cases it is just statistical data.

B0jangles wrote: »

If we are to accept that women are less suited to some roles because they are more likely to be neurotic, then by the same argument all male staff should be monitored using constant CCTV supervison to counteract their greater statistical likelihood of committing criminal acts.

The parallel doesn't work because:
- We are looking at high level distributions, which means that obviously no woman should be discarded for IT roles because she is a women and no man should be suspected of being a potential criminal because he is a man.
- In both cases if you agree with the data you should only draw conclusions at a population level rather than at an individual level: i.e. build more male prisons because statistically you know you will have more male convicts than female ones, and accept that you will have more men than women in SWE teams because these are less attractive to women on average. But neither of these actions constitutes a statement that because someone is a man they should be regarded as a potential criminal or that because someone is a woman they should be regarded as less suitable for a SWE role.

B0jangles wrote: »

I would contend that neither observation is in the least helpful when it comes to judging an individual's capacity to excel at a given role.

Absolutely correct, and this is actually exactly what he says in the memo.


Edit: and an important additional point I think: there are also lines of work where you will find a majority of women because men are on average less attracted to the role and/or not as good as conducting it, and it is not an insult to men to say that. So saying that men or women are naturally more represented in a specific field is of course not claiming any gender is superior to the other.


Overall the reason this thing is becoming controversial is because it revolves around a very ideological question which exists across Western societies: are genders equal (i.e. people should be treated in the same way regardless of gender) or undifferentiated (i.e. people should on average be expected to behave in the same way regardless of gender)?

professore

His main point is if you have a random sample of 100 men and 100 women, 50 of the men would be INTERESTED (not CAPABLE - INTERESTED) in a STEM career as opposed to 5 of the women. (Disclaimer: I made up these ratios. I'd say for programming you would be doing well to get 2 women who are interested )

This is not solely down to cultural reasons - biology plays a role. Therefore expecting a 50/50 split of men to women in STEM is not reasonable or sensible. He DOES NOT say that women are biologically incapable or anything of the sort, in fact he goes to great pains to say the opposite.

If anyone said we need a 50/50 split in nursing, garbage collection or primary school teaching they would be ridiculed. Why is the same position not taken with STEM?

People want the careers they want. This does have a biological component whether people like it or not.

professore

In fact it is GOOGLE who are sexist and racist in assuming women and minorities are all automatically disadvantaged whereas white men are all automatically privileged when the white individual man might have grown up in a trailer park with alcoholic parents and the black lesbian woman might have had a fully funded ivy league education. It's Google putting people in boxes, not him.

Maybe I would have been a great nurse ... But I DON'T WANT to be a nurse. Should I be forced to be one?

professore

It's clear many of the responders on here either didn't read the memo, or if they did, completely misunderstood it.

professore

B0jangles wrote: »

JMNolan wrote: »

I'm a man and I have no issue with this statement. If the stats back it up then it's true.

Same as Damores document. Backed by science and stats and not emotions and feelings, unlike your post.

So if you accept that statistically men are far more likely to commit crimes, and also accept the validity of using very broad statistical data as a tool to decide whether or not an individual should be hired for a specific role, do you agree that it would be perfectly logical and valid for companies to simply refuse to hire men because they are statistically more likely to commit crimes?



I'd better sit down now, lest I get an attack of the vapours, eh?

That's not what he said AT ALL. He is 100% in favour of hiring the best man, woman or anything else for the job. He's just saying if you have 100 positions in programming to fill, and you have 500 men and 10 women, it's not reasonable to hire all 10 women JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE WOMEN. This isn't a sexist position.

Grayson

JMNolan wrote: »

I'm a man and I have no issue with this statement. If the stats back it up then it's true.

Same as Damores document. Backed by science and stats and not emotions and feelings, unlike your post.

You're kidding about the science and stats bit right bit right? Stats don't back it up. Sue women might have a higher chance of certain mental illnesses but that doesn't mean they're not suitable engineers.
The percentage affected (Versus men) would have to be huge. And then you would have to prove that it affects their work.

About 1 in 4 people will be affected by depression or anxiety during their lives. Are you suggesting that 1/4 of the population shouldn't be eligible to become engineers for example.

Grayson

professore wrote: »

That's not what he said AT ALL. He is 100% in favour of hiring the best man, woman or anything else for the job. He's just saying if you have 100 positions in programming to fill, and you have 500 men and 10 women, it's not reasonable to hire all 10 women JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE WOMEN. This isn't a sexist position.

Is that what google do? They hire someone less qualified because of their gender?

JMNolan

Grayson wrote: »

You're kidding about the science and stats bit right bit right? Stats don't back it up. Sue women might have a higher chance of certain mental illnesses but that doesn't mean they're not suitable engineers.
The percentage affected (Versus men) would have to be huge. And then you would have to prove that it affects their work.

About 1 in 4 people will be affected by depression or anxiety during their lives. Are you suggesting that 1/4 of the population shouldn't be eligible to become engineers for example.

Literally absolutely no one has said this, where are you getting this rubbish from?

Samaris

I read the article with Word open and typed six pages of commentary on his points. In the interests of not boring everyone to death I might just includes bits of it. My take-home points are more or less as follows;

- He makes some good points that could do with more investigation.

- While he is very careful about not appearing biased, he does have an issue with taking one potential explanation (innate bio-psychological differences between men and women for one, there are other explanations for neuroticism as well, poor pay-negotiating skills) and basing his responses on them while subtly denigrating actual research on the topics as leftist (I am also a bit suspicious of that very conveniently round and unsourced 95% of social science is leftist). That is dangerous and leads to confirmation bias - he indicates that changes should be made based on the views he reckons on his gut instinct are more correct without being able to prove that they are correct. It should also be noted that the changes he is talking about would roughly more benefit his in-group and potentially at the expense of other groups. This does not delegitimise his points, but it should be borne in mind.

• Programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender or race [5]

- I agree regarding the classes - it should not be automatically assumed that a a determined, confident, smart woman needs this class more than an uncertain, smart male who doesn’t have much confidence in himself. He needs encouragement and assistance more than her in this regard and given people are individuals, that should not be ignored merely due to his gender.

-

• A high priority queue and special treatment for “diversity” candidates

Difficult without knowing exactly what the “high priority queue” and “special treatment” is. In the UK company Lush for example, there were English classes during work hours for non-English speaking workers as it was recognised that they didn’t have much time for learning and they were obviously handicapped in moving forward despite any other positive traits they had simply due to this lack. That would indeed count as “special treatment” for “diversity” candidates, but it seems a fair and reasonable one. Within the hiring process, it does need more detail.

• Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate

Again, needs more explanation. I don’t see much of an issue with hiring in line with the general population of the region, and it does generally come down to when X person has comparable scores to Y person, their whatever-trait can be a tipping factor. No, this is not fair, and nor is it fair when their whatever-trait is a tipping factor to a negative outcome either, which is also a firmly established characteristic in hiring. Two wrongs doesn’t make a right, quite, but one wrong that doesn’t seem to be changeable isn’t helpful either.

- He talks then of more general issues facing males - that if they complain about something agin them, they are shouted down. As I have commented numerous times on that topic, the issue is often that what affects males negatively often also affects females; big case in point is that men have a harder time accessing their children. Flipside; women are more expected to take on the upbringing of the child at the cost to her career. There is a heftier social impact for a woman who leaves her child to be raised by the father than there is for a male who leaves his child to be raised by the father. This is all rather irrelevent to Google unless there's a lot more breeding going on there than I'd expect, but that women are currently more effective in making a racket about issues is down to a few decades of practice and institutions that either a) males need to get about setting up too to work for their own issues or b) and much more helpfully, those who are interested in solving the issue for both sides get together and work it out to the benefit of all rather than a 1:0 vs 0:1 win being the only outcome. Still though, a bit irrelevant to Google.

His suggestions are a bit unhelpful as they are not generally explained.

De-moralize diversity.

Uhm, how. What does that mean? I assume it is along the lines of “don’t treat diversity as the most important factor”. Fair enough. What is he actually suggesting doing though – get rid of classes that assist those with various obstacles against them? Or introduce those classes for everyone that may need them? Bring everyone up to the same level, or knock the supports out from under those that have more obvious ones? He complains about the results of having problems with the policies, but does not really suggest an alternative.

Stop alienating conservatives.

What viewpoints, specifically, not what class of people, are being crushed out? SPECIFICS, MAN! PLEASE.
He gives the bad results of alienating conservatives without really giving any specific issues that should be taken into account.

Confront Google’s biases.

I don’t know what the Googlegeist thingie is so I can’t comment. But it’s no harm to confront biases.

Stop restricting programs and classes to certain genders or races.

Well, I haven’t found the “non-discriminatory practices [he] outlined”, but I’ve commented on making them available to those that need them rather than assuming that women need them more than men or fluent English-speaking foreign workers need them more than someone who was brought up in an English-speaking country but spells like Facebook invaded their fingers.

Have an open and honest discussion about the costs and benefits of our diversity programs.

Okay, that’s fair enough, although I am not certain what he’ll do if he finds that they are beneficial.

• Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts.

?? That does not follow. And he does still need to indicate the specific discrimination practices that he feels are harmful. Just “discrimination” is very hard to deal with – it has to be taken completely at face value. Interesting side-note, women used to dominate programming until it became lucrative and suddenly ended up male-dominated. The early programmers had a strong female contingent as "technicians", often because women tended to have background experience that translated well to programming (such as short-hand typing). Bit of potted history there, but it certainly doesn't quite add up to males being naturally better at it, which is an argument not used here, but often used.

currently very little transparency into the extend of our diversity programs which keeps it immune to criticism from those outside its ideological echo chamber.

Little transparency is usually a bad thing, fair enough.

• We need psychological safety and shared values to gain the benefits of diversity

True. And it is clear that there are those, like the author, who do feel left out, side-lined, discriminated against and, tbh, lost. That needs to be addressed.

Prioritize intention.

Agreed, although don’t be backward in squashing dickishness either.

Be open about the science of human nature.
• Once we acknowledge that not all differences are socially constructed or due to discrimination, we open our eyes to a more accurate view of the human condition which is necessary if we actually want to solve problems.

Okay, if it can be proven – he has stated that this is a thing multiple times, but it is still only one not-quite-certain possibility and given individuals differ greatly, as he has pointed out, it is best not to leap to extremes of that set of views either. I do see a danger in his rejecting social sciences that are actually studying these issues because he feels that it is 95% made up of liberals and thus a bit untrustworthy. Therefore, he is going on his own gut instinct and his own reading which may or may not be entirely reliable. So I’m a bit hmmm on this, despite accepting the basic idea.

Reconsider making Unconscious Bias training mandatory for promo committees.

Without any experience of this training, I can’t comment.


Eh, ended up pretty long anyway.

Dyr

These are pretty funny though

Oddly enough google image search could'nt find them, they were the first hit on duckduckgo

Bob24

Bambi wrote: »

These are pretty funny though

They are funny. But to be honest while I like Apple much more than Google in terms the quality of their products and the way they treat their users as customers rather than products to be sold to advertisers*, I am pretty sure Apple is exactly the same as Google related to the issues we are discussing here. Same political bias, same echo-chamber, and same incapacity to even consider different ideas when it comes to certain topics.


* another reason to use DuckDuckGo ;-)

Dyr

Bob24 wrote: »

They are funny. But to be honest while I like Apple much more than Google in terms the quality of their products and the way they treat their users as customers rather than products to be sold to advertisers, I am pretty sure Apple is exactly the same as Google related to the issues we are discussing here. Same political bias and same echo-chamber.

You know you're ****ed when you're being unfavorably compared to steve jobs for how you treat your employees

Sonics2k

Haha, it's funny because now we're pretending Apple is a big fan of dissenting opinion in their business.

Back on topic:

I feel like I should have stated this earlier. I do not actually agree with Google firing this bloke for simply voicing a different opinion, but I do contest the claim it's censorship or restricting his Freedom of Speech.

Now, if he'd written up a big piece calling all women whores who should only be used for popping out babies, then I'd say it's worth sacking him.

Dyr

Samaris wrote: »

?? That does not follow. And he does still need to indicate the specific discrimination practices that he feels are harmful. Just “discrimination” is very hard to deal with – it has to be taken completely at face value. Interesting side-note, women used to dominate programming until it became lucrative and suddenly ended up male-dominated. The early programmers had a strong female contingent as "technicians", often because women tended to have background experience that translated well to programming (such as short-hand typing). Bit of potted history there, but it certainly doesn't quite add up to males being naturally better at it, which is an argument not used here, but often used.


.

Bear in mind that back then programming might have been one of the few avenues available to women who did'nt want to follow the other limited career paths available to them at the time, as other professional fields opened up they moved simply on

this lad mentioned in an interview that what spurred his paper was the google diversity push as they normally make a big deal about being open and recording meetings etc yet these meetings seemed to only happen off the record and he felt it was because what they were doing might be illegal. He gave no details again though

Bob24

Apparently those are also popping up around Google offices in the US. Very bad PR sequence for them.

RDM_83 again

In relation to the idea that the Social Sciences are extremely non-politically diverse this is a factual statement.

For instance, recent surveys find that 58–66%
of social science professors in the United States identify
as liberals, while only 5–8% identify as conservatives, and
that self-identified Democrats outnumber Republicans by
ratios of at least 8 to 1 (Gross & Simmons 2007; Klein &
Stern 2009; Rothman & Lichter 2008). A similar situation
is found in the humanities where surveys find that 52–
77% of humanities professors identify as liberals, while
only 4–8% identify as conservatives, and that self-identified
Democrats outnumber Republicans by ratios of at least 5:1
(Gross & Simmons 2007; Rothman & Lichter 2008). In
psychology, the imbalance is slightly stronger: 84% identify
as liberal, whereas only 8% identify as conservative. That is
a ratio of 10.5 to 1.

http://rhodesdiversity.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Haidt-Diversity-2015.pdf

Third, conservatives fear negative consequences of revealing their political beliefs to their colleagues. Finally, they are right to do so: In decisions ranging from paper reviews to hiring, many social and personality psychologists said that they would discriminate against openly conservative colleagues. The more liberal respondents were, the more they said they would discriminate.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1745691612448792?journalCode=ppsa

The first paper might highlight part of the reason this current thread is occurring

There are many academic fields in which surveys find
self-identified conservatives to be about as numerous as self-identified liberals: typically business, computer science, engineering, health sciences, and technical/vocational fields

Companies like Google appear to be applying the philosophy, theories and experts from fields that are have a high degree of political/philisophical "group think" to staff that have had their academic experiences within ironically (considering how STEM/IT/Eng is often viewed) a more open and diverse environment to different opinions.

A lot of the time this type of expert opinion is brought to bear upon groups that are disadvantaged in terms of social cachet, education or wealth, whats happening here is kickback from persons that have equal (but different focussed) educations who do have an understand of methodology, theory and evidence based processes.

Knex*

Bob24 wrote: »

Apparently those are also popping up around Google offices in the US. Very bad PR sequence for them.

"I'm feeling fucked" is a nice touch

Sand

Wibbs wrote: »

It kinda has, though not such a surprise. I'd still think they were sensible to fire him. They'd have been slaughtered in the media if they hadn't for a start. Plus his work relationships would have been strained.

They're still getting slaughtered, and sued on top of it. Its one of those situations where people are going to be unhappy no matter what is done, so they might as well get attacked for doing the right thing and not fire him.

Macha wrote: »

Er, what exactly was he hoping to achieve with the memo? He works in an industry that is already dominated by men, and in a company that has a track record for discriminating against women? What was the point?

He has made it clear. He attended a diversity course. He didn't agree with the positions taken by the presenters. He was invited to provide feedback, he wrote up the memo as feed back and sent it back to the presenters. There was little or no response, so a few weeks later he forwarded it on to an internal 'Sceptics' group asking them to evaluate and disprove his arguments.

The 'Sceptics' group were the ones who decided to make the memo viral, as part of Googles internal culture of bullying.

How do you think it makes the women working in Google, or thinking of applying to Google feel? He calls women neurotic for God's sake.

Distressed? Anxious? Worried?

You're presenting women as neurotic. You're claiming they cant handle the stress of working with someone who holds different views to them. I'd say most women can handle a memo that references publicly available studies on populations, much in the same way as men can handle the knowledge that 80% of people diagnosed with autistic disorders are male, and therefore men are more prone to autism.

Do you disagree?

professore wrote: »

It's clear many of the responders on here either didn't read the memo, or if they did, completely misunderstood it.

JMNolan wrote: »

Literally absolutely no one has said this, where are you getting this rubbish from?

Yes, its incredible how media have misrepresented the memo and the author. Its practically Goebblels style propaganda - lie often enough, loudly enough, brazenly enough.

Its very clear the vast majority of critics of the memo haven't read it.

Samaris wrote: »

I read the article with Word open and typed six pages of commentary on his points. In the interests of not boring everyone to death I might just includes bits of it. My take-home points are more or less as follows;

Difficult without knowing exactly what the “high priority queue” and “special treatment” is.

Again, needs more explanation.

His suggestions are a bit unhelpful as they are not generally explained.

Just as a general point, its worth noting that he wrote the memo for a small target audience who were delivering the diversity training in Google. He never intended it for widespread distribution inside Google let alone outside it. Therefore he is going to assume the Google diversity trainers are familiar with many of the items he is raising. Its not fair (imo) to criticise him for not making it understandable for an audience it was not intended for.

Uhm, how. What does that mean? I assume it is along the lines of “don’t treat diversity as the most important factor”. Fair enough. What is he actually suggesting doing though – get rid of classes that assist those with various obstacles against them? Or introduce those classes for everyone that may need them? Bring everyone up to the same level, or knock the supports out from under those that have more obvious ones? He complains about the results of having problems with the policies, but does not really suggest an alternative.

When he says de-moralise diversity, I took it to mean to stop thinking about diversity in subjective/moralistic terms but instead in objective terms: as a benefit to the company, to be measured against a cost, whilst accepting certain realities about different preferences.

'Diversity' is a bit like 'innovation' in corporate culture these days. Its become a good thing to sprinkle into presentations, press releases and training courses. Everyone is for it. Everyone wants to have it on their CV and be associated with it. Nobody thinks about it.

Bob24

I was quite surprised to see the NYT publishing a very critical opinion piece on the way Google handled this (as another poster mentioned before, this incident is just one event amongst others but the ideological impact of these things shouldn't be underestimated as it seems to bring slightly more variety to the tune coming out of media which would not have allowed it just a year ago): https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/opinion/sundar-pichai-google-memo-diversity.html

Sundar Pichai is taking the hardest hit:

The New York Times wrote:

"Which brings us to Pichai, the supposed grown-up in the room. He could have wrestled with the tension between population-level research and individual experience. He could have stood up for the free flow of information. Instead he joined the mob. He fired Damore and wrote, “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not O.K.”

That is a blatantly dishonest characterization of the memo. Damore wrote nothing like that about his Google colleagues. Either Pichai is unprepared to understand the research (unlikely), is not capable of handling complex data flows (a bad trait in a C.E.O.) or was simply too afraid to stand up to a mob.

Regardless which weakness applies, this episode suggests he should seek a nonleadership position. We are at a moment when mobs on the left and the right ignore evidence and destroy scapegoats. That’s when we need good leaders most."

fash

Academic wrote: »

wes wrote: »

He finally removed the claims of having a PhD from LinkedIn, as per wired:

Wow. In addition to his other problems he's a fraud.

I understand that he started but didn't complete the PhD and had the information up on LinkedIn as soon as he started the course (it was Harvard after all). He was just slow to remove the information when he dropped out ( whether unintentionally or not). Fraud sounds rather harsh in the context.

Samaris

Yeah, that's quite true and why I wasn't commenting on the bits that I could not know about.

He has some points, but he has an awful lot of guesswork and opinions that he rather wants to be acted on. He made it clear that his biggest suggestion that could actively help was already implemented, and the rest was more "this is a problem" without that much indication of how to solve it, based on rather dodgily applied science. I am not saying that he is -wrong-, per se, but there isn't really the research out there to indicate one way or another just how different men and women, all other factors being controlled for, are. The resources to research that don't exist yet because there has not yet been a long enough period of actual equality - we are still prodding the tail-ends of it. His approach felt like a step backwards, tbh, relying on factors that could have several different causes and indicating that they are down to X cause and therefore issues should be solved with that in mind. Problem is, he has no actual proof of his preferred cause.

I more or less agree that he wasn't attempting to denigrate his colleagues, just look for help for his own cohort. It is unfortunate that he chose to spend so much time talking about the perceived differences between men and women in his examples, as well as actually a bit irrelevant in the end, at least in terms of how much of his argument he devoted to it.

In short, while it may have been innocent on his part, it wasn't very well handled. He had some decent starting points, but he followed a bit of a wild rabbit chase that didn't really help his argument. It shouldn't have gone viral though, that was never going to go well for anyone involved.

hatrickpatrick

I can foresee a time in the not too distant future in which there is a fight over expanding the First Amendment to cover censorship and coercion by private entities as well as governmental ones. That's ultimately what this entire saga and those which preceded it are all about. In a world in which so many publicly accessible platforms are controlled by private corporations, the idea that only the government can engage in meaningful censorship and therefore people don't need protection from censorship by private companies is rapidly becoming farcically obsolete.

Bob24

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

I can foresee a time in the not too distant future in which there is a fight over expanding the First Amendment to cover censorship and coercion by private entities as well as governmental ones. That's ultimately what this entire saga and those which preceded it are all about. In a world in which so many publicly accessible platforms are controlled by private corporations, the idea that only the government can engage in meaningful censorship and therefore people don't need protection from censorship by private companies is rapidly becoming farcically obsolete.

Totally agree. But then the problem will be to define what censorship is.

Delete something because it is labeled as "fake news", "offensive content", or "hate speech" and you can claim it is not censorship. But while there will be indisputable cases of fake news or hate speech, in many cases that label will be a subjective decision not everyone agrees with.

Also when you have huge quantity of information available, the portail you use to sort that information for you and make sense out of it has huge control over what you see or not. Not deleting anything but always presenting you with similar content while burying another type of content is not technically censorship but can have a huge influence on what information you are accessing.

Samaris

Bob24 wrote: »

Totally agree. But them the problem will be to define what censors it. Delete something because it is labeled as "fake news" or "hate speech" and you can claim it is not censorship. But while there will be indisputable case of fake news or hate speech, in many cases it will be a subjective decision not everyone agrees with.

Yeah, that will be a major issue. Although one thing that does drive me into a bit of a frothing rage at the moment is the whole concept of facts and opinions being the same thing and worth as much as each other. Alternative facts.../twitch.

Definitely something that can very easily go too far in either direction.

odyssey06

Just in the act of which facts your report and which facts you do not report there is a whole world of subjectivity and bias.
Whether I run a story about homelessness or crime on the front page, for example.

Taken further, I can say that a man died because the platform he was standing on gave way.
This is a fact.
The truth is that the man was hanged.