[IMTDb]

> Sooner or later, one must take a stand, which is exactly what Google executives just did.

Exactly but then in the statement, don't pretend people should have the ability to speak their mind freely. By firing the guy they basically closed that door entirely, they choose to inflict the maximum penalty they legally could on a guy that wrote an internal memo.

Google executives basically just said: "Anyone expressing any other view other than our official politically correct position will be excommunicated (fired) on the spot" then goes on saying "but hey, we like free speech you know ;-)". They are not fooling anyone.

You may agree with the manifesto author or not, but his thought were articulate. He provided evidence for his theories and at no point was he needlessly insulting to anyone.

I feel a better response form the Google team would have been to issue a statement defending and justifying their position: "Google executive team does not agree with those theories for reasons X Y and Z, and our internal measurements have shown that mixed gender teams perform on average better for X Y and Z reasons as shown by report foo and bar. We however agree with the author that gender equality is a difficult issue to tackle bla bla bla".

The discussion would have moved to the manifesto evidence vs Google evidence and we would have actually had something to talk about regarding gender equality. Now it's just about Google inability to cope with free speech inside the company, as shown by the Bloomberg article.

[gobugat]

> "You may agree with the manifesto author or not, but his thought were articulate. He provided evidence for his theories and at no point was he needlessly insulting to anyone. "

No, no, and no. Asserting that half of humanity is incapable of taking on pressure and responsibility is insulting, and suggesting that his rant was articulate or evidenced shows a serious lack of basic humanity. Strong words, but as I said, this is not a TV debate. This is a struggle. We won't convince each other here.

[mrarg]

> Asserting that half of humanity is incapable of taking on pressure and responsibility is insulting [...]

That is actually what he is trying extra hard to explain that he is _not_ asserting (if you go read the thing).

It's basically what he is spending the first few pages trying to be absolutely clear about. The overlapping normal distribution curves is a very immediate way to visualise it, but an excerpt will have to do:

"Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these 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."

[zimpenfish]

Can you not see how Glenn Beck this sounds? "Now I'm not -saying- that Obama is a Muslim; I'm just asking the difficult questions about why people think he is and letting you draw your own conclusions" [from my leading questions and speculation which is designed to funnel you down one path]

[zbobet2012]

But he didn't do that. At all.

He opens _and closes_ with:

> Many of these 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.

He even includes a chart to show the amount of overlap between the curves (high) and directly argues against applying traits towards individual behavior.

Let's phrase this another way if I state that if you are "black" (sub-Saharan African) in origin you have a higher likelyhood of Sickle-cell is that racist?

No. It is a _population_, _average_ difference.

Now the _science he cites_ (women are more prone to Neuroticism) is less well settled. That's something to disagree with.

But if its insulting to even have a discussion that the population of women, on average, show different traits then men what discussion _can be had_? Can we even talk about diseases that are more likely to affect women? What's okay?

[ticviking]

> Asserting that half of humanity is incapable of taking on pressure and responsibility is insulting

Where in his manifesto did he say that?

I've read it through a few times, and nowhere does he say that.