2017/08/08: James Damore and his Google Memo on Diversity (complete)

It seems that HN is flagging all articles that mention the Google Memo. Which speaks to the need to have this conversation even more. For those who are interested, James has a new interview with psychology professor Jordan Peterson. [VIDEO]

Why is this flagged, and why do the submitted links keep disappearing? (This video in this link is incomplete, the full video is here: [VIDEO] ) The full video is very well put together, including links to the scientific papers discussed. This is a high-profile event at one of the largest internet tech company in existance, and it has a bearing on every one of our lives. So why is it being flagged and removed everywhere?

Maybe the link should be changed, as the text under the video reads: "IF you have come here, go here instead: [VIDEO] The video here is incomplete."

Here's the full interview[1] - the above comment linked a shortened version. For reference, this is Dr. Jordan Peterson, the University of Toronto professor who was fired a few months ago for his stance on using gender pronouns. He's a strong proponent of free speech, which he touches on in this discussion. [1] [VIDEO]

James's memo is a lot better argued, more nuanced and fair than this collection of personal opinions, bald assertions, non-sequiturs and inane hypotheticals. See Jordan Peterson's interview with James Damore, where he goes through the memo almost line-by-line. [VIDEO]

First, see Jordan Peterson's interview with James Damore, where he goes through the memo almost line-by-line. [VIDEO] Second, he doesn't say that "female attributes/desires are not as compatible with tech jobs", at least not as you define them. These are his suggestions for improving diversity: "Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things ○ We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration. Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles at Google can be and we shouldn't deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this). ● Women on average are more cooperative ○ Allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive. Recent updates to Perf may be doing this to an extent, but maybe there's more we can do. " You are saying this is already the case at your workplace. Awesome, you already have what he suggests. Why is what he suggest wrong-headed??

Why is everyone appealing to emotions and producing red herrings? No one refers to any points other than those which they interpret to be oppressive and offensive (mostly points having to do with female/male differences which are real and exist). The hypothesis put out are there to further the discussion, not to be taken as facts (there are words like "may", "in part" all over the place yet we interpret "may" as "is", and "in part" as "mostly"). What about Google's unscientific, hidden, irrational methods of fixing bias? Unconscious bias training is unscientific yet they practice it. It does not work, or at worst it is harmful. Facebook does it too. These methods come from one of the hardest fields of science - psychology. We know how much the studies aren't reproducible, repeatable, some results even depend on time (more known the methods the less they work). Why is no one looking at those points? [VIDEO] Watched the interview above and cannot believe how media and almost every individual responding put this individual in some kind of aggressive, oppressive, racist frame. Given the peer-reviewed sources in the video description of the interview no one sane enough could believe that the guy was being malevolent. The real guilt goes to the leaker, the dramatizer and the reactionist. I'm officially stopping with the tracking of this topic. It frustrates me that so many brilliant individuals become ideologues and witch hunters incapable of continuing the discussion. It saddens m

I highly, highly recommend watching Damore's interview with Jordan Peterson. I am starting to think that Damore might be on the right side of all of this. [VIDEO]

TL;DR version, James Damore works for Google, researches scientific sources for gender definitions. Compiles each definition and factor into a document that uses neutral third party citations and peer review to back up his citations. Gets fired over SJW Politics, accusing him of making gender stereotypes by people using politics, culture, society for gender definitions, Google panics over the protesters, feminists, social justice warriors, etc upset over the document and under pressure fire James Damore. He was not a shitty or toxic employee, he was assigned to do scientific research on genders and compile it into a document using scientific proof. [VIDEO] Look at the full text of that video to see the links cited: Published on Aug 9, 2017 James Demore of Google recently wrote a memo detailing his thoughts about Google's various diversity initiatives. Inside the company, and then outside, it went viral. He lost his job, in consequence: for "perpetuating gender stereotypes." The problem is that everything James claimed is solidly backed by well-developed scientific literatures. Thus, the company that is arguably in charge of more of the world's communication than any other has now fired a promising engineer for stating a series of established scientific truths. That's worth thinking about. In this full 50 minute interview, James and I discuss his motivations, and the consequences of his actions. We are joined (audio only) by another Google employee who wishes, for obvious reas

It wasn't even meant for the entire company. He gave it to a small community of people within Google who later distributed it across the company AFAIU from his interview with Jordan Peterson ( [VIDEO] ).

Yeesh, this guy seems to lack a sense of proportion. I watched part of his interview with Jordan Peterson [0] and I was struck by how naive and reactionary he seemed to be. For example, he talks about how he was inspired to write his memo after going to one of Google's "diversity summits". He tells Peterson that the summit was "unrecorded and super-secret", which made him uncomfortable because other meetings/discussions at Google are open and recorded [1]. I worked at a past company in which we were mandated (I believe it might have been part of complying with to California law [2]) to do training that involved talking about diversity. It was also unrecorded, and for good reason. Part of the session included a group discussion about stereotypes and beliefs about diversity and other cultures, and the moderator asked us to be honest. Some people said things that would be considered very offensive (both with and without context) in airing their reservations about diversity and harassment. They would never have been open and honest and said those things in a session that was recorded . I've never worked at Google so I don't know how their diversity summits are recorded. But it's possible that what Damore sees as a secretive conspiracy was actually meant to be good practice when fostering honest internal discussions. The fact that he sees what he allegedly suffered as even remotely analogous to a Soviet gulag makes me give him less benefit of the doubt. [0] [VIDEO] [1] [VIDEO] [2]

I'm not an expert on the subject. However, in his interview with Jordan Peterson [0], whom AFAIK is an expert on the field, the following claim was made: "I would like to state for the record that I believe that what you said in there, if not accurate, was at least representative of the current state of the art among well-trained psychometrically informed psychologists who are experts in the field of individual difference." Peterson points out a few issues in his writeup as they go over it. Considering the author of the memo is not an expert, I think it's reasonable to be a bit more charitable with his writeup. [0] [VIDEO]

How often is that post going to be bandied about as The Final Truth ?? 1. "Argues for biologically determined sex differences... Not really. Argues that we can't rule out biologically influenced differences. 2. "fails to understand the current state of research " Well, there's a whole bunch of researchers who disagree with that. 3. "argues cognitive sex differences influence performance" Nope. Argues there are differences in preferences that come out at the population level. 3a) "in software engineering, but presents no supporting evidence" Sort of true. It doesn't present evidence for performance differences, because it doesn't make that claim. It presents evidence for differences in preference, which is that it does claim 4. "fails to acknowledge ways in which sex differences violate the narrative of female inferiority;" I don't even know what that is supposed to mean. 5. "assumes effective meritocracy" Nope. See above about preference vs. ability. In fact, does quite the opposite, by assuming preferences and not abilities are often a stronger influence. 6. "makes repugnant attacks on compassion and empathy" COMPLETELY WRONG. It references a plea for compassion instead of empathy, because empathy leads to bad outcomes, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion by Paul Bloom: "Brilliantly argued, urgent and humane, AGAINST EMPATHY shows us that, when it comes to both major policy decisions and the choices we make in our everyday lives, limiting our impulse toward emp

I disagree. He mentioned in an interview[1] that he was looking to be proven wrong which is what led him to share it with the Skeptics group at Google, which is when the document propagated. He had actually wrote the document weeks prior but was unsatisfied with the lack of discussion on his document. [1] [VIDEO]

I watched some youtube interviews of him, one on Bloomberg where he seemed pretty nervous and not as articulate or as relaxed as on this longer interview [VIDEO] with some Canadian professor who apparently has a bad rap of his own. Still an interesting discussion with some odd 3rd party alternate Googler in the background who speaks up every now and then but who has an obscure role in the context of the overall discussion. I was pretty curious too who this fella was that stirred up the hornet's nest.

> This is why I dislike Damore. I don't care what his manifesto says ... Playing games is pathetic, dude. Well, according to his statement he was a top performer at Google, so we can assume he was not afraid of being replaced by a woman. Besides he just started a discussion in a response to, according to him, shady moves in regards of equality performed by Google. It is worth to listen to the other side: [VIDEO]

He's citing "legitimate scientific sources" but he doesn't understand them, so his citations are meaningless. You seemingly refuse to substantiate this. I made no claim that his interpretations are "wrong". I said that his interpretations are most likely wrong because he's not a psychologist What would you say if a prominent and widely cited academic and clinical Psychologist corroborated his interpretations? [VIDEO] I think your response would be to again be intellectually dishonest and tar him by association. However, in doing so, you abandon your former position. You keep insulting me. No, what you are doing semantically parallels what climate science deniers do. You are using the same techniques and tactics, seemingly counting on the audience to be too lazy to read the actual sources for themselves. My comparison is functional. If you wish to prevent me from making that point, then please start substantive responses, using facts, reasoning, and references. Otherwise you are just using the climate denier tactic of repeated assertion.

> It was a hodgepodge of cherry picked science Not all scientists would agree. [LINK] [VIDEO] > motivated reasoning and slander against all of his female workers. Only if you don't take what he says at face value and impute motivations which aren't directly stated in the text. The very need of this imputation to justify his treatment and the huge reaction, as well as the intellectually dishonest way in which the Google management and the left-leaning press engaged in hit pieces -- all of this smacks of ideological groupthink. The very fact that people can reasonably disagree about the interpretation of the memo, contrasted with the outsized reaction are pretty damning. Here's a feminist who disagrees with Damore's position in his memo, who lays out a cogent argument for why he's wrong, and there is systemic bias, but who thinks the reaction was a "little off," [LINK] Also, note that my position is that there is also some cultural bias in the programming field -- as a field. (Hackers in the HN sense have model train clubs as their cultural forebears.) However, this doesn't preclude that women within our current cultural context may well decide not to become programmers for their own reasons, and that some of this motivation may be correlated with their gender -- without there being systemic bias within hiring organizations.