Seconded. I find it's the power-hungry managers in the industry who push this idea that unless a software engineer knows "literally everything about everything" they'll always be inferior, especially as compared to some abstract "Perfect Google Engineer" which I've never actually met in real life and seems a lot like Bigfoot.
It is indeed the way traditional policing works. The average police officer things facial recognition is the visual equivalent of Google and since he/she can similarly rely on search results - they either have no idea about false positive biases based on race or worse, probably are too lazy to dig deeper.
Though the suffering of the victims of such wrong matches is real, one consolation is that more of such cases will hopefully bring about the much needed scepticism in the results so that some old-fashioned validation/investigation is done.
We, as technologists, probably largely agree with this argument, but those in charge are all laymen: officers, Dept. leaders, politicians, even lawyers, can all be ignorant of that nuance, and will probably remain so unless walked through in detail, and then continuously badgered about it.
Sure, but there are more underrepresented groups than the ones currently adopted by woke culture. Folks with English as a second language are having a hell of a time with the rapidly evolving speech codes. One cannot even go by the annotations in the OED anymore.
Damore wrote an essay basically arguing women and minorities should be incapable of joining the software profession based on their genetics.
The effect of which would silence both their work rights and free speech rights.
Google, a private corporation, not a government, decided to stop contracting with him, as they have women and minorities on staff whose employment output likely outweighs his personal need to write long, politically charged, essays at work. To me that sounds like no one's essential rights were violated at all.
> Damore wrote an essay basically arguing women and minorities should be incapable of joining the software profession based on their genetics.
That is completely false and you should be ashamed if yourself for spreading such blatant lies. I urge anyone reading your comment to check for themselves and read Damore's essay, which was well researched, rational and compassionate, the exact opposite of the kind of libel that has been used to slander him. Damore will be a case study at some point when reason returns and people look back and try to understand how it came to be that fools and liars became the arbitrers of what others were allowed to say and think.
I often find that the usual so-called defenders of free speech do not hesitate for one moment with that libel charge whenever they encounter an opinion they happen to disagree with.
We know that "Damore wrote an essay basically arguing women and minorities should be incapable of joining the software profession based on their genetics." is factually false, considering that what should it be called if not libel?
> Google, a private corporation
Which by the way told its employees that they were free to publish their opinions and Damore acted on that premise.
free speech gives you certain right to say what you want to say, and express your opinion. It even lets you give your opinion on other peoples opinions.
It doesn't allow you to state as fact that someone holds an opinion that they do not. You can express an opinion, but there are limits on stating falsehoods, especially wrt other people.
you say "encounter an opinion they happen to disagree with", implying your statement about the memo is just your opinion, but you didn't say it in any way that suggests it was that subjective; and, making any unsubstantiated claim about a person is on shaky ground even if you did make it clear it was just opinion.
"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.
" was of course a proposition, not advanced,but the propasition that it could not be debated was put forward.
Newsflash!! This was being debated 30 years ago. No evidence ever found, apart from < 50% women in STEM
"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."
Which could be interpreted, honestly, as saying...
"women and minorities could be incapable of joining the software profession based on their genetics"
That seems an acceptable interpretation only if it also means that "men and majorities could be incapable of joining the software profession based on their genetics."
Because both are encompassed by the more general "people could be incapable of joining the software profession based on their genetics."
And that's of course not the only interpretation possible, but the one you choose. You say it's because of "capability" but you could look at it in terms of "inclination", "interest", "comparative advantages" or other angles.
He literally had a list of suggestions for increasing the number of women in tech.
Much of the thrust of his essay was a critique of the methods being used to increase diversity, not of the goal or the feasibility of achieving the goal.
It was a technical critique. This method won’t work, kind of critique.
"Differences in traits" doesn't mean "incapable". You know what happens if you take a whole population and deprive them of adequate calcium and protein in their early years? You get a "difference in traits" as to their height. Damore made no Essentialist claims about race or gender. He was just trying to be helpful in explaining an observed phenomenon at one causal level back.
Mangalor said "should" rather than "could". Even then, I do not think that it could be interpreted like that. He talks about distributions of traits, the sentence that you quoted did not put minorities in a single box.
Not sure how this differs from a firing unless you are suggesting it was unrelated to the memo.
> his personal need to write long, politically charged, essays at work
You don't know the context. He didn't force the memo on people - he was actively encouraged to provide feedback to a forum on this exact, politically-charged, topic; then that memo was leaked, without his permission, (to unfriendly, politically-charged outside recipients) when someone found issue with it.
The insinuation "write long, politically charged, essays at work" that he abused company resources to do his own thing, versus being encouraged to engage with politics (which google does) and then finding himself on the wrong side of opinion is exactly the kind of abusive framing that hit-pieces used.
> women and minorities on staff
Who saw the memo because someone tried to offend them with it - not Damore. I don't disagree that sensitive topics might not be appropriate for wider audiences, but Damore is not responsible for that. No one was fired for leaking the memo, nor are media outlets being sued for propagating a false, offensive representation of the memo.
To be clear "women and minorities should be incapable of joining the software profession based on their genetics" is not something Damore said, it is something the media said, attributing it to him. It is the media therefore that owns these words and the offence they (and their distribution) caused. Not only did they slander Damore, but they also caused the offense Damore was fired for.
I have just reread the first few pages of his memo. I had forgotten, it has been a few years. It is naive, pompous, and offensive to people who have been fighting against the currents of prejudice and bigotry for generations.
I don't know Damore personally, so this concern might not apply, but I wonder if neuro-atypical folks aren't the hardest hit folks in the current reenactment of The Crucible.
EDIT: And The Scarlet Letter seems relevant as well.
