This thread isn't about whether Google should have fired the engineer or whether he breached the companies code of conduct, or any of that. I am genuinely curious whether he actually said anything that evidence suggests is factually incorrect. I have read a lot of articles on this topic, and nobody seems to really be addressing this aspect of the memo.

●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.

-I think the above bullet point he made captures the point that is receiving the most backlash. Is there actual scientific evidence that suggesting his argument is incorrect? Are we even allowed to ask this question in the first place?

FWIW I always assumed hormonal differences between males and females throughout life, including prenatal, would absolutely cause them to have different psychological profiles on average (with huge individual variation and overlap) and don't even really consider this a misogynist viewpoint. Just a biological one.

But I admit it is not something I have critically explored through study of scientific literature, so I cannot defend this viewpoint with much more than empirical and anecdotal examples.

Is there any actual scientific evidence on this topic one way or another? Or is it just something where we say, "You aren't even allowed to ask this question because it perpetuates harmful stereotypes" and that is that?

I mean, the fact that you don't have any empirical evidence in hand despite slogging through his manifesto suggests he wasn't very scientific in his approach.

He had a couple cites to peer reviewed scientific articles, but for the most part you are correct. However, I read a lot of articles that opposed his viewpoints, and don't have any empirical evidence his argument is incorrect either. Seems this is an angle no one on is really addressing. Kind of why I made the OP in the first place.

It's not correct to group by the between the legs criterion.

We are not losers just because of our balls.

This is dead simple. You don't need to bring up hormones or anything that will get the losers upset.

You have two groups of men, identical in all traits except for the following

Group 1: Doesn't get pregnant for nine months and require substantial time off
Group 2: Does get pregnant for nine months and require substantial time off

In a cutthroat competitive business world, which group is going to do much better?

Second test: what do women do when they have the greatest level of equality of opportunity?
Answer: They choose non math, non science, non programming classes, overwhelmingly.

It's an open and shut case. Nothing wrong with what he said. It's only the ultra ultra weirdo left, who think lack of equality of outcome is proof of lack of equality of opportunity, take this as a PREMISE, and have unfortunately taken over much of academia and the media, that have this bizarre and destructive delusion. You'll find a bunch of them in the politics forum here.

Unfortunately they're very loud and bigoted and hateful. Because people succumb to it.

Well, the author did bring up hormones and natural differences between the sexes, even if he didn't "need to." So since he did bring it up and since most of the criticisms aimed at him is focusing on this point, it seems pertinent to ask whether his argument is legitimate from a scientific standpoint.

Until we map the brain, it's hard to tease out the effects of culture. The dishonest and crazy can (and do) claim that there is no such thing as biological sex, and it's all culture, and they fit with fashionable politics, so they get support from academia rather than a straightjacket. You can't disprove that finally until you map the brain, which we're a long way from doing.

So while his views are common sense and experience (of course women on average are different from men in very substantial biologically influenced ways, including behavior and preferences), and there's powerful, overwhelming evidence for this difference in preference, you can't yet stick a knife in the naysayers who claim that it's all confounded cultural influences and sex differences are otherwise nonexistent. No honest and sane person would conclude otherwise, but the left aren't honest and sane. The best you can do is look at the evidence impartially, but until we map the brain fully, anything around choice can be nitpicked to death by the dishonest.

Theories like this are interesting too.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/...56797612458937

Science doesn't prove anything about specific peers and coworkers is a thought-place to explore?

I'm all for that. In fact, most people are happy to just get on with their day and treat everyone according to individual merit.

It's the morons on the left who are claiming that there's unfair inequality/discrimination/patriarchy because coders aren't 50% women, or 13% black. Take it up with those morons, they're the only reason we're having this discussion. The right is hugely in favor of individual merit. The left want equality of outcome regardless of preference or talent. Except in coal mines and garbage work.

You are missing preschool and kindergarten teachers (97% female), nurses and probably a thousand other occupations that have clear gender biases the left doesn't seem to have a problem with.

It's challenging to "prove" things one way or another since there isn't a lot of reliable empirical science on the topic of whether women are biologically bad at computer programming. It's hard to do double-blind experiments on human subjects, very tough to separate biology from cultural/social factors, and also hard to really quantify "computer science skill" in a useful way.

OTOH, there's a long, long history of people using flimsy science as a pretext to reinforce negative stereotypes about women and minorities. There's plenty of evidence that women can be successful at a high level in STEM fields. There's plenty of reason to take these kinds of claims with a grain of salt. Even if we assume that women are slightly worse at it then men, I doubt the extreme disparity in the field is solely due to that alone (something like 20% of CS grads are women now?).

On the balance, the onus is really on him to demonstrate strong evidence that women are underrepresented because they're naturally dumber.

The extreme disparity in the field is because of choice, not talent. See the study I linked above, or what women choose when they have maximum choice - they move AWAY from STEM the richer they get and the more choices and freedom they have.

Let me ask a simple question. Why are there FAR more Asians in high end coding than white people, relative to their population percentage?

Is it racism against white people?
Are white people dumber than Asians?
Who on Earth is saying that in that day and age? For coding? No one serious that I know.

Yes of course. The left want anything that's predominantly male and white to match population percentages, regardless of talent, choice, merit. It's a pure political game of bringing down the perceived power of white men, who, despite being the most productive and generous and giving and achieving and peace-making and feminist race in history (these are all indisputable), are seen as the devil. So they go after jobs that are privilege giving or money giving, and claim that disparity is due to discrimination, hidden and insidious.

It's cut from the same cloth as the "reactionary rightist" bigotry and violence of the Maoists, when anyone with a business and their entire family became responsible for all social ills and were murdered, imprisoned and 'reeducated" en masse. A bizarre political movement, to say the least, but one that's cropped up often throughout history, to the detriment of all.

https://archive.is/VlNfl

I guess the actual site is down do to DDOS attacks, but this is a link to an archive of a website that has 4 scientists who argue in favor of his argument of there being a biological contribution towards psychological sex differences.

Again, this is not really germane to the discussion of whether Google had the right to fire him or not, unless you are going to argue that Google should have (and did) fire him for saying something factually incorrect, which it does not appear anyone is doing.

How could there not be, given evolution? Men and women occupied two very different roles, had to face very different threats, and had very different selection pressures.

I read the article a few hours ago, so maybe I am not remembering correctly, but I would say the argument is more "Women are underrepresented because they choose to be, and there are biological reasons underpinning this choice". I am not saying his argument is right or wrong, but I don't think you are characterizing it very accurately.

His summary of the research, at least in my understanding of it, is big picture accurate.

Plus this. You can literally find examples on 2p2 of people trying to ****can discussion for such reasons.

From the vacuous and vomit inducing gibberish of the postmodernists (and many others) to the profundity of Russell and Euclid and Boccaccio and Spinoza, SMP allows it all.

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist. -Salman Rushdie.

This, aside from the rudimentary fact that any question(s) can be asked and explored and critical methods devised for experimentation and truth finding, the bedrock that sustains both Science and Philosophy.

Of course men and women are different . That doesnt give the right to discriminate superficially on unproven areas though.

If one ever expects a stupid company however famous to ever do anything other than what serves its bottom line because of public outrage arguments good luck with it. Anyone who says such things is targeted instantly for firing.

But look again at the classic example i offer in tough math competitions from decades ago to modern times in the male female ratio in participation. Why does it still stay near 8-9-10 to 1 all these years? Bias in cultural terms cannot explain such ratio difference. I mean intelligence will find its way whether male or female in a modern country to show affinity for tough math. Kids at school get the same exposure to it in both sexes.

https://www.imo-official.org/results_year.aspx


The proper position in this is to anticipate that women will be better than men in some tasks and vice versa for men. Just find the tasks and fine tune things that way without anticipating that everyone fits the norm until they prove so.

When you are in a group trying to solve a problem nobody should care where you come from or what sex you are etc. The statistics will have a story to say because of course we are different. Also the average probably will be very close on many tasks to not even mean anything. But there will be some areas there is difference. To deny that is to deny that our condition is affected by our biological different functions at times. The 2 systems are not identical. There will be some tasks women do better and some task men do better based on these differences that may affect how brains approach certain tasks or situations. I have no doubt also that the need for ethnic diversity etc is a ridiculous argument in a truly free self respecting world. Let things evolve as they deserve on merit and dont be concerned with artificial boosting of mixes of people. Dont make it ever an issue for either side pro or against. Just embrace merit wherever it comes from.

Sure it can. Women have more rounded lives and so lack the obsessive focus needed to get good at something as narrow as math olympiads. There is some evidence for this. Women skilled in math have much higher verbal reasoning skills than males skilled in math (who seem to be more autists).

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/...56797612458937

Apart from that, people often do things for cultural reward; spending an obssessive amount of time getting good at math as a teenager provides little payback for girl who has other options, where it may be one of the few outs for a loser male. Very different reward structure.

I think more telling is the fact that men crush women at the elite of nearly every pursuit, including traditional female roles such as cooking or psychology. That's pretty hard to explain in modern society without a "fat tails" view of male talent. Or it might be a simple consequence of something like males having more narrowly focused rather than holistic brains; that would make a lot of sense for a hunter/warrior/competitor as compared to a caregiver, nurturer and peace maker.

I generally agree that intelligence thrives and seeks what it is good at.

I agree with this as well, however, we need to be very cautious on what we call evidence.

Stereotyping rationalizers come in many shapes and sizes.

Morons who think that talking about average traits of groups is stereotyping come in many shapes and sizes.

Again, your side brings up the group stuff when they try to engineer society, rather than letting merit decide. If you grew up just a tiny bit, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

Here's the mindless stereotyping: There are more male coders than females because of the males in these professions exert patriarchal power (and for no other reason). Any male who wants to talk about other reasons why this employment disparity exists is a sexist who should be fired.

That's both stereotyping and village pitchfork type thinking. And it's all you, bro.

Here's a clue for our zero content troll friend, spank, who hasn't learned English:

No one in this thread is stereotyping since no one thinks that ALL women have particular qualities - just that it seems plausible that men and women on average tend to have different qualities that may be relevant to why groups of men and women have, on average, different choices and hence different outcomes.

You are definitely not in charge of males and females- at all.

I'm being a little bit nitpicky here since there is obviously a lot more to the story than just this, but I believe that Asians in the US do in fact have modestly higher mean IQ scores than whites.