[matchu]

It's important to distinguish between what the memo's author says, and what effect his words actually have. It is an anti-diversity memo, even if it isn't intended as one.

The author makes shaky statements about gender, reinforcing sexist stereotypes. The author applies rationalist disclaimers, which enables already-sexist readers to feel that their sexism is rational. And, most distressingly, the author asserts that Google made a mistake hiring many of the women who work there. Actively making your minority coworkers feel unwelcome is an anti-diversity behavior, and it was an obvious and predictable consequence of how he chose to communicate.

I don't claim to know the author's intent, or how he truly feels about the women he works with. But, regardless of whether he's actually opposed to diversity, we judge words by their consequences. These words are thoroughly anti-diversity in consequence, and judging them in a vacuum is dangerously naive.

[pdkl95]

> I don't claim to know the author's intent

What so many comments about this memo don't seem to understand is that it it isn't possible to derive the author's intent from the text of their work. The intent of the author isn't included when the reader interprets their work, because the author isn't there[1] to explain their intent. The reader only sees the work.

As you said, intent doesn't matter. When authoring a work, it's important to consider how the work might be interpreted.

[1] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeathOfTheAuthor (apologies for using a tvtropes link. It was better than Google's other suggestions)

[zbyte64]

One of his recommendations was to emphasize intent over unintended offenses.

[throwawayjava]

>> The intent of the author isn't included when the reader interprets their work, because the author isn't there[1] to explain their intent

This is not a recommendation, and it is not a value judgement. It's just a reality.

[wry_discontent]

This could be overcome by and large with a modicum of research and critical thinking.

[throwawayjava]

> ...a modicum of research and critical thinking.

You're assuming that each piece of text has only a single possible interpretation when "research and critical thinking" are applied to its interpretation.

This is so far from the truth I'm not really sure what to say.

For the current topic, see e.g., https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio... You'd be hard pressed -- or perhaps simply obstinate -- to claim this piece is devoid of "research" or "critical thinking".

Beyond the current topic, your opinion becomes so obviously false I really don't know what to even say. As a base-line example, let's take any pair of 5-4 SCOTUS opinions on a constitutional matter. I suppose it's possible that half of the supreme court justices (and often slightly different halves) are routinely incapable of critical thinking of research to the text of laws and of the consitution. But that seems like an exceptionally arrogant explanation.

Believing "only my reading of the text is possible if you're remotely capable of research and critical thinking" is, for an author, an extraordinarily enormous mistake.

[pdkl95]

No, it can't. This is a fundamental limit of language, because language itself - which you're using to accomplish your research - requires using imperfect symbols.

If you don't mind 100% spoilers for Davey Wreden's game "The Beginner's Guide", I highly recommend watching "The Artist is Absent"[1]. It's a surprisingly good introduction to semiotics, death of the author, and enunciation theory, which together explain why you can interpret the narrator of a work, which should never be confused with the author.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N6y6LEwsKc

[Danihan]

Define sexism...

Is believing men and women on average have different hormone levels and generally speaking, this leads to different behaviors and proclivities, sexist?

Is admitting there is any difference between the two sexes, sexist?

Is using different pronouns for men and women sexist?

I honestly don't know where someone draws the line who finds this memo "sexist."

[matchu]

I haven't decided yet whether I think the memo is sexist. But I'm confident that, because of how it's written, sexist people who read it will feel validated in their sexism.

It uses the same core argument as sexism: women are less suited to certain tasks, perhaps biologically. And it reaches the same conclusion: we should roll back our pro-diversity and pro-empathy programs. A sexist person who reads this will therefore feel that it supports their views, and, because the argument seems rationalist, they'll conclude that their poor treatment of women is rationalist. That might not be the intent of the document, but it is a predictable outcome.

Words that validate sexist behavior, intentionally or unintentionally, contribute to the problem. Regardless of the merit of the underlying idea, or the valuable conversations it inspired, it's important to remember that the memo itself did harm. It's appropriate that some people are focusing on that.

[slavak]

This idea of avoiding saying something because of how horrible people might choose to interpret it is something I find, frankly, terrifying. This is going beyond just censorship and going into the realm of trying to censor reality.

Where do you draw the line on something like this? Are we allowed to publish statistics that show black people are proportionally more involved in crimes, or is this taboo because a white supremacist might use it to claim blacks are inherently criminal? What if you write something apparently neutral but some terrible person somehow finds a way to twist it to their ends? Do we get to condemn you ex-post-facto over this?

[matchu]

I'm not saying don't have these conversations. Rather, have them carefully, and choose your words with the consequences in mind. There are many good and thoughtful ways to talk about potential issues with Google's gender diversity programs, but instead this memo made some especially bad choices.

For one thing, the memo focuses on needlessly contentious issues, instead of sticking to actionable arguments. It's valid to say that decreasing stress in engineering and leadership positions might attract more women, because modern women tend that value that more. But framing it as a biological issue is hard to prove, and doesn't help support his logistical point. It only has the consequence of hurting people.

The memo also presumes that Google's full-time diversity experts haven't even thought of his concerns. He asserts that seeking out women necessarily lowers the hiring bar for them, instead of asking "How are we mitigating the risk that our pro-diversity push might itself introduce bias into our ideally gender-agnostic perf evaluations?" That's a valid question, and I'm sure Google's diversity team has answers, and I'm sure that some people wouldn't be satisfied with those answers. But jumping to the conclusion that Google's women must be less qualified than the men, just because he can't think of a way to mitigate bias in the hiring pipeline, is self-centered and disrespectful.

I'm very much in favor of a world where it's equally okay to express all ideas! But that doesn't mean we should be equally okay with all modes of expression. No matter which side we're on, we need to think first, then speak. Given the meta-thesis of the memo (especially the "prioritize intent" section), I'm not convinced that the author took much time to consider needs beyond his own.

[slavak]

> It's valid to say that decreasing stress in engineering and leadership positions might attract more women, because modern women tend that value that more. But framing it as a biological issue is hard to prove, and doesn't help support his logistical point. It only has the consequence of hurting people.

What it sounds like you're saying is that saying women are on average more sensitive to stress based on extensive scientific research which implies a strong biological basis, is contentious and hurtful. But then for some reason saying modern women tend to put more value on a stress-free environment, based on nothing but an unsupported assertion, is somehow better?

I don't have a crystal ball, but I suspect you're being naive and that the outrage would have been much the same no matter how he'd chosen to frame this statement. The very assertion that men and women have some innate differences that might be worth exploring seems to be tantamount to blasphemy -- particularly when coming from a man!

> The memo also presumes that Google's full-time diversity experts haven't even thought of his concerns. He asserts that seeking out women necessarily lowers the hiring bar for them, instead of asking "How are we mitigating the risk that our pro-diversity push might itself introduce bias into our ideally gender-agnostic perf evaluations?" That's a valid question, and I'm sure Google's diversity team has answers, and I'm sure that some people wouldn't be satisfied with those answers. But jumping to the conclusion that Google's women must be less qualified than the men, just because he can't think of a way to mitigate bias in the hiring pipeline, is self-centered and disrespectful.

This is just you projecting your presumed intentions on the author. At no point in the memo did he claim or imply that Google's women are less qualified than the men. The only paragraph that can really be taken to say that is the part about "lowering the bar" for diversity candidates; Which is, admittedly, an unfortunate choice of words in retrospect. However the same sentence clarifies that the bar is "lowered" by decreasing the false-negative rate for diversity candidates, meaning those that are accepted are still qualified at the same standards. The sentence also includes a reference for this claim, but this is unfortunately to an internal Google group so we don't know its contents.

On the other hand, right at the start of the document the author takes pains (including a big colorful picture to illustrate the point) to point out that "you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions," which should make it pretty clear that he's NOT claiming Google's female engineers are less qualified.

> I'm very much in favor of a world where it's equally okay to express all ideas! But that doesn't mean we should be equally okay with all modes of expression. No matter which side we're on, we need to think first, then speak. Given the meta-thesis of the memo (especially the "prioritize intent" section), I'm not convinced that the author took much time to consider needs beyond his own.

This is saying that one must choose his words like a politician and consider the reaction of the world at large when distributing a personal opinion document not intended for wide publication to a select group of individuals. The idea that one's career might hinge on using the proper newspeak in such a document is, frankly, terrifying to me. Do people have a right to be upset about his choice of wording or angry at his opinions? Sure, absolutely! But losing your career for this, over an opinion that is, arguably, not really harmful or hateful and expressed in a relatively considerate tone, is something else entirely.

[matchu]

Mm, thanks for calling out the false-negative thing! I think I misparsed that the first time around and got confused between decreasing false negatives and increasing false positives. That's embarrassing, sorry ^_^`

In any case, I think I made a mistake suggesting specific improvements to the memo; lemme pop off the stack a bit:

It's not okay to publish a document to your coworkers that will predictably make them feel unsafe. Full stop.

When you want to express an idea at work, you need to engage in empathy, and try to express yourself in such a way that your coworkers will still feel safe with you. If you can't figure out how to express an idea without hurting your coworkers, then, yeah, you don't get to express it unless you figure something out :/ That's an appropriate workplace policy, and I'm comfortable with the general idea that freedom of expression is subject to some conditions. I know not everybody agrees with that prioritization, though!

More importantly, I'm just tired of articles like this one dismissing the social consequences lens outright. There's more than one valid issue being raised in our community right now, and the importance of one doesn't invalidate the others. Let's have both conversations: how to enable expression of less common ideas, and how to ensure that we express them empathetically. If we approach the problem thoughtfully, I think we can optimize for both :)

(BTW I edited this comment a lot during the first 30 minutes, and pretty significantly changed its contents. Sorry if that ends up being an issue!)

[zbyte64]

s/sexist/racist/g

Weird how race realists use the same template.

[echaozh]

People of the different races are definitely different. Otherwise, why do people evolve to so different races? The white people may be better fit for higher latitudes, while the black people may tolerate more heat and sunshine.

In mentality, there may also be differences due to tens of thousands of years of different ways of gather food, even though those differences may be converged by education.

Denying existing differences is not leading to equality. Admit the reality and see if there's anything we can do to improve the situation.

[malandrew]

https://status451.com/2017/08/06/judging-things-by-their-sid...

[matchu]

Yeah, that's a good point! It's important to consider the truth of the underlying idea, as well as the consequences of how it was expressed—though I don't like that the blog post seems to give up on the latter problem just because it's less objective. Discussions about social values and social consequences are worth having, despite not being subject to pure rationalism.

Still, while both lenses are valid, I'm focusing on the consequences lens, because we're discussing an Atlantic article that tries to invalidate it. It's not misleading to call the memo "anti-diversity", if you're focusing on the memo's role as a social artifact rather than as a dissertation, and that's a valid perspective. Words often serve both roles, and it's important to consider both.

(Incidentally, I don't find the memo's argument to be especially sound, either, so it's not just that it was expressed carelessly—but that's sorta beyond the scope of this thread.)

[ChemicalWarfare]

>>It's not misleading to call the memo "anti-diversity"

if I had to summarize the memo with an "anti-..." prefix then I would say it's against artificially skewing the gender makeup of the workforce via preferential treatment of female applicants/employees over the discriminated male applicants/employees.

if that's what "diversity" means then I don't know on what logical basis you would be defending the "let's make sure we have a 50/50 gender makeup of the workforce even though the proportion in the applicant's pool is nowhere near that" position.

I myself (and from what I've read in that "manifesto" I believe this is author's position as well) welcome diversity - the 'IT sausage fest' is totally a downside - but not at the expense of ppl getting gender-discriminated.