The author of the memo framed his argument in exactly this way.
To quote the memo:
"As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy.”"
The author literally thinks 'Left' policies are part of a Communist power struggle.
If the above comment is toxic, then so is the original memo.
And here I thought I was just a capitalist who believes that people should all be given an equal shot to choose their own path in life and that how things have been does not necessarily dictate how things should be.
Turns out I'm a hateful, dogmatic, sexist racist as well as a malevolent nihilist, postmodern feminist, and a Marxist to boot.
Thanks for clearing that up.
Those -isms really snuck up on me (they really are an insidious bunch, aren't they?). Good thing there are people out there that know way more about people's position and why they have them than they do themselves. Otherwise, we may have to picture the world we want to live in and work toward it without thought to all of the pseudo-cruft attached to specific iterations of ideas throughout history in various places and times by specific individuals that some people might highlight and promote as The One Truth of an Idea to further their own political agenda. It's all very obvious, now that you bring it up.
I did not say that you're a "hateful, dogmatic, sexist racist". I said that postmodernism and feminism are.
Very few people subscribe to all of the beliefs of a particular ideological and philosophical framework. But the tenets of an ideology are there, even if a particular adherent is unaware of them.
An ideology manifests itself in its effects on the world. In postmodernism and feminism, we see that in the completely dogmatic and anti-science reaction to the memo. Here was a memo that was produced in good faith, stayed fully within the realm of established science in its assertions, and within the realm of the reasonable in its opinion, and yet we have absolute lies being trotted out by its critics about its content, and an ideologically motivated firing of its author.
This is not an accident. It's a result of an anti-science dogma that frames the world as a power struggle between identity group, and where facts are only acceptable when they aid in the fulfilment of the postmodernist/feminist agenda: which is to flatten the social dominance hierarchy that, according to the postmodernist/feminist framework, is formed by various identity groups. This is inspired by Marxism (as the historical record shows), whether or not you personally identify as a Marxist yourself.
That's your point of view (and likely the author would agree with you). Let me explain mine.
I see the memo and the citations it trots forth, not as an authoritative treatise with well sourced, scientifically sound backing, but as a cherry picked hodge-podge of descriptive science (where the citations were, in fact, scientific publications - many were blog posts and opinion pieces) abused to support a prescriptive framework.
This is not an anti-science position. It is a position that understands the limitations of science. A scientific fact that may successfully describe the past or current condition doesn't consider other states that could have happened under similar conditions and certainly doesn't lock us into a way forward. Descriptive science can tell us the process that gave giraffes their long neck but doesn't have much to say about why other creatures didn't select for long necks as well under similar conditions but instead found a different niche nor does it have anything to say about niches left unfilled. It also doesn't have much to say about what giraffes will look like in 10,000 years under different conditions. It's the difference between analysis and synthesis. Turning successful analysis into successful synthesis is only possible under very simple conditions relative to the messiness of the world[1] and the complex and chaotic interactions that are possible. Nowhere is this truer than in the realm of human behavior.
This is one reason the memo only had the veneer of reasonableness. Either the author was unaware of what he was doing (deeply misguided but in good faith) or thought others would not catch on to the bait and switch (in which he was promoting his own agenda in bad faith). I lean toward the former since he seems genuinely surprised that other people had a problem with his analysis and cherry picking facts and abusing statistics to make a political point is very common (on the other side of the political specturm too, of course).
[1]Which is why we've had better luck as a species crafting synthesis in different fields from mathematics -- building from the ground up rather than trying to tease the relevant parts from the morass where we are in danger of missing important ingredients or making effort killing assumptions.
The article that is linked here is written by a PhD in sexual neuroscience, and defends the claims made in the memo as scientifically valid.
Instead of responding to the memo, and proving the assertions contained in it wrong, Google's executives fired him, and Google VP Daniele Brown justified the reaction by claiming that the memo advanced "incorrect assumptions about gender".
And you claim this is not an expression of dogmatism, and is not hostile to science, which I see as yet another manifestation of this anti-science dogmatism.
>A scientific fact that may successfully describe the past or current condition doesn't consider other states that could have happened under similar conditions and certainly doesn't lock us into a way forward.
That's a sweeping and over-simplistic generalisation, and trying to justify the extreme rejection of and intolerance toward the memo based on it is a stretch, to say the least.
The individual was fired for stating facts and an opinion (which any society that values rational debate and dialogue will tolerate) that went against an unscientific dogma. A dogma that is as certain of the correctness of its own conjecture about gender as it is about the inapplicability of science to understanding statistical differences between genders in socioeconomic outcomes. An individual, especially a male, is not permitted to express an opinion that contradicts the dogma on the causes of differences in gender outcomes, and the proper reaction to said differences.
That's what the Google engineer's firing demonstrates.
You've been posting like this over and again. It amounts to waging ideological battle on a site that exists for thoughtful and considerate intellectually interesting discussion. Please don't, it's not what we're here for.
There is nothing to debate against, unfortunately. If I'm being repetitive, it's because the justifications for the firing are so utterly baseless.
Also, if the upvote/downvote ratio is any indication, many people appreciate my contributions, even if they're not agreeable.
One final point I'd add is that this is an explicitly ideological issue. A Google engineer was fired for violating Google's corporate ideology (on diversity and gender). There is no way to address the issue in a meaningful way without addressing said ideology.
Let me ask this: what difference does the statistical differences found between genders in the general population matter for any small subset of that population?
If I had test scores from 1-1000 with 1 being the worst and 1000 being the best for a million people that match a normal distribution and I told you that I have a set of 10 that I picked non-randomly but I don't tell you how, what can you tell me about that sub-set of 10?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
What does it say about how that set of ten will do on the next test given only that you know the test will be an iteration on the last with some differences?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
So, why would it matter if, statistically, females exhibit certain behaviors more or less than males in the general population when applied to the subset that apply and work for Google?
Same. Answer.
What disturbs me (having Google stock, as many do) is how a person that doesn't understand this basic fact got past the Google hiring process and ended up an employee.
>what difference does the statistical differences found between genders in the general population matter for any small subset of that population?
With all due respect, this is an absurd question. Statistical differences between the genders in the general population will very plausibly cause differences in the representation of each gender in a particular field, like computer science.
Do I really need to elaborate more on why this is the case?
To claim that the causes of gender differences are a settled science, that agrees with the postmodernists and feminists, and so assuredly that an opinion based on a different interpretation deserves to be punished and otherwise ignored, is absolute nonsense.
If anything, the social constructionist position on gender differences has been thoroughly discredited by the experimental evidence, to the point where the media and Google's reaction to the memo is, without a doubt, an expression of anti-scientific dogma.
Google is not selecting their employees at random. Google is not promoting people at random. Google is not placing employees in a neutral environment relative to the rest of the population. Google is not providing neutral support to employees relative to the general population.
There is no reason to expect that their subset of the population should conform to a general population skew.
In short, plausibility =/= probably.
You repeat yourself a lot for someone who keeps bringing up dogma in this conversation like it means something in context. Can you point to my dogmatic position?
The guy was fired because he let everyone know that he is more than happy to point to descriptions of the general population and sinister world spanning conspiracy theories in order to maintain a dismissive and belittling attitude within the work environment toward women that happens to support a status quo that directly benefits himself rather than support the stated goals of the company.
>There is no reason to expect that their subset of the population should conform to a general population skew.
Absurd. Differences in the general population will translate into differences in the number of men that pursue CS and related fields, which will affect the gender composition of the applicant pool that Google recruits from.
>Can you point to my dogmatic position?
The dogma is in you ignoring and denying basic statistics and common sense in order to defend the ideological premise underlying Google's discriminative (affirmative action) policies.
>The guy was fired because he let everyone know that he is more than happy to point to descriptions of the general population and sinister world spanning conspiracy theories in order to maintain a dismissive and belittling attitude within the work environment toward women that happens to support a status quo that directly benefits himself rather than support the stated goals of the company.
This grossly mischaracterizes the content of the memo and the veracity of his arguments. Your comment displays utter and unscrupulous intolerance to opinions that disagree with your postmodernist viewpoint on gender.
It rejects the relevance of overwhelming empirical evidence on the causes of gender differences in the general population, that are manifestly relevant to gender representation in tech. Your comment embodies the prioritisation of dogma over science, and the willingness to use any means, including blatantly mischaracterizing the arguments made by ideological opponents in order to justify their being fired, to achieve one's ends.
Ok, since we asked you to stop doing this ideological boilerplate thing and you've repeatedly ignored us, we've banned this latest account. Would you please not create accounts to abuse Hacker News with?
To quote the memo:
"As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy.”"
The author literally thinks 'Left' policies are part of a Communist power struggle.
If the above comment is toxic, then so is the original memo.