> Damore did make a scientific case for his claims and referenced a bunch of studies.
Ehhh. Among my friends/coworkers one of the biggest objections was how dicey a lot of the referenced research was, and how much he was bending or extending conclusions to fit his narrative. At the very best his essay was awful science, but to me it felt more like a half-hearted attempt to cherrypick studies that sort of reinforced his preexisting beliefs, which is kind of the opposite of science.
It wasn't the strongest possible argument for his case IMO. There are other better studies and statistics I would have referenced. But it was good enough and the points were solid,. That there are observable personality differences between men and women, and we shouldn't expect perfect gender ratios.
> That there are observable personality differences between men and women, and we shouldn't expect perfect gender ratios.
This assumption always bothers me. What do you think defines behavior? Is it purely culture, or purely biology? How do you rule out culture when you don't have a culture that promotes equality?
It seems perfectly plausible to me that it's biological. E.g. identical twins have similar personality measures. But it does it matter? Even if it is cultural, it still disputes the feminist argument that the disparity is due to sexism in tech. Or the effectiveness of Google's diversity programs that Damore was arguing against.
> Even if it is cultural, it still disputes the feminist argument that the disparity is due to sexism in tech.
This sentence contradicts itself. If it is cultural, then it'd be most likely based on sexist stereotypes that we force on our kids from an early age (mind you, when I say sexist I don't mean in the "actively nasty towards a gender" way, but in the "you define people by their gender even before you know them" way.)
If that's the case, then that sexist behavior permeates the culture, which means tech companies are not going to be devoid of it. Which would make the disparity based on sexism in tech (and everywhere else.)
I think people get overly defensive about being called "sexist" because they perceive it as an attack on them. It is not. The moment you realize that, it's so much easier to get out of the "them vs. us" mentality and actually take constructive criticism better.
You've done a bait and switch on me. I'm talking about personality types. Maybe you can argue that women are less likely to be e.g. introverts, because of culture. But that has nothing to do with the tech industry and they can't change that.
And that was basically Damore's argument. You have personality types like INTP being vastly overrepresented among programmers, yet 4 times less common among women. You have the same percentage of young girls interested in computer science at a young age as work in the tech industry. You have studies trying to raise kids as neutrally as possible and still finding boys prefer trucks and girls prefer dolls. It's definitely not culture.
> ... that has nothing to do with the tech industry and they can't change that...
So what you are saying is that:
a) We don't know if this is a cultural issue or not
b) So the tech industry shouldn't do anything about it
Huh?
> You have studies trying to raise kids as neutrally as possible and still finding boys prefer trucks and girls prefer dolls. It's definitely not culture.
There's definite proof to the contrary: certain cultures (like Soviet Russia, for example) had a much bigger female representation in STEM fields than others [1]. Heck, even Mexico today has a higher representation of females in CS degrees than the US [2]
How do you explain that if "it's definitely not culture"???
I'm saying the disparity is due to personality difference. Which, even if cultural, can't be changed by the tech industry. I find it very implausible that the differences are cultural at any level. And many possible cultural explanations have been ruled out.
Poor and communist countries have less gender disparities because people have less choice over their careers. E.g. poor parents shove their kids into STEM because it's see it as a way out of poverty. In rich countries people have the freedom to pursue their actual interests. And so statistical differences in interests start to matter.
> And many possible cultural explanations have been ruled out.
You say this, but quote absolutely no science to back it up. Maybe this is just an intuitive perception that you have, rather than a fact? I actually quoted two articles that prove the contrary, and you have no retort for them, but rather just glance over them as if they didn't exist.
> Poor and communist countries have less gender disparities because people have less choice over their careers. E.g. poor parents shove their kids into STEM because it's see it as a way out of poverty. In rich countries people have the freedom to pursue their actual interests.
So you are going against your previous statement and saying here that culture plays a major role? Unless you use the word 'culture' in a very narrow definition that only includes things such as food, drinks and folk dances.
Communist countries, especially Russia, made a big deal about erasing gender inequality (they saw gender roles as another form of oppression.) That's the main reason why Russia had such a high participation of women in STEM, it wasn't because "parents would force them because they were poor."
I'm all for having a conversation about this, but are you willing to take new evidence and process it, rather than keep pushing your intuitive notion?
>You say this, but quote absolutely no science to back it up.
Yes I do, and I've been over some of it with you in this thread.
>I actually quoted two articles that prove the contrary, and you have no retort for them, but rather just glance over them as if they didn't exist.
What, the poor countries have different gender ratios claim? I addressed that.
>So you are going against your previous statement and saying here that culture plays a major role?
In poor countries, yes. How is Russia doing today after a ton of economic growth? I had trouble finding statistics, the only stat I could find is this:
>In 2016 Russia had the highest percentage of patents filed by women, at about 16%.
Which is about the ratio of women in STEM in the West.
> Yes I do, and I've been over some of it with you in this thread.
I looked for all your comments with your name in my history. Not a single one of them links to anything.
> What, the poor countries have different gender ratios claim? I addressed that.
You haven't addressed it, though. You claim it's based on economic growth, yet cite no evidence. In fact, there's plenty of evidence to the contrary: the UK has a bigger (and more advanced) economy than India, and a bigger participation of women in STEM. The same goes for Norway vs. US. In fact, Latin America has a much higher participation when compared with, say, Asia for comparable economic growth.
Even if we take the US in isolation, your claim doesn't hold up: we have grown at a relatively steady pace for the past few decades and more women participate on STEM fields today that they did in the 80s and 90s. If "economic growth" was the one driving factor, you'd see the exact opposite.
Again, are you sure you are putting enough effort into validating your statements? Here are two sets of statistics you might want to consider [1][2]
> How is Russia doing today after a ton of economic growth?
Russia has gone through a huge amount of "Westernization" since the Berlin Wall came down, so trying to make the case that economic growth or cultural shift are 100% to account for the changes is a fool's errand.
> In 2016 Russia had the highest percentage of patents filed by women, at about 16%
What makes you think that patent filings of all things represents industry participation? You have to be careful, you could easily conclude there are no males younger than 24 in a given industry if you used patents filed as your only data source. I think the links I posted above, in particular [2] are a better reference.
Your hypothesis doesn't explain the data any better than mine. Would you really predict the Arab states, with their incredibly progressive views on feminism, to have higher percentage of female researchers? It really isn't weird to you that Russia, in just 20 years, went back to the same levels of everyone else after all the "progress" they made? Cultures don't change that quickly.
The statistics are nearly useless anyway because of how differently they are measured. Women are much more represented in "soft sciences" like biology. But in math etc, the percentage has been pretty consistent. Math majors show a huge increase in women. But when you dig into it, it turns out that they are going into it to become math teachers. And the actual percentage of female Math researchers is the lowest of all of STEM. And pretty consistent through time. And our culture has changed a hell of a lot.
>gender differences on the people–things dimension of interests are
‘very large’ (d= 1.18), with women more people-oriented and less thing-oriented than men.
Gender differences in personality tend to be larger in gender-egalitarian societies than in gender-
inegalitarian societies, a finding that contradicts social role theory but is consistent with evolution-
ary, attributional, and social comparison theories. In contrast, gender differences in interests appear
to be consistent across cultures and over time, a finding that suggests possible biologic influences.
d=1.18 is one of the largest effect sizes I've seen in a social science. It means something like 93% of men are more "thing oriented" than the average woman.
> Your hypothesis doesn't explain the data any better than mine.
My "hypothesis" is that without trying to eliminate the cultural factors, we'll never be able to actually measure how strongly the alleged biological factors affect behavior. So no, my hypothesis doesn't explain anything, because it doesn't try to.
> And our culture has changed a hell of a lot.
Our academic scientific culture is barely 200 years old. Female participation in academic culture is way younger than that, with most of the earlier examples (like Marie Curie) being known as "weirdos" in their time because they didn't behave like "normal women". Our current cultural system is thousands of years old, yet you expect that the last 100 years of science to have fixed all disparities accrued over millennia. Doesn't sound very realistic.
> Why is it so implausible to you that it's biology?
Why is it implausible to you that it is culture, when there are reams of data showing that different cultures perform differently? You are cherrypicking data that supports your thesis and completely ignoring everything else. Why?
Notice that even the paper you link is hedging when making the claim: "In contrast, gender differences in interests appear to be consistent across cultures and over time, a finding that suggests possible biologic influences." But you, somehow, are 100% sure. Weird. Makes me think you have an agenda first, and look for evidence to back it up second, just like Damore did.
Before I go any further, just answer this one question. Is there literally any conceivable evidence that could convince you that you are wrong? That there are biological differences between men and women?
This is a basic scientific question. It has nothing to do with politics. You accuse me of "having an agenda" just because I disagree with you. You accuse damore of being "alt right" and defend his firing, just because he believes a relatively uncontroversial scientific claim. You accuse me of "cherrypicking data" when I've done nothing of the sort. Yet apparently cherrypicking a few random countries with different stats to support your bizarre culture theory is fine. But as I've shown your model doesn't make any sense of the data either, which apparently isn't a problem for you.
What even is your theory? Yeah, it's "culture", sure. But what predictions does that make? How can it be disproved?
If I show, for example, that there's the same percentage of female computer science graduates as female tech workers, does that disprove it? Does your theory predict that? "But the sexism is happening before the industry then." Ok.
So what about the same percentage of female high schoolers interested in computer science as female computer science majors. Does your theory predict that? "The sexism is happening before then."
Well we can go back to middle school. Hell let's go back to early childhood, and we find boys and girls show strong preferences for different kinds of toys. That seems pretty damning for your theory to me.
But that's far from the only evidence. Does your model predict neurological differences between male and female brains? That doesn't make any sense if all differences must be explained by culture.
>Female participation in academic culture is way younger than that, with most of the earlier examples (like Marie Curie) being known as "weirdos" in their time because they didn't behave like "normal women"
Exactly! 160 years ago women were excluded from many areas. There were no women doctors, few women at universities, no women lawyers, etc.
Now, in 2017, we've reversed all that. There are more women getting university educations than men! They make up 51% of law students, 50% of medical students, 75% of psychology majors, etc, etc. And yet in engineering they make up 20%. And it's been that way, consistently, for decades. And shows no signs of changing even as culture continues to change.
Think about this. It makes no sense to your theory. Why should culture change so quickly for every other area but engineering.
(And also why the double standard of caring so much about gender ratios in engineering, and not any other area like psychology or university in general?)
> Is there literally any conceivable evidence that could convince you that you are wrong?
Oh, for sure, if it was proven beyond reasonable doubt culture is not a factor in decision making.
> That there are biological differences between men and women?
This is not what I am arguing. There's a huge difference between "there are differences between men and women" and "they comprehensibly explain the current gender ratio in the Tech industry".
> That seems pretty damning for your theory to me.
Not really, because for the fifth time: my "theory" (call it: my anti-theory) is we don't know the extent of how potential gender differences might affect career selection, as long as we have a culture that has embedded strong gender identities even before the first career decision is made. Even if you think girls should play with toy ovens while boys play with toy guns, you can just discount the effect such boxing will have long term.
----
For the rest of your post, let me draw an analogy:
Let's say that we are working out of the same office. At some point you are trying to load a website (say, Hacker News) and it doesn't load. You ask me if I know what might be going on:
Me: "Yeah, the WiFi has been terrible today, we called the management company to come and fix it".
You after trying to ping google.com, and getting about 50% packet loss: "I know what it is, it's the database they use to store the articles, it's broken and that's why Hacker News won't load".
Me: "Wait, but the internet is really bad"
You: "Yeah, but there's some connectivity, so it must be the database"
Me: "Have you tried pinging the host?"
You: "No, but I pinged google.com"
Me: "Have you tried loading google.com?"
You: "No, because I know it's the database"
Me: "But... how? Nobody else can't connect to anything because the internet sucks. Even if the internet worked perfectly, there's a bunch of other stuff besides the database that could be broken."
You: "Is there any piece of evidence that will convince you it's the database? Why are you so against it being the database? I know it's the database!"
That's pretty much the conversation we've been having over the last few days. If a coworker of yours did that, you'd think twice before asking for their next time you have to debug something, wouldn't you?
Weird analogy. But from my point of view you are the guy screaming about the database. Replace "database" with "culture". You can't even consider the possibility it's not the database. No amount of tests or other possible explanations seem to have any effect on you.
You latch on to one tiny scrap of evidence that might point to a database issue. Say, the Russian site had a slightly better packet loss. And they have a different server over there, or something.
Then you make it political. And start ranting about how I'm a "database heretic" that should be fired for daring to question the database theory.
The Damore case has nothing to do with the validity of the science. If the scientific interpretation had been perfectly reasonable there would still be a flip-out and would have also been fired.
Damore was fired not because his science was flawed, but because he made himself essentially impossible to work with. Would you be "scared" if someone refuses to take a shower for months on end and a company decides to fire them?
I disagree entirely and vehemently to what you are saying.
> he made himself essentially impossible to work with
Who told you this? Im sure there were 100's of engineers, including female co-workers, at google that would have worked with him.
But lets play along, lets say that effectively no single person at google would voluntarily let himself work with Damore. Why do you think that is? Because 99.9% disagree with his essay? Or because he became a target for scorn in the public eye that overpunished him?
He was not fired because he wrote a shabby essay. He did not get fired for writing the essay itself. He got fired because the public asked him to be fired and punished, and google complied for PR.
> But lets play along, lets say that effectively no single person at google would voluntarily let himself work with Damore. Why do you think that is? Because 99.9% disagree with his essay? Or because he became a target for scorn in the public eye that overpunished him?
I'll give you a hint: if you are a female engineer, and you are put as a report for Damore, would you ever have a lingering feeling he might be biased against you if he decided to promote your male peer instead of you?
Do you think that consists a liability for the company? Does the company own the onus of making sure Damore doesn't put them in a position where they might be sued for gender discrimination?
> He was not fired because he wrote a shabby essay. He did not get fired for writing the essay itself.
Wrong. He was fired because he publicly said "fuck it, I don't believe that women are equal and you have to suck it up." That's his prerogative, but doesn't entitle him to a job anywhere.
> I'll give you a hint: if you are a female engineer, and you are put as a report for Damore, would you ever have a lingering feeling he might be biased against you if he decided to promote your male peer instead of you?
I don't know. Maybe. What we do know if that if someone else shares the same opinion of Damore within google, we will never hear about it , and the bias effect you attribute will still happen but there would be no way to address it.
Not only that, but it might have exacerbated it: someone with the fear of being perceived bias and losing his job will want as few women in his team as possible. How about that possibility?
> Wrong. He was fired because he publicly said "fuck it, I don't believe that women are equal and you have to suck it up." That's his prerogative, but doesn't entitle him to a job anywhere.
He said it multiple days before he got fired. The timeline doesn't add up!
> Not only that, but it might have exacerbated it: someone with the fear of being perceived bias and losing his job will want as few women in his team as possible. How about that possibility?
Someone being actively nasty towards women in his team just because they are women will most likely get fired, so that's a self-limiting problem.
> He said it multiple days before he got fired. The timeline doesn't add up!
What timeline? There's only one timeline:
1) He releases a "manifesto" expressing his opinion
2) Someone reads the manifesto, is disgusted and a controversy ensues
3) Media picks up on the controversy
4) Google is forced into a really shitty position by being asked a bunch of times what they are going to do
5) Damore gets fired
6) Damore goes to "men's rights advocate" Stefan Molyneaux podcast and wears his "Goolag" shirt. He does a bit of media, tweets out some really ambiguous tweets.
As I explained to conanbatt, the problem is that he put himself in a position of being perceived as biased against women. Even if 90% of the company agreed with him - even if the CEO agreed with him - any Legal department would recommend firing him, rather than have to deal with the liability.
I propose a mental exercise: let's say that Damore had written a similar "manifesto" but instead of concluding that "women are not that interested in engineering" he concluded "black people are not that interested in engineering". Would you see a problem with that? Do you think that might create some friction with fellow engineers of color?
You're not convincing me when your argument is literally "it doesn't matter if he's right, it's illegal to talk about it."
Which isn't true anyway. As I said, his opinions were nowhere near that extreme and are basically just "women have statistically different interests than men." He never said the women in tech were less interested or capable or should be treated any differently.
> "it doesn't matter if he's right, it's illegal to talk about it."
I never said it was illegal. I said it was stupid to do it at work. There's a lot of things that while not illegal, are stupid to do at work and will get you fired.
> his opinions were nowhere near that extreme and are basically just "women have statistically different interests than men." He never said the women in tech were less interested or capable or should be treated any differently.
His opinions demonstrated that he holds biases against women and minorities, and he thinks the company is doing the wrong thing by hiring more of both. Whether those biases are justified by his "science" (they aren't) or not, is neither here nor there, he's a walking legal landmine. On that basis alone, it would be perfectly justified to fire him.
Now, should he be able to express his opinions? Sure! Talk to your friends at a bar. Find people you think are like-minded and discuss this. Better yet: find people you know to hold the opposite opinion and discuss it with them. Don't fucking spread something company-wide and then complain when you get fired.
It's a double standard. Feminists with far more extreme beliefs can talk about their opinions at work. Not only that, but actually have them become official policy. Even policies that intentionally discriminate against men, which is insane.
But if you dare to object to it... Against policies that are actually sexist and actually relevant to your work. Make an actual scientific case for your side. Then somehow you are an evil sexist that wants to discriminate against minorities.
> Feminists with far more extreme beliefs can talk about their opinions at work.
Please give examples.
> Even policies that intentionally discriminate against men, which is insane.
Again, provide examples. I hear this argument a lot "poor men are being discriminated by women!!!" and yet I have to see a single shred of evidence of this. Again, for context, I'm a male working in the tech field and I have worked at Google.
Do you personally feel that a field where 80% of the workforce is male (vs a 50/50 split in overall demographics) is "actively discriminating against hiring males? I find that argument very, very, VERY difficult to defend.
> Then somehow you are an evil sexist that wants to discriminate against minorities.
What exactly do you propose was Damore's original intent?
Read page 6 of Damore's memo. He gives a number of very serious examples.
>Do you personally feel that a field where 80% of the workforce is male (vs a 50/50 split in overall demographics) is "actively discriminating against hiring males? I find that argument very, very, VERY difficult to defend.
What are you not understanding here? If 20% of qualified applicants are female, but 30% of new hires are female, you must be discriminating against men. A 50/50 split would require severe discrimination. Damore suggested they were lowering hiring standards and setting arbitrary quotas. I find this very, very, VERY difficult to defend.
> What are you not understanding here? If 20% of qualified applicants are female, but 30% of new hires are female, you must be discriminating against men.
Thing is, you don't have these numbers. And you are making them up, to push your narrative. Which is another massive flaw on Damore's argument: he's trying to solve a problem he doesn't even know exists.
> Damore suggested they were lowering hiring standards and setting arbitrary quotas.
Damore suggested based on assumptions. I find that very, very, VERY difficult to defend.
Those - as far as I understand - don't exist at Google. I interviewed tons of candidates there. I was never told to benefit this person or the next because they were of a particular gender or ethnic background. In fact, there was mandatory training on how to not fall for your own biases.
> Women-only lectures, events and benefits.
So you are all for "freedom of thought" but you don't want people to be able to group in whatever way they want. That's an interesting take.
> Why does it matter. Thats not the point.
That's totally the point. Why on Earth would he write the manifesto otherwise?
You keep doing this in all the arguments you have in this thread: you ask a question, and then when you get a response you reframe the question. You are being either dishonest or a zealot.
> Those - as far as I understand - don't exist at Google.
You asked for example of extreme "feminists" opinions that are allowed in the workforce and I gave you some. Also Damore's argument is that google is propping the numbers in a way akin to quotas, by jigging the selection process. (Well, I heard people say that, i haven't read the essay).
> So you are all for "freedom of thought" but you don't want people to be able to group in whatever way they want. That's an interesting take.
Now you are reframing the question as in a constitutional matter. That was not the question you asked. You asked for examples of extreme feminist positions in the workplace and women-only events is an example of one. Man-only corporate events dont exist, and if you called it one, there would also be public outrage. Women-only is actively discriminatory. Some people are fine with that, some aren't. The standard is not the same for everyone.
> That's totally the point. Why on Earth would he write the manifesto otherwise?
So if a feminist had written the essay, you would agree with it and would find it enlightening?
Its a simple ad-hominem. It can be true and Damore be the worst person ever born at the same time. Its not an argument of anything.
> You keep doing this in all the arguments you have in this thread: you ask a question, and then when you get a response you reframe the question. You are being either dishonest or a zealot.
Or maybe I'm trying to consider the whole context of a nuanced and complex topic before reaching a conclusion. Dishonest, idiot me for not taking every discrete input as an absolute determinant in order to keep the argument "simple" for your benefit.
> Also Damore's argument is that google is propping the numbers in a way akin to quotas, by jigging the selection process.
Damore does not provide proof of anything like that happening. His biggest gripe is that Google is proactively reaching out to minority groups in order to try to get more candidates from that pool. He also mentions a "high priority queue for diversity hires", but I haven't found any evidence of that and he doesn't provide any.
> (Well, I heard people say that, i haven't read the essay).
So, let me get this straight: you are criticizing my analysis of a manifesto you haven't read (I have), written by someone working at the same company I used to work for (Google) on a topic I have researched quite a bit on my spare time (causes of gender disparity in Tech and other STEM industries). Your criticism is not based on published statistics, academic studies or any other kind of hard evidence, but rather hearsay and anecdata. Wow. That has to be the most Argentine behavior I've seen in a while. La Argentinidad al palo.
> Now you are reframing the question as in a constitutional matter
No I'm not. You cited things that are perfectly legal as examples of "extremist behavior". Damore's behavior was legal too, it was just stupid.
> Man-only corporate events dont exist, and if you called it one, there would also be public outrage. Women-only is actively discriminatory.
It's kind of bizarre that you are trying to paint males as some form of oppressed minority. Have you ever stopped to think why some of these events might want to avoid having males take the spotlight from people trying to discuss something? Maybe it's because they deal with that every day?
> So if a feminist had written the essay, you would agree with it and would find it enlightening? Its a simple ad-hominem.
You attack my supposed ad-hominem, by offering an ad-hominem based on a completely baseless assumption. Meanwhile you complain about me being dishonest. Again... wow.
> Or maybe I'm trying to consider the whole context of a nuanced and complex topic before reaching a conclusion. Dishonest, idiot me for not taking every discrete input as an absolute determinant in order to keep the argument "simple" for your benefit.
I'm still not sure if you do this on purpose or not, but you again answer a question that was not asked. I didnt make any conclusion in the previous post, so you are responding some question about conclusions that is not relevant to the context.
> Damore does not provide proof of anything like that happening. His biggest gripe is that Google is proactively reaching out to minority groups in order to try to get more candidates from that pool. He also mentions a "high priority queue for diversity hires", but I haven't found any evidence of that and he doesn't provide any.
I dont work at google, but i have never heard any of the rebuttals or official statements by google saying that it's not true they benefit minorities in their process. In any case, if Damore claimed that was happening and it isn't, then everyone can be happy, because Damore was asking precisely to stop doing that, and noone needs to feel attacked.
>So, let me get this straight: you are criticizing my analysis of a manifesto you haven't read
I think you haven't read my first post at all ,where i start by saying it haven't read it. Talk about accusing people of not reading the source!
> Your criticism is not based on published statistics, academic studies or any other kind of hard evidence, but rather hearsay and anecdata.
My criticism is based on the most classical anecdotal case, that Damore made an essay, there was a shitstorm and he got fired. That was my original topic. I have made no opinion on the contents of the essay , because i haven't read it nor its a topic I find interesting.
> That has to be the most Argentine behavior I've seen in a while.
Thats xenophobic. Bear in mind that if you had made this comment on twitter, you would run the risk of being fired and also become unemployable.
I think this last comment is enough. You sounded sour for a lot of your exchanges, but when you start insulting I lose interest. Hope you enjoyed the conversation.
> In any case, if Damore claimed that was happening and it isn't, then everyone can be happy, because Damore was asking precisely to stop doing that, and noone needs to feel attacked.
Damore claimed a lot of things in the manifesto, for example he claimed that conservatives are treated unfairly at Google. Had you read the text, you would know that the manifesto was more of an alt-right screed than a treaty on the biological determinants of behavior.
> My criticism is based on the most classical anecdotal case, that Damore made an essay, there was a shitstorm and he got fired. That was my original topic. I have made no opinion on the contents of the essay , because i haven't read it nor its a topic I find interesting.
So you are painting Damore as a martyr of PC culture, but haven't bothered to actually inform yourself on the subject.
> Thats xenophobic. Bear in mind that if you had made this comment on twitter, you would run the risk of being fired and also become unemployable.
That's cute. I lived most of my life in Argentina, my family is in Argentina, I am an Argentine citizen and an active member of the Argentine community in San Francisco. Nice of you to take a joke and try to make yourself a victim. For someone who decries PC culture, you are becoming really good at cry-bullying ;)
Had Damore been a woman, she would have to be fired too. I don't really understand this perception that "women get away with everything". The legal department would have as much of an argument to fire a female Damore as they'd have a male Damore.
> Had Damore been a woman, she would have to be fired too.
I seriously doubt that. The public would generally be conflicted about crucifying a woman in the name of women, it would have not arised easily to public knowledge.
To deepen the understanding of the situation, men and women withing google might have shown public agreement of some level with the essay and they havent been fire. People have done threats and attacks of many degrees on Damore because of that essay, which would have been a firable offense in any other circumstance.
And that's your prerogative. But it also makes the rest of your argument just conjecture. Making a huge deal about "inequality" based on conjecture is probably not the best way to spend your time.
There's also an equal or bigger amount of science proving that gender "interests" are driven in a large part by cultural background. As I linked elsewhere, Communist Russia used to have a huge participation of women in "STEM" fields, while Europe and the US were still moving from single-income families to the current standard of working professional women.
There's nothing we can do to fix the - alleged - biological differences between men and women. There's a lot we can do to fix the cultural factors leading to gender inequality. So why not work on the stuff we can work on rather than assuming "awwww, why bother, if there's some chance it might be biological?"
> There was too much data pointing to the biological basis of sex-based cognitive differences to ignore, Halpern says. For one thing, the animal-research findings resonated with sex-based differences ascribed to people. These findings continue to accrue. In a study of 34 rhesus monkeys, for example, males strongly preferred toys with wheels over plush toys, whereas females found plush toys likable. It would be tough to argue that the monkeys’ parents bought them sex-typed toys or that simian society encourages its male offspring to play more with trucks. A much more recent study established that boys and girls 9 to 17 months old — an age when children show few if any signs of recognizing either their own or other children’s sex — nonetheless show marked differences in their preference for stereotypically male versus stereotypically female toys.
If I were to attribute malice, I'd say that you are actively avoiding the point I've been making to keep pushing your narrative.
The text you quote just says that some behavior might be driven by biological differences. Cool, nobody is arguing that. So what's the point you are trying to make?
The point I'm trying to make is that there's enough evidence that culture plays a major role in behavior and so we should maybe try to make the playing field fairer, so that if there are any biological traits dictating this or that behavior, they can be allowed. You know, work on what we know before we focus on what might be. It's pretty simple, really.
Ehhh. Among my friends/coworkers one of the biggest objections was how dicey a lot of the referenced research was, and how much he was bending or extending conclusions to fit his narrative. At the very best his essay was awful science, but to me it felt more like a half-hearted attempt to cherrypick studies that sort of reinforced his preexisting beliefs, which is kind of the opposite of science.