skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
you didnt read his memo. please cite the passage where he says that he doesnt believe females should be there. point to where he says this, whether he did so directly or as an insinuation, and explain exactly how it means that he wants females out of google, please.
For you, probably chief of staff for Travis K, or Trump.
The past eqivilent was flipping to a random page in the yellow pages, throwing a dart at a map, or flipping a coin. It's funny that we need a app to randomize our life at all. I suppose it is largely just how we acces information now.
It absolutely does not follow that everyone who had a PhD at Harvard in Biology gets to say whatever they want about humans, especially in a way that's derogatory of his coworkers.
Slate star codex on the science behind gender representation: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagge...

Makes the very clever comparison to medicine and other fields that used to be 100% male.

"Nobody has any real policy disagreements. Everyone can just agree that men and women are equal, that they both have the same rights, that nobody should face harassment or discrimination. We can relax the Permanent State Of Emergency around too few women in tech, and admit that women have the right to go into whatever field they want, and that if they want to go off and be 80% of veterinarians and 74% of forensic scientists, those careers seem good too. We can appreciate the contributions of existing women in tech, make sure the door is open for any new ones who want to join, and start treating each other as human beings again."
I feel Google cornered itself into this pickle. On the one hand they need to grow their pool of talent and make the non majority to feel comfortable --which makes those not in the majority feel they have more than average support from Management, who in turn turn a blind eye to anti-majority bashing.

On the other going above and beyond for underrepresented groups will eventually grate against the majority when they ham-fistedly overcorrect.

This engineer likely got a nice severance or will get his due in court. Seriously, you don't fire someone for having a non milquetoast opinion.

I mean, I expect this heavy handedness from a Walmart but not from a Google. There are other more finessed ways to get your corp culture disseminated.

Off topic, but not having a union allows Google to fire these offensive employees, unlike School districts who must retain people who grind their own little axes.
We should be able to apply security technologies to online discourse. Theoretically it should be possible to separate real identity from virtual identity: maybe I publish a bunch of stuff in such a way that no one can ever figure out who I am but anyone can verify that a series of different comments/articles/etc. were all made by the same person. Then you could decide to follow people who publish things that interest you without having any feasible way to identify them (you can’t fire them, you can’t meet them, etc.).
he never said that. i've seen your take repeated by others. all he was saying is that maybe the 'natural' balance of women/men in tech isn't 50/50. he said nothing about those who made it into the company.

people like you, who can't understand simple arguments, are what got him fired.
Life is way too short to spend in soup kitchens worrying about how much and what form of privilege you may have.
I take it you haven't read the manifesto. Here you go: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideo...

Then read about the law of averages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_averages
"There's no such thing as a bad student. Only a bad teacher." - Mr. Miyagi
When I was in academia there was no shortage of my peers with PhDs in physics who were very religious. Having a PhD in a science is not proof against having misinformed or unscientific views.
> He's a good man.

Why do you say that?
I think managerially this is the right move; the guy created chaos and had to go.

I'm not sure that's the right move in any other respect, it certainly doesn't advance the conversation.
Other commenter here said he has a PhD in Biology from Harvard. I think it should give him some credit about what he said.
Point 2 and 3 are independent from point 1. He is completely right on the factual merits; stop with the science denialism.
I mean at the end of the day the story about “Marxist intellectuals” making an enemy out of “straight, cis white males” after “class warfare” failed to overthrow society sounds almost exactly like the Frankfurt School/“cultural Marxism” conspiracy theory. (Its a specific conspiracy theory btw, not just the general and true observation that the left is more concerned with race and gender than it used to be.)

Maybe it’s not deliberate but given the context it raised a major eyebrow for me.
Seems similar to what happened with Larry Summers - also affiliated with Harvard. http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2005/1/14/summers-comments...
It depends on whether your ethic emphasizes fairness in average, or fairness in individual cases.

Those who do the former, point at decreasing gaps between population groups as evidence that their approach is more fair. Those who do the latter point at specific cases where a person was ipso facto denied something that they would otherwise be a better fit for, because they were positively discriminated on the basis of some factor.

The catch is that conceptualization of fairness is driven by empathy ("I wouldn't like being treated like that if it were me!") - and empathy in humans works towards individuals, not large populations. A guy who couldn't get a job because his race made him rank lower is easier to empathize with, because the injustice is done to him personally and explicitly, as opposed to another guy from a historically discriminated group who is suffering from an accumulation of subtle but systemic biases throughout society.

Thus, too much or too visible positive discrimination triggers a significant social pushback, which may well swing the pendulum far in the opposite direction.
> He said that those differences make attempts to achieve numerical parity misguided, discriminatory, and harmful.

No, he said quite clearly that Google was hiring too many women and minorities (and also that said women and minorities suck at tech jobs, though not in so many words). It's the specifics of the argument that got him in trouble. Bland abstract stuff like you paraphrase above wouldn't get anyone fired.
May I remind you that the Russians were the first to space? Also that they created the biggest bomb in history? Also Hitler's top aids all had very high IQs.

The problem with people with high iqs is they think they know everything. And when you think that, that's when you do stupid things. When you get group think going, no one is insuceptible.
Well I just scanned it and can again confirm that there are no new ideas in that document.
Since he violated the code of conduct, there's not much to base a suit off of regardless of genetics.
Gizmodo removed the citations to scientific studies and also took out the images.

The original document is here (credit to lisper) https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...
Google fires employee behind controversial diversity manifesto
We've always conflated moral leanings with truth.

Previously, "the truth" was right leaning; it is now left leaning. Unfortunately, many people find (and have always found) that all it takes to dismiss an opposing moral position is to point out that their opponent's position is untruthful, and the discussion (or lack thereof) ends there.

A sibling poster has linked us to PG's essay on "What you can't say", which states my concerns more eloquently and thoroughly.

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
Perhaps you can post exactly where he said that, because as far as I'm aware he said nothing of the sort.
You should probably describe what Triberr is next to its mention, because their site is absolutely useless (at least on mobile).
We've banned this account for showing up just to violate the guidelines.
I'm sorry, you can't just say the man is "implicitly claiming" anything. Espectially when his career was so negatively effected. Support your claims with direct quotes or keep your slander to yourself.
Having a phd in biology doesn't prevent someone from being wrong
Since you more or less pasted your comment from the other thread, I'll TLDR my same reply:

The claims in this document are FAR from "widely-believed" or "scientifically established". By count, most of his claims are just asserted. But even most of the claims with a link are highly debatable.

This is NOT a particularly good advocacy document on the core scientific questions surrounding inequality. It may have some points in the cultural commentary bits, but stop presenting this as good work (on diversity). It's shoddy and amateur.
He stood up for the truth. Sure he got fired, but he did a good thing and we all benefit. He's like tank man who stood up to the Chinese. Sure they killed him, but we honor people who stand up for truth especially when it comes at personal cost.
Huh, I didn't know that's the case for x86. My quick search suggests that support is still quite limited though, and none of my HW (1~4 yrs old) support it. I suppose by the time the spec is finalized and widely adopted HW-accelerated SHA256 would be, too (and I should switch my zfs checksum back from SHA512/256 to SHA256).
> The harm of Google’s biases

> I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more. However, to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several discriminatory practices:

> * A high priority queue and special treatment for “diversity” candidates

> * Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate

^ Isn't that exactly what the author is saying?
I don't see any text in there that warrants that claim. Is there a specific sentence or two that you could highlight that leads you to your conclusion?
You don't need to go very far and blame Google for the level of difficulty. Making generalizations based on sex and without references is hostile from the get go.

If you want to have a rational conversation, have it rationally.
Good. People should be thinking twice.

Freedom of Speech is not the same thing as Freedom from Consequences. Unless we decide that being "aggressively antisocial" should be a protected class, private companies should have every right to fire employees who they deem toxic for their culture.
The author accused Google of discriminatory hiring practices and "hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for 'diversity' candidates" (under the subhead, "The harm of Google biases"). Just because he couched his claims in a boring, vague manifesto doesn't mean he didn't imply something that impugns the qualifications of his coworkers.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideo...
What does that have to do with anything? Do you think having an advanced degree makes you invulnerable to common biases or errors in reasoning? Do you think that having a STEM degree makes someone knowledgeable in issues of sociology? Ben Carson is a very accomplished neurosurgeon, and yet he has enormous gaping voids in his knowledge of other subjects.
String concatenation is slightly facile, but in the sense that most people are writing web servers, which are largely just composing templates, and not, e.g. Working on the distributed lock service.
Yes, except for the case where they are already past the bar but not being considered because of biases of people doing the hiring. I think that's the case that the prevailing amount of diversity-related efforts try to solve.

You're right though, and it's actually really insulting to insinuate that certain groups need help passing the bar. You can easily identify people who think like this if you ask a question (politely) like "would you hire a candidate that was more 'diverse' but less technically skilled than another candidate?". People who would choose the more "diverse" candidate but without a principled reason are probably just virtue signalling.

Note that 'diverse' can mean anything -- like comparing a developer who used to work in construction before being turned on to programming to a developer who came out of an ivy school (assuming they have comparable skill levels).
Not sure what's the case at Google, but when I was managing people at a Fortune 500 company, I was guided by HR to be especially careful if I need to fire a women or a minority employee - put them on PIP, document everything very carefully, etc. - because of much higher perceived risk of a wrongful termination suit.
I think he's thought it through enough to see the implications. And that ex-Googler has a fairly draconian, authoritarian view of groupthink.
We fire people for snickering at the word "Dongle".

We witch hunt people who play at Gor in their spare time.

We hound CEOs who disagree with the popular stance on gay marriage.

We fire people who clumsily try to open a dialogue internally to a company.

The tech industry is indeed fucked, but perhaps not for the reasons that are currently popular.
I believe that equal opportunity among all persons is manifest. But I think the manner in which we encourage/enforce/promote it, especially in the workplace, demands debate. We must be able to disagree with the methods without any question of our belief of its purpose.

The most disgusted I've ever felt at a workplace was when my boss, prior to me interviewing someone, said, "and she gets an extra point because she's a woman." The government punishes us on research tax breaks if we don't have enough diversity.

So what am I supposed to say to this person when she asks what set her apart from the other candidates to be hired? "No you weren't the best candidate, but you are a woman." That disgusts me and I refuse to do it.

My job is not to balance an arbitrary math equation that x% of engineers are supposed to be women. That's an issue far larger and more systemic. It can't be fixed this way.

What I can do is remind myself that my job is to pick the best candidate, and my definition of "best" may be fraught with bias, so I need to be exceptionally perceptive to question what capabilities each candidate might bring to the job that I don't naturally consider to be ideal.

Apologies for the ranting nature of this comment. I feel frustrated when faced with the reality that what the establishment wants are at such odds with my morals and convictions.
6th page, under the subhead "The harm of Google's biases"

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideo...
The underrated power of small consistent effort
You don't think the generalizations against women were scary?
Right, wrong, damage, and safety are precisely the dressed-up fashions PG's essay talks about.
Thanks a lot. Citations are pretty much what I expected them to be, but it is good to know that good citations were made.
In an imaginary utopian meritocracy, yeah it would. Since we live in the real world however ...
I would strongly disagree with the part about "Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics". Marxism is still Marxism, and it's still about economics. Most Western Marxists are also socially liberal, but the so-called "cultural Marxism" is a chimera created by the right.
I operate with very different rules, but I'm really happy with the results so far. I would _never_ work on a team that you're leading, though.

I guess success looks different for everyone.
Thanks so much, couldn't find the original (can't say I tried very hard, all things considered).
No. It’s actually a policy of no longer favouring certain groups (e.g., white men). There is systemic discrimination in favour of white men in software engineering, and only policies and procedures that change hiring away from those things which encourage such discrimination will fix the balance.

You don’t have to “lower the bar” at all, because it turns out that the average “bar” is the wrong standard for anything but the most independent of programming (which is not modern software engineering, thanks). My own hiring standard looks for people who love learning, don’t mind shifting contexts and languages, and can work well in a group. Some of the “smart guys” who have interviewed with us have been poor choices because they are bad culture fits—cowboys and jerks.
Nor is being very religious proof of having misinformed or unscientific views.
If things keep going this way (esp. in California) someday saying that only women can get pregnant is gonna count as "perpetuating gender stereotypes".
In California, it's illegal to fire someone for political actions or affiliations.
What else is the American mind unfairly closed to? Why is "women are, in the the large, excepting some outliers, biologically disfavored to become programmers" the threshold issue? What else should we be more open-minded about? We're also very closed-minded about:

* Child labor

* The facially legitimate grievances of Al Qaeda

* Universal suffrage

* The illegality of marital rape

Does it just happen that this particular issue, the one pertaining to nerds working for six-figure salaries at software firms, is the last straw?
He's criticizing discrimination on the basis of race (and gender), not advocating it.
There's no room for personal attacks like this on Hacker News. If you're interested in having a thoughtful and more inclusive discussion on the topic, this isn't how you do it.
Not having a PhD in biology will probably make you less right than him.
I think you are making a number of poor logical leaps. I have read the memo in its entirety. I have begun the process of reading the citations in their entirety. I am, so far, entirely unconvinced of that he has proven his point about gender bias. I am entirely convinced that he did prove his entire point about the political and moral echo chamber that is Googles Mountain View office. Though he did not do it within the letter. Google helped him by firing him.

Where you've made some poor logical leaps are: there is zero evidence that he shouted out his obviously controversial beliefs to the world. As far as I can tell this memo did not go to the whole world by his doing. It did not go to the entire Google staff by his doing. In fact, for all we know he was asked for his well thought out opinion on Googles diversity training and gave it to the appropriate people who did not respect the fact that he was giving his opinion to a small group and began forwarding it on. You might say I have no proof of this, and you'd be right. But you have no proof that he blasted this to the whole world.

Additionally, he was a number of things in the memo but he was not an unhinged idiot. It reads like someone who was asked for his opinion on the training that was going on and whether there was value in making it mandatory.

I have been asked in professional settings for my opinion on controversial matters. One time I was put into a very troubling position because of my opinion and many people were quite upset. It was uncomfortable for us all. I no longer give my opinion on controversial topics. I keep quiet and do my work and if I disagree with a policy or procedure I find new employment.

I am sure the author of this memo has learned his lesson now. He will shut up. I hope that the world is a better place without his opinion.
'sources' is the key word here...I'm not attacking anything.
Funnily…both concepts (“utopia” and “meritocracy”) were satirical before people started taking them seriously…
> This is pure censorship

No, it is not censorship. He can say those things. He just can't pretend to be an effective team member if this is what he believes about his coworkers and he is unwilling to learn from others.
He certainly did not say that in his essay. I agreed with a few points of his (ex: acknowledging that even men who choose to should be included in stress/anxiety management programs instead of having them be gender specific. Make things a two way street.). Although, he did go full /r/theRedPill in certain parts which he probably shouldn't have.
It's very simple: if you believe that others' fitness or qualification for their jobs, based on flimsy (at best) evo-psych arguments, is a topic that you can legitimately put forward for public debate and discussion, then I believe your fitness or qualification for your job, based on whatever I pull out of my ass, is a topic that can legitimately be put forward for public debate and discussion.

In other words: don't dish it out if you can't take it.
I could imagine there being external Jeff Dean fans, but yeah, that jargon
> fired from a tech company for "perpetuating gender stereotypes"...

Fired from a tech company for publishing a company-wide memo insinuating that some of his coworkers are, on average, at a biological disadvantage for the type of work they do and suggesting that some subset of them haven't achieved their position based on merit.
Does Google's hiring practices "effectively lower the bar for 'diversity' candidates"? That's a key issue. If so, the details of Google's hiring practices themselves impugn the qualifications of preferred candidate groups.
1. He worked for Google. One could argue that he wouldn't have been hired in the first place without "cultivating a positive reputation."

2. He earned his PhD in Biology at Harvard University.

What, in your opinion, should James Damore have additionally done to ensure that his thesis would be taken seriously?
the author of the memo is completely correct and, as others have said, his memo is drastically misrepresented in the coverage it has received. he simply points out that women could have less desire to go into fields such as cs because of their biological makeup. he never says that women should leave google -- he only says that trying to reach a perfectly equal distribution is misguided. perhaps those who are red in the face while reading the memo failed to read between the lines and realize that under this logic, the women who do find themselves wanting to go into cs for passion and not just money should be welcomed. he never once called for anything other than the policy of acceptance and wide open doors that is currently in place. he is merely suggesting that maybe a perfect 50/50 distribution is not needed and, more importantly, liberal people in general need to snap out of the double think where we believe men and women are the same. men and women are not the same.

as a liberal i find that it is important to not shy away from controversy: women and men are biologically different. i am sorry, but they are. you dont need to reject this fact in order to treat women with respect and equality.
It relates to Trumpism because this is why Trump won:

People are sick to death of speech codes, wrong think, collective mob mentality enforcing what is and isn't ok to talk about and which opinions you have to hold to be in line with acceptable thought in media, corporations, silicon valley, education, etc.

As you stated, the facts of the matter don't have relevance here. And if he was wrong, why not discuss it rationally and unemotionally. Or even disagree and move on.

But no, now he's fired for having the wrong unspeakable points of view that do not fall in line with the state religion of mandatory gender quotas.
Do you think his writings were advancing the conversation?
More politically correct fascism.

Beware. This is bad.
I think many of us end up reinventing the same techniques through trial and error. I too do a similar technique for blocks.

Completely agree that there's nothing wrong with apologizing for it. It lays it all out instead the other party wondering why you are nervous, or think you are hiding something. Finding the appropriate time to bring it up has always been a challenge. I sometimes will do a fake stutter, and bring it up after that so I have more control of the situation.
It's interesting how an upvote is "invisible" but can say so much.