A pervasive attitude
To many people in tech, Mr Memo’s memo is no surprise at all.
Others were less surprised to hear what they called a pervasive attitude in an industry long dominated by men. The manifesto “is the Silicon Valley mindset in many ways,” said Vivek Wadhwa, a distinguished fellow at Carnegie Mellon University college of engineering and a frequent critic of the tech sector’s lack of diversity. “You could take this to a lot of people and you would hear: ‘Yup, we agree with this.’ People used to say things like this fearlessly.”
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The manifesto claims that men have a higher drive for status, that women might not like coding because they have more interest than men in “people and aesthetics”, and that the low number of women in “high stress jobs” is down to them having more “neuroticism”. “We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism,” the author writes.
The document also claims that the gender wage gap is a myth, but Google is locked in an ongoing battle with US labour regulators claiming to have evidence that the company systematically undercompensates women.
The US labour regulators are probably all neurotic women.
What kills me about Mr. Memo and his purported love of evidence and facts is that it’s all such obvious horeshit. “All cultures,” “women are naturally,” “it’s universal.” As if this guy’s pronouncements are based on anything other than the stew of stereotypes we’re all marinating in.
Instead of saying that gender pay gaps and other workforce gender discrepancies imply sexism, he is saying they JUSTIFY sexism. In doing so, he is justifying sexism, which gives weight to the argument that gender discrepancies in the workforce exist because many men are sexist, himself being a prime example.
Supposedly the prick has been fired, and that’s as it should be.
Actually scientists who know about the subject say that James Damore got his facts broadly right: http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/
And his conclusion was that we should “treat people as individuals”. I don’t think that makes him a “prick” and I don’t think he should be sacked for saying it.
I remember when this blog was subtitled “Fighting Fashionable Nonsense”. Seems a long time ago now.
Ben: Don’t forget the motherload of bullshit ‘evidence’–he identifies evo-psych as the source of his wisdom.
Eric @ 4 –
Well I never liked that subtitle, because it sounds so hideously smug…plus of course it’s the very trap you indicate: it invites people to say “but you’re talking fashionable nonsense yourself!!1” That’s why I removed it. Of course anyone might be talking fashionable nonsense at any time. Maybe you’re right, maybe I am – but then again the nonsense that Mr Memo talked is also exceedingly fashionable. Boy is it ever. One word for that is “backlash” and we’re all soaking in it.
And four scientists don’t equate to “scientists who know about the subject.” There are more than four scientists who fit that description.
It’s convenient to forget that Computer Science was heavily populated by women until it became prestigious and lucrative. After all that’s what the film Hidden Figures was partly about.
Putting my biologist’s hat on, evopsycho nonsense is as removed from real science as you can get.
After Mirzakhani, another heroine of mine (never met her but met a close colleague who was effusive in praise of both her work and her humanity).
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/07/science/women-mathematicians-maryam-mirzakhani-marina-ratner.html
(But I don’t think Mr. Memo should have been fired. That’s just easy window dressing for Google. They have a lot more to answer for.
And evolutionary psychology – studied neutrally – has nothing to do with institutionalized sexism… or fashionable postmodernism.)
Helene: Right now, Evopsych seems to be at the stage of alchemy and astrology–there’s probably lots of completely valid measurements and correlations that have been found buried in the glut of papers, but until they develop genuine scientific rigor, the field is going to continue producing vast amounts of just-so stories and utter bilge-water.
And while we’re on overlooked mathematicians, few can rival Amalie Noether… a shoo-in for the Fields had she lived.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/27/science/emmy-noether-the-most-significant-mathematician-youve-never-heard-of.html
Freemage @9
I’ll take Steven Pinker’s work – and opinion – over your, um, appraisal.
Steven Pinker is a bright guy, no doubt about it. He also seems to be an empiricist from what I can figure. This is a pretty common approach in the bits of evopsych I’ve dipped into. Look at associations, explain them in a way that fits your pre-conceived bias. It’s largely why ‘babble’ is often added to the end of evopsych. Until the field adopts a more rigorous approach to the scientific method – hell, until it adopts the scientific method – it’s actually just a bunch of (largely) dudes using statistics out of context. The field needs to address issues like culture and socialisation, confounding factors and structural mechanisms. It especially needs to stop using population averages, devoid of any correction or control for culture and socialisation, to justify the treatment and behaviour of individuals.
Until that happens I’ll continue to treat it with significantly less weight than sociology, let-alone biology.