The Google memo firestorm

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WiseOne
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by WiseOne » Sat Aug 12, 2017 10:08 am

MangoMan wrote:[Are you saying that corporations have an obligation to hire X% of each ethnic/racial/gender/religious group even if they are not as qualified as other candidates and even if they underperform, just to meet some quota?
That's what happens now - it's called "affirmative action." I'm saying I don't think this is a good idea, because it's putting a bandaid on a systemic problem that needs to be dealt with on a more fundamental level.
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by Maddy » Sat Aug 12, 2017 1:11 pm

WiseOne wrote: Seems to me that if you want to increase minority representation, the key is to get to them before they're applying for the job . ..
Unfortunately, many of the groups and individuals who claim to be underrepresented in professional and technical fields don't want to be "gotten to." Many have no real interest in conforming to the norms of the corporate environment if it requires a change in behavior or runs counter to their natural temperment. They expect the norms to change to accommodate them.
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by WiseOne » Sat Aug 12, 2017 4:46 pm

So that gets back to the insane, unorthodox thought that I'd had two posts back: maybe the under-representation of certain women and minority groups isn't actually a problem. Because culture and society are a lot more big & complicated than the world of corporate structures. Some groups don't fit into that structure, and maybe that's ok.

In fact, maybe saying they SHOULD fit into that structure is the very definition of the attitudes that are popularly blamed on affirmative action naysayers like us. Now there's a heretical thought!
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by Xan » Sat Aug 12, 2017 9:05 pm

WiseOne, you've just blown my mind.
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by Maddy » Sat Aug 12, 2017 9:41 pm

WiseOne wrote:So that gets back to the insane, unorthodox thought that I'd had two posts back: maybe the under-representation of certain women and minority groups isn't actually a problem. Because culture and society are a lot more big & complicated than the world of corporate structures. Some groups don't fit into that structure, and maybe that's ok.

In fact, maybe saying they SHOULD fit into that structure is the very definition of the attitudes that are popularly blamed on affirmative action naysayers like us. Now there's a heretical thought!
+1

WiseOne, I'd be curious to know how your experience during your medical residency shaped your views on this. (I'm guessing that was back in the days when they actually believed lack of sleep provided a character building experience.)
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by WiseOne » Sun Aug 13, 2017 8:56 am

Maddy wrote:
WiseOne wrote:So that gets back to the insane, unorthodox thought that I'd had two posts back: maybe the under-representation of certain women and minority groups isn't actually a problem. Because culture and society are a lot more big & complicated than the world of corporate structures. Some groups don't fit into that structure, and maybe that's ok.

In fact, maybe saying they SHOULD fit into that structure is the very definition of the attitudes that are popularly blamed on affirmative action naysayers like us. Now there's a heretical thought!
+1

WiseOne, I'd be curious to know how your experience during your medical residency shaped your views on this. (I'm guessing that was back in the days when they actually believed lack of sleep provided a character building experience.)
I've been very aware of gender bias/sexism/whatever you want to call it since I was a kid. Example: when I was around 10 years old, I remember reading a cereal box offer of a customized name plate. The options were "Mr. and Mrs." or "Dr. and Mrs." The next line said "There are no other allowed combinations." That so incensed me that I decided then and there I was going to have that Dr. in front of my name one way or the other. There were lots of other examples, like my high school guidance counselor telling me I couldn't take that fourth advanced placement course because it would be too hard for a girl, or trying to steer me to small, middle of the road liberal arts colleges instead of the Ivy league schools. Then of course there was the infamous "Math class is hard" squawking Barbie doll, that inspired one of my favorite Simpsons episodes of all time. If that stuff were still going on, I'd definitely have something to say about it. However, I don't notice this anymore. If a woman really wants to get into the game, she can. It's just that a lot of them don't want to. And that is perfectly OK!

What I did see were people accepted into schools or training programs, from college to medical school and on up, purely in order to fill diversity goals. You could always tell who they were. They couldn't do the work, and when you had to work with them you had to cover for their incompetence. Worse yet, there's always an attitude that comes with it, something like "You better not mess with me" plus "You should be happy to do my work for me" along with a dash of "let's see what I can do to mess you up." They are always the most toxic people around, I guess because deep down they realize that they're in over their heads and that everyone around them knows it.

How this does anyone any favors I can't imagine. All I can see is how it breeds resentment on both sides. I'd still be the first to complain if I see anyone being actively discouraged from pursuing something they want and are qualified for, but that's a completely different situation from affirmative action hiring/acceptance.
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by farjean2 » Sun Aug 13, 2017 9:18 am

Maddy wrote:It was reported that a number of women were compelled to stay home from work due to feeling "uncomfortable" over the memo.

You couldn't make this up.
Are they going to be fired for "perpetuating harmful stereotypes about women"?

The women were so outraged by assertions such as women have “lower stress tolerance,” as he put it, they “skipped work” to try to tolerate the extra stress. The more we hear about this hateful document, the more it confirms itself to be true. This is why James was fired. He was naive enough to do his job and explain ways his company can improve. He questioned the liberal narrative and provided cold, hard facts to back up his points. He said we are living in an era where you will be punished if you say conservative ideas, and he was promptly punished for it. Google knows he’s right. They Googled it. They know the truth. They also know most of us can’t handle it.

Please share this article by using the link below. When you cut and paste an article, Taki's Magazine misses out on traffic, and our writers don't get paid for their work. Email editors@takimag.com to buy additional rights. http://takimag.com/article/google_tech_ ... z4pe2lvFE0
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by dualstow » Sun Aug 13, 2017 10:25 am

That so incensed me that I decided then and there I was going to have that Dr. in front of my name one way or the other.


Awesome :-)
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by Mr Vacuum » Sun Aug 13, 2017 2:34 pm

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/the-bi ... ogy-sexism

Here is a response to the memo that acknowledges that it was not a rant and actually had something worth saying about the internal political climate at Google. The response proceeds to address conclusions point by point with statistical reasoning. It's nice to see a rebuttal on the memo's terms instead of the more common emotional thrashing. I still find the use of the word manifesto to be a mischaracterization, but the response is otherwise fair on the whole.
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by Mr Vacuum » Sun Aug 13, 2017 2:38 pm

dualstow wrote:
That so incensed me that I decided then and there I was going to have that Dr. in front of my name one way or the other.


Awesome :-)
Ditto. Great post, WiseOne. Thanks for that.
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by farjean2 » Sun Aug 13, 2017 4:05 pm

An interesting chart from this article... https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/04/ ... computing/

Image

The article offers the following as a possible explanation......

Women view the ICT sector as male-dominated and this is putting them off entering the field, according to the International Communications Union, the main partner for International Girls in ICT Day.

Hmmmm.... Weren't medicine, law, and the physical sciences also once seen as male-dominated? How is that we big, bad computer programmers managed to scare the ladies off but doctors and lawyers couldn't?
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by l82start » Mon Aug 14, 2017 9:09 am

farjean2 wrote: Hmmmm.... Weren't medicine, law, and the physical sciences also once seen as male-dominated? How is that we big, bad computer programmers managed to scare the ladies off but doctors and lawyers couldn't?
a weird and probably more humorous than true theory just occurred to me... the nerd effect.. doctors and lawyers tend to be socially skilled alpha male professions, programming (in my imagination) tends to be the profession of choice for the high intelligence low social skilled nerd, having to put up with awkward and uncomfortable crap (the kind that all boys clubs tend to have when they are at there worst) from the former is not so bad... taking it from a guy who could be cast in a revenge of the nerds remake... not so much....

my apologies to all my non nerd socially skilled programing friends here on the forum.. ;D
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by dualstow » Mon Aug 14, 2017 9:27 am

Well if not socially skilled = arrogant, I believe Tyler said there was no shortage of that in tech firms. This was in a thread about Uber/Kalanick.

(stray thought: I wonder if a German piece of software ever mistranslated "Uber/Kalanick" into high colonics. Never mind O0 )
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by WiseOne » Mon Aug 14, 2017 11:03 am

Trust me, there's no shortage of arrogant bastards in the medical and legal profession, male and otherwise. Also, having been in both fields, I'd rate computer science a lot lower on the arrogance scale. Much higher on the nerd scale, of course.
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by Tyler » Mon Aug 14, 2017 11:32 am

dualstow wrote:Well if not socially skilled = arrogant, I believe Tyler said there was no shortage of that in tech firms. This was in a thread about Uber/Kalanick.
Arrogance is universal, although in my experience it can take different forms depending on the profession. For example, the average arrogant doctor likely has a major God complex while the average arrogant engineer probably thinks he's the smartest person on the planet surrounded by morons on all sides. Mix in lots of money and low emotional intelligence, and arrogant techies can be plenty painful to deal with even before you get to outside influences like political themes that feed on that sense of intellectual superiority.
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by jhogue » Mon Aug 14, 2017 1:26 pm

Tyler wrote:
dualstow wrote:Well if not socially skilled = arrogant, I believe Tyler said there was no shortage of that in tech firms. This was in a thread about Uber/Kalanick.
Arrogance is universal, although in my experience it can take different forms depending on the profession. For example, the average arrogant doctor likely has a major God complex while the average arrogant engineer probably thinks he's the smartest person on the planet surrounded by morons on all sides. Mix in lots of money and low emotional intelligence, and arrogant techies can be plenty painful to deal with even before you get to outside influences like political themes that feed on that sense of intellectual superiority.
Exactly.
I have no doubt that the design of the "defeat device" software behind the VW diesel scandal was hatched by an arrogant group of very smart German engineers who thought that actually obeying stupid US EPA standards was beneath them.
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by dualstow » Sun Aug 20, 2017 10:52 am

WiseOne, et al, let me know if there is a paywall. (Might be able to get by using anon mode).

http://nautil.us//blog/outraged-by-the- ... 8-60920101
Sabine Hossenfelder wrote:I don’t normally write about the underrepresentation of women in science. Reason is I don’t feel fit to represent the underrepresented. I just can’t seem to appropriately suffer in my male-dominated environment. To the extent that one can trust online personality tests, I’m an awkwardly untypical female. It’s probably unsurprising I ended up in theoretical physics.
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by Kriegsspiel » Mon Jan 22, 2018 7:28 pm

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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by Kriegsspiel » Fri Feb 02, 2018 7:26 pm

Rubin Report with James Damore

From SEP 2017. 93 mins long.

As Tyler Cowan says, interesting throughout.
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by Kriegsspiel » Mon Feb 26, 2018 10:46 am

According to the NLRB, Google was not only justified in firing Damore, but he also sexually harrassed women by referencing scientific studies,

"notwithstanding _____ effort to cloak _____ comments with 'scientific' references and analysis, and notwithstanding _____ 'not all women' disclaimers.' Moreover, those statements were likely to cause serious dissention and disruption in the workplace."

This insanity right here.
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by Kriegsspiel » Mon Feb 26, 2018 11:14 am

Damore, Diversity, and Disruption at PSU
A protest campaign to hoard free tickets claimed more than half the seats, suppressing turnout. Nevertheless, surrounded by officers and protected by an entourage of private security, James Damore spoke to an audience of 270 people. He was joined on the panel by former Evergreen State professors Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein, PSU philosophy professor Peter Boghossian, and critic of third wave intersectional feminism Helen Pluckrose.

Explaining what had moved him to write the “Google memo,” Damore said that he found the analyses of the company’s sex disparity, offered during a conference on diversity and inclusion, to be unsatisfactory. “They went through these different things, like microaggressions and unconscious bias, and said that is why we only have 20 percent women,” he recalled.

After the conference, Google solicited feedback from staff. Damore obliged with a ten page document entitled “Google’s Ideological Echo-Chamber,” in which he argued that sex differences on average may help explain the male/female disparity at the company. He also offered suggestions about how the workplace environment could change to appeal to more women. But when his memo was leaked to the press and published, it was stripped of important nuance and links to supporting data, and Damore was viciously mischaracterized as a misogynist and a racist.

“James argues, accurately, that there are differences between men and women,” evolutionary biologist Heather Heying said during the panel discussion. “This is a strange position to be in, to be arguing for something that is so universally and widely accepted in biology. . .You can be irritated by a lot of truths, but taking offense,” — here, Heying paused as hecklers shouted and began to walk out — “is a response that is a rejection of reality.”

A non-student protester then yanked the cables from the sound system and shoved the equipment to the ground, breaking an antenna. She was promptly detained by police. “[Damore’s] a piece of shit!” she screamed as she was issued a citation for criminal mischief in the second degree. “Even the women in there have been brainwashed!” Another protester stated: “Nazis are not welcome in civil society."
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by Xan » Mon Feb 26, 2018 11:21 am

Is there something I'm missing here? It seems like these protestors are from a different planet. Have they taken leave of their senses or have I?
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by Mountaineer » Mon Feb 26, 2018 12:12 pm

Xan wrote:Is there something I'm missing here? It seems like these protestors are from a different planet. Have they taken leave of their senses or have I?
Devolution in action. ;) But we already know that, it began in a garden a long time ago. It accelerates toward the end.
DNA has its own language (code), and language requires intelligence. There is no known mechanism by which matter can give birth to information, let alone language. It is unreasonable to believe the world could have happened by chance.
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Re: The Google memo firestorm

Post by Kriegsspiel » Mon Feb 26, 2018 10:30 pm

Xan wrote:Is there something I'm missing here? It seems like these protestors are from a different planet. Have they taken leave of their senses or have I?
The most likely explanation is that there's an entire generation of people who are so desperate to be protesters and social activists on par with those of the 20th century that they're prepared to invent their causes out of whole cloth.


In case you've been missing it, this type of behavior has been happening for years now. The quote at the end of the article by the campus police is pertinent, where he says (paraphrasing) "you're so extreme that I have to escort you off campus? I just don't see it" The modus operandi seems to be extreme disproportionate violence (or the threat of violence) so that anyone with opinions that differ from the Leftist students is obstructed. I'm surprised you haven't heard about the protests: Milo Younappolis, Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, Christina Hoff Summers, Warren Farrell, etc. Mostly at Cal Berkeley.

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