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from the diversity-of-opinion-department dept.
Gizmodo got their hands on an internal memo gone viral at Google that criticizes extreme biases and blind promotion of diversity. The memo's author confronts the practice of silencing such minority opinions through shame:
"Despite what the public response seems to have been, I've gotten many personal messages from fellow Googlers expressing their gratitude for bringing up these very important issues which they agree with but would never have the courage to say or defend because of our shaming culture and the possibility of being fired. This needs to change."
Are these hints of the writing on the proverbial wall? One fears the diversity pendulum will break rather than be allowed to swing back.
[Update: Google has written a memo to its employees about the document. - ed]
Also at Motherboard and BBC.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @10:50AM (49 children)
The memo starts ok, discussing how different points of view are important, and political bias should be considered. But then it blathers on about gender stereotypes, as if they were a proven fact. Larry Summers made the same mistake. Biologically, women may be better, worse, or equal to men in various disciplines. But we don't know, because we don't have the data. Give it another five generations...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Entropy on Monday August 07 2017, @11:38AM (48 children)
We're not allowed to have that data. We're living under the myth that every (whatever group) is exactly the same at every single task, when it obviously isn't so. News flash: Some groups of people(perhaps based on gender) are better at some tasks, and thus others are worse at some tasks. A very silly, and obvious example of this is men are better(on average) at some tasks requiring raw strength.
Yes, you can find a woman stronger than a man, but that doesn't change the average.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @11:51AM (44 children)
Innate gender differences are universally acknowledged for sports. So it's not as if people can't accept differences. But for mental abilities, it's almost impossible to distinguish between innate differences and cultural/historical factors. More history with more equality will clarify things. Or do you have some special data that is free from these confounding factors? If you're going to call some people inferior, your evidence better be unimpeachable.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @12:26PM
Yet you get people trying to censor wikipedia and remove passages that say there're biological differences between men and women.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 07 2017, @01:28PM (21 children)
I presume that you actually read the whole thing? Under the heading, "The harm of Google's biases" we find "Reconsidering any set of people if it’s not “diverse” enough, but not showing that same scrutiny in the reverse direction (clear confirmation bias)"
And, here you are, predicting confirmation bias. In effect, you're saying that if women are forced to take on leadership roles, and men are prohibited from being leaders, things will sort themselves out. Confirmation bias, to the extreme.
And, none of that even considers the question: WHAT RIGHT DOES GOOGLE HAVE TO ENGAGE IN SOCIAL ENGINEERING?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @03:10PM (20 children)
Like any company, they are responsible to maintain a friendly work environment for all employees. You label it as social engineering, it's actually human relations. Sorry if life is leaving leaving you behind, standing still tends to do that.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 07 2017, @03:33PM (12 children)
"maintain a friendly work environment for all employees."
Right - that includes people who are not progressive.
"life is leaving leaving you behind"
Noted. Except, your side isn't making any real progress. They still don't have a corps of female engineers willing to follow the progressive agenda, do they?
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @04:03PM (8 children)
You're so adversarial and stupid. You think it is some sort of competition, but it isn't. The progress is on general equality, and it has been fucking massive. It is no longer OK to assault minorities, whether racial or cultural. In the US at least everyone is technically equal and it gets closer all the time. A lot of the bullshit bigotry and misogynism is going out of fashion, and you can be angry that your "common sense" nastiness is no longer accepted but don't expect anyone else to shed any tears for you.
Basically, social awareness is beginning to trump "being the boss". Just because you are an adult does not give you a free pass to be a stupid jerk, want to tell some racist or sexist jokes? Expect negative reactions.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 07 2017, @04:55PM (7 children)
Yeah, you're right. There is little competition with people like this representing your party. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2484587/posts [freerepublic.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @05:18PM (6 children)
Not my party, but I guess HRC is still a crook so Trump supporters don't need to look at their own problems.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 07 2017, @05:29PM (5 children)
The Grand Inquisitors of the Far Left are examining Trump as we speak. They'll have him burning at the cross soon enough. Then they'll regret it because the forgettable fellow filling the second string slot will become first string - and he sucks more ass than Trump does. Have you ever heard, "Be careful what you wish for, because you may get it"? In all of GWB's years, I never wished that Bush would just drop dead, because that other forgettable second stringer would have taken over GWB's job.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @05:39PM
**WOOOSH**
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday August 07 2017, @09:09PM (2 children)
Is that really the best endorsement you can muster for the corrosive dickhead you helped vote into office? "BEWARE THE MIKE PENCE DEADMAN SWITCH"
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 07 2017, @11:30PM
HRC and Wasserman-Schultz helped elect the corrosive moron - I did not. I suppose you need a reminder that I didn't vote for the court fool, or for the wicked witch - I voted Libertarian. And, before you get started, as bad as Johnson is, he's still better than either the D or the R.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 08 2017, @08:31AM
Its funny how the whole world is now being introduced to dirty dealings of Trump almost everyday. Everyday there is an article on NYT and The Economist and The Guardian crapping all over Trump. One almost wonders what would have happened if so much shit was hurled at him before his election.
Oh wait, no.... there was only 1 thing that was important, wasn't it? He hates women..... grabs pussy.... and if you don't support HC you hate women..... I suppose even if Russian connection is true, in the eyes of the libtards grabbing pussy was a clear indicator the conservatives should have foreseen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @09:12PM
I think the HRC / Trump reference is about you not having to address your own problems because you can deflect on to something else. You took the bait and reeeeally ran with it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @06:22PM
No, it does not! Non-progressive people are regressive, and regression is not progressive! It moves things backwards, loses money for the company, causes tribalism to re-emerge! Nope, conservatives that are openly conservative, with racist, misogynist, classist and pedophilic tendencies, need to be purged from the workplace. Think of it as kind of a "final solution".
(Score: 2, Insightful) by i286NiNJA on Monday August 07 2017, @10:36PM (1 child)
No. It's true. Anyone who makes statements that sound anything like "Some large percentage of the people I work with are inferior... oh but with caveats don't you worry!!" is not worth keeping around.
That person is going to be a problem for a number of reasons. If you're going to cause trouble at least say something clever like "I think that PoC womyn and trans-women must be oppressing thin upper class white women of thin white richness because they're by the numbers the least represented of all womyn-types in engineering!"
I get that SJWs have waged a mostly unfair battle on nerds lately but they do it because nerds are socially stupid enough to fall into their traps. Which this guy did by attempting some sort of serious discussion. The only way to win this is not to play at all and certainly don't attempt to argue with them or defend your ideas. If you must open your yap the only thing that should come out is condescending mockery. As people watch these guys poisoning causes and failing to bring about useful social changes of any kind despite their nonstop successful fundraising then they'll lose their pull in places like google... engaging them at google is exactly what they need so they have a controlled environment to get the data and stories they'll use to publish their next round of garbage.
If all they had to talk about for a year was their own failures to deliver (social change, patron promises, new products, outright killing once productive social movements) then they would dry up and fuckoff but nerds react with pathetic impotent flailing so they continue to have a nonstop roster of enemies to fight and they can distract from their own fraud by publishing a continual play-by-play of the action. How many shitty buzzfeed articles have you see like "Oh a sexist dumb guy said something on twitter and then you won't believe how PWNED he was!"
It's just an easy out for some blue haired lollapalooza studies major to shit out 1000 words so they can call it good, collect some favors from the friends they namedropped, and make happy hour in time for free-range mango IPAs, avocado bacon toast and a shot of cruelty-free heroin before bed. It's exactly what they were trained to do in school.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @10:46PM
^ This guy gets laid, 100% guaranteed.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 07 2017, @04:39PM (6 children)
HA! Hahahahahahahaha! That is the funniest shit I've heard all day!
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @10:06PM (5 children)
You need a life
(Score: 1) by i286NiNJA on Monday August 07 2017, @10:42PM (4 children)
Buzzard is a good example of what happens if we just let welfare mooches sit around posting on the internet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @10:48PM (3 children)
I would gladly pay those taxes, keep him from interacting with real people.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday August 08 2017, @12:41AM (2 children)
Never gonna happen. I'm a people person.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 08 2017, @01:11AM (1 child)
Found TMB getting fired! [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday August 08 2017, @01:42AM
Right movie, wrong character.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday August 07 2017, @04:19PM (20 children)
Actually, sports are a very instructive example, because athletic performance can be compared objectively.
And here's what you learn if you look at it: While men are stronger and faster than women, the difference in training is much more significant than the difference between men and women. For example, the world record for men's weightlifting is 307 kg, for women it's 217 kg, which is a significant difference without question. But since the average person can typically lift no more than 1/3 of the women's record, if you're hiring for strength the fact is that a trained woman will do much better than a majority of untrained men. A similar result happens in, say, the 100m dash: Usain Bolt's record is slightly faster than Florence Griffith-Joyner's, but both of them are much much faster than a typical guy running those same 100m. And as for sports with a substantial skill element, if you put your typical male tennis club member in a match against Serena Williams, he's going to lose, badly.
So what that means is that trying to make categorical judgments about people's abilities based on a demographic identity is a stupid idea, because the differences within each demographic are nearly always far greater than the differences between the averages of the group. As far as engineering goes, is anyone seriously suggesting we'd have been better off without the likes of Grace Hopper or Yvonne Brill?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by crafoo on Monday August 07 2017, @04:32PM (5 children)
It's funny you resort to weightlifting for your example. The women only approach men's performance by massive injections of steroids derived from male hormones. Essentially bio-engineering themselves to become more like men.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @04:37PM (4 children)
Way to miss the point and show yourself to be a tool as well. Not every athlete is doping, your statement is retarded.
(Score: 1) by crafoo on Monday August 07 2017, @07:08PM
Every single athlete competing at the top of their game is doping. Once steroids enters into the competition anyone not doing it cannot compete. There aren't even in the same class. They are barely the same biological beings. Some sports have worked very hard to eliminate doping with mixed results. No one wants to go back to seeing sports with normal people. It isn't exciting. They cannot get anywhere near to the records set by the modified individuals. No one wants to see it.
(Score: 1) by i286NiNJA on Monday August 07 2017, @10:47PM (2 children)
No you're wrong.. Pro womens sports teams lose to highschool teams all the time.
How is it that you were able to fill your post with stats and numbers and yet seem to be unaware of things most trainers know as common knowledge?
Parrot much?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @10:51PM (1 child)
Incorrect, the problem here is your own reading comprehension. Clue: you have to read the OP as well.
(Score: 1) by i286NiNJA on Monday August 07 2017, @11:26PM
No there is no incorrect I said that women's pro teams lose to highschool kids. Go ahead and google it.
My clean and jerk wasn't ever as high as a pro women's score but in the 90s it would have not been far off. A guy who is almost 30 who pounds beer and smoke on the weekends.
There is simply no incorrect. Only your own wishful thinking. They did a study and they gave testosterone.. mind you they're giving steroids to guys that probably put them on the upper end of normal T levels and didn't train them.. and measured muscle growth against guys who were actually training.
The juiced guys grew muscle 8x faster than the guys who were working out. I know this doesn't quite line up but literally everything outside of the gender studies department disagrees with you.
Do you even lift bro? Of course you don't.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday August 07 2017, @05:32PM (13 children)
No, it is a lot more severe. It is a pretty safe bet that most professional male tennis players could compete well against either of the Williams sisters, not just now but when they were at their peak performance. Any college men's basketball squad will wipe the floor with any womens basketball team, many highly competitive high school teams are good enough to demolish a WNBA team. Even sports where things should be more equal due to a lack of dependency on upper body strength show marked differences. Compare the putting stats between men and women professional golfers. The best women wouldn't make the cut in the PGA. The highest ranked chess players shows a high gender skew. Nobody understands these realities better than women athletes who very visibly do not agitate for equality and inclusion into the "big leagues" and instead remain content to compete in a "league of their own." They just demand equal money even though the ratings / attendance are usually a fraction of the "real game."
Your mistake is comparing maximally trained women to totally out of shape men. Try a better comparison, compare a women's weightlifter who wins competitions to a freshly minted United States Army infantryman. He is expected to be able load up a hundred pounds of weapons, armor and other gear and not only work and fight with it, he needs to be able to pick up a fellow soldier, equally equipped, and get him to safety. Don't compare to the women they have to call soldiers though because they don't have to meet those physical standards, that 'roided up female weightlifter can probably out lift one of them. The bottom line though is that if the US Army can't develop a training program that can bring women recruits up to standard, it probably can't be done.
Now to take up you notions about variation. Yes, there is great variation but that hurts your argument. Google wants (well wanted) to hire the very top of the Bell Curve. That means they wanted only the top 1% of the top 1%. This means any demo who performs even a little below average in the couple of very specialized skills that Google values is pretty much fucked if they continue to hire into those positions purely on merit. Math, learn it; focus your study today on standard distribution curves and what impact that has on the topic.
Bad set of options there. They competed on merit, even against a bias against them, yet successfully contributed. No, the modern question, since sanity doesn't seem to be an option anymore, is whether we have a total backlash that eliminates women from the industry and means we lose the contribution of the occasional exceptional woman or have to staff half the slots with diversity hires who can't actually do the work and the few have to kill themselves trying to carry their useless asses. Given that binary there is only one sensible, yet currently impossible of course, choice. Meritocracy seems to be entirely outside the realm of debate.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday August 07 2017, @06:13PM (5 children)
Just grabbed a random bit of your comment to counter.
https://www.golfdigest.com/story/putting-matthew-rudy [golfdigest.com]
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday August 07 2017, @07:09PM (3 children)
Uh huh. What do you expect them to say? All we have to assume is they want to continue working to get that mush that boils down to an admission women can't putt but... but.. THE PATRIARCHY! Women's golf has plenty of money sloshing around to pay for instructors and if you can think of a reason why a professional female golfer isn't practicing as much as the men I'd like to hear it. They are professional atheletes, playing a game is their day job. Or perhaps they know their pay isn't based on raw performance to the extent it is for men, female athletes tend to get the big endorsement bucks based on their physical appearance so they spend more time in the gym maintaining their look instead of the putting green. Forget what people are forced to say, look at what they do, then look at the numbers. Math is truthful.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday August 07 2017, @07:55PM (2 children)
Exactly. If you read that article they point out that the lady use to be on par with men and then that changed later. She says it was because the focus wasn't on putting anymore (if i remember right).
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 08 2017, @01:14AM
I just LOVE seeing jmo blown out of the water and then never replying.
PS: jmo, if you DID reply and acknowledge that you were not on-point I would actually gain respect for you, but that will never happen cause you're a precious unique snow flake that never wants to change.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday August 08 2017, @03:32AM
Uh huh. Saying the focus isn't on putting is simply insane since golf only consists of driving and putting. Either it is an admission that women's golf isn't really a sport or worse. Oh, finally read the article and it is about a child prodigy who apparently really didn't understand putting is half the game. But I wasn't talking about one young woman's delusions, I'm talking about the professional rankings. The fact the highest ranked women would rarely even make the cut to compete in the PGA is not a disputable point and the article you cited certainly doesn't try, instead trying to fog the issue to maintain the Narrative.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 08 2017, @09:17AM
Here, let the data tell the truth: http://imgur.com/a/6dG4F [imgur.com] (Olympic records on multiple distances and ground types). Researches won't be funded if they started telling the truth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @06:14PM
The amazing bit here is how clueless you misogynerds are. I guess you wouldn't have such personality problems if you were able to clearly see them, but you give away your true feelings all the time with shit like that.
Go back to the 1800's you troglodyte.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @06:27PM
jmorris? Modern? Yes, sanity does not seem to be an option for you. But this false dichotomy? It would be much easier to just eliminate pre-modern men who believe that they are superior to women. We would lose the occasional contribution of an asshole that actually has an idea once in a while, but it would be worth it.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday August 07 2017, @06:54PM (4 children)
OK, so explain to me exactly how somebody picking up 50kg of equipment or a 90kg person is stronger than somebody picking up over 200kg of weights. You haven't refuted my point, you've proven it: The effects of training far outweigh any gender variance.
As for the female soldiers, I'd wager an average female soldier could kick the butt of an average American male. Again, because of training and lifestyle.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by crafoo on Monday August 07 2017, @07:12PM
Extremely doubtful. You do not understand the strength difference, lb for lb, that male hormones impart. Also the massive advantage in a fight of reach and weight, and how much they matter compared to training. Sorry, your TV shows of 90lb women shoulder-throwing 250lb men is bullshit.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday August 07 2017, @07:28PM (1 child)
Math is not your strong suit is it. Soldier carrying 50KG of gear picks up 90KG soldier carrying 50KG of gear. 190KG total load, and that is a baseline requirement to get assigned into a combat unit, not an exceptional soldier, not special forces.
And again, you missed the elephant in the room. The US Army obeys the Jurassic Park rule when it does something, no expense is spared. If they can't train men and women to anything approaching an equal standard it is safe to assume it can't be done. It is an open secret that men and women in the military should not fight, not even as a training exercise, because it instantly reveals the truth that women shouldn't be there. Pray we don't ever fight a real war where survival is on the line instead of beating low tech brown people into submission.
Say the words, men and women are not equal in physical ability. They aren't equal randomly plucked from the street, they aren't equal if given equal training. The spread of the top 1% of women are outside the range of the 1% of men. In some specific tests of physical capability it is probable that the top 1% of women are below the 90% percentile of men. There may not be any tests where the reverse condition exists. Pretending otherwise will not change physical reality. Punishing people who correctly observe that reality will not change reality. Reality IS.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @07:50PM
You don't need to be the hulk to operate a rifle... Jmo shows his stripes again! You are a trashbin of a human being jmorris. A heap of garbage. A stinky mess. A drain upon humanity's resources.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 08 2017, @02:45PM
Let me help you with that comparison:
The soldier referred to, isn't merely lifting that 50 kg of equipment, he is actively traversing terrain with it. When he reaches down, grabs a fallen comrade AND that comrade's gear, he still has to navigate terrain that probably isn't engineered for navigability. And, most likely, he is hauling ass, with the hounds of hell nipping at his heels.
Strength and stamina.
Even as a kid, I never saw much sense in lifting tons and tons of shit, just to drop it back to the floor. The soldier mentioned beats hell out of your weightlifter, by any metrics that I think matters worth a damn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @04:29PM (2 children)
Oh, look! Fake news flash! Probably written by a male!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 07 2017, @04:42PM (1 child)
Biological fact is Fake News now? I guess that makes sense since most everything you see on The News is bullshit, so truth would be fake bullshit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @05:22PM
You can't apply the average to every situation, #fakenews #failedstats #fullofshit