Whether we agree with the memo or not, there was a very good point that guy made and that we should keep in mind, it's the paragraph with the two overlapping distributions.
Even if you admit that all genders, races, any way you want to segment the population, do not have the same distribution, that doesn't mean anything to a person as an individual.
For instance I think it's fair to say that black people are better at athleticism/running than white people (a disproportionate number olympic champions are black), i.e. the tail of the distribution is fatter for black people than white people. It doesn't mean anything to a random individual in that group. I am white, I shouldn't feel offended that another category of the population has a different distribution than my category. And it doesn't mean that no white people can become an olympic athlete either. Just that there will be a natural race imbalance among athletes. And it doesn't mean that a random black man will be better than a random white man at athletism.
So I don't agree with the way you read this memo: In this memo's case, perhaps you're mad at someone for saying you're genetically predisposed to be less capable of individual action. The memo doesn't say that an individual woman will be less capable. What it claims instead is that women have a different distribution for certain skills than men, which you might agree with or not. But it's a very different point.
This ignores the fact that countries like Jamaica recruit their best athletes into track and field, whereas Australia or China would push those kids into something else. A more accurate statement would be black countries have better track and field coaching infrastructure considering Usain Bolt routinely washed out of race finals until he was picked up by pro coaching staff. It's the same reason Canada usually wins the winter Olympics in Hockey, it's not because Canadians are genetically better at skating and handling sticks, it's because of the coaching, infrastructure to get kids into the national program, funding priorities, ect. Same reason why Germany wins the world cup, it's a financial priority for that country to ensure they do so they can build a national infrastructure of success, they don't have genetically superior athletics for Soccer.
It's interesting how introducing certain attributes into a conversation can disable parts of the human brain, I wonder if a study has ever been done on this.
An important difference is that in the olympics, a fair and objective qualification system exists. Kenyans are disproportionate in the RANKINGS but not the POPULATION.
In Google's case, women fare poorly in botrh (with rankings expressed in the axis of pay or leadership positions). That's a significant difference.
My point was moreso about how prevalent the phenomenon of ignoring obvious objective reality is when certain topics are involved, the key ones off the top of my head being: race, gender, sexuality.
Threads such as this are chock full of examples of people who are normally very logical and scientific, but once the subject turns to one of the above, suddenly everything's different, nothing can be determined, observed, or measured, the entire world is completely random with no patterns whatsoever, etc.
I wonder if all cultures are like this or only us in the west.
> My point was moreso about how prevalent the phenomenon of ignoring obvious objective reality is when certain topics are involved, the key ones off the top of my head being: race, gender, sexuality.
Fair. I just wanted to add that it's not terribly applicable to the specifics of the memo and article. People are upset about systemic total representation and undervaluation rather than a lack of singular genius.
But I agree that there are people who find any conversation about statistics as it regards this subject as a form of heresy.
> I just wanted to add that it's not terribly applicable to the specifics of the memo and article. People are upset about systemic total representation and undervaluation rather than a lack of singular genius.
It's applicable in that (in my opinion) the majority of the people aren't - rather they are interested in a fantasy version of the situation that exists only in their imagination. This is why even on forums like HN where people are far more logical than the average person, there is no shortage of bickering over obvious misinterpretations, moving of goalposts, etc. For example, how many of the outraged people here are angry about things that literally aren't even in the article, and even when this is pointed out to them, still they aren't able to wake up and realize how their brain is playing tricks on them.
The older I get, and the longer I see the very same arguments over and over again over decades, the more I am coming around to the idea that a massive portion of the human population possibly can't even see reality. Maybe I am one of them!
> The older I get, and the longer I see the very same arguments over and over again over decades, the more I am coming around to the idea that a massive portion of the human population possibly can't even see reality. Maybe I am one of them!
All we can do is dedicate ourselves to following the evidence where we can and avoiding judgement when possible.
> I've met him in passing, he didn't strike me as worth considering, then or now.
That seems fairly judgemental to me.
Edit: To clarify, you are making a value judgement of a person based on some unspecified happening when you met then in passing. That seems to indicate you didn't give much chance in the way to understand that person or the reasoning behind their thoughts.
If Jamaica does better than USA in track and field they must be doing something right, but what do you mean by generalizing to "black countries"?
There might be a bias towards track and field programs and careers in poor/small countries, thanks to cheap infrastructure and sustainability with very few athletes, and expensive sports that are practically reserved for relatively privileged people, e.g. swimming and horse riding, but confusing an athlete's race and their available opportunities is silly.
> fair to say that black people are better at athleticism/running
Is it fair though? Is it supported by metrics of muscle strength and length etc? And does it take into account the differences between blacks (Africans?), west vs south vs central (pygmies!).
Also, there's the possibility that whites of equivalent athleticism find better options for their life than being a professional sportsmen, the bottom 80% [1] of whom end their career at 30 with little to show for it but lifelong injuries.
It seems to be supported by the results at the Olympics and many other sporting events that can be viewed publicly.
And I think that's probably what the OP meant by "better at running". The vast majority of people can run to some extent, so the assumption is that someone is "better" at it usually means "faster". And the obvious place to look for evidence of that would be in sporting competitions, rather than trying to look up metrics that you have described. Obviously its a simplification, but if you don't do that then life would be far to complicated and detailed to navigate.
Right, it "seems to be supported." There's a lot of just-so storytelling going on here. Take a look at American football in 1940. No black players! Hm. Black people must be bad at football, perhaps more suited to being airmen (pilots). Seems to have held up perfectly over the last 77 years, eh?
Do people have no sense of history here? The internet lets you look up all sorts of things, like how the racial composition of US track and field has changed over the 20th century, or how Paavo Nurmi (a poor guy from an underdeveloped country) dominated distance running in the 1920s, challenged only by another couple poor guys from underdeveloped Scandinavian countries. It was clear from publicly viewable sporting events in the 1920s that Scandinavians are really the best at running; east Africans really didn't figure into the competition.
That argument applies to the general population maybe, but that doesn't mean it also applies to the population of Google employees. Everyone there passed their hiring standards, so everyone has proved their individual merit already.
The population of Google technical employees is I think the equivalent to the population of Olympic athletes in my example. If the general population has a different distribution (again whether you agree or not with that assumption), then there should be a natural imbalance among the cream of the top that made it to Google. And as you said, those who made it are all "Olympic athletes" (in theory, they should have been recruited based on individual merit) so these distributions do not mean that a female google employee would be more or less capable than a male, but it will result in less female google employees than male employees.
> If the general population has a different distribution (again whether you agree or not with that assumption), then there should be a natural imbalance among the cream of the top that made it to Google.
Your conclusion does not follow from the premise. It's not hard to come up with a distribution that is identical for the top x% but differs for the general population. Or one where the difference in top x% is in the opposite direction of the general population (e.g. two normal distributions where mu1 < mu2, and sigma1 > sigma2).
> but it will result in less female google employees than male employees.
Well, again, the Google memo started by arguing Google's technical standard was being hurt so James doesn't seem to believe his colleagues all got the same interviews he did.
I'd be more inclicned to this sort of argument for racial and gender diveristy if Google & others didn't have such abysmly skewed distributions towards white men. Go look at Google's diveristy report and then do some Bayes Rule hacking with it.
Incorrect question: you want the graduate rates. Not the staff rates.
Google's diversity rates are worse than the graduate rates for most schools I've checked. I have not found a composite data source to compare a larger average to.
Even if you admit that all genders, races, any way you want to segment the population, do not have the same distribution, that doesn't mean anything to a person as an individual.
For instance I think it's fair to say that black people are better at athleticism/running than white people (a disproportionate number olympic champions are black), i.e. the tail of the distribution is fatter for black people than white people. It doesn't mean anything to a random individual in that group. I am white, I shouldn't feel offended that another category of the population has a different distribution than my category. And it doesn't mean that no white people can become an olympic athlete either. Just that there will be a natural race imbalance among athletes. And it doesn't mean that a random black man will be better than a random white man at athletism.
So I don't agree with the way you read this memo: In this memo's case, perhaps you're mad at someone for saying you're genetically predisposed to be less capable of individual action. The memo doesn't say that an individual woman will be less capable. What it claims instead is that women have a different distribution for certain skills than men, which you might agree with or not. But it's a very different point.