Jabanga

There is no reason to expect that their subset of the population should conform to a general population skew.

Absurd. Differences in the general population will translate into differences in the number of men that pursue CS and related fields, which will affect the gender composition of the applicant pool that Google recruits from.

Can you point to my dogmatic position?

The dogma is in you ignoring and denying basic statistics and common sense in order to defend the ideological premise underlying Google's discriminative (affirmative action) policies.

The guy was fired because he let everyone know that he is more than happy to point to descriptions of the general population and sinister world spanning conspiracy theories in order to maintain a dismissive and belittling attitude within the work environment toward women that happens to support a status quo that directly benefits himself rather than support the stated goals of the company.

This grossly mischaracterizes the content of the memo and the veracity of his arguments. Your comment displays utter and unscrupulous intolerance to opinions that disagree with your postmodernist viewpoint on gender.

It rejects the relevance of overwhelming empirical evidence on the causes of gender differences in the general population, that are manifestly relevant to gender representation in tech. Your comment embodies the prioritisation of dogma over science, and the willingness to use any means, including blatantly mischaracterizing the arguments made by ideological opponents in order to justify their being fired, to achieve one's ends.

There is nothing to debate against, unfortunately. If I'm being repetitive, it's because the justifications for the firing are so utterly baseless.

Also, if the upvote/downvote ratio is any indication, many people appreciate my contributions, even if they're not agreeable.

One final point I'd add is that this is an explicitly ideological issue. A Google engineer was fired for violating Google's corporate ideology (on diversity and gender). There is no way to address the issue in a meaningful way without addressing said ideology.

what difference does the statistical differences found between genders in the general population matter for any small subset of that population?

With all due respect, this is an absurd question. Statistical differences between the genders in the general population will very plausibly cause differences in the representation of each gender in a particular field, like computer science.

Do I really need to elaborate more on why this is the case?

To claim that the causes of gender differences are a settled science, that agrees with the postmodernists and feminists, and so assuredly that an opinion based on a different interpretation deserves to be punished and otherwise ignored, is absolute nonsense.

If anything, the social constructionist position on gender differences has been thoroughly discredited by the experimental evidence, to the point where the media and Google's reaction to the memo is, without a doubt, an expression of anti-scientific dogma.

The EPI is heavily funded by labour unions which have a major stake in the continued acceptance of central tenets of Marxist/postmodernist ideology, like the existence of race/gender/class based social dominance hierarchy and the importance of creating laws that discriminate against the identity group that is perceived to be at the top of this hierarchy.

For a scientist's analysis of the memo, see this:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/no-the-google-manifes...

Were it offered merely as a factor which explained some subset of the gender imbalances in STEM, that would be more reasonable.

Yes that is a more accurate construction. For the sake of expedience I wasn't this precise, and left it to the reader to sauce out this more precise meaning, which given the format, I think was entirely reasonable.

The article that is linked here is written by a PhD in sexual neuroscience, and defends the claims made in the memo as scientifically valid.

Instead of responding to the memo, and proving the assertions contained in it wrong, Google's executives fired him, and Google VP Daniele Brown justified the reaction by claiming that the memo advanced "incorrect assumptions about gender".

And you claim this is not an expression of dogmatism, and is not hostile to science, which I see as yet another manifestation of this anti-science dogmatism.

A scientific fact that may successfully describe the past or current condition doesn't consider other states that could have happened under similar conditions and certainly doesn't lock us into a way forward.

That's a sweeping and over-simplistic generalisation, and trying to justify the extreme rejection of and intolerance toward the memo based on it is a stretch, to say the least.

The individual was fired for stating facts and an opinion (which any society that values rational debate and dialogue will tolerate) that went against an unscientific dogma. A dogma that is as certain of the correctness of its own conjecture about gender as it is about the inapplicability of science to understanding statistical differences between genders in socioeconomic outcomes. An individual, especially a male, is not permitted to express an opinion that contradicts the dogma on the causes of differences in gender outcomes, and the proper reaction to said differences.

That's what the Google engineer's firing demonstrates.

You're correct, it is a hateful, sexist comment, and I won't take it back or apologize for it.

Then you're choosing to not be constructive. Sexism and racism are not constructive, and they are hurtful to innocent people.

They could very plausibly explain the differences in the number of men who write software relative to women. The only explanation is absolutely not "systemic discrimination against women".

I know it's trendy to defend feminist talking points, but it ultimately leads to what we see now with the Google firing: a public conversation where facts take a secondary role to ideology/dogma.

STEM fields, especially applied rather than theoretical ones, involve people as much as things

This doesn't negate my point.

You're correct that I oversimplified: some STEM fields are indeed less 'biologically geared' to men. But the principle remains: biologically established differences in interest can very plausibly explain the differences seen in gender representation in some STEM fields. It is the assertion of this fact that has invited unfounded accusations of sexism.

women are overrepresented in education and entry-level work, but still lag men in pay and advancement

That alone says nothing about the presence or absence of systemic discrimination.

I did not say that you're a "hateful, dogmatic, sexist racist". I said that postmodernism and feminism are.

Very few people subscribe to all of the beliefs of a particular ideological and philosophical framework. But the tenets of an ideology are there, even if a particular adherent is unaware of them.

An ideology manifests itself in its effects on the world. In postmodernism and feminism, we see that in the completely dogmatic and anti-science reaction to the memo. Here was a memo that was produced in good faith, stayed fully within the realm of established science in its assertions, and within the realm of the reasonable in its opinion, and yet we have absolute lies being trotted out by its critics about its content, and an ideologically motivated firing of its author.

This is not an accident. It's a result of an anti-science dogma that frames the world as a power struggle between identity group, and where facts are only acceptable when they aid in the fulfilment of the postmodernist/feminist agenda: which is to flatten the social dominance hierarchy that, according to the postmodernist/feminist framework, is formed by various identity groups. This is inspired by Marxism (as the historical record shows), whether or not you personally identify as a Marxist yourself.

Can you at least admit that your initial comment: that he "defends discrimination against women", is unfounded?

These 2 lines essentially state that as women are more interested in people, there are some roles they might not be able to perform.

That's absurd. You're not even interpreting his comments at face value. You're attributing a subtext to them that only exists in your imagination.

Strip away his science and his words, he's a misogynistic techbro

What an absolutely hateful and sexist comment. It amounts to: "strip away his message and judge him by what identity group he belongs to"

Postmodernists and feminists are generally very critical toward evolutionary psychology and hostile toward its scholars, so you're actually supporting my point.

That is the postmodern anti-science belief, which assumes that truth is not really truth. It is just a device used in power struggles between identity groups. It's so extreme that there was actually paper published on feminist glaciology [1]. This is not science. It is just dogma and actually hostile to the principle of science as a pursuit of objective truth carried out by people of good faith.

[1] http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0309132515623368

Do you believe these comments defend discrimination against women? I'm trying to understand how one could see it that way. I see both of these statements as unquestionably true, and the sexism accusation as stifling the type of free expression needed for rational dialogue. If facts are sexist, then the definition of sexism being used is wrong.

This is toxic postmodernist/feminist dogma.

It frames everything through a lens of identity power struggles. Therefore, whether an argument is scientific and factual is secondary to what identity group the person making it belongs to, and what their group stands to gain from it.

This ideological lens is anti-science, anti-cooperation, extremely racist/sexist and ultimately focused on only one objective: reducing the power of the group perceived as being at the top of the social dominance hierarchy.

It does not defend discrimination against women. That's absurd. Quote me a single section that "defends discrimination against women". Incredibly harmful false accusations like this seem to be par for the course anytime someone goes up against postmodernist/feminist dogma.

This is just dogma. Making a scientifically supported argument against a position of postmodernists and feminists doesn't equal an "attack on women".

The lack of intellect and integrity displayed by the attacks on the fired Google employee is really disturbing.

Your cynical view is very old [1]:

Predictions that automation will make humans redundant have been made before, however, going back to the Industrial Revolution, when textile workers, most famously the Luddites, protested that machines and steam engines would destroy their livelihoods. “Never until now did human invention devise such expedients for dispensing with the labour of the poor,” said a pamphlet at the time. Subsequent outbreaks of concern occurred in the 1920s (“March of the machine makes idle hands”, declared a New York Times headline in 1928), the 1930s (when John Maynard Keynes coined the term “technological unemployment”) and 1940s, when the New York Times referred to the revival of such worries as the renewal of an “old argument”.

As computers began to appear in offices and robots on factory floors, President John F. Kennedy declared that the major domestic challenge of the 1960s was to “maintain full employment at a time when automation…is replacing men”. In 1964 a group of Nobel prizewinners, known as the Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution, sent President Lyndon Johnson a memo alerting him to the danger of a revolution triggered by “the combination of the computer and the automated self-regulating machine”. This, they said, was leading to a new era of production “which requires progressively less human labour” and threatened to divide society into a skilled elite and an unskilled underclass. The advent of personal computers in the 1980s provoked further hand-wringing over potential job losses.

and based on a simplistic understanding of how automation impacts the demand for labour.

Automation reduces costs, and this increases consumer spending on more difficult to automate goods/services. [2]

That has been the pattern for 200 years, and why wages today are 20X what they were in 1800.

Unfortunately, ideas like yours are very common [3] and lead to terrible government policy.

[1] https://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21700758-will-...

[2] https://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/10/24/13327014/productivi...

[3] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2006/11/the_big_four_ec.html

But without massive a public investment in psychological health, personalized treatment will remain a luxury solution for those who can afford it.

Hopefully with greater automation, we can free up more people to become therapists.

Poverty in the US is overwhelmingly an issue for women and children. If we valued women so much, this travesty should not be true.

This is incorrect. 14% of women are under the poverty line, to 10% of men. That's not "overwhelming". On the flip side, a significant majority of the homeless are men.

The gender difference seen in the poverty statistic is in my estimation due to the fact that women are generally less motivated than men to earn money, and thus less willing to make sacrifices to do so (which is why men overwhelmingly work dangerous jobs, and are 10X more likely to die in a work place accident as a result). This will result in the lower income levels seen in the female demographic, which will extend to more women having income levels that fall under the poverty line.

The disruptive behavior should be dealt with directly, in a manner that's agnostic to whether the person staying is a short term tenant, a long-term tenant, or a nonpaying guest of the owner, not by discriminating against short term tenancy based on a generalisation about the people who utilise it.

Also, from what I've seen, most opposition to Airbnb is motivated by its alleged effect on rental rates for long-term tenants, which is the least justifiable reason to oppose it in my opinion.

If you appreciate Airbnb when out of your own city but oppose it when it's in your city, then your opposition is not grounded in an objective analysis of what is in the general public's interest, and should therefore be dismissed in my opinion.

You're saying that differences in extrinsic incentives (tennant vs. resident) should be treated the same as biological differences when discriminating between good and bad neighbors. Are you kidding?

Legal discrimination based on inborn traits, like race, gender or place of birth, is probably worse, because the targeted group can't change those traits, but both are bad because they discriminate against people based on generalisations about the group they belong to rather than a harmful action they engage in.

The equivalent of your statement is saying that a licensed doctor and a stranger who claims to know what he's doing should both be able to perform surgery on you - because we wouldn't want to discriminate.

Well, first of all, it shouldn't be illegal for an unlicensed person to perform surgery. It's none of anyone else's business what two consenting adults agree to do together. But that aside, it's not the equivalent at all. The licensed doctor has qualifications that attest their medical knowledge.

Turning them into hotels reduces short term rental rates. If long term rental rates are extremely high, short term rental rates will be as well.

The same could apply to gender, race, age, and occupation groups. I don't think it's good policy to create laws based on generalisations.

Put me in the camp that's very anti-AirBnB as a resident who doesn't want where I lived turned into a hotel. I live in NYC.

You're simply demonstrating NIMBYism. You get to stay in one of the most geographically desirable locations in the world and in order to pay lower rent you want to prevent others who live in much less geographically desirable places from renting units in your locale so that they can get to enjoy something you get to enjoy year round, for a few days of the year.

The discussion here reminds me of this:

"We have an ingrained anti-profit bias that blinds us to the social benefits of free markets"

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/08/04/we-have-an-ingrained-an...

I love how "austerity" is the catch all cause of all social problems, despite social welfare spending as a share of GDP massively increasing in the UK over the last 50 years.

This is a self-correcting problem. Traders who fall for fake walls lose their capital, and thus influence on the price, to those who do not. The feedback loops and incentives of the market cause it to evolve toward a more price-stable configuration.