Outraged about the Google diversity memo?
Certainly much better than a lot of the outrage that&#x27;s been going on.  A couple of nits:<p>&gt; I know most of Google’s work is people-centric.<p>Hmmm...is that really so?  Last I checked a lot of Google&#x27;s code output and value-generation is backend-y, with very little interaction with humans.  Google is also notoriously bad-mediocre at UX, though this has improved lately.<p>&gt; Assuming that job skills and performance can be deduced from<p>&gt; differences among demographic groups.<p>Hmm...he didn&#x27;t do this, and in fact explicitly states that doing so is not correct.<p>&gt; Damore naturally assumes the differences between<p>&gt; typically female and male traits mean that men are more skilled.<p>I also didn&#x27;t see that in the memo.  At all.  First, what he talks about is mostly <i>preferences</i>, not <i>skills</i>.  Second, there is the whole &quot;you can&#x27;t draw conclusions about individuals from slight variations in populations&quot;-thing.  So you can&#x27;t turn &quot;women have slightly stronger preferences, statistically, for these things&quot; into &quot;men are more skilled&quot;.  Third, and maybe least intuitively, this is almost entirely about the people who don&#x27;t (yet) work at Google.<p>Finally, she brings up Northern Europe.  I can relate, because I am also from Germany, and yes, the country finds, for example, having a female Chancellor simply <i>not remarkable</i>.  So when people vote for or against her, it is largely (can&#x27;t speak for everyone) because of what they think about her, her party and their policies (or in her specific case, lack thereof <i>g</i>), not because she is a woman or is not a man.<p>And I also believe this applies to other jobs as well.<p>However, what Sabine misses is that this has not had the effect of gender representation in the job market equalizing.  Surprisingly, it has had the <i>opposite</i> effect, as has been documented many places.  And yes, I want to stress again how utterly unexpected this is.<p>And so:<p>&gt; I believe for example if it wasn’t for biases and unequal<p>&gt; opportunities, then the higher ranks in science and politics<p>&gt; would be dominated by women. Hence, aiming at a 50-50 representation<p>&gt; gives men an unfair advantage. I challenge you to provide any<p>&gt; evidence to the contrary.<p>Challenge accepted (although not for politics, that&#x27;s a different subject)!<p>If it were obstacles, countries that (as we both agree) have fewer of those obstacles such as Northern Europeans ones would see more women in technical fields.  The opposite is the case.<p>And of course there is the point that the question is not &quot;why aren&#x27;t there more women in these jobs&quot;, but &quot;why are there any men that do them&quot;, because they generally suck if you want to have a life.  See Jordan Peterson&#x27;s excellent take on &quot;Women in High Paying Jobs&quot;:   <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=NV2yvI4Id9Q" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=NV2yvI4Id9Q</a>