[asciicircum]

Could someone opposed to the arguments the manifesto makes explain to me what quotes caused them to strongly dislike it?

Reading the reactions to the manifesto I'm left feeling like I'm taking crazy pills. I must have read a different manifesto.

AFAICT the main idea of the manifesto is that biological differences between men and women account for part of the representation gap. This seems to be perfectly logical and fair to me. Whether the explained part is significant or just a fraction of a percent should definitely be discussed. The available version of the manifesto not having its sources makes this a lot harder though.

> The text of the post is reproduced in full below, with some minor formatting modifications. Two charts and several hyperlinks are also omitted.

If your offense is with the manifesto misrepresenting the amount of the gap explained by biological differences I can relate to your point of view and this post is not directed at you (which quotes of the manifesto lead to this impression would still be interesting to hear).

If not, I would really like to understand where you are coming from. The manifesto does not seem sexist (e.g. representing women in tech as inadequate) to me. Some quotes from the manifesto to support my claim:

> I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes.

> Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business

> Many of these [biological] differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.

> I hope it’s clear that I’m not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that we shouldn’t try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority.

> I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).

Please help me understand.

[schimmy_changa]

The issue is that he is trying to solve an social problem via engineering, and in trying to simplify the problem, not spending enough time researching, and by "de emphasizing empathy" he takes a step backwards.

Basically, he sets forward incorrect assertions about biological differences without the self-awareness about why he takes those differences as truth. For instance "Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things". This is true at least in a very large part because women are socialized from birth to do so. There are dozens of similar examples.

The people unhappy with him are frustrated by always having to make the same damn argument to the same people who somehow think behavioral evolution is the end-all-be-all, as if somehow the computer they're typing on was a natural result of that evolution.

Now, in this particular case I don't think the author had any bad intent, and I think people who disagree should argue straightforwardly and use this as a great, clear opportunity to address the many people who actually do agree with this person but don't speak out. I also think the author has some good feedback when it comes to how dissenting opinions are heard on the left, but it's overshadowed by his lack of understanding of the more serious problem of bias and discrimination of women in tech. (yes, it is a more serious problem than conservatives being unable to express their views - at least they can choose to talk or not, even if I'd rather everyone be able to freely share their views)

[thecupisblue]

>but it's overshadowed by his lack of understanding of the more serious problem of bias and discrimination of women in tech.

Huh I didn't get that, I actually thought he understands there is a problem with bias and discrimination, but he also points out there are other reasons why there is not a balance and why there won't be a 50/50 balance and forcing it might be bad. Now, I don't agree with his writing completely and honestly haven't done the research to know if it's true or not, and personally feel like the problem is rooted in education of our young ones.

Still, I'm afraid to speak out on this issue and this is the first time I've voiced I even partially agree with him. Honestly, I just skipped discussing this issue.

> The people unhappy with him are frustrated by always having to make the same damn argument to the same people who somehow think behavioral evolution is the end-all-be-all, as if somehow the computer they're typing on was a natural result of that evolution.

I don't get that feeling and that's why I don't want to comment on it. I get a feeling like he does, anyone with an opinion that doesn't fit the super-uber-equality narrative isn't countered with arguments, but attacked, shamed and "blacklisted". As people in tech, an industry that is supposed to build a better feature, I believe we should be better than this, we should be rational and use arguments, we shouldn't attack, shame or fire someone who doesn't agree with us but discuss it. Really makes me sad and I hope I get to cash out and leave tech as soon I can. Is it fair that I'm just 25 and don't want to work on what I love anymore because people have turned it into a toxic community where differing opinions are assaulted? Isn't equality to all people, views and opinions what diversity is about?

(Note: This isn't as much as an reply to your post as much as I wanted to reply but it lead me to a mini-rant. Just like, fuck this, I don't wanna be a part of this shithole anymore)

[schimmy_changa]

I feel ya, this stuff wears me down too. It's exhausting thinking about this stuff and wondering what the right thing to say or do is.

However, that's exactly what the women and other under-represented minorities have to handle every day in tech! (and they don't even get the option to skip discussing the issue)

There's a reason women leave tech, and it's the reason you're feeling right now! And there's a problem if we don't address those feelings.

[schimmy_changa]

... and now I'm getting downvotes after answering the OP's question earnestly trying to provide the opposing viewpoint ...

[peacetreefrog]

With respect, I feel like part of you having been down voted is because your second paragraph is doing exactly what you accuse this memo writer of, namely "sets forward incorrect assertions about biological differences without the self-awareness about why he takes those differences as truth".

A cursory reading of the literate suggests at least some evidence that the differences can't be explained by socialization, for example. See:

"In her preface to the first edition, Halpern wrote: “At the time, it seemed clear to me that any between-sex differences in thinking abilities were due to socialization practices, artifacts and mistakes in the research, and bias and prejudice. ... After reviewing a pile of journal articles that stood several feet high and numerous books and book chapters that dwarfed the stack of journal articles … I changed my mind.”

"Why? 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."

https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-...

Is this the end all be all? No. Does it mean women can't be good engineers? No. Does this episode lead to more self awareness all around? Hopefully.

[peacetreefrog]

The problem is bringing up biological differences (even just in terms of groups and allowing for lots of individual overlap, and even in this case, when the differences aren't nec better or worse, just differences). It's a non-starter to many people, particularly on the left (see the Bell Curve).

One the one hand, I sort of get it, given historically people have used biology/similar arguments to justify a lot of awful things. If Hitler was around now, it'd be sort of disgusting to ask people to engage his argument on its merits (this is where some of the Nazi language re: this manifesto comes in I think).

But, when it's presented like it is here, making clear that individual variation is much greater than differences between groups (e.g., he's not talking about existing female engineers at google or anyone else in particular), stressing that diversity/human dignity/worth etc are all paramount even if there are group level biological differences/trends. Then I think the lynch mob/monoculture/not engaging reaction is in the wrong, and the reaction to this very much proves one of the guy's main points. But that's my two cents.

[11thEarlOfMar]

>>...feeling like I'm taking crazy pills...

Include me as a fellow confused person. My read is a bit more succinct: "We value people who are different, but, we don't talk about what makes us different."

I am not good at hints, subtleties or reading between lines. Behaving properly in such a nuanced circumstance is really a non-starter for me and I'd rather disconnect completely than walk through that type of minefield.

[jjirsa]

I find this to be well written:

https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man...

Notably:

1) The document makes a fundamentally flawed argument - that is, he's based his whole argument on a flawed premise that women just aren't interested in being engineers (and it's clearly wrong, because gender ratios were nearly identical until about the mid 80s; it's not a biological difference, it's a social and cultural difference, which means it has a social and cultural solution). Biological traits vary between genders, but the variance is TINY for most that aren't physical (strength, etc).

2) Even if he were right about men and women being biologically prone to certain traits, those he attributed to women tend to make them better engineers (and especially better engineering managers) anyway.

3) The document has (rightfully) alienated women inside and outside his organization, which makes it impossible for this person to be an effective member of the team. The next time a woman interviews for his team, and he votes against hiring, how does the hiring committee interpret that vote? The next time he's peer reviewed by a woman, how does that review get interpreted? The next time he peer reviews a woman, how does that review get interpreted? The next time a female candidate interviews with the author and is denied, how likely is it that the candidate will believe they had a fair interview, or is the organiation perpetually exposed to increased legal risk forever? Such a manifesto is toxic and shows a profound lack of awareness for any professional.

[PrimalDual]

1. I could not find the source stating that gender ratios were identical before the 80's in engineering. I do know that there used be a more even ratio of male/female programmers but I think the field has changed enough from those times that I would be wary of anyone claiming to make an apples to apples comparison.

2.His points about what makes a good engineering manager skips over the fact that to get good at engineering you have to practice it a lot. You have to spend a significant amount of time alone coding/engineering to grasp well enough that understanding the customer starts mattering a lot more. The guy that wrote the post seems to come from a perspective of so much experience and talent that he forgot or perhaps doesn't even know how hard it is go get started in the field.

3. I think the part about alienating women comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of the manifesto and probability in general. Saying that women in general are less interested or less capable to be a google enginner says essentially nothing about the individuals before you. Trying to infer qualities of an individual from a distribution is racism but making statements about distributions shouldn't be. You can only talk about the whole distribution of google employees and perhaps justify(or fail to justify) the imbalance. Obviously, being a google employee is a much more informative prior than the gender of an individual.

[joshuamorton]

>I think the part about alienating women comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of the manifesto and probability in general

And yet empirically, women have been alienated.

[jjirsa]

> I do know that there used be a more even ratio of male/female programmers but I think the field has changed enough from those times that I would be wary of anyone claiming to make an apples to apples comparison

Yea, it's gotten a lot easier, a lot less rigorous. Problems hadn't been solved, nobody even knew if things WERE possible (let alone how to do them), and they certainly didn't have stackoverflow to go ask for help when they got stuck. Now that you mention it, perhaps you've figured it out - maybe all the women engineers have moved on to harder, more interesting endeavors.

> You have to spend a significant amount of time alone coding/engineering to grasp well enough that understanding the customer starts mattering a lot more

There is never a requirement that you have to code in isolation. Period. Paragraph. End of story. This is a fiction. Nobody should EVER code in a bubble, and especially not junior engineers.

> I think the part about alienating women comes from a fundamental misunderstanding

Nope. It comes from reading.

[Udik]

> Reading the reactions to the manifesto I'm left feeling like I'm taking crazy pills

I've discovered several years ago, debating very similar issues on usenet, that people (maybe some people, but a good proportion in any case) have the ability to make themselves perfectly blind to aspects of reality they decided to disregard. They'll be even ready to contradict themselves multiple times in the space of a few sentences, and never admit it, rather than allowing the possibility of a different view. I think it must be what allowed religious piety and bigotry to flourish for millennia: a natural disposition to stand with all your heart and soul to defend ideas that unite a community. Climate change (irrespective of its scientific validity) is another of those.

[matt4077]

> They'll be even ready to contradict themselves multiple times in the space of a few sentences

> Climate change (irrespective of its scientific validity) is another of those.

[Udik]

If you mean I'm contradicting myself, not sure: one thing is something being true or false, another is how you defend it and how capable you are of even taking in consideration that you might be wrong.

[ubernostrum]

For one thing, it assumes that a small alleged "biological difference" is sufficient to explain a gigantic observed effect. If we were to suppose that this difference translated directly into a difference of precisely the same magnitude in programming competence, it still would not be enough to account for the amount of skew observed in actual gender ratios in programming.

The supposedly rational author and his supposedly rational fans apparently are happy to overlook this, however. Running the numbers and figuring out what the expected skew would be seemingly has not crossed their minds.

And a larger problem is that this is not the first time someone has made such an argument. It's been made before, many times, in other fields, and was eventually demonstrated to be false: massive disparity turned out to be more a function of bias in hiring and performance evaluations than anything else. The classic example, once again, is classical music, where the very same "women just are naturally less inclined" and "biological differences mean men are just on average better" arguments used to be trotted out to explain gender disparity. Then the classical-music world started using blind auditions (where evaluators could hear a candidate's performance, but not see the candidate or know the candidate's gender until after completing their evaluation). And suddenly... the gender ratio shifted significantly.

Music was one of the first fields to undergo this shift, but wasn't the last. And yet the author of this manifesto seems blissfully unaware of the precedent from other fields where similar arguments were trotted out. Or, to be as charitable as possible, fails to explain why programming deserves to be a special singular exception to the trend of fields arguing "biological differences" and getting served with proof that it was actually bias all along.

And largest of all is the problem that this alleged biological difference, if it were an explanation, would earn a Nobel prize for anyone who could prove it, because within living memory programming had a very different gender ratio (both for programming jobs, and university computer-science enrollment). So this biological difference would have had to have evolved extremely recently, and spread through the human population with incredible rapidity, including likely being CRISPR'd into women who already were working as programmers or studying CS, in order to un-qualify them for it.

In other words, it falls apart on even the most superficial examination of its claims. There is no "taboo" or "facts nobody's allowed to talk about" or "politically incorrect but everybody knows it's true" here. There's just an incredibly shoddy argument which has been debunked more times than anyone cares to count, and yet somehow is still accepted blindly by people who desperately want a justification for tech's gender ratio that doesn't include "this industry discriminates against women".

[CalChris]

> Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.

He's telling this to a $650B company. And then just to cover for himself, he says:

> I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more.

And then:

> My concrete suggestions are to: De-moralize diversity

But my favorite is:

> Stop alienating conservatives.

[asciicircum]

I don't want to put words in your mouth and would be happy to hear more of what exactly you disagree with in these quotes. Nevertheless, here's my take:

>> Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.

> He's telling this to a $650B company.

I assume your reaction is towards the "bad for business" and I agree, without any supporting evidence he is not qualified to tell google what is right.

> And then just to cover for himself, he says:

>> I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more.

I assume you see a conflict between striving for diversity / equal representation and opposing positive discrimination ("Discrimination to reach equal representation").

Looking at the context of the quote I think his argument is consistent though: Assuming biological differences account for a part of the representation gap, it is unfair to use positive discrimination to reach 50/50 representation. At what ratio fair representation lies depends on how much the biological differences explain for and as long as we don't know that, we don't know how much positive discrimination is fair.

>> Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.

I don't think I understand your pov enough to answer quote 3 and 4 but would be happy to see you expand your opinion on them a little.

[CalChris]

Perhaps if I reversed the order of these sentences:

> I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more. [But] Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, ....

This just makes no sense to me. As the $650B number suggests, whatever Google is doing it sure works for them. However Trump now wants his Justice Department to look into affirmative action as a form of anti-white discrimination [1] so maybe you will have the law on your side.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/08/02/o...