One of the best days of my winter was meeting a Ph.D. in Systems Biology from Harvard. Were my dreams coming true? Yes! She had, in fact, overlapped with the Google Heretic, James Damore.
Americans like a world in which bad stuff never happens by chance. If we hear about someone who got lung cancer we want to know “Did he smoke?” Journalists thus dug around at the time that Google was casting out its heretic until they found some people willing to declare that Damore had been unlikable back in grad school. I grilled his former colleague for details. “He’s the last person I would have expected to end up identified as anti-woman,” she said. “We all thought that he was a nice guy.” Had he been interested in differences between the human sexes when at Harvard? “No, not at all. He never mentioned anything on the subject,” she explained.
I wonder if this is more evidence for the research psychologists’ findings that personality is mostly situational. We think that people have stable and certain personalities, but that is mostly because we typically see these folks in the same environment day after day. The “hard worker” who inherits $10 million, for example, may turn out not to have a work-oriented personality at all!
Thus Damore was fine at Harvard, but once he got to Google and received daily homilies from the priests of gender diversity, he hit the academic journals for papers on differences between the (human) sexes and wrote the memo that got him fired.
[Separately, here’s a Facebook posting of mine from the first week of the Harvard class:
Had a James Damore (TM) School of Sexual Dimorphism lesson today. Asked if the room was too warm, all of those born with XY chromosomes shouted “YES” and those with XX then drowned them out with “NO.”
Only two friends were brave enough to click “Like”. Compare to 30-40 who will “Like” a photo of a todder and/or retriever.]
In some ways the most interesting part of my conversation with the Google Heretic’s comrade in Systems Biology was that she with her Ph.D. summarized his 10-page memo, stuffed with academic journal citations, in the same inaccurate way as American journalists: “women are not as good at programming as men.” (I think an accurate short summary would be “on average, women are not as interested in the stare-at-a-screen-all-day-for-30-years programming job as men.” [don’t forget “get pushed out of the industry at age 50-55” in the job description too!]) This should be a good lesson to any future James Damore: Americans are not going to understand what you write, nor will they try to understand, but instead will map it to the simplest concept with which they’re already familiar. Even the best-educated Americans will then tend to adopt the mob view of the uneducated journalists. (Debra Soh, an academic in this area, wasn’t swayed by the consensus view and wrote “No, the Google manifesto isn’t sexist or anti-diversity. It’s science,” but she is Canadian.)
Related:
- “The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM” (Atlantic), with a fancy chart purportedly showing that women are less likely to become nerds if a society opens all of the doors (note the differences between similar countries, e.g., Switzerland and Germany, where potential child support and alimony profits are very different (data), so they probably would want to adjust for differing revenue opportunities in marriage and/or out-of-wedlock pregnancy)
- “Facebook uses a Malibu-flying engineering manager to promote careers in engineering” (Facebook inspires young women toward nerdism by using the example of a woman who built her career… as a man)
“Even the best-educated Americans will then tend to adopt the mob view of the uneducated journalists.”
This is related to the concept of Gell-Mann Amnesia:
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
― Michael Crichton
The journalists are approximately 100% “Baizuo”, to use the term your commentator Anon++ offered a few days ago. I.e. they are zealous adherents of the progressive belief system which we can regard as a religion, as jackie argued a few days ago.
So we can expect the hostility to heretics to intensify. The Soh article you link to establishes that facts and logic are irrelevant to one’s status as a heretic in the eyes of the baizuo. In former times heretics were burned so there’s plenty of room left for our modern day inquisitors and witch-finders to expand their cleansing powers!
Did you see Damore’s tweet a month ago?
Did I read this right? Susan Wojicicki said that women find “geeky male industries” (as opposed to “social industries”) “not very interesting” and Sundar cites research on gender differences.
https://twitter.com/JamesADamore/status/958138574171287552
Apparently it’s ok to cite gender differences as long as you are not a white man.
To which Wojcicki replied, “I think the problem is, is that computer science as a whole and tech as a whole has a reputation of being a very geeky male industry.
…
I think it has to do with these perceptions that the computer industry is, a geeky, not very interesting, not social industries
AND
In the conversation, Pichai noted the differences between what women look for in jobs and men.
“Women typically look for jobs with a purpose. Studies show that. I think it’s important for them to see the why of why you need to need technology,” Pichai continued.
Steve: I hadn’t seen that. Unfortunately I don’t follow anyone on Twitter (I still can’t figure out what it is for!). So thanks for pointing that out.
That Susan Wojcicki YouTube CEO seems like a reasonable person. Wikipedia says that this hard worker has five kids. That’s a good response to Americans who say that they need a river of government cash plus paid time off in order to breed. And she refuses to give appropriately sanctimonious responses on the social justice issue of why there isn’t a 50/50 gender balance among the slaves on her coding plantation. She says that her boss, sitting right there, did the right thing by firing Damore for hurting their attempts at “trying to create a very diverse inclusive environment” (they have infinite money and are trying super hard, but they still end up with white/Asian guys coding away?). Okay, she wants to be promoted into his job.
She also says “if something violates our code of conduct, we should be able to take an action”. In other words, it was okay for Sundar Pichai and his underlings to email Damore every day talking about how much they hated having so many white males around. But the code of conduct forbade Damore from citing some research results that nobody liked!
So Wojcicki seems like someone who would do or say anything necessary to make an extra dollar. I.e., she’s a true American! (let’s hope that this successful 49-year-old executive is smart enough to move out of http://www.realworlddivorce.com/California before her husband figures out how much he could get paid for having sex with younger women; or maybe the guy will suffer a tragic treadmill-related death in Mexico before it comes to this…)
Pichai, on the other hand, makes statements that make sense only if he believes that his audience is stupid: “Women typically look for jobs with a purpose. Studies show that.” So he’s exactly like Damore, except that his statements are obviously false and he can’t back them up with journal citations. A huge percentage of women graduating from Ivy League colleges apply for Wall Street and consulting jobs. Those are the jobs that have the most “purpose” in our society? Then Pichai transitions into “refuge of a scoundrel” territory by talking about his daughter. The audience seriously believes that the billionaire wants his daughter to be a leaf-node programmer at Google? That will be the highest “purpose” job she can find? It won’t be curing cancer or discovering an exoplanet that we can move to after we’ve completely trashed the Earth?
I had little interest in this story but out of curiosity I checked the famous memo. It is way too boring to read, but it is trivial to notice it has no in line references and no bibliography at the end. The author might refer to peer reviewed published work, and he might correctly understand and present it, but no biblio, no party.
Federico: That’s part of the genius of journalism. The NYT-owned Gizmodo published Damore’s document, referring to it as a “screen” in the headline, with all of the references stripped out. So they turned it from James Damore summarizing journal papers into James Damore offering his personal opinions on a wide range of gender differences. See https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320
The Fox-owned vice.com site, on the other hand, published Damore’s document with the references. See https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/evzjww/here-are-the-citations-for-the-anti-diversity-manifesto-circulating-at-google (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x/abstract is a typical cite)
So this works as an example of how folks who the news sections from NYT and Fox are getting different facts. Thus of course they can’t understand the conclusions that readers of the other media source are drawing.
Oh, those. Lord, really, people at google are just a bunch of hominids with opposable thumbs. That is (1) not how citations are done and (2) still no biblio. He should also have provided support for many more of his statements. If a student ever came round with hyperlinks, some of which pointing to wikipedia, unsupported statement, and no biblio, I’d have to go medieval on the poor idiot’s ass.
A more interesting thought. Google has, apparently, a load of data about everyone. In theory they are thus best placed to say whether the reaction to the memo would look like ‘a bunch of SJW will have a fit, they will scream on social media from their android gadgets, and after a week it will blow over’ or ‘we will loose a quantifiable and non trivial percentage of revenues because people will wrestle themselves free of our all pervasive embrace’. I am at loss how we can get rid of google from our lives, but apparently the company decided that Damore did hurt the brand enough to be worth sacrificing. So, was Damore really worth sacrificing? are SJW really that powerful? if there is a silent majority of folks that care not a jot about this issue, shouldn’t google know?
Federico: He was not writing for a printed journal. Why does he need to conform to a 19th century print style in a document intended for viewing on the Web? Why does he need to gather up all of the links into a bibliography when the readers are Python programmers who can, one hopes, quickly write a script to generate the bibliography you’re demanding?
What’s wrong with Wikipedia? He links to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology
which in turn has the very bibliography (169 journal papers in conventional academic citation style) that you claim is the sine qua non of high-quality research. This is a bad collection of 169 papers because it happens to be on the Internet? Because it happens to be part of Wikipedia? What makes this survey of the literature obviously worse than a hardcopy literature survey?
Damore was not purporting to be conducting original research or offering any original scientific views. His memo was about how the priests of diversity at Google might apply existing research results. Since the target was business managers, why would it make sense to clutter the memo with 19th century print scientific journal conventions? How would people who never read anything longer than a PowerPoint deck be able to process something like that?
Phil, it’s called academic rigour. That’s why I said “Lord, really, people at google are just a bunch of hominids with opposable thumbs”. What Damore produced might be ok for said troglodytes, but more evolved folks might prefer some style.
That statement with its implied intellectual superiority complex, ““Lord, really, people at google are just a bunch of hominids with opposable thumbs””, Federico, puts you in the same cluster of thinkers that Iron John belongs to. Unfortunately..
Federico: How is it more intellectually “rigorous” to cut and paste
Lippa, R. A. (2010), Gender Differences in Personality and Interests: When, Where, and Why?. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4: 1098–1110
from
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x/abstract
than simply to link to the URL (as Damore did)? If academic rigor is all about citation style and gathering up a bibliography, can I get tenure for a robot that gathers up all of the most frequently cited papers in a field within the last year, produces a good-looking bibliography, and contains some text lifted from the abstract of each paper?
Alternatively, would Damore’s work suddenly become more rigorous if he ran a computer program over it to turn every hyperlink into a print citation in accordance with the 1929 American Psychological Association style? (see http://pitt.libguides.com/c.php?g=12108&p=64730 or http://www.apastyle.org/ ) Then you would be convinced by his arguments whereas currently you are not?
Related gender-equity news: Harvard slaps sanctions on single-sex clubs (unless they are for women).
Phil, I stated I never bothered to look into the issue and when I had cursory look I found the memo lacking in its presentation of references. As Damore committed career suicide with it, it might have been wiser to produce a memo where all the damn citations were in line, with a biblio and without links to wikipedia or the atlantic, for the simple reason that this course of actions would have immediately offered some level of defence had the document been sent out to the press (as it had). The people whose work Damore referred to did present their work as journal articles, with all the bells and whistles I mentioned — and nobody is hounding these people like they do with Damore.
Concerning the substance of said memo, who cares? Is a population level difference going to be found to the same extent and in the same direction in the self selected group of people working for google? no idea and frankly, I would not give a damn. In line of not caring, I trust someone looked into the sampling issue I just highlighted, if not, there you go.
Ivan, I stand by my words 100%. Not only they have an appalling standard for their references (they could have defused the whole thing by asking for decent referencing!), they go for mean spirited educational beat down to the sorry soul who dared to question the infinite wisdom of the alpha members of the tribe. Like dude-bros, just less classy.
So when the Google managers fired Damore for creating an intolerable environment for women (by writing this document), he could have used a 19th century-style paper bibliography as a “defense”? He should have foreseen that the document would have been picked up by a NYT subsidiary and stripped of all of its hyperlink references? But could have been sure that the NYT subsidiary would have published anything containing a bibliography complete with that bibliography?
“The people whose work Damore referred to did present their work as journal articles, with all the bells and whistles I mentioned — and nobody is hounding these people like they do with Damore.”
Wouldn’t those colorless academics generally have tenure? So what would be the point of hounding them? To make them feel bad as they cash their lifetime paychecks? If they had worked at Google AND challenged Google’s passionate commitment to diversity AND suggested that Google go about recruiting and retaining women in a way that they thought was likely to yield results, THEN you’re sure that nobody would have been upset … because there was a bibliography? These academics could have connected their research to the demonstrated lack of interest by women in computer nerdism, rather than presenting it as disconnected from any social or work context, and not ruffled any feathers… because there was a bibliography?
Well, as you say, Damore has 0 strategic foresight, poor lad. As I mentioned, I cannot comment on other matters pertaining him because I just could not care less. Removing hyperlinks ‘by mistake’ is far less work than removing in line citations (and has greater plausible deniability), and journos removing in line citations would have undermined themselves by showing malice had they done so.
Concerning the colourless academics, why don’t you check? also check their tenure situation at the time of printing! contact them and ask them how their work informs their appointment committees! also feel free to check the sampling issue I mentioned above! So much exciting research! As I mention I could not care less, but I am sure you would find such quest fascinating!
Actually, now that I think about it, the experiment you posit has been done. Two sociologists, one a Harvard professor and one a PhD from MIT in political science, published the Bell Curve. It has a bibliography from pages 775-832 (i.e., despite the fine print, way longer than Damore’s entire memo!). The book contains a small section titled “Ethnic Differences in Cognitive Ability”, heavily referenced to this bibliography. The folks who did the underlying research concluding that measured IQ varied by race were not attacked, but the Bell Curve authors, attempting to draw some policy conclusions from this research, were attacked at the time and the surviving author (Charles Murray), generates million dollar security costs whenever he shows up among young snowflakes on campus today. The snowflakes incorrectly summarize the book as being “about race and IQ.”
It would seem that Americans are happy to fund research on what makes groups of people different, but they don’t want to do anything with the findings!
A formal bibliography would have made them back down huh? Recall that the impartial majesty of the government decreed <b<“that specific Damore statements were “discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment, notwithstanding [his] effort to cloak [his] comments with ‘scientific’ references and analysis, and notwithstanding [his] ‘not all women’ disclaimers.” It seems quite harsh to require that someone sexually identifying with an ornate house must be more stringent.
Tom I read that Damore himself asked for the impartial majesty of the government to intervene, in a process where the employer would also be involved. I have not seen any of the documents the two parties provided to the blessed and impartial majesty of the government, but clearly Damore failed to convince the government! apparently he even failed to stop any pronouncement despite trying to pull the plug on the proceedings! talk about shooting yourself in the foot!
” journos removing in line citations would have undermined themselves by showing malice had they done so.”
Federico, considering that many journos simply paraphrased Damore as saying “women can’t program well” I’d say the burden is on you to prove that a footnote could deter journos from showing malice. Nor have I seen evidence that misrepresentation undermined any of said journos; it seems more likely that malice is good for news circulation.
But you are right, if Damore wanted to stay at Google he should have shut up and groveled at the feet of the social justice brigades. That’s a decision requiring moral and mental health considerations in addition to the usual salary and careerism.
Folks, do I really need to show how citations are done? So be it:
Damore’s original (without hyperlink because I cannot be arsed — see how easy it is to remove it?):
“Note that contrary to what a social constructionist would argue, research suggests bla bla bla.”
The correct way:
“Note that contrary to what a social constructionist would argue, research suggests (Schmitt et al. 2008) bla bla bla”
with the biblio entry
“Schmitt DP, Realo A, Voracek M, Allik J. 2008. Why can’t a man be more like a woman? Sex differences in Big Five personality traits across 55 cultures. J Pers Soc Psychol. 94(1):168-82. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.94.1.168.”
I see a malicious journos cut off the biblio, but a properly referenced text is *work* to purge, and we are talking lazy journos and lazy journos on a deadline. Damore yaks about being pro diversity and that he was misunderstood and that google was doing diversity wrong. I really cannot be arsed to go check (you lots seem to care) if Damore got fired only after the interwebz backlash, but if that is the case, plonking down a doc where factual statements can be taken as opinions proved his undoing. Plus, Damore uses the general population as a reference for a self selected sample — if the folk at google took umbrage at being measured by the meter of the unwashed masses, or at being told that their choice to work at google could not be everybody’s only dream, Damore has nobody to blame but himself.
There is nothing wrong with asking questions like “do race and gender correlate with intelligence?”. However, if you have only a medieval level understanding of what “intelligence” is, then people can be excused for calling you an insufferable asshole.
There’s absolutely no way a business professional is going to take the time to use APA or other such styling in a non-academic setting. It’s a waste of time.
Phil:
Your larger point not withstanding, the ownership you cite for Gizmodo and Vice doesn’t seem to be accurate. Gizmodo seems to be owned by Univision, and while Vice doesn’t seem to have a majority owner, Fox does own 5% of it. However, that is dwarfed by Hearst and Disney.
Uh oh. Getting senile. Thanks for the correction. It is Wirecutter that NYT acquired!
Also, Fox sold its shares to Disney two months ago: http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/disney-vice-media-21st-century-stake-1202642054/