Nobody cares about it anymore because it was a million news cycles ago, but I found the whole thing kind of insane and had a bunch of notes in my queue that I'm finally getting around to organizing. The reporting on the actual content of the memo was highly disingenuous, imo.
"I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions. If we can’t have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem."
No, the Google manifesto isn’t sexist or anti-diversity. It’s science - The Globe and Mail:
"Despite how it’s been portrayed, the memo was fair and factually
accurate. Scientific studies have confirmed sex differences in the brain
that lead to differences in our interests and behaviour.
As mentioned in the memo, gendered interests are predicted by exposure
to prenatal testosterone – higher levels are associated with a
preference for mechanically interesting things and occupations in
adulthood. Lower levels are associated with a preference for
people-oriented activities and occupations. This is why STEM (science,
technology, engineering and mathematics) fields tend to be dominated by
men.
We see evidence for this in girls with a genetic condition called
congenital adrenal hyperplasia, who are exposed to unusually high levels
of testosterone in the womb. When they are born, these girls prefer
male-typical, wheeled toys, such as trucks, even if their parents offer
more positive feedback when they play with female-typical toys, such as
dolls. Similarly, men who are interested in female-typical activities
were likely exposed to lower levels of testosterone.
As well, new research from the field of genetics shows that testosterone
alters the programming of neural stem cells, leading to sex differences
in the brain even before it’s finished developing in utero. This
further suggests that our interests are influenced strongly by biology,
as opposed to being learned or socially constructed.
Many people, including a former Google employee, have attempted to
refute the memo’s points, alleging that they contradict the latest
research.
I’d love to know what “research done […] for decades” he’s referring to,
because thousands of studies would suggest otherwise. A single study,
published in 2015, did claim that male and female brains existed along a
“mosaic” and that it isn’t possible to differentiate them by sex, but
this has been refuted by four – yes, four – academic studies since.
This includes a study that analyzed the exact same brain data from the
original study and found that the sex of a given brain could be
correctly identified with 69-per-cent to 77-per-cent accuracy.
Of course, differences exist at the individual level, and this doesn’t
mean environment plays no role in shaping us. But to claim that there
are no differences between the sexes when looking at group averages, or
that culture has greater influence than biology, simply isn’t true."
...In fact, research has shown that cultures with greater gender equity
have larger sex differences when it comes to job preferences, because in
these societies, people are free to choose their occupations based on
what they enjoy.
As the memo suggests, seeking to fulfill a 50-per-cent quota of women in
STEM is unrealistic. As gender equity continues to improve in
developing societies, we should expect to see this gender gap widen.
This trend continues into the area of personality, as well. Contrary to
what detractors would have you believe, women are, on average, higher in
neuroticism and agreeableness, and lower in stress tolerance.
Some intentionally deny the science because they are afraid it will be
used to justify keeping women out of STEM. But sexism isn’t the result
of knowing facts; it’s the result of what people choose to do with them.
This is exactly what the mob of outrage should be mobilizing for,
instead of denying biological reality and being content to spend a
weekend doxxing a man so that he would lose his job. At this point, as
foreshadowed in Mr. Damore’s manifesto, we should be more concerned
about viewpoint diversity than diversity revolving around gender."
Gender & Toys: Monkey Study Suggests Hormonal Basis For Children's Toy Preferences | HuffPost:
"In experiments, male adolescent monkeys also prefer to play with
wheeled vehicles while the females prefer dolls — and their societies
say nothing on the matter.
The monkey research, conducted with two different species in 2002 and
2008, strongly suggested a biological explanation for children’s toy
preferences. In recent years, the question has become: How and why does
biology make males (be they monkey or human) prefer trucks, and females,
dolls?
New and ongoing research suggests babies’ exposure to hormones while
they are in the womb causes their toy preferences to emerge soon after
birth. As for why evolution made this so, questions remain, but the toys
may help boys and girls develop the skills they once needed to fulfill
their ancient gender roles.
First, in 2009, Gerianne Alexander, professor of psychology at Texas
A&M University, and her colleagues found that 3- and 4-month-old
boys’ testosterone levels correlated with how much more time they spent
looking at male-typical toys such as trucks and balls compared with
female-typical toys such as dolls, as measured by an eye tracker. Their
level of exposure to the hormone androgen during gestation (which can be
estimated by their digit ratio, or the relative lengths of their index
and ring fingers) also correlated with their visual interest in
male-typical toys.
“Specifically, boys with more male-typical digit ratios showed greater
visual interest in a ball compared to a doll,” Alexander told Life’s
Little Mysteries.
Kim Wallen, a psychologist at Emory University who has studied the
gender-specific toy preferences of young rhesus monkeys, said, “The
striking thing about the looking data shows that the attraction to these
objects occurs very early in life, before it’s likely to have been
socialized.”
Further buttressing the idea that toy preferences are caused by
hormones, last year, a group of British researchers found that girls
with a condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia, who experienced
abnormally high levels of the male sex hormone androgen while in the
womb, prefer to play with male-typical toys. [Why Is Pink for Girls and
Blue for Boys?]
But why would male sex hormones make people favor wheeled vehicles and
balls? A common explanation holds that these toys facilitate more
vigorous activity, which boys are evolutionarily programmed to seek out.
But the 2009 study indicated that their affinity for balls and trucks
predates the stage when children actually start playing with toys. At
just 3 months old, the newborn boys already fixed their eyes on the toys
associated with their gender.
“Given that these babies lack physical abilities that would allow them
to ‘play’ with these toys as do older children, our finding suggests
that males preference for male-typical toys are not determined by the
activities supported by the toys (i.e., movement, rough play),”
Alexander said.
Wallen approaches the data more cautiously. “It’s hard to interpret what
the looking data mean because we don’t know why people are attracted to
specific things.
Clearly children recognize that certain objects in
their environment are appropriate for certain activities. They could be
looking at a certain toy because it facilitates an activity they like,”
he said.
The debate over why boys prefer toy vehicles and balls continues. In a
new study, Alexander and her colleagues investigated whether
19-month-olds move around when playing with trucks and balls more than
they do when playing with dolls. According to the study, they don’t.
Toddlers with higher levels of testosterone are more active than
toddlers with lower levels of the sex hormone, but the active toddlers
moved around just as much when holding a toy truck, ball or doll. “We
find no evidence to support the widely held belief that boys prefer toys
that support higher levels of activity,” she wrote in an email. A paper
detailing the work has been accepted for publication in the journal
Hormones and Behavior.
If it isn’t vigorous activity they’re after, it could be that boys
simply find balls and wheeled vehicles more interesting, while human
figures appeal more to girls.
As for why evolution would program these
toy preferences, the researchers have a few ideas. According to
Alexander, one possibility is that girls have evolved to perceive social
stimuli, such as people, as very important, while the perceived worth
of social stimuli (and thus, dolls that look like people) is weaker in
boys. [The Smarter Sex? Women’s Average IQ Overtakes Men’s]
Boys, meanwhile, tend to develop superior spatial navigation abilities.
“Multiple studies in humans and primates shows there is a substantial
male advantage in mental rotation, which is taking an object and
rotating it in the mind,” Wallen said. “It could be that manipulating
objects like balls and wheels in space is one way this mental rotation
gets more fully developed.”
This is purely speculative, Wallen said, but boys’ superior spatial
abilities have been tied to their traditional role as hunters. “The
general theory is that well-developed skills in mental rotation allowed
long distance navigation: using an egocentric system where essentially
you navigate using your perception of your location in 3D space,” he
said. “This might have facilitated long distance hunting parties.”"
By Firing the Google Memo Author, the Company Confirms His Thesis - Reason.com:
"Most of the mainstream media refers to the former Google engineer's
leaked internal memo as the "anti-diversity memo." Recode calls it
"sexist." And Google fired James Damore for "perpetuating gender
stereotypes." But in reality, the problem isn't diversity; it's that a
senior software engineer admitted, perhaps unwittingly, to pondering
three of the most scandalous thought crimes of contemporary American
society.
The first crime is proposing that a meritocracy might be healthier for a
company than bean-counting race, ethnicity and sex. The second is
pointing out that ideological diversity matters. The third and most
grievous of all is suggesting that men and women are, in general,
physiologically and psychologically different, and thus they tend to
excel at different things.
"On average," asserts Damore, "men and women biologically differ in many
ways." He then has the temerity to accuse women of generally displaying
a "stronger interest in people rather than things," of having empathy
and "openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics," and of being
less pushy and having less interest in status than male colleagues.
Women, this guy says, are "more cooperative" than men and search out
better "work-life balance."
There's much more, but I don't want to further upset any female readers.
One of the problems with this kerfuffle was that the vast majority of
the histrionic reactions on social media and elsewhere have
misrepresented not only what the memo says but also its purpose. It was
neither a screed nor anti-diversity. It was the kind of unvarnished,
dispassionate and meticulous case that I imagine many engineers offer.
It's difficult to believe anyone who read through it with an open mind
could interpret the author's notions as an attempt to consolidate the
patriarchy or make life less diverse in his field.
The other, bigger problem is the reaction to it demonstrates that the
author is completely right about the lack of ideological diversity and
the consequences of that lack.
Damore's contentions about the bias at Google is a near-perfect
summation of the dangers manifest in all close-minded institutions,
including most of the news media and many universities. He points out
that conflating "freedom from offense with psychological safety" shames
people into silence. Further, he argues that these monocultures foster
unhealthy environments where people can no longer honestly debate
important topics. Finally, and most destructively, he says that these
bubbles then promote "extreme and authoritarian elements."
We see incidents of this close-mindedness all the time. In schools. In
government. In business. Just ask Brendan Eich, who was hounded out as
CEO of Mozilla in 2013 for having the wrong opinion on gay marriage in
2008, despite zero evidence that he had ever discriminated against
anyone in his life.
Or, better yet, ask Danielle Brown, Google's new vice president of
diversity, integrity and governance. She wrote in response to the
engineer's memo, "Diversity and inclusion are a fundamental part of our
values and the culture," and then rebuked the statement, telling
employees that she wouldn't link to the letter because everyone
disagrees with its contents. Rather than showing appreciation for
diverse thinking among her ranks, Brown even went on to insinuate that
the engineer's suggestions in the memo might undermine "discrimination
laws."
Does Brown believe that dissenting Google employees will now feel safer
sharing their opinions when they see that the company won't stand by
those making unpopular ones? Because, after all, any old VP of
diversity, integrity and governance can defend positions that confirm
the biases of the majority of their workforce.
Of course, nothing in the letter states women aren't as good as men, or
that women deserve less money, or that women aren't suited to be good at
tech jobs, or that they should be victimized by the company. The author
mostly theorized as to why self-selection might account for some of the
disparity at Google."
In Defense of the Google Manifesto – AREO:
"...you would think Damore wrote the next iteration of Mein Kampf. Gizmodo
labelled it an “anti-diversity screed.” Mashable called it a
“racist/sexist manifesto” when reporting that the author’s identity had
been revealed. Tweetstorms were fashionable, with one user even positing
that Damore was saying “Your gender means that you’re biologically
incapable of doing this job and should never have been hired.” A popular
response by a Yonatan Zunger chided the author as causing “significant
harm to people across this company,” and for being incorrect in
everything — except Damore’s points on the male gender role being
inflexible. Even the respectable Atlantic managed to pipe up with a
“Googler’s Would-Be Manifesto Reveals Tech’s Rotten Core,” by an Ian
Bogost. Another Mashable piece complained “the text of that Google
employee’s manifesto is just like every other MRA rant,” with the writer
of the piece strangely going on to say, “The biological arguments get
into some weird assumptions around gender that are also offensive for
reasons unrelated to the tech industry.”
Weird assumptions, you say? The sciences of sex differences and their
results on cognition and behavior are not the purview of a fringe group
of men operating in bunkers to prove their sexist fantasies about
subjugating women. They are established, respected fields. I’m not sure
what I can say to convince those who have reacted so adversely to
Damore’s claims about biological, developmental, and hormone related
male and female differences in behavior and personality, except to try
to marshal the relevant information — and hope that their ideological
biases don’t impinge on their willingness to accept scientifically
arrived at truths.
The reactions from hyperventilating journalists and bloggers has been
akin to: “What Damore wrote goes against everything I know and my
worldview. Which means… that he’s a sexist and racist.” "
...Prenatal and pubertal organizational hormones have an effect on
individual behavior with “good evidence that exposure to high levels of
androgens during prenatal development results in masculinization of
activity and occupational interests, sexual orientation, and some
spatial abilities.” Girls exposed to high testosterone levels in the
womb have more male-typical career interests. Men are more interested in
things, women in people. Newborn male and female children, (scientists
use newborns to rebut the objection that children are socialized to
behave in certain patterns) show a distinction in what they find
interesting. Male infants exhibit a stronger interest in the
physical-mechanical-mobile while female infants show a stronger interest
in the face (the proxy for “interest” here being the time of fixed
gaze). Men and women in 55 different countries show clustered patterns
in the big five personality traits — with women reporting higher levels
of neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness than
men do across most nations.
These sex differences are also seen in nonhuman primates in play and
grooming, and object manipulation patterns also emerge in rhesus
monkeys, with toy preference paralleling those of human children. Sex
differences in mate preferences and status-seeking have also been
studied heavily across cultures."
... "It goes without saying: noting different patterns in male and female
cognition says nothing about the moral distinction about equality or
treating people as individuals — a point Damore makes himself. But the
reactionaries don’t seem to understand this. Pointing out aggregate
differences in population does not mean we can justify discrimination.
I’ll also note that the objectors in this instance are usually the types
to say “we should trust scientists, they know best,” when it comes to
issues like climate change, but when it comes to taboo topics like sex
differences in behavior between men and women they are the first to plug
their ears and cry out: “sexism, misogyny, biological determinism!”"
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