After reading the memo and after reading most of the comments here that claim that users also read the memo makes me very afraid on the state of educated people in America.
I cannot believe that most of you still go with the media narrative that Damore claimed "women are worse than man at engineering" while this is a very obvious misrepresentation of what he wrote in order to fill a narrative.
This is all part of a politically driven agenda that destroys everyone trying to question the unique, politically-correct acceptable way of thinking.
And it kills me that smart people in HN are falling for it so easily.
> I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
[...]
> This is all part of a politically driven agenda that destroys everyone trying to question the unique, politically-correct acceptable way of thinking.
This is nonsensical. He wrote bullshit, he caused a problem at his office of employment, he was fired. End of discussion. If you end up pissing off most of your co-workers it leads to a hostile environment so you remove the fewest amount of people to fix it. It doesn't even matter if what he wrote is or isn't correct at that point.
He speaks about the `distribution of preferences and abilities`.
Going from a distribution to state that `women are worse then men at engineering` is a false narrative and COMPLETELY different. You probably didn't realize that because you already made your own politically-correct version of the truth on that subject, and refuse any discussion about those topics.
For example, what he said doesn't say anything about two specific individual women and men abilities.
About your second point. That's the whole issue! Bringing up any point of debate or discussion on those politically-driven topics will end up pissing of some people (while a majority might agree, but will stay silent because politically incorrect). It is very very sad that this is the state of affairs, and that we cannot discuss those sensible subjects anymore without being fully ostracized.
I think he is somewhat confused or insincere about the maths here.
Given this `distribution of preferences and abilities` he said that women on average were lower, but if you only hire people above a certain threshold, there is no difference in the people you hire. This is not true.
Unless the `distribution` is binary "has ability / does not have ability", the people coming from the "higher average" distribution will still on average have more ability. For example, say X~N(1,1) and Y~N(2,1) are normal-distributed with standard deviation 1 and mean 1 and 2 respectively, then E[X | X > 3] ≈ 3.37, while E[Y | Y > 3] ≈ 3.53.
I am pretty sure Damore doesn't think preference and ability are binary, so unless he's confused about his maths, he does say that women at Google on average have less preference/ability.
I'd say that the very fact that identical quotes from the memo can be used to argue opposite positions in earnest shows - with no judgment for which side is correct - that the memo itself is poorly written.
Every single memo/book/essay has quotes that can be taken out of context in order to criticize the whole. That's why the phrase "taken out of context" exists.
No, not at all. I meant conservatives/Damore supporters. The argument hinges on free speech, respect for differing opinions, oppression of conservative viewpoints, etc... That's all fine but then I see a lot of jumping to "you obviously didn't read it". That seems like a bit of a contradiction, to disregard the idea that someone has a different interpretation than you do.
> The findings suggest that
the persistent – and usually neglected average large advantage of boys in mechanical
reasoning (MR) — orthogonal to g – might be behind their higher presence in STEM (science,
technology, engineering, and math) disciplines.
The quoted line about distribution of talent does not imply that women are worse than men at engineering. In fact, due to the way standard deviation works, the average woman could be better than the average man at engineering but the average of the top 5% of women could be worse than the average of the top 5% of men at engineering. Yeah, that sounds weird, but it's completely possible with the right standard deviation and average.
Example: average ability score of 100, standard deviation of 16 and average ability score of 90, standard deviation of 32. The 95th percentile cutoff for the first group would be about 164; the 95th percentile cutoff for the second group would be about 218. So even though the average member of group 1 has a higher ability score than the average member of group 2, an organisation which hired the best 5% of all candidates would have disproportionately more members of group 2 than group one.
I cannot believe that most of you still go with the media narrative that Damore claimed "women are worse than man at engineering" while this is a very obvious misrepresentation of what he wrote in order to fill a narrative.
This is all part of a politically driven agenda that destroys everyone trying to question the unique, politically-correct acceptable way of thinking.
And it kills me that smart people in HN are falling for it so easily.