There is one problem with the article, though. It's not going to bring along any of the right-leaning people who are upset about anti-male discrimination and other such things. The article opens (smartly) by calling out “motivated reasoning”. But by the end, it references a list of lefty (from their perspective) links. Perhaps a better interpretation of Damore's own references would have been better.
Is it so unacceptable to admit that yes, men and women are different, but not mutually exclusive, and that women have plenty of the things the company wants?
Edited last sentence for clarification.
You could say the same about "ad hominem" or "straw man". I could just argue against anything by saying those things, even if they aren't true.
Let's look at motivated reasoning in this case. Google has diversity initiatives. What is their motive? Google exists to make money for their shareholders, the greatest beneficiaries being the executives and the board. Google has determined that they can be more successful (and therefore make more money) by being inclusive. Seriously now, how likely do you think it is that a company like Google is willing to give up their technical edge?
These sorts of arguments are easy to refute. Motivated reasoning is impossible to prove in either direction.
I don't believe empathy, cooperation, collaboration or managing team is engineering. Engineering is human mind dealing with systems and things. Engineering is as much about empathy and collaboration, as much as HR is about being able to use payroll software. You need the latter to be able to do the job, but it isn't "all about" that.
Yes, if you want to go up, then after a certain point you need to get into management, (like the article says "Senior engineers must manage teams", but must manage teams does not mean engineering somehow is about managing teams), but writing documentation, sitting in meetings, being on calls and reviewing other people's code is not engineering. It's not what excited me as a kid, and it's not the reason why in my free time from job I tinker stuff and write code (and nearly every Sr engineer in my team whom I respect does that). I have seen people quit of being a great tech lead to join a startup as a developer, mostly because they felt that something within them was dying.
I had many engineering jobs when I was a junior programmer where there was a well defined interface, a well defined job for me to do, and I did it alone and submitted the code without review and it worked.
But, when I started working on teams and on more ambitious projects (some of my own invention), everything changed. Suddenly, I realized that I could achieve more by engineering people through writing design docs, code review, and cat-herding.
Yeha, it's less fun to program humans, but you can get more done.
Imagine if people kept on saying "Engineering isn't just about building things, it's about design and aesthetics, it's important to know the elements of typography. It's all about that. As a Jr developer you can get away by not caring about design and beauty, but as you go up, it won't fly", then this would annoy most of us because even if it was an absolute requirement to know theory of types and aesthetics in order to do a work as an engineer in a bigger company, that ISN'T fundamentally engineering.
Engineering at its core is about building things, and on it's shoulders other elements (like design, users, engineering management etc) stands. Just like if you are an educator, at it's core, it's about teaching.
> Suddenly, I realized that I could achieve more by engineering people through writing design docs, code review, and cat-herding.
And you'd discover that by learning psychology, you are achieving even more. The problem is, in that case Psychology to HR is the same as Legal to HR, it's expansion of domain.
Evidently so. Damore was fired for admitting exactly that.
His over-arching point is fundamentally incorrect (as evidenced by the fact that other countries see engineering as a stereotypically female job), and even if it were correct, he didn't provide any actually acceptable proof of said claim.
Let's ignore what I just said though and look at your "group differences are in part responsible" line there. What does it matter if something is in part responsible? How does that at all completely invalidate the possibility that Google is discriminatory? Let's say for a second that Google actually does discriminate against women. Is that perfectly fine now because biological differences are in part to blame? How does that at all invalidate the actual problem being addressed by the diversity memo?
There is a difference between proving something is possible and that something is True. Damore may have only demonstrated the first, but this is enough to refute the claim "There is sexism in tech because the gender ratio is not equal".
This is why it is important that group differences are in part responsible - it puts a burden on Google et al to find the magnitude if that influence, rather than attribute all of it to sexism. In other words, you can't attribute anything to sexism (without proof) as soon as there are multiple possible influences/causes.
No, it means he picked articles that supported his viewpoint while ignoring the ones that didn't.
>There is a difference between proving something is possible and that something is True. Damore may have only demonstrated the first, but this is enough to refute the claim "There is sexism in tech because the gender ratio is not equal".
Damore demonstrated the first, and then used that to say that to completely discount any sexism in tech.
>This is why it is important that group differences are in part responsible - it puts a burden on Google et al to find the magnitude if that influence, rather than attribute all of it to sexism. In other words, you can't attribute anything to sexism (without proof) as soon as there are multiple possible influences/causes.
That exact statement could be used against Damore and his supporters.
EDIT: to add to this, Damore would've been completely justified if he had said this to open a dialogue, but he didn't. He should have said "There are multiple possibilities, let's not immediately jump to conclusions.", but he didn't. He took a handful of Wikipedia articles, twisted around what they said to fit his confirmation bias, then said "I'm right, you're wrong, deal with it." and then claimed that was the truth (his twitter handle is @fired4truth). He's very clearly a narcissist who can't handle that he could possibly be wrong.
Maybe the author is more comfortable role-playing Larry Page with stuff like that.
It's basically impossible to discuss this subject without it being motivated reasoning. It's a profession in which it is notoriously difficult to measure aptitude and productivity. And it's a field of study that's a landmine for researchers to study for exactly the same reason as the fact that every single Damore-related thread here blows up into an uncivilized moderation war filled with name calling and insults.
We're still at a point where the science isn't pointing one way or the other and we haven't even settled on any decent metric to give to the scientists to calibrate any testing they'd be brave enough to explore. Is it any wonder that discussions on this topic are rife with confirmation bias? We're not going to approach anything resembling a productive conversation on this topic until both sides concede that the other side might have some point and that the true answer, as almost all true answers do, lies somewhere in between the polar ends of the spectrum that people argue from.
If anyone who agrees with James Damore's point is motivated to see the reason these arguments are summarily dismissed by many, I recommend reading "the mismeasure of man", by Stephen Jay Gould.
The idea of biological determinism has one fatal flaw... the grouping.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/science/14skull.html?r...
Guess he'll have to join the throngs of people fired for motivated reasoning to arrive at 'diversity is strength' and 'everyone is equal'.
Slightly off-topic, most "logical fallacies" actually have very important heuristic uses. Just to get the ball rolling, "ad hominem" becomes extremely useful in a world in which we have limited access to full information, and have to constantly evaluate the reliability of outside parties.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/k9/the_logical_fallacy_of_generaliza...
Not very compelling, which is too bad because I was hoping to read something a lot more succinct.
