And what would you have him do? Let's assume for a moment, he's telling the truth.
He's tried to improve assembly process. He's asked to personally be in the loop. He's said he'll do the task himself to make an assessment.
Alternatively, if he lies, that's another matter. He has made a commitment and he can be measured against that.
Don't get me wrong. Nobody is so naive to believe everybody's perfect. However, I'll give Musk the benefit of the doubt and watch closely.
We need to move back to a philosophy of objective fact, unambiguous statement of intent, being measured against that intent.
If you have value to add, please do. However, throwing Machiavellian observations into the ring is unlikely to provide value unless something was missing from the article or you can tie it to an objective fact.
The article is full of straw men too. However, I liked most of it.
I support the Google Engineer for speaking out.
"I don’t normally write about the underrepresentation of women in science".
I wonder how much you research your facts. We know that at least 85% of veterinary science (yes, science) students are female [1] and nobody is complaining about this or asking for balancing of numbers in that field. This article is strongly implying that forcing a quota (artificially influencing interest) in veterinary science would be diversity. How? Diversity has nothing to do with quotas, nothing. In fact, I consider personality far more important than gender to diversity.
The article also makes remarks about females and males as if they are an absolute. Again, this is a fallacy. If you force 50% of females in an organisation (as an example as many have called for that), you may not actually be diversifying at all! If all the females you hire are tomboys (or masculine), you've achieved what? Just as many masculine personalities, but some just don't have a penis. There is a fundamental misunderstanding of what "diversity" even means!
The author talks about "affirmative action" and "equal opportunity" as if they are compatible. How does that work? You either hire the best candidate or you do not.
The other elephant in the room is that nobody discusses the areas where females dominate. Show me! Vets are one of many examples [1]. Why is that? I believe this whole topic is one big power struggle by a one-eyed ideology.
"much of the data in Damore’s memo is well backed-up by research"
Thank you for saying that. Several leading behavioural psychologists also confirmed what he said. Which makes the reason behind the outrage even more interesting.
"That coding actually requires “female” skills was spelled out clearly by Yonatan Zunger, a former Google employee". This is a misleading argument. It implies quotas of 50/50. It also assumes that all females are one type and all males are another. The author did not think this argument out well.
"I believe for example if it wasn’t for biases and unequal opportunities, then the higher ranks in science and politics would be dominated by women."
You mean like veterinary science that we do see [1]? And why politics? What about politics is specifically female?
"I’m likewise biased in favor of women"
I really respect your honesty but it's to your own detriment. Your arguments are often flawed. Your research is scant and easily proven wrong in far too many instances. You should really check out Sweden as you suggested. Have a look at their IT and veterinary science numbers. It will turn most of your flawed theories on their head. Yes, I have researched it.
"... increasing diversity"
Again, you really need to be clear. You seem to be saying "hire people based on their genitals because that's diversity".
"change societal gender images"
Please read the work by Dr Simon Baron Cohen on very young children [2]. It sounds like you're saying "I don't care if there's a natural inclination, force people to behave how someone else believes they should so that some ideologists' numbers balance". I strongly disagree with your views here. Strongly. I respect differences in people (and to me, that's true diversity). You appear to want to force a homogeneous society for "diversity".
There are many other sections I could critique. I really don't care if someone is a man or a woman. This is probably why your more sexist views stand out (and you admitted that).
If you need to change one attitude, it's your definition of diversity. Recognising people are different (and trends do exist) is a significant part of it. Quotas are not diversity, especially when they are cherry picked by the media.
Giving everyone the same opportunity is not an ideology, it's common sense (or it was before political correctness). Giving all people the same opportunity is nothing to do with ideologies. An ideology, as an example, pretends that all outcomes must be the same.
For example, the overwhelming majority of veterinary "science" students in the western world are female [1]. Would you care to explain how this result represents an ideology?
What is an ideology is that Australia sexually discriminates against boys in "science" policy despite knowing this fact on vets. This would seem (to the educated individual) that it would be illogical to sexually discriminate against boys when the majority of students in veterinary "science" are female. That's because an ideology drove that illogical decision making.
Equal opportunity makes sense, not equal outcome. It's not an ideology. The ideology is a group like feminism who have pushed hard to discriminate against boys in science. Perform a Google search for "STEM" and "girls" to see thousands of articles in case you have any doubt about the power of fallacy of ideologies. You are welcome to see if there are any articles that encourage boys in science, you won't find them.
It surprises me that so many people misunderstand why equality of outcome is both a fallacy and a construct of ideologies.
You're upset with the question? That thought process is at odds with knowledge seeking.
Why not ask the question? What ever happened to discussion? Good discussion can come from bad ideas. I think it's a good question and I loosely answered it elsewhere in this thread.
I'm playing devil's advocate here. I'm glad the testing has been done and hope to see robust discussion.
Some people are deliberating over 1973. It doesn't appear to be a magic year for when problems started. It appears to be the earliest date that was analysed.
The question of "so what" is important (even if people are being downvoted for asking it). At least one expert has said "despite the decline found in the study, average sperm counts still remain in the normal range."[1]. I won't claim to understand "normal" in this context.
What is even more fascinating is that every western country has negative population growth and has for quite some time [2]. In spite of testosterone levels being within normal range, western population numbers are going backwards across all countries. Why?
There are some historical lessons that some people are looking to (eg. The decline of the Roman Empire). I would add that there are other factors that are having a bigger impact than sperm count, namely the pill and career vs motherhood [3]. I greatly respected Kate Ellis (a local MP in South Australia) for publicly resigning and stating just how hard it is to be a committed mother and a woman with a full time career. The "career woman" is the principal type of woman represented by the media today and Kate's voice was very important to some women I spoke with who were relieved that somebody finally spoke out.
We don't even know if sperm count will have a significant impact compared to population decline. I support the investigation but it's part of a much bigger issue.
Is the issue principally chemicals? The data said Asia doesn't appear to be impacted and Asia has plenty of chemicals (and microwaves to respond to another poster).
Is the media contributing to the problem by downplaying the significance of motherhood for women? Are we undermining our collective strength by pretending that every human being is equal rather than recognising and accepting we are different? Should we focus on opportunity rather than outcome when we talk about equality?
Our population decline is a major issue and it apparently isn't linked to sperm count. Migration may be an answer to population decline, or, maybe it's a stop gap. Maybe, the answer can be found in our attitudes.
Not all are created equal. Our children are unique.
One of my children showed natural talent in language at 9 months with no prompting. This was brought to our attention by childcare staff. Another of our children showed a natural talent with mathematical concepts at about a year old.
Even as they grew, our linguist struggled with math (for years) and our procedurally oriented child struggled with language (for years).
To this day, these two children maintain these core differences. It took at least 6 years for our linguist to crack basic arithmetic (even basic addition) which was at least several years behind our proceduralist.
I found out later that some leading child psychologists recognise different brain types in very young children (exactly as I found). An Internet search on brain types of children will show some high profile child psychologists who talk about this in depth, despite some strong "opinions" (ie. devoid of evidence) that oppose these studies.
Our linguist, with minimal pressure, has developed into a strong mathematician (at least grades wise) but to this day has never demonstrated anywhere near the natural ability of our proceduralist.
I have drawn the same conclusions with my own siblings and my wife's siblings. At a very young age, our own strengths become apparent without intervention. I am very glad I never pushed my kids to be equal (or even close to equal) in all skills. I consider most uses of the word "equal" worrisome (except for equal opportunity, a concept frequently downplayed in the last decade or so. Even Zuckerberg's famous open letter was unclear on such a fundamental concept).
OBS: when I asked our linguist to step through basic math, they understood the concept but could not do the work independently. Someone in this thread described a similar story for their child and attributed this to a lack of "confidence". For my child, I wholly reject that it was confidence related. When things clicked for our linguist, they clicked. If anything, our linguist's ability to crack the basics took patience on my part. I wanted my child to succeed quickly but I restrained myself (thankfully).
People need to realise that not all kids are the same. We have innate strengths. We have different learning styles, different learning rates, and different interests and motivations. I strongly reject the modern populist theory that we are all equal in ability and I believe we do significant harm because of this factoid. The motives behind this factoid concern me deeply.
If I could offer one piece of advice, your child(ren) are unique. Don't ever let anybody tell you that your child's strength or weakness comes from social conditioning. The only social conditioning cones from extreme behaviour (eg. Heavy handed forcing of "equality" under the banner of political correctness is extremely harmful, rather than focussing on potential and opportunity. This heavy handedness is also driving some extremely destructive social engineering under the banner of "equality". If you are watching academic trends you should be horrified as a patent).
I always encourage(d) play at a young age (physical activity, math games, language games). However, if you make this more than games (if you call this teaching and you start to measure), you set kids up for failure, especially when many children need patience and time.
According to PISA rankings, most western countries (especially English speaking) are not the top performers. I have hinted my beliefs of the root cause of this in this post. I predict most western countries will slip in ranking even further (especially English speaking countries). If things play as I expect, the slip will be significant in the next 10 years.
After reading this article, I have no idea about how Google Chrome gives any advantages over paper and pencils. The gist of the article is that it allows students to collaborate.
What I don't understand is how the technology is actually being used to extend education.
For example, Wikipedia is a dynamic encyclopaedia. Dictionary.com is an online dictionary/thesaurus. I can obtain photos through a Google search. I can find articles by searching for them... so, what does Google Chrome actually provide?
I often think back to Alexander the Great. He was taught by Aristotle. What was his teaching technique? It was about a way of thinking, not the vehicle for teaching. Mac/PC/Chromebook. They all offer the same basic opportunities to online resources. The difference (superficially) is cost and admin.
My children still generate real world artefacts (eg. Paintings/posters/models). These can't be marked or submitted electronically. This means that it can't be about aggregating student work, unless you only allow electronic work, which would be crazy.
We use a tool called seesaw. As a parent, it gives me warm and fuzzies seeing my kids sitting with other kids in a classroom (it's being used as Facebook for classrooms). I never get copies of homework sheets or a good idea of the actual work being done. This is an example of how technology can be used in all of the wrong ways (technology for technology's sake).
So I'm back to my original question. Other than cheap cost and simple integration of basic office tools, how does this product actually help students?
Disclaimer: I spent several years developing an electronic education system. I asked myself this same question often!
In many ways, yes. There is a hatred, a malice, especially by special interest groups who have circled the wagons and demonised everyone around them.
When the NYT was hiring a gender editor, they prefixed the application with comments about how men "used to rule", they talked about how women "ruled the Olympics" [0]. How is this meant to help readers or a potential applicant? How does it make the world a better place? It doesn't, it tears the community apart. It's hate, but a popular hate!
Or search Google (or any news paper) for "domestic violence". Almost the entire media industry refuses to represent any male victims of domestic violence (again, division, isolation, sexism). In Australia, we starved ALL male victims of support. Yes, such segregation is still alive and kicking!
When I went back and looked at newspapers from the early 70s, I felt sick when I realised how much hate we have introduced today. It is a stark contrast. Please check for yourself and I suggest you'll be as shocked as I was at the extremes.
It's all around us though. Hollywood movies, NYT, Sydney Morning Herald, BBC, they have all been pushing extreme and nasty views (them and many other papers).
The world has become a
hostile place. There is no voice of reason. Who pointed out Hillary's sexist exit speech [1]? Nobody, not one media outlet. Why? Because her brand of divisiveness (hate) is popular! Little boys suck! Little girls rule! (Look for "boys" and "girls" in her speech to see what I mean that no media outlet will comment on).
So, yes, today's society is the most intolerant I've ever lived in. I can understand why people feel depressed. It's why I'm willing to take the karma hit every time I expose these special interest groups. My karma score ultimately means nothing, but, exposing these intolerants does (at least to me).
My wife and I have been married a long time. We respect each other. Compromise comes from respect, not the other way around.
Every relationship I know that works has mutual respect. The unhealthy relationships I know are full of compromise and little respect. One guy told me his wife was a bitch. I told him that his lack of respect was a bad sign. He said she started it. Respect doesn't work that way.
When my wife was very ill for a long time, I put most of the focus on her. It changed the dynamics of our relationship (in some not so good ways given that we see each other as equivalents). Without this compromise, I think our marriage may have failed or at least deteriorated greatly. I did it for her needs and out of respect. I also had to learn to back off and not be too supportive.
Neural to me means stop favouring one special interest group over everybody else. When the NYT was seeking to hire a gender editor (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/jobs/nyt-gender-edi...) and said "women ruled the Olympics", "men used to dominate", etc. were they impartial? Was there any need for such divisiveness? What did they hope to gain?
The special interest groups will move into Facebook. They will shut down anything they don't like and allow everything (no matter how intolerant) that aligns with their political agenda. Use "domestic violence" as an example by searching that term at Google. Almost all publications ignore worldwide government stats that show huge numbers of female perpetrators. Almost all media outlets say domestic violence is something only males do and only females are victims of, in spite of overwhelming evidence this is false. That's an example of non neutrality by a special interest group. It's lead to a starvation of funding and support for one sex. It's lead to animosity.
Do you think Facebook will be impartial in their moderation? The special interest groups will apply extreme pressure and the result will be extreme views.
I would be very careful of that advice. There are many ideologies that use that exact thought process as a justification for divisiveness and intolerance, especially in an echo chamber like Facebook.
Is there another side to the argument? Have you investigated it? Is the constraint or division unjustifiable? Who/what is being excluded in that argument? Many patents and anything politically correct fail that test. Eg, do we need a "women in engineering"* or should that be "people in engineering"? If you have "women in engineering" (because of percentages), do you have "men in veterinary science" because of percentages too? You see? Feelings may tell you one thing, but considering divisiveness, exclusion and an opposite view tell you something entirely different.
If people asked that last question more often, the world would be a much better place. Leaving the criteria as a logical reasoning rather than a feeling would eliminate a lot of prejudice, intolerance, division and constraint.
* I'm married to a qualified and practising engineer. We discussed this topic when she went to a "women in engineering" meeting. When I asked if we should hold a "black people in engineering" meeting, she said "of course not, why would we?". Now we agree on the divisiveness/exclusion test as well as the inclusiveness test. Be warned, my views are not popular.
I thoroughly enjoyed your read. I have a few comments for you to mull over.
The article should re-iterate the impacts of loss of net neutrality and a focus of power in the summary at the end.
"They control politics. Facebook won the new president the election — even the president and his advisors acknowledge this.". This is really a stretch of the truth. Hillary surround herself with wealthy celebrities. She played the gender card hard (see her exit speech and look for "boys" and "girls" to see how transparent she was in her prejudice). Hillary lost (albeit by a small margin) by being out of touch with average people through arrogance, sexism, elitism. I would rewrite your section as it really doesn't reflect that I'd call truth.
There is also a battle raging in the media. Extreme sexism (eg. Look at NYT's hiring page for a gender editor - and if that's been altered, look at my past analysis), or collusion on topics like domestic violence (ie. not one single media outlet will admit that many women are aggressors too - that's extreme collusion across all mainstream media). This collusion represents a loss of freedom we need to fight for. If there's no media integrity, there's no Internet worth fighting for. There has been almost no integrity from much of the Internet for a long time.
Your cause is excellent. I hope we can build an Internet with more freedom.
I'm inclined to strongly agree with smsm42. There is something deeper than funding journalists. Ideologies (special interest groups) are far too powerful and connected through other means to simply disappear. They will collaborate and infiltrate anything that has visibility and a reputation.
Will Wikipedia shut out these ideologies? Of course not. It will favour some ideologies over others and you at straight back to where we are now. This was well summarised in the article about WWIII yesterday on HN. The crux of the WWIII article covered all forms of bias, but ideologies still equally applied to the pitfalls identified.
Let's say for a minute the Wikimedia board put one of each ideologist type on the board (1 for each religion, sex, ethnicity, colour of skin, sexual orientation, etc). It would exclude some ideologies (eg. ISIS) and favour others (eg. Christianity). Subgroups would form among the wider group and political correctness would kick in (especially if it stroked the preferences of editors, founders, lead sponsors, vocal readers, etc).
As somebody else mentioned here, Wikipedia is a basket case on anything controversial. Often, one side of a topic is watered down by mods with an agenda and the opposing view is given carte blanche. I read the comments by editors after I saw how extreme some of the articles were. Editors for one side were exasperated at the lack of impartiality.
I don't have an answer. Simplisticly, you could start with egalitarianism and exclude special interest groups. Reject political correctness. If it is divisive (eg. Special interest groups), then block them all. However, this isn't tenable and limits some worthy/essential discussion. As soon as you allow divisiveness (eg. Special interest groups), you are destined to fail.
Even if egalitarianism won out (ie. no divisiveness), the authors would still inject their own prejudices. I believe wired tries to be egalitarian, but, the authors who support certain ideologies still slip in one-sided comments frequently. They do this sufficiently frequently that I can usually pick the ideologies supported by their staff. To their credit, they are very mild compared to most other outlets.
There are conflicting needs, too many politicised groups, too much to gain/lose. Unless the wikimedia leadership has a plan to stop the failures inherent in Wikipedia, this will fail too. Power struggles and division will ultimately (I suspect quickly) corrupt wikimedia. It will become a war of numbers (as somebody else said). They will also follow the funding.
The thrust of the article used this merely as an illustration of distrust, manipulation and outright lies from all sources of news/information that we have.
I'm deeply interested in "fake News" and I suspect, like many do, that Facebook is merely an enabler rather than the source (ie. Facebook tells us what we want to hear, thus amplifying confirmation bias). I recently exposed the New York Times for being a cultivator of divisiveness and manipulation (but they are not alone). The NYT are far more likely to be a source of the problem than Facebook.
The article, for me at least, was a recognition of system-wide manipulation, misinformation and intent. It was also a recognition that things are dire. It was also a recognition for unity.
The challenge we face is that we are divided. Not just on national boundaries, but on our essences of self-identity which have become extremely fragmented and extremely hostile. I believe people need to pull together more than ever, yet, we are tearing apart. We are being manipulated on so many fronts that we can't see the wood for the trees. The discussion on Syria was merely one example of this confusion.
The article calls for recognition of the importance of truth. Excellent. However, the root cause of problems is squabbles over power leading to division. You're never going to stop squabbles for power. Truth can always be re-packaged until it suits. No matter how we try to bring people together, there will be more to gain through differentiation and divisiveness.
This rabbit hole runs deep. I am grateful to this article for challenging my views on fake News and social fragmentation.
I enjoyed this article, except for one section. The author's basic attitude toward genius. It's flawed on a few fronts.
Genius is not being remembered. That's irrelevant.
Education. The author states the lack of female geniuses through a lack of education. How does education explain Srinivasa Iyengar Ramanujan? It doesn't. Like all geniuses, they push the envelope intuitively, bit by copying others.
It's a fun read. However, I fear the author misses the fundamental nature of genius.
There's another category that fits beautifully with this article. Critical thinking. The article focuses on knowledge domains. It would also benefit from discussing the ability to correlate facts or deduce conclusions based on prior knowledge.
I often talk about domestic violence because it's a fundamental issue of ethics: why all western media outlets only focus on fully grown white women, ignoring government bureaus of statistics that dispel such an obvious fallacy that drives victims to be starved of funding and support based on their sex. What we see is that the ability to critically think, to correlate information, to ascertain truth (even when presented with hard numbers from an authoritative source such as governments) is compromised.
There's a deeper issue beyond knowledge domains. Is this linked to a change of emphasis/importance in our virtual society? Are we becoming encyclopaedias of partial truths (ie. knowing lists of discrete information without aggregation and without deeper understanding)?
The Internet opened up a new world. There are many fewer older people on the Internet. That collective wisdom that comes with age is often lost. I don't know if it's this collective loss of knowledge on the Internet, whether it's Facebook's filters that only tell a person what they want to hear, whether it's information overload, or a combination of factors that appear to have changed our focus from gathering knowledge to gathering information.
Your version is a somewhat closer reflection of the version of what is taught in school today (ie. there is no magical 1869). However, the actual conflict was sparked over Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand's assassination. You excluded some fundamental points that help understand a much broader series of issues (namely, a very late unification of Germany causing upset in many alliances, region-wide instability beyond Germany and a crumbling Austro-Hungarian empire desperate to cling to power).
As an example, read Aethelric's post here as it is important in explaining the seeds that set Germany as it was in 1869.
The region we now know as Germany was a series of small towns with mostly independent rule. With instability (especially crumbling of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), Germany established formal alliances quickly as the political climate grew in intensity.
Franz Ferdinand was shot, the European states fought and the US (with late entry) injected fresh ideas, troops and supplies, which decisively turned the tides of a messy war.
So, 1869 was more like a traffic light that triggered the car crash. Without understanding the history, you can't really understand each participant's trajectories or motives. To limit the answer to "1869" is only slightly more informative than limiting the answer to "Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand's assassination".
I've researched Japan's situation quite carefully as I believe there are lessons the west can learn from what's happened in Japan. Your attitude is dismissive and arrogant and shows a complete lack of empathy and understanding.
If you had read about Japan, you would know of a country that has had decades of stagflation. You will know of a country that places extremely high expectations on their young. Instead, you throw rocks. The article quotes 4.5 million people who have lost hope and you dismiss them all as lazy parasites. 4.5 million and they're all lazy? There's nothing else at play because you have 2 daughters?
May I suggest that you consider researching before commenting next time? There are many articles (unlike this one) that are not judgemental, that are informative and help those that wish to understand.
I apologise for going OT but you are right. This is a culture creeping into HN. Unpopular (but well thought) views are sometimes (too frequently) being down voted because people don't like it. This behaviour shuts down robust discussion and creates a conformist culture where "we are all individuals" (ala Monty Python).
It is a fine line. Some postings cross the line, some are not value adding because they say nothing (eg. Me too). However, contrasting views (particularly well argued, potentially controversial views) are what really keeps HN so refreshing and thought provoking.
It may be time for the owners to open up a discussion on use of votes again.
He's tried to improve assembly process. He's asked to personally be in the loop. He's said he'll do the task himself to make an assessment.
Alternatively, if he lies, that's another matter. He has made a commitment and he can be measured against that.
Don't get me wrong. Nobody is so naive to believe everybody's perfect. However, I'll give Musk the benefit of the doubt and watch closely.
We need to move back to a philosophy of objective fact, unambiguous statement of intent, being measured against that intent.
If you have value to add, please do. However, throwing Machiavellian observations into the ring is unlikely to provide value unless something was missing from the article or you can tie it to an objective fact.