I hate the high end examples, because people want to argue them. The case is also true the other way - there are more men at the bottom of the IQ scale. Can someone come up with a reason why an IQ test would make men appear more often in the bottom of IQ distributions?
I have no evidence, only speculation, but it could be because boys do not receive the same type of nurture and care growing up compared to girls. As well as, anecdotally, being more likely to engage in dangerous (for the brain) activities and take less care of themselves. The last point manifests itself in many ways, but the most important one I can think of is diet.
Again, this is all conjecture and I don't know how I would go about finding the studies to link it together.
> The manifesto claims empathy for colleagues and customers is not required, but clearly it is.
Can you help me understand how you reached that conclusion? Here is the relevant section of the original:
> De-emphasise empathy.
> I've heard several calls for increased empathy on diversity issues. While I strongly support trying to understand how and why people think the way they do, relying on affective empathy — feeling another's pain — causes us to focus on anecdotes, favour individuals similar to us, and harbour other irrational and dangerous biases. Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts.
Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts.
This is wrong. Emotions - feeling - are part of what makes teams work together well and make products work with people.
The reply linked on this post says it well:
Engineering is not the art of building devices; it’s the art of fixing problems. Devices are a means, not an end. Fixing problems means first of all understanding them — and since the whole purpose of the things we do is to fix problems in the outside world, problems involving people, that means that understanding people, and the ways in which they will interact with your system, is fundamental to every step of building a system. (This is so key that we have a bunch of entire job ladders — PM’s and UX’ers and so on — who have done nothing but specialize in those problems. But the presence of specialists doesn’t mean engineers are off the hook; far from it. Engineering leaders absolutely need to understand product deeply; it’s a core job requirement.)
Note the part I quoted above. I didn't quote this part: relying on affective empathy — feeling another's pain — causes us to focus on anecdotes, favour individuals similar to us, and harbour other irrational and dangerous biases is completely wrong. I struggle to think of a more wrong way of explaining empathy - I think it is fair to say that the author's idea of what empathy feels like is completely different to what the rest of the world thinks. For the fact biased amongst us (which I am) I'd note that there is no citation given.
> Emotions - feeling - are part of what makes teams work together well
I have never seen any group of people work together better because of emotions. Many times have I seen emotions tear groups of people apart.
I would also point out that emphasizing "empathy" as a vital skill, in and of itself, creates a hostile and discriminatory work environment. Many highly productive and valuable engineers are on the spectrum and it doesn't seem to inhibit their ability to do their jobs.
> I think it is fair to say that the author's idea of what empathy feels like is completely different to what the rest of the world thinks
I think you misunderstand what he is getting at. Yale researcher Paul Bloom
wrote a whole book about this concept of empathy as a bad thing, and I think that is what the manifesto is getting at (I'd almost argue quoting): https://www.amazon.com/Against-Empathy-Case-Rational-Compass... TL;DR is this:
> We often think of our capacity to experience the suffering of others as the ultimate source of goodness. Many of our wisest policy-makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers agree that the only problem with empathy is that we don’t have enough of it.
> Nothing could be further from the truth, argues Yale researcher Paul Bloom. In AGAINST EMPATHY, Bloom reveals empathy to be one of the leading motivators of inequality and immorality in society. Far from helping us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and, ironically, often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it, but to draw instead upon a more distanced compassion.
This is how that manifesto is being so miscategorised. It says - DIRECT QUOTE - "relying on affective empathy — feeling another's pain — causes us to focus on anecdotes, favour individuals similar to us, and harbour other irrational and dangerous biases". Not empathy is not required. Not empathy is useless, but a specific, nuanced usage of empathy. It is understandable this miscategorisation given how most people see empathy, but it is still borderline strawmanning to impose a definition here that was not intended.
This is around the multiple definitions of empathy. To quote:
I am staunchly with Bloom here: it is undoubtedly a valuable gift, but only provided it is fortified by a prior rational moral position and appropriately judged action. And there are many arguably moral actions that have nothing to do with empathy or even sympathy – paying one’s taxes, or picking up litter are not glamorous activities but they stem from a rational perception of what is for the general good.
What's great is the next sentence: "But I am neither a biologist, a psychologist, nor a sociologist, so I’ll leave that to someone else." So, you know it is false, completely, and that we should ignore it because it is false, but you are unqualified to provide any examples? Sigh.
So you have a study which refutes this? He's made a claim, you are just making an appeal to emotion! Show that there are no differences between men and women on these scales, or that the whole science behind the idea is sketchy (which I've seen arguments of) but please, pretty please, some evidence.
Random software engineers don't tend to be experts in social psychology and sociology. Maybe the thing to do is to defer to experts in those fields rather than trying to parse through the literature with no experience whatsoever?
Oh because he linked to so many studies in his manifesto? He didn't.
Read his footnotes. They basically say "this is true because I know it to be true," and "this is universally accepted" (it isn't). But he gets a pass on that, sure.
From the Gizmodo article[1], "The text of the post is reproduced in full below, with some minor formatting modifications. Two charts and several hyperlinks are also omitted." The several hyperlinks are probably his sources.
You are here trying to persuade me, at least I assume that is the goal, you could just be here trolling I guess. To try to persuade by claiming you are as bad as everyone else seems, unpersuasive?
You seem to think there are two sides: for or against. I have the ability to be against EVERYONE, don't I? Neither side can be convincing, or one side can. As it stands, you are just as unconvincing as the other side, which is hardly a great position!
So, seeing as you have a strong opinion, as evidenced by about 400,000,000,000 posts in this thread, do you have any evidence to support your ideas and refute what you seem to think is a bad piece? Or should I continue to be unpersuaded by both sides?
Here [1] is an article on how cultural gender inequality leads to poorer maths results for women, and fixing that cultural inequality fixes the maths results. This was commonly attributed to differences in biological traits in the past, that was wrong.
Here [2] is another article where spatial abilities relate to societal roles. Another area commonly attributed to biological differences (and which the author of the manifesto still seems to believe).
I've linked to Arstechnica articles because they are good summaries and reference the sources.
Notice that the trend here is that we misattributed something to biological differences and then science showed us that things were more fluid than we initially thought. That attribution to biological differences propagated extremely harmful beliefs that still seem to resonate, though.
Here [1] is an article on how cultural gender inequality leads to poorer maths results for women, and fixing that cultural inequality fixes the maths results.
That is an interesting study which demonstrates the opposite of what you seem to think it does. Here's the PDF: https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/sapienza/htm/sc.... It shows that the as cultural inequality decreases, the relative performance of girls rises in both math where they end up about equal to boys, and reading where they end up even further ahead. Take the sum of the gap values in the first chart; they're all between 40 and 60 except for Iceland which is over 70. (Edit: no, I'm bad at math. Iceland's relative gap is about 50 as well).
So if you point to the more equal math scores as proof that there are no innate differences between boys and girls, you now have to explain why the reading scores become even more unequal with increased gender equality. Is it just that Norway and Sweden are hotbeds of discrimination against boys?
Alright, I'll bite. But, I've never heard of any research suggesting women have a different cognitive capacity than men. I read some research a number of years ago suggesting cross-culturally women had better language skills than men, but I don't know if this is still considered to be true.
I can't remember reading anything in the manifesto which suggested women are less capable as software engineers. The essay did suggest women were less interested in programming than men (obviously true - see enrolment figures) and that at least some of the effect size is due to biological factors (probably true - see below).
---
None of these links suggest any capacity difference. Only that there is a biologically influenced gender difference in interests.
A summary of studies looking at big 5 personality distributions and other effects. Of note is the long section describing blindspots in current research:
"Gender Differences in Personality and Interests: When, Where and Why?"
http://sci-hub.cc/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x
Here's a Dutch documentary where they send a camera crew around asking different researchers about gender differences:
https://youtu.be/cVaTc15plVs?t=30m49s
The full documentary is great. Their conclusion is that biological factors result in an overlapping but different distribution of personalities between men and women. These differences result in statistically different career preferences.
A talk by researcher Steven Pinker on the subject, where he argues that biological differences result in at least some of the effect size in STEM interests:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw&t=1057s
This is part of a debate on the subject. (Not linked) Prof Elizabeth Spelke responds, but I found her argument to be much less convincing than Pinker. Watch both, make up your own mind.
> I can't remember reading anything in the manifesto which suggested women are less capable as software engineers.
It does suggest this:
> “I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes,”
Preferences and abilities. If men are in the majority of leadership, senior, and CEO roles, what is the author suggesting about the abilities of women?
He is suggesting that it's a difficult problem in a complex system and that it's likely that we don't understand all the factors at play? And that we need different perspectives in order to engage in the kind of constructive skepticism which ultimately leads to better understanding?
Making assertions, on the other hand... that suggests that we already know the answers; and that further scrutiny is not required.
> If you truly believe people are equal and deserving of equal treatment then you must
The two don't follow, at all. Lets replace this statement, and make it about the NBA.
"If you truly believe people are equal and deserving of equal treatment then you must see a game where black men hold the vast majority of positions as a failure of the game".
If the NBA example should be laughed at, why shouldn't the opposite? Neanderthals don't exist anymore, but homo sapiens do, despite very little relative advantage to us. Small differences in averages between groups will lead to dramatically different results. For the best example of all, see casinos (advantage: 2-4%) versus gamblers.
Are you serious? Of course it doesn't make sense if you change my words to be about the NBA.
Look at the government. The majority of the US government leadership is older white males.
Either you think: wow, white males are really good at getting into top government positions. Old white males must be superior to other humans.
Or you think: society really gives an advantage to older white males and it's much easier for them to get into government. Maybe power structures are balanced in their favour?
(Hint: the latter is true. The author of the article thinks along the lines of the former, that's why it's sexist and discriminatory and people are upset by it.)
Or maybe it's both? After eliminating incorrect biases, perhaps we'd find top leadership to be 60/40 male/female. Or even 40/60 (I'd be surprised but hey).
Maybe women have a higher avg IQ but a smaller standard deviation. Then what?
I'm only taking issue with the sacrosanct idea that every mind is equal and that we should expect proportional representation in everything that's not obviously physically biased like sports. (How the brain isn't physical is still an open question.)
Or maybe IQ itself favours only certain types of intelligence and the test is fundamentally flawed because it simplifies intelligence into something that distorts our understanding of it?
How long did we think women performed more poorly with spatial reasoning tasks? Then we realised cultural gender inequality was the culprit, not biological traits [1].
The original author continues to propagate the harmful idea that women aren't making it because of biology, when there is no evidence to support that biology is the reason. And you seem to believe the same thing, despite the science in this area changing and even reporting the opposite results.
So if Google was serious, they'd attempt to measure productivity or coding performance, then apply IQ (and other) tests. They can take rigorous approaches to find out the truth, rather than operating off of feelings.
So, to make it clear: you are arguing that discrimination would be ok if you can prove it is effective?
(I'm sure I don't need to point out on this forum how difficult it is to measure productivity or coding performance. AFAIK there are no measures of this which are effective outside controlled conditions, and controlled conditions are close to irrelevant for actually being effective at a job)
Uh, yes? I'm saying if we somehow magically determined that group A had 10% benefit than group B at a task, then we should expect to see more of group A represented, even if their populations are equal.
Exactly like we expect to see certain phenotypes over-represented in basketball.
Despite the difficulty, saying it's hard but it just must be true that everyone's equal doesn't seem like a robust approach. Or is Google saying it just has zero way of evaluating a person's work? Perhaps they could do blinded code reviews or something.
I'm saying discrimination, meaning non-equal results, is fine. I don't think there should be any active discrimination, and incorrect unintentional discrimination should also be removed.
I'm saying discrimination, meaning non-equal results
I think you may want to reconsider the word you use for that, because that isn't a widely shared definition.
To be clear, when you say "discrimination.. [snip] is fine" most people hear that as "making hiring or promotion decisions based sorely or primarily on the gender of the person is fine". That's what the dictionary definition is too.
This isn't discrimination, and (almost) no one says it is. Unequal outcomes have many sources, and provided they are non-discriminatory that's defensible.
The issues arise when unequal outcomes occur and no one can agree on the cause, because there is a (very good) chance that there is an inequality of opportunity somewhere in the process.
I suspect there is a miscommunication here and your defense of the possibility of unequal outcomes is being confused by the wording.
I think the other person with which you are speaking is communicating clearly enough without your help on what the definition of words are supposed to mean.
I am constantly amazed that "society" means America. Also, that all the examples are always how white majority countries have white majority X. What about China? What about Indonesia? What about Malaysia, where there is a lot of racial diversity?
Americans think their country is the world. Trust me, you are definitely less than 5% of the world population-wise, even if you are ~25% of nominal world GDP.
It is really sad how insular Western culture has become, and weird in an industry and era where the biggest tech IPO was Chinese.
Is the current user-base an asset or a liability? I guess I am asking is it a kind of technical debt?
I'm not sure, and Digg is obviously the cautionary tail here on the "don't tick off the user-base" side, but I'd wager that to continue to grow, they need a little more mass appeal.
Reddit as an anonymous FaceBook Feed might have some real value, as both a value prop for people, and as retargeting for Marketers. Reddit knows that you browse, say, /r/atheism as a Mormon, or /r/gonewildasian as a single guy, and those are not things FaceBook may know. There is a lot of value in anonymous, on both sides.
> Occasionally a guilty person will be acquitted, and it would really be best not to also punish an innocent as a result of that.
That's not how it works, is it? it is not a battle where someone has to be guilty - either the accused or the accuser. Someone can be acquitted without anyone lying, or making false statements, or anything else. Just a few examples: insufficient evidence to prosecute, contradictory timelines.
It is bizarre that anyone thinks that this could be the system - get a conviction or suffer a conviction yourself.
There is a spectrum between provable accusations and demonstrably false claims that includes uncertainty, doubt and poor evidence. It isn't like going all-in in poker!
However, I still think that the kind of 'eye for an eye' approach proposed by the comment I was relying to would have a non-trivial, negative impact on the reporting of crimes. Just as guilty people can be acquitted, innocent people can be found guilty (even if it's not automatic), and this means that the accuser is exposing themselves to risk.
Fundamentally, no one should ever have to worry about the consequences of reporting a crime.
>no one should ever have to worry about the consequences of reporting a crime
The rub is, they should have to worry about the consequences, if they're making a bad-faith false report. They should have to worry a lot, because they themselves are committing a wrong by reporting a false crime in such a way.