patrick.net

rando says

Can I get fired for criticizing Trump? Nope, you can get fired only for supporting Trump. Completely one-sided.

@patrick if you actually believe that then you really need to get out of the bay area bubble more often. Like anywhere between the 2 coasts. I know it's hard for the denizens to believe but the bay area is only a very very small part of America. A very very small and very very unrepresentative part of America. It's true.

So the news this morning, google let that person go. Wrong action, I'm disappointed in their unwillingness to listen.

Dan8267 says

rando says

See how these lines diverge at just about the time SJW issues came to the fore?

That wasn't due to SJW, as bad as SJW are. It was due to women entering the workforce, decreasing the bargaining power of labor.

That's a good point. Also fits with the elite agenda to take more of the profits for themselves and give less to labor.

rando says

The exception proves the rule. She is notable exactly because of her rarity.

and these were also exceptions that prove the rule because of their rarity? https://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/pioneer.cgi?female

or the women at JPL and NASA were all exceptions that prove the rule? The space program wouldn't have happened with out women mathematicians most of whom became programmers.

"Social justice warrior" (commonly abbreviated SJW) is a pejorative term for an individual promoting socially progressive views,[1] including feminism,[1][2] civil rights,[1] multiculturalism,[1] and identity politics.[3] The accusation of being an SJW carries implications of pursuing personal validation rather than any deep-seated conviction,[4] and being engaged in disingenuous social justice arguments or activism to raise personal reputation, also known as virtue signalling.[5]

The phrase originated in the late 20th century as a neutral or positive term for people engaged in social justice activism.[1] In 2011, when the term first appeared on Twitter, it changed from a primarily positive term to an overwhelmingly negative one.[1] During the Gamergate controversy, the negative connotation gained increased use, and was particularly aimed at those espousing views adhering to social liberalism, cultural inclusiveness, or feminism, as well as views deemed to be politically correct.[1][2]

http://www.nationalreview.com/morning-jolt/450246/Firing-Google-Memo-May-Result-in-Lawsuit

My guess is that a lawsuit at Google is going to explore that question under theharsh glare of public scrutiny.Google on Monday fired the employee who wrote an internal memo suggesting men are better suited for tech jobs than women, escalating a debate over free speech at the company.Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said in an email to his staff that the employees memo violated company policy. Google, part of Alphabet Inc., didnt publicly name the memos author.Software engineer James Damore, who said in an email that he wrote the memo and was fired for it, said he was considering...

Google Fired a guy that was in process of talking to the Labor department about Hostile work environment.

Lawyer up Google!

bob2356 says

or the women at JPL and NASA were all exceptions that prove the rule? The space program wouldn't have happened with out women mathematicians most of whom became programmers.

Yet the fact remains that in all cultures and at all times women are much less likely to show a preference for engineering than men.

Note that that book and movie is as much propaganda as history, with fiction deliberately created to fill in where reality did not conform well enough to the narrative:

Is Jim Parsons' character, NASA engineer Paul Stafford, based on a real person?
No. In fact-checking the Hidden Figures movie, we learned that white collar statistician Paul Stafford, portrayed by Jim Parsons, is a fictional character. He was created to represent certain racist and sexist attitudes that existed during the 1950s.

It also exaggerates racism for propaganda purposes:

Did Katherine Johnson feel the segregation of the outside world while working at NASA?
No. "I didn't feel the segregation at NASA, because everybody there was doing research," says the real Katherine G. Johnson. "You had a mission and you worked on it, and it was important to you to do your job...and play bridge at lunch. I didn't feel any segregation. I knew it was there, but I didn't feel it." Even though much of the racism coming from Katherine's coworkers in the movie seems to be largely made up (in real life she claimed to be treated as a peer), the movie's depiction of state laws regarding the use of separate bathrooms, buses, etc. was very real.

http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/hidden-figures/

rando says

Lol, bet you $100 the author is male.

Such honey badgers do not exist, at least I have not run across one like that yet.

Patrick, when I was in graduate school, you'd run into two camps of women.

The incompetent ones that relied on the culture that exists today to even graduate. They would get kicked out of labs for being incompetent until some hack professor only interested in funding picks them up to get some diversity money into their lab.

Then there were the competent ones. These types abhored the feminsts...could not stand the female SJW professors...and held their own. It wasn't a coincidence that all their friends in the department were male. Basically, this is how I met my wife. My wife absolutely cannot stand the shameless promotion of women in the name of diversity and equality.

As it stands right now, any female student with a 3.4 or higher in an undergraduate science program is almost certainly guaranteed into admissions for a PhD at places like Harvard or MIT whereas a male with a 3.8 can easily be ignored. Anyone that claims that women are disadvantaged when it comes to opportunities in science are either ignorant or have their own agenda.

There was one girl that I went to grad school with who absolutely could not stand this type of behavior. However, 3 years ago, she completely switched sides and sounds of the discriminatory alarm non-stop. She did this once she realized that her career will move faster on this side.

My 2-cents:

The workplace is not a forum to unload your personal beliefs or personal problems onto others.

If you bring politics, religions, or personal problems into the workplace, you are playing with fire. Keep it professional and focus on work.

My wife is quite legitimately geeky as well. She was in the physics PhD program at Michigan before I met her. She does not need any assistance in tech. The gender bell curves of interest in tech do indeed overlap even while distinctly different.

Her photo was used in a recruiting poster for the physics department, which I found amusing because it seemed to be targeting geeky men, showing them that there was at least one good looking woman in physics graduate school. Or maybe it was trying to attract other women to apply. In any case, she was the unusual one, so they clearly picked her to be on the poster (the "poster child", lol) for some reason aside from truthful representation of physics department demographics.

BayArea says

If you bring politics, religions, or personal problems into the workplace, you are playing with fire.

It's Google that brought politics into the workplace. This guy was objecting to it.

rando says

BayArea says

If you bring politics, religions, or personal problems into the workplace, you are playing with fire.

It's Google that brought politics into the workplace. This guy was objecting to it.

Patrick, you are saying that Google brought politics into it with their diversity initiates?

Not sure I can object there. But everyone knows there's nearly 100% chance of employment termination by pushing back on a diversity initiative.

BayArea says

The workplace is not a forum to unload your personal beliefs or personal problems onto others.

Tell that to the Google CEO and Vice President of Diversity, Integrity & Governance.

rando says

That's a good point. Also fits with the elite agenda to take more of the profits for themselves and give less to labor.

Well, I wouldn't call the owners "elite". They are just the descendants of the corrupt and lucky who used connections to gain advantages not available to the rest of us. All of their riches comes from exploiting public wealth, the productivity of their workers, and cheating at zero-sum games.

Dan8267 says

BayArea says

The workplace is not a forum to unload your personal beliefs or personal problems onto others.

Tell that to the Google CEO and Vice President of Diversity, Integrity & Governance.

Can't disagree there

bob2356 says

and these were also exceptions that prove the rule because of their rarity? https://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/pioneer.cgi?female

or the women at JPL and NASA were all exceptions that prove the rule? The space program wouldn't have happened with out women mathematicians most of whom became programmers.

It's not that women lack the ABILITY to excel in tech or STEM, or mathematics. It's that they lack the MOTIVATION to pursue these subjects with the fervor they require to become proficient!

BayArea says

But everyone knows there's nearly 100% chance of employment termination by pushing back on a diversity initiative.

Thank you. That's really the point.

There is a PC Koran. To question it means beheading.

No discussion allowed.

Patrick says

The lack of discussion fosters the most extreme and authoritarian elements of this ideology.
Extreme: all disparities in representation are due to oppression
Authoritarian: we should discriminate to correct for this oppression

rando says

XXY chromosomes

XXY does not make a person non-binary. They are simply males, because of the Y chromosome, specifically because of the SR-Y gene. Having an extra X chromosome does not make them feminine. X is not a female chromosome. Y is a male chromosome solely because it contains the SR-Y gene which triggers testosterone production which in turn triggers tons of genes to express male traits.

XXY does not men less susceptible to geneitc disorders in the X chromosome like color blindness because having one bad copy of a gene don't cause those disorder if you also have one good copy of that gene.

XYY does make men ultra-male because two copies of the SR-Y gene causes more expression of this gene, more testosterone, and more aggressive behavior statistically.

rando says

Gays should honestly assert their right to choose their vice, instead of excusing it as somehow biologically determined.

Why do you think being homosexual is not biological? How could it be cultural? And what difference does it make other than understanding nature?

rando says

The idea that gay behavior is biological while women's work preference is not biological is not even self-consistent.

Actually, those are independent questions. It's just that they have the same answer. Both are biological, but there is not reason to think that the answer to one implies the answer to the other.

The difference between the male and female brain is, of course, genetic since the difference occurs because of the SR-Y gene. What other genes are triggered by testosterone is largely unknown at this time, as is the very interesting question of how does the genome specify how to build the brain and how do genes influence this. It's interesting because there is far more information in the human brain at birth than in our genetic code. So the instructions cannot specify where to lay down the neurons or how to connect them. It must be more of a guide to building the structure. So how much of this guide is determine by genes and how much is environmental including essentially random?

Quigley says

It's not that women lack the ABILITY to excel in tech or STEM, or mathematics.

Most men lack the ability to excel in STEM. Only the best men excel in STEM.

Most women also lack the ability to excel in STEM. Only the best women excel in STEM.

More men than women excel in most STEM fields, the exceptions being chemistry, biology, and ecology, and those exceptions are easily explained. See Why men better than women at software development.

Dan8267 says

Why do you think being homosexual is not biological? How could it be cultural? And what difference does it make other than understanding nature?

Identical twins are not identically straight or gay. They have the same genes and same fetal environment and usually the same upbringing.

It could be cultural simply by being normalized, as in ancient Greece.

It makes a big difference in what you are and are not legally allowed to say in this current atmosphere of intolerance for non-PC ideas. It's a restriction on freedom which is made into law to promote and normalize a specific vice, IMHO.

Maybe some people are more inclined to alcoholism for whatever reason. Should they be recognized as a specific protected class based on that, or is drinking a choice? It's clearly a choice. Obesity is another example.

rando says

Identical twins are not identically straight or gay. They have the same genes and same fetal environment and usually the same upbringing.

OK, so the flaw in your thinking is equating biological to genetic. They do not remotely mean the same thing.

Genetics is a small, but crucial, part of biology. There are, however, other important biological aspects including the epigenome and the environment.

Studies have shown that homosexual men are more likely to have older brothers. The more sons a woman has, the more testosterone is remains in her womb, and the more likely that a subsequent son will become gay. This is clearly a non-genetic but biological factor. It has nothing to do with choice.

The fact is that genes get turned on and off due to environmental factors. Alligators become male or female not due to genetic code, but rather due to temperature. Chickens literally become transgendered from temperature as well.

Genes do not in themselves solely determine traits. Genes act in an environment and both are critical in determining traits.

Do you really think being gay is a choice? And if so, do you believe you yourself could choose to be gay even for a short time? Do you honestly think that you could will yourself to enjoy sucking cock? If not, why do you think anyone else can will themselves onto cock?

rando says

Obesity is another example.

Obesity is caused by eating habits, which are choices. In order for your comparison to be valid, you have to be able to choose to like cock. Not just choose to suck cock, but choose to like it.

Ricky Gervais said it best.

www.youtube.com/embed/t1JhjugqB0U

Women should be kept barefoot & pregnant.
I don't care if you have morning sickness,get in the kitchen & fix my breakfast,NOW!
When you're finished washing dishes,CLEAN UP THIS PIGSTY!

Bitches need to grow some ovaries or STFU.

Patrick, statistically your measure of men and women's preference and capability to do engineering work is likely to be closer to the truth.

Although there are truth in science/engineering, on physical matters, human computing and psychology is another thing.

Which religion is more true? Which God is more real?

Democracy is "better" and yet North Korea soldiers believe in honor serving King Jung Un.

To compete for resources, business,jobs, and ultimately wars, human propaganda anything to gain competitive edge.
Truth does NOT matter.
Who gets the food and sex matters.

Google fired James NOT because he is wrong, but because that's bad for google's business.

Women go against James, NOT because he is wrong, but because his "truth" hurt their job opportunity.

People go to wars in order to secure food and sex. It does NOT matter wheather the propaganda for war is true or NOT.

In the end, the fittest survives.

If google goes down because they keep firing people like James, the. google failed the natural selection.

If James went broke, and failed to secure food and sex for himself, James failed the natural selection.

There is truth, but it does NOT matter.

Dan8267 says

Studies have shown that homosexual men are more likely to have older brothers.

Yes, and here is one possible explanation:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?uid=11501300&cmd=showdetailview

In research with 942 nonclinical adult participants, gay men and lesbian women reported a significantly higher rate of childhood molestation than did heterosexual men and women. Forty-six percent of the homosexual men in contrast to 7% of the heterosexual men reported homosexual molestation.

Dan8267 says

The fact is that genes get turned on and off due to environmental factors. Alligators become male or female not due to genetic code, but rather due to temperature. Chickens literally become transgendered from temperature as well.

There are some biological realities you're missing here. The phenomenon you're describing is epigenetics, the selective expression of genes triggered by environmental factors. This is a very important field and scientists have much work yet to do to understand it fully.
However, only genes contained in the genetic code may actually be expressed. Women LACK the male "Y" chromosome, and so can never express the genes it contains no matter the environment. Certain other animals like lizards and frogs have all relevant DNA and can swap genders easily. That doesn't mean humans can do the same.

That said, I'm thinking homosexuality is part learned behavior (homo molestation as a child can play a huge role) and part epigenetics. DNA expression of homosexual traits can begin even in the womb if mom's hormones are off. This can even be triggered by lack of essential nutrients, as happens often in second and third pregnancies. However, given the method of epigenetic expression has to do with nutrition and environment, could it be possible for the biological component of homosexuality to be switched off? Maybe all you need to go straight are enough red meat and broccoli and some careful study of Hustler magazine.

Coding is conceptually simple, even though it is abstract.
Good analytical skills help but many coding tasks require only basic reasoning.
I believe many women can code and some are very good at it. I know some.

On the other hand, the computer won't treat you like a princess.

This guy was fired for "promoting gender stereotypes" but the biggest promoter of gender stereotypes I know are Disney movies. And I don't hear feminists complaining about them.

BayArea says

If you bring politics, religions, or personal problems into the workplace, you are playing with fire. Keep it professional and focus on work.

I agree with the advice, but I do believe one is only being paid for labor, not conscience. The employer is only entitled to control your work while at work. Free Speech Everywhere.

The idea that an employer can regulate your opinions at work is a holdover from Feudalism that needs to be abolished. Free Labor isn't Serfs.

One can only be fired if the non-work conversation is causing interference with work, and it by law should be subject to escalation: That is the employer has to show it interrupted work (not just what they didn't like) and can't fire on the first offense. This would greatly retard SJWs (and others, but SJWs represent the dominant force abusing speech the most)

Google proved he was right about "echo chamber" and "authoritarianism" by firing him.

He was right that "shaming into silence is the antithesis of psychological safety"

TwoScoopsMcGee says

BayArea says

If you bring politics, religions, or personal problems into the workplace, you are playing with fire. Keep it professional and focus on work.

I agree with the advice, but I do believe one is only being paid for labor, not conscience. The employer is only entitled to control your work while at work. Free Speech Everywhere.

The idea that an employer can regulate your opinions at work is a holdover from Feudalism that needs to be abolished. Free Labor isn't Serfs.

One can only be fired if the non-work conversation is causing interference with work, and it by law should be subject to escalation: That is the employer has to show it interrupted work (not just what they didn't like) and can't fire on the first offense. This would greatly retard SJWs (and others, but SJWs represent the dominant force abusing speech the most)

Yet for some strange reason, you have no problem with Employers mandating drug testing. Odd

rando says

Time to short Google stock yet?

At this point I would not bet against GOOG, which is primarily an advertising company and has a huge number of available engineers. For better or worse, they can replace James much more easily than he can replace them. I recommend reading Dan's Post on compartmentalization vs interconnectedness. GOOG's brand and business depend heavily on connectedness, and (probably for that reason) GOOG's process emphasizes collaboration.

rando says

The idea that gay behavior is biological while women's work preference is not biological is not even self-consistent.

Again, you conflate probability and certainty, which are discrete concepts. A group of people being more likely, on average, to do XYZ does not tell you whether a specific individual representative of the group will do XYZ, much less why. The most probable roll for two 6-sided dice is 7, but 7 is definitely not the only possible roll. Dan addressed this too.

Daniel Kahneman and Alan Greenspan have both written that people can learn intuitively to understand mathematical probabilities, and lessons learned that way are available faster and more reliably than lessons learned only theoretically based on rules at the level of the cortex. I am guessing maybe Dan played more card games or dice games than you, which might explain why he seems to have a deeper and more fluent understanding of probabilities and how they affect people.

rando says

one possible explanation:

Possible, but not probable. Girls are more likely to be molested than boys, but getting molested doesn't turn a boy into a girl. Gay boys are more likely to be molested than straight boys, but getting molested isn't likely to turn a straight boy into a gay boy. More likely, the fight-or-flight mechanism doesn't engage the same way; there can be more ambivalence or even interest. Either way, your link says most gay men weren't molested. In contrast, many women have been molested or assaulted sexually, but they don't hold pride parades to celebrate that fact. You are quite mistaken in equating pride and shame; the founders of the St. Patrick's Day parades were not ashamed of their Irish heritage, but they were determined to secure equality or at least decent opportunities in the New World.

rando says

an ancient and well-known vice

Excess is a vice. Eating, drinking, gambling, and sex are not vices.

I won't suggest going to the Boise airport or Reseda truck stops to try your luck with Larry Craig or Fortwhine, but I do suggest you might enjoy more card games or dice games, which can improve your fluency with probability.

You mentioned ancient Greece, where Sparta proved that socialization can influence the sexual behavior and interests of probably most males. Sparta thrived longer than the USA has even existed, but fell eventually to Athens, which had broader collaboration and connectedness. Both had plenty of what would now be called homosexuality, though Sparta had a more compartmentalized version.

GOOG compartmentalizes certain technology projects, but its revenue depends on advertising, where it tries to maintain an emphasis on collaboration and connectedness. I would guess James might have been well suited to one of the tech compartments, but his memo strayed outside his position, using words like "need" to tell more senior policy people what they "need" to do for the core business. If James had understood collaboration and connectedness better, he might have avoided words like "need" and instead stuck to probabilities and legal issues: he may indeed be right that statistical disparities in employment result primarily from stastically different distributions of innate abilities and opportunities; he may also be right that intentionally discriminatory remedial programs might cause liabiity problems, but it isn't his role to order senior management to do what he believes they "need" to do. The CEO came back early from vacation to take charge ot the situation and to protect the core advertising revenue and brand, which require collaboration and connectedness.

ThreeBays says

Labeling a whole group with generalizations like "more interested in people than things" is antithetical to recognizing individual achievement.

Reading James' memo as a whole, I thought he emphasized probabilities without denying individual variation and achievement. Maybe I misread him, or maybe he wasn't clear enough. Certainly in some of Patrick's comments I see a tendency to deny the existence of individual variation, so maybe James fell into the same mistake, or maybe some parts of his memo reminded people of someone else (e.g. Patrick) and so they reacted to that association rather than to what James wrote.

Either way, James wrote as an engineer but used highly charged words to assert what senior management "needs" to do. The CEO returned early from vacation to show who was in charge, i.e. who decides what the company "needs" to do.

ThreeBays says

Labeling a whole group with generalizations like "more interested in people than things" is antithetical to recognizing individual achievement.

Favoring whole groups for recruiting based on gender or race is also antithetical to recognizing individual achievement.

ThreeBays says

Nice straw man, but this isn't what anyone is debating.

Wrong. The article was explicitly about the lack of interest that women show in engineering, relative to men, and how female disinterest in engineering leads to systemic discrimination against men. The difference is falsely assumed to arise from sexism when a more plausible explanation is simply that women do not like engineering as much as men, on average.

James himself makes the excellent point that the clear and significant difference in the bell curves is invariably and disingenuously used as a straw man by SJWs:

Other things that were divisive: Heliocentrism, Evolution, and Anasthetics.

I'm laughing at the Corporate Speak:

In her initial response to the memo, Brown, who joined from Intel Corp. in June, suggested that Google was open to all hosting “difficult political views,” including those in the memo. However, she left open the possibility that Google could penalize the engineer for violating company policies. “But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws,” she wrote.

"We're open to anything, unless that anything conflicts with the subjects mentioned in our Corporate Materials. Then STFU and you're fired."

PS Google Veep Brown worked on the Clinton Campaign

Google is raking in shitload of money from advertising via their search engine. The rest is just something they spend money on. Be it Brin's Boeing, "googleglass", "self-driving cars" or "diversity" - it's their dough to blow. Who's to say they can't buy another jet, "VP of diversity" or "equal number of girl engineers" just because? If shareholders are OK with it this all that matters.

ThreeBays says

His discourse turned unproductive due to being disrespectful to whole groups of people.

At my workplace (large university) we got directive coming from the very top to hire only a woman or a minority for the next open position. Is that discrimination or not, and how does that compare with potential minor biases in evaluation?

Live on your knees if that's your style Uncle Tom

BayArea says

rando says

BayArea says

If you bring politics, religions, or personal problems into the workplace, you are playing with fire.

It's Google that brought politics into the workplace. This guy was objecting to it.

Patrick, you are saying that Google brought politics into it with their diversity initiates?

Not sure I can object there. But everyone knows there's nearly 100% chance of employment termination by pushing back on a diversity initiative.

rando says

Dan8267 says

Studies have shown that homosexual men are more likely to have older brothers.

Yes, and here is one possible explanation:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?uid=11501300&cmd=showdetailview

I don't see how that explains anything. Even if child sexual abuse caused homosexuality, why would men with older brothers be more likely to be homosexual? If a parent is molesting a child, would he or she not start with the first? Are you saying that older brothers molesting younger brothers cause homosexuality? That would require evidence. I'm not aware of any study that shows this.

In any case, you'd still have to explain why countless non-molested boys become homosexual. The in vitro testosterone hypothesis does explain this.

But even if your hypothesis is correct, then homosexuality is still not a choice as no one chooses to be sexual abused.

Quigley says

This is a very important field and scientists have much work yet to do to understand it fully.

Neither is genetics. Your point?

Quigley says

However, only genes contained in the genetic code may actually be expressed.

All genes, by definition, make up genetic code. The epigenome is not composed of genes. The term literally means "above the genome".

Quigley says

Women LACK the male "Y" chromosome

Chromosomes aren't expressed. Genes are. You mean women lack the SR-Y gene. However, that's not relevant. The scientific studies indicate that male homosexuals may be the result of high levels of in vitro testosterone, not lesbians. Also, women do have testosterone, just not as much as men.

Also the Y chromosome isn't male any more than the X chromosome. Nor is the SR-Y gene male. The SR-Y gene causes testosterone to be released in the developing embryo causing it to form male body parts and a male brain. The difference might be subtle, but it is critical. No gene is male or female. Nor is it the case that male body parts are determined solely by the presence of particular genes. Testosterone turns on and off various genes and even turns on and off specific genes at specific times and places in the body. So the SR-Y gene is like a master switch.

Also, technically you could have an XY woman if the SR-Y gene was sufficiently damaged so as to not encode. This would indeed make a person's biological sex female while her CIS sex was male. She would have a functioning womb. One might wonder what would happen to a fertilized YY egg in that situation. I suspect it would not survive because there's a lot of genes only on the X chromosome. I don't know of any case of there being such a XY woman, but it is theoretically possible. But evidently somethingsimilar happens called XY gonadal dysgenesis.

Quigley says

I'm thinking homosexuality is part learned behavior (homo molestation as a child can play a huge role)

Hell, heterosexuality is part learned behavior. That does not say anything.

Heraclitusstudent says

Coding is conceptually simple, even though it is abstract.

Software development is way more than coding, and even writing code is way more than the mechanics of for-loops.