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Equality Or Diversity? – An ‘Outrageous’ Memo Questions Google
A Google engineer, James Damore, recently wrote an internal memo about "Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber – How bias clouds our thinking about diversity and inclusion":
At Google, we’re regularly told that implicit (unconscious) and explicit biases are holding women back in tech and leadership. Of course, men and women experience bias, tech, and the workplace differently and we should be cognizant of this, but it’s far from the whole story. On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed because:
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Google company policy is in favor of "equal representation" of both genders. As the existing representation in tech jobs is unequal that policy has led to hiring preferences, priority status and special treatment for the underrepresented category, in this case women.
The author says that this policy is based on ideology and not on rationality. It is the wrong way to go, he says. Basic differences, not bias, are (to some extend) responsible for different representations in tech jobs. If the (natural) different representation is "cured" by preferring the underrepresented, the optimal configuration can not be achieved.
The author cites scientific studies which find that men and women (as categories, not as specific persons) are – independent of cultural bias – unequal in several social perspectives. These might be life planning, willingness to work more for a higher status, or social behavior. The differences evolve from the natural biological differences between men and women. A gender preference for specific occupations and positions is to be expected, Cultural bias alone can not explain it. It therefore does not make sense to strive for equal group representation in all occupations.
From James Damore's memo
From there he points to the implementation of Google's policy and concludes:
Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.
Google fired the engineer. Its 'Vice President of Diversity, Integrity & Governance' stated:
We are unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success as a company. [..] Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions. But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws.
(Translation: "You are welcome to discuss your alternative policy views – unless we disagree with them.")
The current public discussion of the case evolves around "conservative" versus "progressive", "left" versus "right" categories. That misses the point the author makes: Google's policy is based on unfounded ideology, not on sciences.
The (legal) "principle of equality" does not imply that everyone and everything must be handled equally. It rather means that in proportion with its equality the same shall be treated equally, and in proportion with its inequality the different shall be treated unequally.
The author asks: Are men and women different? Do these differences result in personal occupation preferences? He quotes the relevant science and answers these questions with "yes" and "yes". From that follows a third question: What is the purpose of compelled equal representation in occupations when the inherent (natural gender) differences are not in line with such an outcome?
Several scientist in the relevant fields have stated that the author's scientific reasoning is largely correct. The biological differences between men and women do result in observable social and psychological differences which are independent of culture and its biases. It is to be expected that these difference lead to different preferences of occupations.
Moreover: If men and women are inherently equal (in their tech job capabilities) why does Google need to say that "diversity and inclusion are critical to our success"? Equality and diversity are in this extend contradictory. (Why, by the way, is Google selling advertising-space with "male" and "female" as targeting criteria?)
If women and men are not equal, we should, in line with the principle of equality, differentiate accordingly. We then should not insist on or strive for equal gender representation in all occupations but accept a certain "gender gap" as the expression of natural differences.
It is sad that Google and the general society avoid to discuss the questions that the author of the memo has asked. That Google fires him only confirms his claim that Google's policy is not based on science and rationality but on a non-discussible ideology.
@okie farmer
Perhaps different types of intelligence exist, but if they do, they are highly correlated, hence the emphasis on (the mathematically dubious) g.
FWIW, I advocate a modified lead/iodine deficiency model to explain most variation in IQ. Unlike older studies, more recent studies have found a small IQ gap between men and women, and women having a narrower IQ range (standard deviation) than men, i.e. fewer outliers high and low. If you look at US blacks, they have a narrower standard deviation of IQ than whites as well as a lower mean IQ. This may be understood quite readily:
Healthy pubertal brain development adds to the standard deviation e.g. 9 points standard deviation in my proposed model—12^2+9^2=15^2, where 15 is the defined std deviation over population of IQ. Poor environment e.g. poison or lacking nutrition cause mean to differ as well.
The environmental argument is usually attacked on the basis of twin studies, e.g. using the Falconer equations. That is because the equations are not usually derived from first principles. To wit, one has mean environmental effect, deviation from mean environmental effect correlated with gene, and uncorrelated with genes, which might not even be environmental, but simple developmental noise. Those arguing that twin studies show the environmental effect to be small, ignore that means are subtracted in calculating the Pearson correlation.
For women, especially after bromide replaced iodine in preparing dough for bread, late 70s or early 80s, the need for iodine will not be met sufficiently during puberty, as both breasts and the brain require iodine for development, in large quantities, and with feminising endocrine disruptors in greater quantities in the environment, breast sizes have risen on average (cup size inflation). Note deviation from previous generations’ size should matter for same genes, not deviation from population mean, so if daughter is bigger than mother, e.g., then lower IQ expected, but not because daughter is bigger than agemate, as the environmental mean is shared (but does not enter Falconer equations’ correlations, being subtracted)…
With US blacks, lead poisoning is still an issue, albeit much smaller than during the 90s. Look at the NHANES III data—the histogram of blood lead is nearly inverse, which suggests sporadic poisoning (lead paint, with dBLL/dt=R-BLL (ln 2)/\tau_{1/2} where R is the rate of intake (function of time, zero most of the time under sporadic poisoning). Also, sub-Saharan Africa largely avoided the Bronze Age, going straight to iron work—the Bantu used a bit of copper but not much evolutionary pressure to develop resistance to lead uptake. If you read e.g. Unz review, I did previously argue that blacks in US are more likely to live in lead painted housing, based on BLL, but US data show whites as likely to live in such housing—blacks take up more lead for same environment.
Posted by: Johan Meyer | Aug 8 2017 21:05 utc | 33
Merasmus | Aug 8, 2017 8:42:28 PM | 50
« humans are (ostensibly) a higher lifeform that isn’t driven entirely by instinct. So appealing to how things work in the wider natural world is something of a non-starter. »
You are right. Humans are above base animal instincts like eating, sleeping and reproducing. As “higher lifeforms”, we don’t do any of these things.
« For some *strange* reason people appealing to nature never have much to say about the Bonobo… »
I’d love to know what that’s got to do with anything, but anyway, last time I looked, female and male bonobos showed different behavioural patterns. For instance, the males don’t look after the babies. The mothers do. They even have a particularly strong mother-son relationship (while who knows who the father is), so maybe you shouldn’t have brought up the subject at all.
« I have literally never met a feminist who claimed sexual dimorphism didn’t exist in humans. What I seen is a whole lot of people who absolutely refuse to differentiate between sex and gender, however. »
I was very clearly pointing to behaviour, not dimorphism. How you achieved reading what I most specifically didn’t refer to baffles me.
« Instead, they do what Anti-Soros above does, and relegate women to breeding and housekeeping »
You are reading minds, like many liberals. That’s to to say, you put words to beliefs YOU hold about conservatives, instead of answering what they say (not what you imagine, figure or fantasize they are saying, but what they have actually written). At least in the West, nobody is relegating women to anything they don’t want, apart from men like you. By your very immature male ideas about what a woman should be like, one can see you are not a woman (in a nutshell, you think women should be men). Please don’t try to mansplain to us what we should believe or do. For instance, 90% of all hospital nurses and 100% of pediatric nurses are women. This is not a matter of « discriminatory hiring procedures » that would bar men from nursing jobs or redirect them to driving ambulances (a nearly 100% male job), it is a matter of being naturally more drawn to some jobs and not to others.
Aaaand this is called “reality”. Thank you for reading and have a good day.
And thank you to the kind people out there who approved of my previous comment. Cheers to you!
Posted by: Lea | Aug 9 2017 12:33 utc | 89
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