<story><title>Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo</title><url>https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-engineer-thoughts-on-the-google-memo/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>michaelchisari</author><text>It seems to be completely lost on a lot of HN people that Damore&amp;#x27;s memo was not very scientific at all for the subject matter he was tackling.  It was written in a certain intellectual language that often provides a veneer of authority for those who agree with his conclusions and lack the domain knowledge to understand the nuances of why he&amp;#x27;s wrong. But a lot of these &amp;quot;bio-truth&amp;quot; type of arguments do the same thing.&lt;p&gt;Google had plenty of reason to rethink his employment, not just because of his poor judgement, but because of the fact that he tackled a new (to him) science is such an unreasoned and unscientific way.&lt;p&gt;All it would have taken was for him to run the essay past a couple of people with solid domain expertise, and they would have pointed out the dozens and dozens of problems with his assertions, reasoning and perspective.&lt;p&gt;As people have pointed out on HN before, there is something about computer science that leads people to believe they can out-think experts in other fields at their own game.  And while reaching outside of your expertise is to be encouraged, it should come with a certain humility that is not common in our industry.</text></item><item><author>aaron-lebo</author><text>&lt;i&gt;I do not think that anyone&amp;#x27;s ability to write should disbar them from discussion. We can not expect perfection from others. Instead we should try to understand them as human beings, and interpret them with generosity and kindness.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;You are completely right, but on the other hand if you are going to invoke &amp;quot;science&amp;quot; and you present your writing as scientific (he did), you have a higher bar. If you fail to be objective (see semi-related assertions about Marxism), or your writing obscures the point you are attempting to make, then you&amp;#x27;ve failed as a writer of scientific content.&lt;p&gt;If your writing isn&amp;#x27;t good enough, then don&amp;#x27;t release a memo to your workplace of tens of thousands of smart and ideological people. Put it on a blog, write it anonymously, but expect whatever criticism you get.</text></item><item><author>hedgew</author><text>Many of the more reasonable criticisms of the memo say that it wasn&amp;#x27;t written well enough; it could&amp;#x27;ve been more considerate, it should have used better language, or better presentation. In this particular link, Scott Alexander is used as an example of better writing, and he certainly is one of the best and most persuasive modern writers I&amp;#x27;ve found. However, I can not imagine ever matching his talent and output, even if I practiced for years to try and catch up.&lt;p&gt;I do not think that anyone&amp;#x27;s ability to write should disbar them from discussion. We can not expect perfection from others. Instead we should try to understand them as human beings, and interpret them with generosity and kindness.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Artistry121</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt;All it would have taken was for him to run the essay past a couple of people with solid domain expertise, and they would have pointed out the dozens and dozens of problems with his assertions, reasoning and perspective.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think this squares with truth. There is at least one PH.D psychologist who mentioned the memo was generally correct.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo</title><url>https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-engineer-thoughts-on-the-google-memo/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>michaelchisari</author><text>It seems to be completely lost on a lot of HN people that Damore&amp;#x27;s memo was not very scientific at all for the subject matter he was tackling.  It was written in a certain intellectual language that often provides a veneer of authority for those who agree with his conclusions and lack the domain knowledge to understand the nuances of why he&amp;#x27;s wrong. But a lot of these &amp;quot;bio-truth&amp;quot; type of arguments do the same thing.&lt;p&gt;Google had plenty of reason to rethink his employment, not just because of his poor judgement, but because of the fact that he tackled a new (to him) science is such an unreasoned and unscientific way.&lt;p&gt;All it would have taken was for him to run the essay past a couple of people with solid domain expertise, and they would have pointed out the dozens and dozens of problems with his assertions, reasoning and perspective.&lt;p&gt;As people have pointed out on HN before, there is something about computer science that leads people to believe they can out-think experts in other fields at their own game.  And while reaching outside of your expertise is to be encouraged, it should come with a certain humility that is not common in our industry.</text></item><item><author>aaron-lebo</author><text>&lt;i&gt;I do not think that anyone&amp;#x27;s ability to write should disbar them from discussion. We can not expect perfection from others. Instead we should try to understand them as human beings, and interpret them with generosity and kindness.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;You are completely right, but on the other hand if you are going to invoke &amp;quot;science&amp;quot; and you present your writing as scientific (he did), you have a higher bar. If you fail to be objective (see semi-related assertions about Marxism), or your writing obscures the point you are attempting to make, then you&amp;#x27;ve failed as a writer of scientific content.&lt;p&gt;If your writing isn&amp;#x27;t good enough, then don&amp;#x27;t release a memo to your workplace of tens of thousands of smart and ideological people. Put it on a blog, write it anonymously, but expect whatever criticism you get.</text></item><item><author>hedgew</author><text>Many of the more reasonable criticisms of the memo say that it wasn&amp;#x27;t written well enough; it could&amp;#x27;ve been more considerate, it should have used better language, or better presentation. In this particular link, Scott Alexander is used as an example of better writing, and he certainly is one of the best and most persuasive modern writers I&amp;#x27;ve found. However, I can not imagine ever matching his talent and output, even if I practiced for years to try and catch up.&lt;p&gt;I do not think that anyone&amp;#x27;s ability to write should disbar them from discussion. We can not expect perfection from others. Instead we should try to understand them as human beings, and interpret them with generosity and kindness.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cookiecaper</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t understand why this means that Damore shouldn&amp;#x27;t have shared his opinion.&lt;p&gt;We absolutely &lt;i&gt;should not&lt;/i&gt; construct a credentialist edifice that says only people certified to have gone through brainwa---err, regent-approved programs--- can comment on a topic. That would prevent discussion on most topics, as virtually all topics of interest are complex and have many years of study behind them.&lt;p&gt;Overall, these comments are still criticizing the &lt;i&gt;how&lt;/i&gt; instead of the &lt;i&gt;what&lt;/i&gt;, which is what people do when they don&amp;#x27;t know how to criticize the what but want to express their offense anyway. It&amp;#x27;s much easier to criticize delivery and in fact it will always happen whenever anyone cares, because delivery is inherently contextual&amp;#x2F;subjective.&lt;p&gt;If Damore&amp;#x27;s paper was rejected from &lt;i&gt;Nature&lt;/i&gt; or another peer-reviewed journal, that&amp;#x27;d make sense, as it is not a rigorous academic work. It&amp;#x27;s just a conjecture on the state of diversity hiring and it expresses his reasoning for believing the way he does. If he is so wrong, it should be simple to disprove him, and we can all move on without &lt;i&gt;anyone&lt;/i&gt; having to get fired.</text></comment>