> Yes, I am indeed arguing for free speech that's also free from consequences
I don't often see someone actually owning up to this view - good for you.
I'm not sure how it's possible to enforce speech that is free from consequences. Do you have a specific definition of "consequence" that you'd like to elaborate on? Anything could be a consequence (like, just hearing the speech in the first place). What is it specifically that you're trying to protect against?
> I don't often see someone actually owning up to this view - good for you.
Not sure if you meant it this way but "owning up" sounds like it's something to be ashamed of. I'm quite proud of being a classical liberal and supporting free speech even if it does unfortunately mean that some not very nice people also get to their say their piece.
> Do you have a specific definition of "consequence" that you'd like to elaborate on? Anything could be a consequence (like, just hearing the speech in the first place).
The parent poster is the one that introduced the word "consequences" into the discussion (as I was careful to note in my response) so I refer your question to him/her. Judging by the approval with which s/he speaks of Danmore's firing, it seems rather improbable that it's benign to the recipient though.
Altera took many of the employees (although quite a few are now at AWS) and it's rumored they also bought the IP. A lot of the core ideas will live on in Stratix, hopefully.
Prop 13 is perhaps the biggest reason for the lack of supply. The other reasons you mention (zoning, NIMBYism, etc.) are also big contributors.
But tech is where the demand comes from. The median home price in Santa Clara county is almost $1.3M, and ~20% of residents can afford that price. Those are tech workers.
Supply has been steadily decreasing for years and years, so I don't see that problem getting solved. Therefore I think we'd need to see a significant drop in the tech industry for prices to slow down.
1. The optimization problems that EDA tools have to solve are about as hard as it gets - NP-hard and sigma 2p problems at a massive scale. I'd argue that these are among the hardest optimization problems in modern computer science today.
2. The number of people with the CS + EE training to develop this software is decreasing. Not a lot of people are getting PhDs in EDA anymore, because:
3. Regular software houses (Google, Amazon, etc.) have about 2-3x the comp as EDA companies. Trust me I've seen a lot of incredibly smart EDA people jump to Google and more than double their salary overnight.
I doubt Intel is going to shift the balance here. It's not easy to develop a fast and efficient SP&R flow.
You know, we would all like faster synthesize and P&R cycles, but when people complain about the tooling being shit, that's not what they're complaining about. (Mostly)
> Those are actual falsifiable statements. They can be either true or false. The whole idea of considering them as "viewpoints" is ridiculous and it's precisely what's the problem with the whole environment surrounding the discussion.
Stop it - you are being extraordinarily deceptive with statements like this. Did you actually read this memo? And I mean read it critically? Are these quotes falsifiable statements?
"These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics."
Didn't see a citation for that. Care to cite the evidence? Can we prove that this assertion is true or false?
"This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs."
Would love to read your citation for anxiety leading to lower number of women in high stress jobs.
"Women on average look for more work-life balance while men have a higher drive for status on average
Unfortunately, as long as tech and leadership remain high status, lucrative careers, men may disproportionately want to be in them."
Again, I'd love to see some evidence showing that the desire for work life balance is the reason that men disproportionately in leadership positions in tech.
Stop pretending that just because the author has sources that his conclusions are supported. His argument was poor. Anyone with reasonable reading comprehension could see that, politics be damned.
Several of the studies he cites on biological differences in genders are well accepted, so far as I know the field. But the key conclusions that he draws from those studies (and really, the entire point of the memo) don't have any direct scientific support that I know of. Perhaps I am missing some key references. Care to provide citations for some of these?
"Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things ... These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics."
There's a citation for the first part. What's the evidence for the conclusion drawn?
"Neuroticism ... This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs."
Citation for why neuroticism leads to fewer women in high stress jobs?
How about the entire "Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap" section? That contains stuff like this:
"Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things"
"Women on average are more cooperative"
"Women on average look for more work-life balance while men have a higher drive for status on average"
Each of these statements (which at least hit my radar of being scientifically supported from the literature I know) is followed by some suggestions on how to improve the workplace for women. Implicit, of course, is that these aggregate scientific differences are somehow responsible for the gender gaps in tech. Any citations for why the quoted statements explain anything at all about gender differences in tech, rather than say, other STEM fields (biology? medicine? they have very different gender gaps).
It would be great to have the references I'm missing, because without them it sure appears the author is citing well accepted studies in order to make it look like his unsupported conclusions have "evidence".
Fair point. I'm here to defend the factual basis for his conclusions, not the logic that got him there.
At the end of the day, he told a just-so story; in this, he's no different than the "blame discrimination" camp. At least this story is an empirical one backed by self-reported work place surveys, cross-cultural analyses, etc. The fundamentalists opposing him just have some anecdotes, some unreproducible stereotype threat studies, and a healthy dose of religious conviction.
> So, stating true, scientifically verified facts that challenge Google's official political ideology is now a fireable offence.
Did you read the memo? I don't think you did. Let me help you distinguish fact from speculation. Quote from the memo:
"Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing)"
This is science supported by citations. Cool.
"These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics"
This is pure speculation without any supporting evidence. The document is littered with these unsupported conclusions that he arrives at which are several steps away from the actual science. I'd be happy to point them out at length.
It's extremely deceptive of you to say that he was fired for stating facts, while the minority of the points in his doc had any supporting facts whatsoever.
In fact, reports indicate that was fired for violating the Google code of conduct: http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/08/google-fires-james-damore.... If you'd like to present the argument for a) why he didn't violate the code of conduct or b) that's not why he was fired, by all means proceed. I'd be interested to see your evidence for that.
> the author of the memo is completely correct and, as others have said, his memo is drastically misrepresented in the coverage it has received. he simply points out that women could have less desire to go into fields such as cs because of their biological makeup.
I'm not sure you read the memo? The author never provided evidence for this claim - it's pure speculation. The only points he's able to support with science are the statements that there are biological differences between men and women. Quote:
"Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing)"
That is accompanied with citations. OK, sure, let's take that at face value.
Next, he says:
"These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics"
No citation, no nothing here - just pure guessing on his part. If you're going to make an assertion like this, you need evidence - just, "it makes sense to me!" isn't proving anything. I find it surprising and disappointing that so many fail to read this memo critically.
> men and women are not the same. The author is completely correct?
No one is saying men and women are the same. Similarly, no one is providing evidence to back up your and the author's assertions.
"Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing)"
That is accompanied with citations. OK, sure, let's take that at face value. No dispute here.
Next, he says:
"These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics"
No studies, no evidence, no nothing for this claim. X may lead to Y, because... the author feels in his gut that it may be true? This is not science. This is an unsupported assertion. The rest of the doc is littered with these claims, which I could happily go point by point through.
He may have gotten the science about biological differences between men and women correctly, but the conclusions that he drew using that science is totally unsubstantiated. And frankly, it is extremely deceptive to defend him by saying that "he cited studies" without examining how he linked those studies to his own pure speculation.
He made an argument for his conclusion based on his evidence. You can't prove with science that those things are why women prefer those jobs. But if the facts he cites in his evidence are true, it would not be unreasonable to hypothesize that women may prefer those jobs. If you want to argue that point, I think it's totally debatable. But that's just it - it's debatable.
EDIT: And as has come out, the author of this memo has a PhD in Biology. Here are comments from four PhD scientists in Sociology on the issue, if you'd like some credentials to go with it:
Did you read what those scientists say? While there is consensus on the memo's statements about biological differences (which again - I agree with), there is hardly consensus on the conclusions drawn:
"But it is not clear to me how such sex differences are relevant to the Google workplace. And even if sex differences in negative emotionality were relevant to occupational performance (e.g., not being able to handle stressful assignments), the size of these negative emotion sex differences is not very large (typically, ranging between “small” to “moderate” in statistical effect size terminology; accounting for less than 10% of the variance). So, using someone’s biological sex to essentialize an entire group of people’s personality would be like operating with an axe. Not precise enough to do much good, probably will cause a lot of harm."
He doesn't use it to essentialize each individual. He's pretty explicit about that, if you read his memo. He's clear about the fact many women are exceptions to these patterns, just as are many men. The point he's making is that, perhaps, in aggregate, these differences explain the relative proportion of women in technical jobs. He isn't saying women shouldn't do technical work. He's not saying Google shouldn't hire women. He's not even saying that the women working at Google don't deserve their jobs, or aren't good at them. Far from it. What he's saying is that efforts to actively recruit women in tech, in an attempt to achieve gender parity may be misguided, because part of the reason for the proportionality difference may be biological. That's the essential point he makes, and whether or not you agree, I think its fairly clear that his point is at least not crazy and worthy of firing.
Actually, you can absolutely use social science methods to attempt to demonstrate (or in this case, disprove) these kinds of links. But let's put that aside for a moment, and discuss what is objectionable about the memo.
What are the costs/benefits of having this "debate" at work over a hypothesis that cannot be proven, as you state?
Look again at what the author was doing. He was using scientifically demonstrated biological and psychological differences between men and women (women have "higher agreeableness") to hypothesize about how that affects their work choices and, notably, their performance ("This leads to women generally having a harder time ... speaking up, and leading.").
What this is doing is connecting a gender stereotype (which, sure, is scientifically supported in aggregate - that's true for a lot of stereotypes!) to work practices and outcomes. The authors claimed benefits of presuming that this connection is true are basically a) this will make conservatives feel more accepted at work, and b) diversity is "bad for business" (which is just provably wrong by an enormous amount of evidence that the author ignores). I think a) is absolutely a worthy benefit, but there are lots of other ways to do this without linking gender stereotypes to work performance!
Now let's look at the harms of having this "debate", particularly at work, which are numerous and measurable. While there are no studies demonstrating the link between biology and STEM job performance, there are many studies demonstrating the impact of widespread gender bias in STEM fields (classic recent reference: http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract) and how it affects hiring and advancement. The memo's author correctly acknowledges these types of biases. So the harm is perpetuating gender biases in the workplace that affects people's careers. Not to mention the harms of opening up Google to gender discrimination lawsuits (ala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_Waterhouse_v._Hopkins), the productivity cost of employees who don't want to work with people with publicly broadcasted unproven gender biases that could affect their decision making ("hostile work environment"), etc. And not to mention losing the many economic benefits that a company reaps with a diverse, inclusive workplace.
So no, I don't think it's worth having this "debate", especially at work, where the benefits are negligible at best, and the harms are clear. If you want to have this debate, go write a medium article or something. Don't send this around your workplace. It's not that hard, really. People call this thought policing, or groupthink or whatever, but it's just harmful and a waste of time at work.
Even if there is bias, in what position is Google to fix it? Unconscious bias retraining does not work.
If bias exists it is culturally and biologically motivated and that can only be fixed by changing the culture significantly.
Women in free cultures do not like STEM. That is a fact. In countries where gender roles are being silenced (that's a good thing) women dislike STEM even more!
I went to a STEM focused high-school that had equal numbers of women and men (3000 students). Not the same percentage went for STEM fields after graduation. Women were also more successful during high-school. Every year the questionnaire confirms that women just aren't interested in STEM and go to fields that deal with people much more (medicine and similar social fields - rehabilitation, working with children with disabilities, social work etc.))
Show me a study that measures gender bias, does an educational intervention and succeeds in improving that measure significantly. None exist. At best they do not work.
> I'll let you do the homework finding citations about how you're wrong here.
Cool, good thing I did my homework. I'm quite aware that percentage of women in STEM is increasing every year. Check out research for countries that have successfully removed gender roles.
> Nice anecdote! Is there anything else about high school that you'd like to generalize to the entire population of the world?
Good thing that there's research confirming the same thing. Although I was not generalizing. The 3000 students and the results of questionnaire every year are pretty consistent. I'm sure someone will do a study on the data, will link to it surely when it happens. Although, I'm sure it will not matter given that you value meta-analysis but only those that confirm your bias.
Exactly. It's indisputable that there are biological differences between men and women. How those differences are relevant to the disparities in the gender ratio in tech is pure speculation on the author's part. To quote the doc:
"Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing)"
That is accompanied with citations. OK, sure, let's take that at face value.
Next, he says:
"These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics"
No citations, no nothing, just: X may lead to Y because it feels like it's true to me! And there are people actually taking the arguments presenting in this document seriously? Can we please take a step back and try to read critically what is presented in this doc? Because these arguments are just embarrassingly weak.
A meta-analysis of scientific studies concluded that men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people. When interests were classified by RIASEC type Holland Codes (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional), Men showed stronger Realistic and Investigative interests, and women showed stronger Artistic, Social, and Conventional interests. Sex differences favoring men were also found for more specific measures of engineering, science, and mathematics interests.[77]
Results showed that men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people, producing a large effect size (d = 0.93) on the Things-People dimension. Men showed stronger Realistic (d = 0.84) and Investigative (d = 0.26) interests, and women showed stronger Artistic (d = -0.35), Social (d = -0.68), and Conventional (d = -0.33) interests. Sex differences favoring men were also found for more specific measures of engineering (d = 1.11), science (d = 0.36), and mathematics (d = 0.34) interests.
Not exactly the same point he made above but you can at least see how he is coming up with "women prefer jobs in social or artistic areas", "men prefer [coding]". I wish for his sake that he hadn't gotten into the differences between front end / back end code because it does sound particularly speculative and presumptuous - but if you can take a step back and take a broader look at his arguments there does seem to be some scientific evidence in support of his main thesis that "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".
Note: I just wanted to point out that I am appreciative that you are attacking his memo on the merits of his arguments. I apologize if that comes across as a patronizing thing to say, but for me the big scandal here has really been the way that dissenters have warped, twisted, and outright dismissed his memo as wrong without even attempting to counter any of his points. To me it feels like the liberal left (of which I self identify, btw) are dismissing his argument not because it is wrong, but because it contradicts their beliefs or because they are afraid of where a serious exploration of the subject might lead us. I don't personally have any issues with affirmative action (although I can understand how it might upset some people) - but I do care greatly about protecting the free and open exchange of ideas. And the calls for the this guy to be fired feel like a disturbing form of censorship to me.
I don't often see someone actually owning up to this view - good for you.
I'm not sure how it's possible to enforce speech that is free from consequences. Do you have a specific definition of "consequence" that you'd like to elaborate on? Anything could be a consequence (like, just hearing the speech in the first place). What is it specifically that you're trying to protect against?