<story><title>What I believe II</title><url>http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3389</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cmiles74</author><text>&amp;quot;... if James Damore deserves to be fired from Google, for treating evolutionary psychology as potentially relevant to social issues...&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t believe that&amp;#x27;s why James Damore was fired. He was fired for a much more obvious reason: he was working against their efforts to have a more gender diverse workforce and he embarrassed the company in a very public way.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;First, let me say that we strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves, and much of what was in that memo is fair to debate, regardless of whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with it.&amp;quot;[0]&lt;p&gt;Google admits that there are some things in the memo that are debatable, even though Google disagrees with Damore.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It is contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct, which expects ‘each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination&amp;quot;[0]&lt;p&gt;And that is why he was fired: deliberately working against Google&amp;#x27;s workplace culture goals. There may be room to argue about what Damore may have meant, in his heart, when he wrote the memo. However, since the memo is a physical artifact that we may all inspect, it&amp;#x27;s clear that the text of the memo is unabashedly sexist. He clearly states that he believes the gender gap at Google is not caused by sexism and that&amp;#x27;s at clear odds with Google&amp;#x27;s goals.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism.&amp;quot;[1]&lt;p&gt;As if it needs to be said, that is clearly not the case. The primary cause of the gender gap is very much sexism and it&amp;#x27;s a real problem that needs to be dealt with. While we may disagree on which steps will be most effective, there&amp;#x27;s no benefit to denying the problem exists.&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;techcrunch.com&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;google-fires-memo-author&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;techcrunch.com&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;google-fires-memo-author&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;medium.com&amp;#x2F;@Cernovich&amp;#x2F;full-james-damore-memo-uncensored-memo-with-charts-and-cites-339f3d2d05f&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;medium.com&amp;#x2F;@Cernovich&amp;#x2F;full-james-damore-memo-uncenso...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Diederich</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not going to comment about whether Google was following their own policy statement when firing Damore, one way or another.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; it&amp;#x27;s clear that the text of the memo is unabashedly sexist&lt;p&gt;Just to be sure, I looked up the definitions:&lt;p&gt;sexism: &amp;quot;prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;sterotype: &amp;quot;a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Do these seem like reasonable definitions to you?  If so, I wonder if you can take a moment to clearly connect points in the memo to these definitions?</text></comment>
<story><title>What I believe II</title><url>http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3389</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cmiles74</author><text>&amp;quot;... if James Damore deserves to be fired from Google, for treating evolutionary psychology as potentially relevant to social issues...&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t believe that&amp;#x27;s why James Damore was fired. He was fired for a much more obvious reason: he was working against their efforts to have a more gender diverse workforce and he embarrassed the company in a very public way.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;First, let me say that we strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves, and much of what was in that memo is fair to debate, regardless of whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with it.&amp;quot;[0]&lt;p&gt;Google admits that there are some things in the memo that are debatable, even though Google disagrees with Damore.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It is contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct, which expects ‘each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination&amp;quot;[0]&lt;p&gt;And that is why he was fired: deliberately working against Google&amp;#x27;s workplace culture goals. There may be room to argue about what Damore may have meant, in his heart, when he wrote the memo. However, since the memo is a physical artifact that we may all inspect, it&amp;#x27;s clear that the text of the memo is unabashedly sexist. He clearly states that he believes the gender gap at Google is not caused by sexism and that&amp;#x27;s at clear odds with Google&amp;#x27;s goals.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism.&amp;quot;[1]&lt;p&gt;As if it needs to be said, that is clearly not the case. The primary cause of the gender gap is very much sexism and it&amp;#x27;s a real problem that needs to be dealt with. While we may disagree on which steps will be most effective, there&amp;#x27;s no benefit to denying the problem exists.&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;techcrunch.com&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;google-fires-memo-author&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;techcrunch.com&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;google-fires-memo-author&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;medium.com&amp;#x2F;@Cernovich&amp;#x2F;full-james-damore-memo-uncensored-memo-with-charts-and-cites-339f3d2d05f&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;medium.com&amp;#x2F;@Cernovich&amp;#x2F;full-james-damore-memo-uncenso...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mdorazio</author><text>Please provide a source for your last statement since that is not at all clear.  By your logic, the primary cause of the gender gap in public school teaching must also be sexism.  Do you believe that as well?&lt;p&gt;The primary cause of the gender gap is tech is the lack of a gender-balanced candidate pool for tech jobs.  If you&amp;#x27;re a hiring manager posting developer jobs and 80% of the applicants are men, is it sexist that you end up hiring mostly men?&lt;p&gt;The real sexism problems are happening much earlier in life than when people start looking for jobs.  If you want gender balance in tech jobs, we need to get more women into tech-focused college degrees, which means we need to get more girls interested in tech in primary school, which means we need to encourage teaching and parenting in early development that leads to an interest in tech later... etc.  But wait, prenatal hormone exposure predicts toy choices in young children [1], so it&amp;#x27;s not that simple.  This is exactly what Damore was trying to get at.&lt;p&gt;I think we need to split the gender problem in tech into a few different categories and tackle each independently rather than throwing everything in the &amp;quot;tech is sexist&amp;quot; bucket and looking for magic umbrella solutions.  At a minimum, there are problems with getting girls interested in tech, keeping girls on an education path that leads to a tech career, eliminating subconscious bias in hiring practices, moving startups away from bro culture, and retaining women in tech when work-life balance becomes more important.  All of these are important and require different solutions.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pubmed&amp;#x2F;15693771&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pubmed&amp;#x2F;15693771&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>