You are allowed to travel everywhere in Norway now if you are a resident, even if you are from Oslo. However, there was a couple of weeks where that was not allowed.
Norway is actually almost back to normal,except you can't have gatherings of over 200 people. It has been this way for almost a month now, and there have not been any increase in confirmed covid cases yet, which is surprising.
> However, there was a couple of weeks where that was not allowed.
News to me and I've been here in Norway all through the COVID time. There was a period when we were not allowed to spend the night in a holiday home unless it was in the same kommune as one's usual residence but as far as I remember there was never any country wide ban on internal travel. There were a few kommunes who set up border controls that were most likely illegal but that's about it.
And resident status is not relevant here either. As long as you went in to quarantine on entry to the country (was 14 days, now 10), whether resident or not, you are free to travel where you like.
If you know that anything I have said here is incorrect I would appreciate it if you could provide addresses of web pages (Folkehelseinstituttet, osv.) that would set me right.
The big question is how did Norway handle elderly care. Did they have employees traveling from Oslo and going from home to home, and house to house, often without time enough to even wash their hands?
Because during the worse time, that was the kind of environment being reported around Stockholm. There were not enough people and a universal lack of safety equipment. Many workers also had to rely on the mass transportation system in order to get between homes. Elderly care, both private and state owned, often operate from a single cental point and fan out.
Also Americans on average are more overweight than Japanese. This does not mean there are no overweight Japanese or thin Americans, or that either are less capable of a specific sport.
Does 60% of Americans being overweight today mean that it's likely that 60% of people are naturally and biologically incapable of maintaining a healthy weight?
There are genetic differences among underweight and overweight populations, so it is "possible" that the distribution of healthy weights to overweight people is natural a result of those genetic traits, and not the result of advertising and availability of high calorie foods.
We should stop treating obesity as though it's a problem, right?
I think you misunderstood me. I was not making a biological correlation, but a statistical one; namely that group averages doesn't say anything about an individual. The nature/nurture debate of overweight people is besides the point.
Then I think you misunderstood the memo. The memo is making a biological correlation. It suggests that the current distributions might accurately reflect differences in biology.
Nature vs nurture is completely the point here, Damore argued that nature is the primary force, not nurture, and therefore we should stop nurturing women in tech.
Maybe I should have been clearer, you stated to the parent reply that:
>> I don't understand what you said there, can you elaborate? What is the difference between males being more biologically suitable and females being at a disadvantage? From my perspective, you just contradicted yourself, can you help me understand why it's not a contradiction?
This was in response to the parent that said Damore had not singled out any female google employes. The overweight example was an attempt to clarify that even though statistical averages say something about a group, it does not say something about the individual, i.e the google females should not feel singled out by statistical averages.
As for the nature/nuture point in the memo: yes the memo is making a biological claim backed by sources. It does not suggest that current distributions are correct. No, the memo is not saying that nature is the primary force, only that it might play a part [1]:
"Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership."
> The overweight example was an attempt to clarify that even though statistical averages say something about a group, it does not say something about the individual, i.e the google females should not feel singled out by statistical averages.
Right. And what I've been trying to say is that the statistical averages aren't the offensive part. That's a straw man.
Google women don't feel offended when they're told they're a minority, they already know that; but they sure might reasonably be concerned when someone suggests they're a minority "in part" "possibly" because women aren't biologically as able to engineer as men.
> No, the memo is not saying that nature is the primary force, only that it might play a part [1]:
Sure, the memo didn't say it explicitly, but it did imply that. Everyone keeps defending the exact wording as if implication and misleading statements don't exist. Suggesting it's a "part" suggests it's a measurable and large part, comparable to social causes. Pointing out that women are more neurotic (which is a clinical term with very negative popular connotation, so extremely easily misunderstood) might be a part of why Google has so few women is leading the reader to conclude it's a major factor.
This argument is cherry-picking the science in favor, and completely ignoring the contrary evidence that suggests that social issues are much larger than anything we could possibly measure about innate biological ability. For example, that different countries have very different distributions of women in engineering, or that the distributions have changed wildly in the last 50 years.
You intentional misinterpret the discussion. Well hopefully intentional, because otherwise it would reflect very poorly on you.
Let me use another example: The NFL has no rules against women playing. None. Yet 100% of players are male, because biologically the exceptionally large and athletic tend to be male. I'm male, so does that mean that I could be an NFL player? Of course not, and I in no universe am in that realm.
That is a more extreme example, but patronizingly suggesting that it's all just social is utterly laughable and just outright ignorant.
"This argument is cherry-picking the science in favor, and completely ignoring the contrary evidence that suggests that social issues are much larger"
At this point you've reached utter lol territory. You are outright being dense about actual science, and then casually waving your hands and claiming that is more authoritative.
Where is the evidence that any of these biological differences actually do cause women to choose tech careers less? Sure there are links to studies about the differences themselves, but that's it. And in fact, if you look at the changing makeup of Com Sci majors and programmers over the last 60 years, it seems to be a slight possibility at best and disingenuous at the worst.
> Right. And what I've been trying to say is that the statistical averages aren't the offensive part. That's a straw man.
Well you did pose the question, I just answered it, so it was not to erect a straw man, and I was not really trying to contradict the rest of your claim by that example, maybe I should have been clearer on that.
> Sure, the memo didn't say it explicitly, but it did imply that. Everyone keeps defending the exact wording as if implication and misleading statements don't exist. Suggesting it's a "part" suggests it's a measurable and large part, comparable to social causes.
Yes, he certainly does imply that biological causes has a measurable effect, and a large enough effect that it should be taken into consideration for measures (that he also suggests) in order to change work practices so as they might better fit females and thus increase diversity.
> Pointing out that women are more neurotic (which is a clinical term with very negative popular connotation, so extremely easily misunderstood) might be a part of why Google has so few women is leading the reader to conclude it's a major factor.
I agree that it is unfortunate that neurotic is easily misunderstood, but if he didn't use the correct clinical term he would be critized for not being scientific enough, which you are already critizing him for.
> This argument is cherry-picking the science in favor, and completely ignoring the contrary evidence that suggests that social issues are much larger than anything we could possibly measure about innate biological ability. For example, that different countries have very different distributions of women in engineering, or that the distributions have changed wildly in the last 50 years.
I don't agree with you that science has concluded that biological factors don't play a role in what professions people go into. I saw an interesting Harvard debate between Steven Pinker and Elisabeth Spelke on this [1]. The two examples you present does not explicitly contradict that it might be part biological reasons [2], the provided link has a fascinating discussion in the comment section that gives you both sides of the discussion.
I quite appreciate your measured response, thank you for that.
> I don't agree with you that science has concluded that biological factors don't play a role in what professions people go into.
I don't recall saying nature isn't a factor at all, and if I did I take it back. But I do personally believe that right now nurture, which includes social and historical gender issues plus all forms of implicit and explicit social biases and discrimination, is the biggest factor. And enough bigger that it doesn't make any sense to talk about nature yet.
I didn't really intend to contradict the possibility of any biological factor, what I'm saying is that social issues appear to me to be a far larger influence than, say, any discernible difference in IQ. The memo either disagrees or ignores that.
Given that social factors were >99% of the distribution discrepancy less than a century ago, and that we're still working through huge social issues, and that workforce distributions of women both locally and globally are far from settled, I find it pretty hard to accept the idea that we should look at anything other than social factors.
It is possible that biological differences explain some of the workforce distributions. It's also possible that nature's effect on the current sex distribution of women in US tech is not even large enough to be measurable. It's possible that should we eradicate social gender inequality globally, biology's role will even out to a 0.0001% distribution discrepancy. It's also possible that Sabine Hossenfelder is right, and that once we have equal opportunity, "the higher ranks in science and politics would be dominated by women". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14976028
I will check out the videos, thank you for the links.
Social issues is quite a clearly a problem, I just guess we disagree on the degree of biological influence, although there are some interesting points you bring up.
This whole memo thing has certainly led me down the rabbit hole. Not being an actual scientist with insight into both biological and social factors, I find it hard to be to sure of where I stand on the issue, and the current political climate is certainly helping to muddy the waters.
As long as an individual person is the sum of both nature and nurture, then regardless of the exact ratio of influence, nature will continue to make a difference.
> Damore argued that nature is the primary force, not nurture, and therefore we should stop nurturing women in tech.
No, he argued that nature in part, may explain the gender mismatch. That really cant be denied. It was also specifically talking about interests rather than capabilities of working in tech. Saying you might not be interested in programming software does not mean you're not able to.
The memo also never said we should stop nurturing women but that we should use different tactics that are more of match to their common on average biological traits and avoid any other discrimination based on race/gender, instead treating everyone as individuals.
Actually, if you read it closely, this is not true. True, he does suggest a lot of potential actions that could create a more beneficial tech culture for women, but then he goes on to suggest that Google needs to determine if these types of changes would impact Google's productivity in a negative way.
This is a pretty heavy implication that these programs do not in fact have any value and that diversity is not valuable. I can agree that a perfect 50/50 split is unattainable and the wrong goal, but there are studies that show diversity confers an advantage. And as Yonatan points out, I think the author has a misunderstanding of what is valuable from an engineering culture perspective.
I didn't see that clause about productivity, can you quote that piece of the memo? https://diversitymemo.com/
Yonatan's response was an emotional tirade, refusing to debate any of the cited research and using a different context of empathy. Nobody is debating the value of empathy in engineering (and it's good to have for any job and life in general, nothing specific to tech), but empathy in setting policy is completely different.
Rules should be set based on rational analysis instead of feelings. We argue for science/math-based policies in government so asking for the same in such a large corporation with regards to such a sensitive subject seems perfectly logical.
Here is the section from the memo that I'm referencing:
> Philosophically, I don’t think we should do arbitrary social engineering of tech just to make it appealing to equal portions of both men and women. For each of these changes, we need principled reasons for why it helps Google; that is, we should be optimizing for Google—with Google’s diversity being a component of that. For example currently those trying to work extra hours or take extra stress will inevitably get ahead and if we try to change that too much, it may have disastrous consequences. Also, when considering the costs and benefits, we should keep in mind that Google’s funding is finite so its allocation is more zero-sum than is generally acknowledged.
In general I agree that a rational analysis and science based approach is valuable. In fact, I think research into diversity actually does support the idea that it provides benefits. But it's not simply as black and white as science good, empathy/moralizing bad.
For instance, it may be objectively better for a company to do a lot of things that we consider immoral or harmful to society. For instance, how much does maternity and paternity leave cost a company in productivity, time, and the expense of providing a replacement worker? In fact, it might just be more profitable not to hire women of childbearing age at all, which actually was socially accepted for a long time. But these days our society has come to the general conclusion that this is actually morally unacceptable, and the benefits to parents and society outweigh the costs to the company. A very similar argument could be employed regarding the hiring of employees in the reserves or national guard.
I think you have to look at things holistically, as an entire system, and yes, morally.
He does a provide a source in the form of a wikipedia article that uses actual citations [1]. The version with sources (gizmodo removed them in their first publication of the memo), is located at [2].
As for your comment on his "blatant disregard for social context", he explicitly mentions that he believes that biases should be corrected and that society probably also is to blame [3], he just doesn't believe that biological factors does not play any role at all.
Guess people didn't get it. It's not believable to claim to want to correct biases when you want to remove measures that correct biases. Even more ironic is using much of the paper to argue differences between men and women just to say that men are being discriminated against because they aren't treated exactly the same as women. Therefor the program should be replaced by his own version with 4 out of 5 measure focused on women, but despite the differences between men and women doesn't discriminate against men, because he said so. The guy isn't rational, he has just come up with a lot of synonyms for "I disagree".
Norway has had "gender points" in relation to acceptance at university for several studies, especially in the STEM related ones. The gender gap has closed a great deal in most of the STEM studies, but not that much in CS related ones.
Some of the studies have become nearly 50/50, and an interesting event is when they tried to remove the "gender points" from one of the studies, and the female acceptance rates fell to almost zero. Females in Norway generally have better grades, so one could make the argument that the difference is because of interest.
There is a documentary called Hjernevask from Norway that had a lot of controversy because of the topic. It is good to see different opinions of experts and what happened there:
Modern day Nazi's may use biological differences as a sort of ideological fuel to further their despicable cause, but to lay that sort of intention behind the memo author is also despicable. The nazis should not be able to deter a society from looking at science from an objective viewpoint, that is something everyone would suffer from.
Let's be clear. He isn't doing science. I support research done in a scientific way, but he is cherry picking research to further a political agenda in the workplace. To act like this is science is despicable.
As far as I have understood, his main problem with Google is exactly as you describe him. He feels like Google is actively furthering a political agenda, namely the left one, and does not allow any dissidents or diversity of viewpoints. He explictly states that he is not against diversity, and that he is open to criticism and debate of the arguments he presented.
As for the cherry picking; remember that he is trying to make a point here, namely that biological differences might play a role over aggregated statistical differences, and that this might be one of the reasons we don't see the 50/50 split, and that ignoring this might be counter productive for everyone. Is the biological studies he have presented cherry picked? I'm sure you have seen the Quillette article [1], and the scientists quoted there does not seem to think so.
In many regards he is correct about the left vs right, but I think he misses the broader historical context. Allowing blacks to attend the same schools as whites is also a left v right argument. As is adults dating children. We, as a society, have come up on different sides of the ideological spectrum for each.
And while biology may account for some of the gap, it almost seems obvious that it doesn't account for all of it. And this is just looking at gains women have made economically in the past 30 years.
I don't think most reasonable people at google think there are no bio diffs, but rather that we are still far enough from the point where we have exhausted other causes. Simply pointing out thst bio diffs exist, while effectively trying to use that to shut down other approaches of giving equal opportunity is purely a political and not science based position. Unless he has some much stronger science results he has not yet shared.
> And he is not saying that you are a "freak" or "biological anomaly", he is talking about aggregated, statistical differences.
He provides no evidence to back the conclusions he draws from that data though. It reminds me of some articles or posts you might see briefly gain traction on the internet where the author starts from a point backed by one or two reputable sources and proceeds to use those references to back an argument that lies well outside the bounds of the original data.
As one of the authors of a paper cited in the memo puts it:
> In the case of personality traits, evidence that men and women may have different average levels of certain traits is rather strong. [...] But it is not clear to me how such sex differences are relevant to the Google workplace. And even if sex differences in negative emotionality were relevant to occupational performance (e.g., not being able to handle stressful assignments), the size of these negative emotion sex differences is not very large [1]
The post I responded specifically said the memo author got all biological research wrong. Now, his conclusions from that are certainly more debatable.
I guess the larger point I was trying to make is that when people feel singled out because of statistical differences b it leads them to take things personally, which leads to perpetuating disproportionate reactions and a non-existing platform for actual discussion.
If diverse companies perform better, this would surely mean that there is some sort of difference between the sexes? How else could diversity have an impact on the bottom line of a company?
Well, if women really make 87% of what men make for the same work (or whatever the latest number is), it could save the company 13% or more on car insur- I mean, labor costs.
If it is really true that women make 87% of men for the same work, any company that is driven by profit would exclusively hire women. The alternative would be that sexism is so rampant that it trumps profit driven motivation, am I missing something, or is that what you are suggesting?
I'm not really suggesting anything other than that, it's a hypothetical explanation that disproves the notion, "if diverse companies do better, it MUST be because of differences in the sexes". Admittedly not a high-effort comment.
In answer to the rest of your comment, it's anybody's guess and nobody agrees why. Maybe the stat is wrong, maybe the sexism is just that rampant, maybe the women-only candidate pool is inadequate (small), maybe there is a performance difference, etc.
All four state that there is strong evidence for of biological differences based on sex, though they all seem to come at it from different disciplines and support different claims. That's not, however, the same as saying that all four of them side with the author on his specific scientific claims.
In fact, all four of them conclude explicitly in favor of diversity initiatives.
My point is that not one of them described it in terms such as "shoddy" or "amateur", such as you did. None of them refutes any of the empirical claims he made. This stands in stark contrast to your interpretation of the memo.
Well, I think that's what the author concluded too is it not? He has a problem with the underlying principles, the process, and the endstate...not the goal.
If you're curious, consider doing research on the subject rather than asking people to re-litigate the whole thing from first principles every time the topic comes up. It gets exhausting because most people operate from a position of "a belief that there is no significant bias/significant effect from bias is the correct default assumption unless/until someone demonstrates otherwise through overwhelming evidence". And each individual person expects the whole thing to be proven for them from scratch each time.
Instead you could do some research on your own and find the information that's out there.
My intention with this question was to probe if there was anyone that has experience within this field that might have any milestone studies/papers on hand, or something that they can cite from memory. The reason for this is that when you venture into a new field of study it usually takes time sorting out the wheat from the chaff. Now off course I can do the research on my own, it was simply a question I asked to save time.
To assume that I have some sort of hidden agenda behind this question is rather paranoid from my perspective (and came as a surprise), as you didn't know anything about my intentions.
The thing is, at this point saying that there's discrimination and systemic bias should be about as controversial as saying that the earth orbits the sun. It's not something that should be responded to with a demand for sources, and the fact that it always is, and always devolves into people trying to shift the argument to whether there's even a problem at all (regardless of any one individual's reason for starting such a conversation, that's where the conversation inevitably ends up), is just ludicrous.
People who are unaware of the existence of the problem can use a search engine and read up on it.
This is a very presumptive attitude to take which is not going to convince people on the fence on this topic who don't already agree with you.
I suggest that if you want to change minds and improve the status quo, you should engage these people who you find tiresome anyway. Not to persuade them, but the third-parties who will read the discussion and could be persuaded. Or, if that's too much work, simply don't engage, if only so you don't sabotage someone else's effort to persuade.
I can tell you right now, though, the people who will keep demanding sources and want to re-litigate even the existence of discrimination/bias, in every single thread which mentions the topic, will not be convinced by providing them walls of links and sources. They've already made up their minds, and the only thing they'd do in response is exactly what I said: nitpicks and non sequiturs and "well, I don't find that convincing..." and so what's the point? If someone is genuinely and truly unaware, they can use Google. If someone just wants to try to discredit a basic established fact about the world, it's not my job to coddle them or make them feel good about it or "engage" with them or make them feel that they were properly listened to and had their concerns addressed, any more than it would be my job to do that for someone who denies evolution.
Right, it's not your job to do anything. It is perfectly valid for you to feel frustrated in exactly that way.
All I am saying, is that their are third parties who you are not interacting with, who could be persuadeable, who will read that frustration and are going to find it alienating rather than persuasive, and therefore you end up creating more people in the world who think there is no real problem.
It may be more constructive to simply disengage if you feel that exasperated by it. Both for persuading other people and for your own sanity. That's all I am saying.
Imagine that you live in a world where there is a large, extremely loud (larger and louder than the actual world) population of young-Earth creationists.
Now, imagine that every time you say something which even tangentially mentions evolution -- let alone something where the main topic is evolution -- some of those people immediately pop up with "got sources for that?" / "gonna need a source on that" / "citation needed for that claim" / etc.
And imagine that for a while you did go to the trouble of linking up primers on the topic, but every time you did that, they just responded with non sequiturs and attempts to nitpick little details of the primers and parlay that into discrediting the entire idea of evolution.
Now, imagine you've been living in that world, every day, for years. You might well finally decide "you know what, it's not my job to pause every single time I post a comment online and have to re-prove the theory of evolution to anyone and everyone who demands it; evolution is a basic fact we shouldn't have to debate at this point, and people who genuinely want an intro to it for some reason can find one on their own".
Now, imagine that if you do make that decision, you'll be branded an asshole for "complaining" instead of just posting a link. You'll be told that these folks are "just asking for sources". Or any of a large number of other explanations which don't jive with what you see day in and day out, but if you try to explain that you'll be told you're projecting, or making it up, or arguing with a strawman, and this is a sign that you are not trustworthy (which in turn just reflects back on the theory of evolution -- after all, if this is the kind of person who stands up as its representative...).
Imagine all of that, but change the topic from the theory of evolution... to the topic of this thread. And imagine how tired everyone is of the "got a source for that?" brigade. Regardless of whether the person asking has the noblest purest intentions in the history of noble purity, we're talking about basic stuff about the society we live in and the industry we work in, and if someone is genuinely unaware of it and genuinely curious, they can use Google on their own.
Norway is actually almost back to normal,except you can't have gatherings of over 200 people. It has been this way for almost a month now, and there have not been any increase in confirmed covid cases yet, which is surprising.