[mwytock]

A lot of people on "our side" did a bad job of simply refuting the argument presented. Its straightforward to do in one sentence:

"While there may be scientific evidence of differences between men and women, using these differences to conclude that women are biologically less inclined to engineering is a gross leap in reasoning that is not at all supported by the facts."

Then you can go on and explain why for historical and societal reasons putting forth this weak theory is highly offensive and damaging to a large group of people.

Of course, many feel that you shouldn't _have_ to explain this to people, but unfortunately in todays environment, you do!

[chongli]

"While there may be scientific evidence of differences between men and women, using these differences to conclude that women are biologically less inclined to engineering is a gross leap in reasoning that is not at all supported by the facts."

That is not true. The facts support the exact opposite conclusion: that prenatal exposure to androgens orients a person toward things/systems rather than people. [0]

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/

[mwytock]

I'm not sure what you are arguing, can you be more explicit? You're saying that you agree with the fundamental point of the memo?

[chongli]

I'm saying that the scientific research agrees with the point of the memo. Whether or not I agree is irrelevant to the facts.

[mwytock]

I see. Well I'm saying it does not. Obviously we disagree about what the scientific research says.

[LunaSea]

Could you link to these research papers you are mentioning?

[mwytock]

See citation above. I'm saying its much too strong a claim to go from this paper to the conclusion that women are biologically less inclined to engineering.

EDIT: To be consistent with my original statement (see child)

[lobotryas]

You start by saying something is not "supported by the facts" and then go on by talking about how it's "highly offensive" (i.e.: hurts your feelings). I just want you to meditate on this for a bit.

[mwytock]

I'm not sure what the contradiction is here?

Also, I wasn't making any claim about my own feelings, the massive response shows that the memo was highly offensive to many people.

[LunaSea]

Something being offensive doesn't mean it's wrong or that it shouldn't be debated.

[mwytock]

Well, saying things that are clearly wrong and offensive to large numbers of people is typically looked down upon amongst educated people and highly discouraged at the workplace.

For example, think of other stereotypes about other groups (blacks, hispanics, jews) and think about what the response would be if an employee was publishing 10 page manifestos with loosely connected scientific arguments in support of these views.

[LunaSea]

There is nothing that is clearly wrong about the memo in itself and lots of Googlers actually voiced support for it and agreed. So your comment would be equally offensive to them because you call them uneducated and their opinion invalid.

Creating a strawman argument around racial stereotypes is just an added layer of misdirection and tastelessness.

[yorwba]

There is something clearly wrong about the memo: it uses the direction of various effects to make a qualitative argument to explain a quantitative difference in gender distribution. If he had instead used the effect sizes in his reasoning, and predicted the resulting distribution (allowing direct comparison with reality), it would be much easier to objectively determine where he is right and where wrong. I'm fairly convinced that some of the things he mentions have a large enough effect to measurably affect the gender distribution among Google's employees, but some are guaranteed to be smaller than the noise floor. As it stands, his argument is easily dismissed as a collection of mostly irrelevant trivia.

[mwytock]

You made a blanket statement about discussing offensive things and I wanted to point out there are some limits, especially at the workplace.

In this particular case, I feel that leadership and everyone who disagreed with the memo should have at least stated explicitly (if briefly) what the flaws in the reasoning were, as I tried to do at the beginning of this thread.

Obviously, my explanation was not sufficient to convince you and you are still holding on to the belief that women are biologically ill-suited to be engineers. But at least now I have tried to make it clear to you where I think you are wrong. Thats pretty much all you can accomplish on some issues.

[jamesrcole]

I'm all for people arguing against it, but your 'one sentence' doesn't argue the point at all, it just asserts it. It literally just asserts that it "is a gross leap in reasoning that is not at all supported by the facts". I'm all for someone arguing for the points in that quoted fragment, but you can't claim that they're true just because you've said them.

[mwytock]

You're right, my one sentence is just trying to explain the basic point to people who may not get it. Its not trying to lay out a complete thesis in support. I'm not sure if thats a necessary exercise, especially for the CEO.

[ebola1717]

I think people have done a very good job of saying that. They just get drowned out by outrage from the right, and overly clipped soundbites from both sides.

My twitter feed has tons of very thoughtful pieces responding to the memo. They just never breach the front page of Hacker News.

[mwytock]

Maybe. I don't think Sundar Pichai or Danielle Brown did though, they just said "this is not OK" and "code of conduct". Perhaps they felt they didn't need to engage with this kind of argument, but that mentality is exactly what has a lot of people upset.