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Diversity programs at Google discriminatory, says engineer's anti-diversity manifesto

Auburn85

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Auburn85 Founding Father

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http://www.12news.com/news/nation-now/diversity-programs-at-google-discriminatory-says-engineers-anti-diversity-manifesto/462312013

 

SAN FRANCISCO — A document written by an unnamed senior software engineer at Google suggesting the company encourage "ideological" rather than gender diversity, is generating anger within the company and in Silicon Valley.

Titled "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber," the male author wrote that women don't make up 50% of the company's tech and leadership positions not because of sexism but because of differences in their preferences and abilities. 

He also writes that the company's focus on diversity tends to alienate conservatives, which he believes is bad for business as conservatives tend to be more conscientious, a trait that is required for "much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company."

The essay comes as Google is engaged in an ongoing effort to try to get more women and minorities into technical and leadership jobs, and as the Mountain View-based company is being investigated by the Labor Department over allegations that it does not pay men and women equally. 

Just a month ago, Google hired Danielle Brown, the former head of diversity at Intel, to be its vice president of diversity.

In the past, several years as staffing data has come out, Silicon Valley firms have been shown to hire a high proportion of white and Asian men, but fewer women and other minorities. Increased efforts to deal with the lack of diversity have also created a backlash against such initiatives. 

The 10-page manifesto against Google's diversity initiatives appears to have first been circulated internally at the company Friday. It was initially reported by Motherboard.

On Saturday Gizmodo published the full document, prompting a flood of angry tweets and some supporting the writer's right to free speech.

this google manifesto has everything 

- "i'm a 'classical liberal'"
- men are from mars women are from venus
- actually, reverse racism

 
 

Imagine working at Google, getting paid all that money, just to spend your time writing a disgusting manifesto and sending it to your peers.

 
 

The overall tone of the essay is calm. The author acknowledges that there is bias that holds women back in tech and leadership. He doesn't suggest that women aren't capable of doing technical work but rather that the differences between men and women should be acknowledged. 

He states that women tend to be more interested in people rather than things, "empathizing vs. systemizing," whereas men have a higher driver for status and so tend to end up in leadership positions.

He also says that on average, women have more "neuroticism," as defined as "higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance."

The author doesn't believe that Google should engage in social engineering just to make its jobs equally appealing to men and women, calling "discriminatory" programs at the company available only to women and minorities.  

Google didn't appear to have any plans to discipline the staffer, though Brown, the vice president for diversity, did say that the views expressed in the essay were not endorsed, promoted or encouraged by the company.

In a memo to employees on Saturday, she wrote, "part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions. But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws."

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metafour Founding Father

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Everything that he said was completely logical and backed by psychological and biological academia.  The fact that his memo was edited multiple times (sources ripped out, graphs of data removed) before being unleashed on the masses is proof that it simply made too much sense; you can't let logic get in the way of your agenda.  Finding his actual FULL "manifesto" is difficult, and there is a reason for that.

Of course, the irony in it all is that basically everything he said was confirmed by the subsequent actions that took place, all the way down to the women at Google who didn't show up to work because they were so emotionally traumatized by this guy's completely logical and unassuming manifesto. 

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Mims44 Founding Father

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well, whatever they are doing... it's working.

One of the top brands in the world. Over 100B worth. Employs over 60k people... still under 20 years old.

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AUDub Founding Father

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On August 9, 2017 at 4:42 PM, metafour said:

Everything that he said was completely logical and backed by psychological and biological academia.  The fact that his memo was edited multiple times (sources ripped out, graphs of data removed) before being unleashed on the masses is proof that it simply made too much sense; you can't let logic get in the way of your agenda.  Finding his actual FULL "manifesto" is difficult, and there is a reason for that.

Of course, the irony in it all is that basically everything he said was confirmed by the subsequent actions that took place, all the way down to the women at Google who didn't show up to work because they were so emotionally traumatized by this guy's completely logical and unassuming manifesto. 

No, it was not. Much of the data he cited, he misinterpreted. The scientific consensus is not on his side here.

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Throughout his memo, Damore linked to many Wikipedia pages as justification for his claims – but neither news media organisations nor scientists accept Wikipedia as a credible source of information, especially when used in policy recommendations.

To back up the “people over things” hypothesis, Damore cited a study published in the journal Social and Personality Psychology Compass in 2010; however, that work never suggests that the gender differences it lists have a proven biological basis.

In fact, the study says the opposite: “Although most biologic scientists accept that sexual selection has led to sex differences in physical traits such as height, musculature, and fat distributions, many social scientists are sceptical about the role of sexual selection in generating psychological gender differences.”

A 2000 review of 10 studies related to gender differences in empathy also suggests men and women don’t have innate differences in this area. The researchers found that such distinctions were only present in situations where the subjects were “aware that they are being evaluated on an empathy-relevant dimension” or in which “empathy-relevant gender-role expectations or obligations are made salient.”

 

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AUDub Founding Father

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An evo biologist's opinion.

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For many system shoppers it's a good-for-nothing system

that classifies as opposites stupidity and wisdom.

because by logic-choppers it's accepted with avidity:

stupidity's true opposite's the opposite stupidity.

— Piet Hein

This is an interesting document, one that has taken a lot of energy from a lot of people I know over the last few days. When I first read it, some parts seemed very reasonable. And some parts still do, like this conclusion:

Once we acknowledge that not all differences are socially constructed or due to discrimination, we open our eyes to a more accurate view of the human condition which is necessary if we actually want to solve problems.

To an evolutionary biologist, the idea that sex differences are purely socially constructed is simply implausible. And the necessity of facing up to this is something I’ve talked about as well.

That said, the argument in the document is, overall, despicable trash.

TL;DR: Yes, men and women are biologically different — which doesn’t mean what the author thinks it does. The article perniciously misrepresents the nature and significance of known sex differences to advance what appears to be a covert alt-right agenda. More specifically, it:

  • argues for biologically determined sex differences in personality based on extremely weak evidence
  • completely fails to understand the current state of research on sex differences, which is based in neuroscience, epigenetics and developmental biology
  • argues that cognitive sex differences influence performance in software engineering, but presents no supporting evidence. Available evidence does not support the claim.
  • fails to acknowledge ways in which sex differences violate the narrative of female inferiority; this shows intellectual dishonesty
  • assumes effective meritocracy in its argument, ignoring both a mountain of conflicting scientific literature and its own caveats (which I can only assume were introduced to placate readers, since their incompatibility with the core thesis is never resolved)
  • makes repugnant attacks on compassion and empathy
  • distorts and misuses moral foundations theory for rhetorical purposes
  • contains hints of racism
  • paradoxically insists that authoritarianism be treated as a valid moral dimension, whilst firmly rejecting any diversity-motivated strategy that might remotely approach it.
  • ultimately advocates rejecting all morality insofar as it might compromise the interests of a group.

Biological sex differences

On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed because:

  • They’re universal across human cultures
  • They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone
  • Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still identify and act like males
  • The underlying traits are highly heritable
  • They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective

We do have evidence for some of these to some extent for some gender differences in behavior. That, however, does not imply what the author thinks it does.

His implicit model is that cognitive traits must be either biological (i.e. innate, natural, and unchangeable) or non-biological (i.e., learned by a blank slate). This nature versus nurture dichotomy is completely outdated and nobody in the field takes it seriously. Rather, modern research is based on the much more biologically reasonable view that neurological traits develop over time under the simultaneous influence of epigenetic, genetic and environmental influences. Everything about humans involves both nature and nurture.

For an accessible introduction to sex differences in their developmental context, see: Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow Into Troublesome Gaps -- And What We Can Do About It

As an evolutionary biologist, the claim that these observations are “exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective” is especially painful to read. I would not dismiss the field completely, but many of its predictions have turned out to be wildly misguided. Early evolutionary psychologists, for example, classified our species as polygynous or promiscuous, contemptuously dismissing monogamy as a puritanical relic. We now know the human extra-pair paternity rate is 5 to 10 times smaller than that of the average monogamous bird. That implies that the fitness benefits of adultery have been vastly overstated — which casts the entire literature on short-term mating strategies in a much more dubious light.

Do women and men differ in personality traits?

It’s true that women and men, on average, have been found in some studies to differ in empathizing/agreeableness, systematizing, gregariousness versus assertiveness; and neuroticism. There are also conflicting results, as this article describes.

Are these trait differences biological?

The argument that these are biological traits (which, by the way, is not a term Damore ever defines) is expressed in one paragraph:

research suggests that “greater nation-level gender equality leads to psychological dissimilarity in men’s and women’s personality traits.” Because as “society becomes more prosperous and more egalitarian, innate dispositional differences between men and women have more space to develop and the gap that exists between men and women in their personality becomes wider.”

The internal quotes are from this article.

At first glance, this seems compelling. Let’s look more closely at this paper. Specifically:

“these changes appear to result from men’s cross-cultural personality variation. In more traditional and less developed cultures a man is, indeed, more like a woman”

Hmm. That sounds a little different, now. In fact, Table 2 shows that, after controlling for human development index, the only gender equality-related factor that predicted gender differences was the ratio of female smokers. In other words, gender equality in general doesn’t change women’s personalities, or the difference between men and women. Rather, human development index changes men’s personalities much more than women’s.

That doesn’t support the claim that gender-liberal societies allow men and women to express innate differences more freely. If that interpretation were correct, women and men should diverge in gender-liberal societies independent of egalitarianism. Instead, men change personality in more egalitarian societies regardless of gender issues; women don’t.

How can we explain that? Maybe personality differences are mediated by power. It makes sense that relatively powerless individuals should be more agreeable and socially alert, less assertive, and more fearful/neurotic — that’s simply rational. How does it interplay with gender? In hierarchical societies, most men are (like most women) subordinate to a powerful minority, so the average man would act much like the average woman. In relatively egalitarian societies, men on average are less subject to oppression by other men, but women still remain low-powered on average relative to nearby men. We already know that social power mediates sex differences in infidelity .

That’s just one possible alternative interpretation. There are others. The point is, the study quoted by the author doesn’t come anywhere near demonstrating his claim.

Do sex differences make women less suited to be software engineers?

I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.

At what point did we jump from talking about personalities to abilities? It’s a massive leap to conclude that a slight difference in average personality must undermine women’s professional abilities in software engineering.

Sex differences in cognitive abilities have been well-studied, so it’s intriguing that Damore chooses to ignore this vast literature to focus on personality. The reason, however, quickly becomes clear when we look at the evidence: namely, there’s zero evidence that suggests women should make worse programmers. On average, women score slightly worse on certain spatial reasoning problems and better on verbal tests. Their overall problem-solving abilities are equal. Women used to score worse on math, but inclusive environments negate that difference. Even the (relatively robust) difference in spatial reasoning can vanish when women are asked to picture themselves as male. The only published study of coding competency by sex found that women were more likely than men to have their GitHub contributions accepted — but if they were project outsiders, this was true only if their gender was hidden.

As Yonatan Zunger explained, empathy and collaboration are also central to competency, especially at senior levels. Published results confirm this: in a study that attempted to identify the factors that influence software engineers’ success, the three most important attributes were: “team oriented”, “seeks help” and “helps others”. Neuroticism might hold women back from promotions, but there’s no evidence it makes them worse at their jobs.

Thus, to say there’s “significant overlap” in male/female abilities is a massive understatement. There’s no evidence that any known sex differences make women worse at software engineering.

How about preferences? It’s worth remembering that many of the first programmers were women, and that they made enormous contributions to developing the field of computer science. Female participation only declined when programming became a lucrative, gender-stereotyped career.

But suppose women were innately less likely to want to be software engineers. That would, in itself, tend to create a gender-biased environment in which women are unlikely to choose to become software engineers (no matter how innately suited they are individually). In other words, women’s lower averageinterest would act as an additional filter on both talent and motivation for the pool of available female software engineers. The result, all else being equal, would be that the average female software engineer, who powered through in defiance of gender norms, would be more innately motivated and/or talented than the average male engineer who faced no such barriers.

All in all, we have no reason to think female software engineers should perform worse at software engineering based on female trait distributions. And there’s a huge amount of evidence that promoting diversity improves the performance of teams and companies.

We know that negative stereotypes damage people’s performance. We know that unconscious biasinfluences our judgement of others’ competencies. Consequently, whenever there’s significant cultural prejudice against certain groups, as there is with female software engineers, we expect to see inequalities emerge. So it’s implausible to attribute these differences to biology alone. When we know that competent people are being held back by prejudice, it makes sense to compensate for that via strategies that enhance diversity.

We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism.

True, gender gaps don’t always imply sexism. But sexism always implies sexism. We don’t need to infer the existence of sexism from the gender gap in software engineering, we can see it in the countless expressions of misogyny we hear from software engineers. Hiding sexism behind a mask of pseudo-rational argument doesn’t make you any less sexist — as Damore’s document illustrates.

How do conservative and liberal morals differ?

Let’s talk about morals, or, as Damore likes to call them, biases. The table describing left versus right biases seems to be loosely inspired by Jonathan Haidt’s work on cross-cultural morality, but it’s a dangerous misrepresentation — compare Damore’s claims with: Moral foundations theory - Wikipedia

In particular, note that conservatives do not typically discard compassion as a moral value. It’s fascists who do that. By polarizing the representation of values as if there’s no overlap, Damore creates a false equivalence: conservatives have one perspective, progressives have another, and neither is more valid than the other.

A closer examination of Haidt’s work reveals that the values espoused more by conservatives than by progressives (obedience, purity and loyalty) have a consistent and specific evolutionary role and function. They are termed the “binding values”, and serve to reinforce internal group bonds in the face of threats from other groups. By sharply delineating groups, they lay the groundwork for dehumanizing outsiders (see also Opinion | Who Blames the Victim?). In contrast, the individualizing values shared by conservatives and progressives alike are simply pro-social.

Whether the binding values are adaptive depends on your situation; claiming that “neither side is 100% correct and both viewpoints are necessary for a functioning society” is vacuous. In evolutionary timescales, there are scenarios when one side is useful, and scenarios when the other is, which is presumably why our neurological architecture predisposes us to both. But in general, Google has done magnificently well without resorting to the binding values — and let’s hope it continues to, because an authoritarian, fanatical and puritanical Google that dehumanizes outsiders would be very, very bad news.

Advocating moral disengagement

I would like to highlight several paragraphs that I find extremely repugnant.

Demoralize diversity. As soon as we start to moralize an issue, we stop thinking about it in terms of costs and benefits, dismiss anyone that disagrees as immoral, and harshly punish those we see as villains to protect the “victims.”

By that logic, we should give up on moral values altogether. It’s perfectly possible to have a civil, respectful discussion that includes morality; in fact, a mutual commitment to fairness and empathy usually makes for much more productive discussion.

I’ve heard several calls for increased empathy on diversity issues. While I strongly support trying to understand how and why people think the way they do, relying on affective empathy—feeling another’s pain—causes us to focus on anecdotes, favor individuals similar to us, and harbor other irrational and dangerous biases. Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts.

Another pernicious false dichotomy. Being emotionally disengaged in fact leads to very bad decisions. Whereas self-awareness — which involves understanding and acknowledging your emotions — does help you make better decisions.

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 principles 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.

What these paragraphs together are advocating is moral disengagement. For all its mild tone, this is textbook fascism:

The core principle — what Paxton defined as fascism's only definition of morality — is to make the nation stronger, more powerful, larger and more successful. Since fascists see national strength as the only thing that makes a nation "good," fascists will use any means necessary to achieve that goal.

(from: What Is Fascism?)

Philosophically, I don’t think Google’s leadership should give a rat’s ass about this guy’s noxious opinions. As far as I can see, Google has consistently been driven by a combination of strong pro-social values and willingness to learn from data, and that’s how it became the dominant global corporation it is. A junior employee telling Google it needs to change these things to be successful is an astonishing sight, to say the least.

Hinting at racism?

the Left tends to deny science concerning biological differences between people (e.g., IQ[8] and sex differences).

The passing mention of IQ is interesting, since it has nothing to do with gender, which is the focus everywhere else. He’s presumably talking about race, but he doesn’t want to be branded a racist, so he keeps the reference subtle. So why risk doing it at all? It’s a dog-whistle to the alt-right.

While we’re here, let’s set the record straight. Racial differences in average IQ have been very widely discussed. Most researchers have concluded that these differences aren’t much attributable to any intrinsic characteristic of race, but are strongly related to differences in pre- and post- natal environment and nutrition. And we can alter racial differences in performance by manipulating the salience of stereotypes. So no, we don’t deny racial differences in IQ, we explain them in ways that upset racists because they want to believe there’s some sort of global conspiracy to hide their innate superiority. Nobody who isn’t racist has any reason to get huffy about this.

Other issues

We always ask why we don’t see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life.

Status is the primary metric that men are judged on[4], pushing many men into these higher paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail. Note, the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths.

I quite agree. Sexist double standards like that are horrible. If only there were a movement dedicated to fighting them, and creating humane working conditions that allow a healthy work-life balance for both sexes.

To be fair, this is something feminism has, I think, got wrong. We’ve focused too much on the ways in which patriarchy is bad for women, while neglecting the ways in which it’s even worse for men.

As mentioned before, this likely evolved because males are biologically disposable and because women are generally more cooperative and areeable than men.

Talking about males being biologically disposable is nonsense. The mean fitness of males and females is equal; every individual has a father and a mother. What you might mean is that low-status men have historically been used for cannon fodder and other dangerous roles because powerful men regard them as disposable. That’s about sociopolitical structures, not evolution. There’s no reason to think we can’t correct it culturally — our ancestors maintained egalitarian societies in most places for countless millennia, until the invention of farming allowed them to concentrate resources across generations and thus reinvent chimp-like hierarchies. In fact, this correction is a project I think feminism should adopt; I call it destroying the patriarchy.

We have extensive government and Google programs, fields of study, and legal and social norms to protect women, but when a man complains about a gender issue issue [sic] affecting men, he’s labelled as a misogynist and whiner[10]. Nearly every difference between men and women is interpreted as a form of women’s oppression. As with many things in life, gender differences are often a case of “grass being greener on the other side”; unfortunately, taxpayer and Google money is spent to water only one side of the lawn.

So, when men do better than women (as they do at Google), it’s despite suffering from gender-specific oppression, whilst when women do badly (as they do at Google) it’s because they’re innately bad (even though we can’t find any evidence for that). Got it.

The same compassion for those seen as weak creates political correctness[11], which constrains discourse and is complacent to the extremely sensitive PC-authoritarians that use violence and shaming to advance their cause. While Google hasn’t harbored the violent leftists protests that we’re seeing at universities, the frequent shaming in TGIF and in our culture has created the same silence, psychologically unsafe environment.

Political correctness can be constraining to free speech. So can fear of the sort of poisonous, fact-free violent mob rhetoric routinely espoused by the alt-right. But it’s true that some people on the left are guilty of this as well, and that upsets me profoundly.

I think it would be immensely helpful to politics if every single one of us, left and right, agreed to commit to sincere, fact-based, non-violent dialogue. Anyone who’s not willing to commit to that is not on my side, whether they call themselves progressive or conservative. Unfortunately, Damore’s document is not fact-based, and many features (such as the above portrayal of violence as a solely left-wing phenomenon) suggest it’s insincere.

I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).

This is naive or disingenuous. Treating people as individuals involves acknowledging that different groups experience different conditions, which results in bias holding back members of some groups. Fairness requires us to compensate for such biases.

Besides which, advocating for the binding values is, quite precisely, advocating tribalism over individualism. That’s why we call them the binding values.

 

Unless you're banging out code with your balls, there are no clear cut biological differences. 

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metafour Founding Father

metafour 4,907

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The scientific consensus is most definitely on his side; I've seen it all before and well outside Wikipedia (the fact that they use this as some sort of proof of debunking is hilarious).  First of all; the fact that "many social scientists are skeptical" in the conclusions made by biologists is irrelevant, as social science is a largely BS field which has long determined that biology can't have any significant impact in anything,  when the actual empirical data suggests the exact opposite.  They did a whole documentary on this in Norway (one of the most "progressively socialist" nations in the world) which led to mass cutbacks in the funding of their "social science" led government think-tanks on the grounds of spreading BS and misinformation.  Everything that this guy refers to is covered in this documentary ("Hjernevask" ) and you can see real scientists and psychologists confirm it if you wish.  The documentary asks a simple question: if Norway (and the neighboring Scandinavian nations) are the most "gender-equal" nations in the world (which they are), then why do these nations feature among the most extreme representations of gender-specific employment in the world (ie: nurses are overwhelmingly female, engineers are overwhelmingly male)? The real-world results are the complete opposite of what forced "gender equality" would make you believe.  The answer is simple: the two biggest factors which determine your choice in profession are biology and environment; if you subsequently eliminate the environmental aspect (which is what they did in Norway) then you allow the biological factor to flourish as there is no counterbalance.  Therefore when you give the sexes COMPLETE freedom to choose, you end up with a ton of female nurses and a ton of male engineers, even though these same females have had it piped into their heads since birth that they are free to be scientists, they choose not to be.  Ironically, where do you see the greatest representation of females in engineering, computer science, etc? In nations like India and China which aren't the least bit socially progressive, in fact, they are completely primitive by Western standards of "equality".  Why? Because the poverty level of these nations gives a financial incentive for these females to go into these fields, because they pay more and thus there is a greater ability to provide for one's family in a society that features much higher gaps between the poor and the rich.  This is the environmental factor overriding biology.  Actual scientists have found measurable gender differences in children as young as infancy, long before "learned behavior" can ever make any impact (which is the entire crux of social scientists; that gender differences are ALL learned behavior).

The bias in your second article from the "evolutionary biologist" is evident immediately from the numerous references to "alt-right" and "racism".  You can watch a 45 minute interview with the guy who wrote the memo on Stefan Molyneux's Youtube channel; its evident immediately that he is about as  "alt-right" and chauvinistic as Hillary Clinton is.  To conclude that his memo had anything to do with politics or misogyny  is an immediate admission that one completely misinterpreted his viewpoints or even the purpose of his memo.  There are even responses debunking your evolutionary biologist right on your same page; including this one which goes over several suggestions: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/

 

 

 

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AUDub Founding Father

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Oh, for Heaven's sake. Dunning, meet Kruger.

The sooner thoughts like this join their cohorts (e.g. women suffer from the "defect of sex" and can't serve on juries, women can't manage money and require a male to co-sign in order to open a bank account, women can't vote rationally, so no suffrage), the better. Red pill bull****. 

4 hours ago, metafour said:

The scientific consensus is most definitely on his side; I've seen it all before and well outside Wikipedia (the fact that they use this as some sort of proof of debunking is hilarious).  

No, it isn't. There is ample evidence of this present across several fields, be it hard sciences like biology and the softer ones like psychology. His citations do not say what he thinks they do.

Hell, comparing people's qualifications to their statements is one easy way to evaluate what they're saying.

If a biology major is making sweeping statements about sociology and psychology (like he's doing) including blunt dismissal of consensus in those fields (he likes out of context psychology stats but ignores/dismisses psychology consensus about unconscious bias and the need for training in it, as part of a broader consensus about reducing barriers to women and minorities in professional settings). 

He said this:

"I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership."

That is absolutely implying that women are inherently less capable at engineering than men.

I trust scholarly consensus in appropriate fields more than I trust cherrypicked statements by individual commentators, in other words. 

If academic consensus can't be trusted we would be forced to conclude that education has no point because informed opinions don't have value, a conclusion that as a clinical eng.  I can't swallow.

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First of all; the fact that "many social scientists are skeptical" in the conclusions made by biologists is irrelevant, as social science is a largely BS field which has long determined that biology can't have any significant impact in anything,  when the actual empirical data suggests the exact opposite.  

That's a pants on head stupid Strawman and a gross mischaracterization of social science, but that's hardly surprising coming from you. And again, what empirical data is there that suggests women are incapable of being engineers at Google? I'll wait.

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They did a whole documentary on this in Norway (one of the most "progressively socialist" nations in the world) which led to mass cutbacks in the funding of their "social science" led government think-tanks on the grounds of spreading BS and misinformation.  Everything that this guy refers to is covered in this documentary ("Hjernevask" ) and you can see real scientists and psychologists confirm it if you wish. The documentary asks a simple question: if Norway (and the neighboring Scandinavian nations) are the most "gender-equal" nations in the world (which they are), then why do these nations feature among the most extreme representations of gender-specific employment in the world (ie: nurses are overwhelmingly female, engineers are overwhelmingly male)? The real-world results are the complete opposite of what forced "gender equality" would make you believe.  The answer is simple: the two biggest factors which determine your choice in profession are biology and environment; if you subsequently eliminate the environmental aspect (which is what they did in Norway) then you allow the biological factor to flourish as there is no counterbalance.  Therefore when you give the sexes COMPLETE freedom to choose, you end up with a ton of female nurses and a ton of male engineers, even though these same females have had it piped into their heads since birth that they are free to be scientists, they choose not to be.  Ironically, where do you see the greatest representation of females in engineering, computer science, etc? In nations like India and China which aren't the least bit socially progressive, in fact, they are completely primitive by Western standards of "equality".  Why? Because the poverty level of these nations gives a financial incentive for these females to go into these fields, because they pay more and thus there is a greater ability to provide for one's family in a society that features much higher gaps between the poor and the rich.  This is the environmental factor overriding biology.  Actual scientists have found measurable gender differences in children as young as infancy, long before "learned behavior" can ever make any impact (which is the entire crux of social scientists; that gender differences are ALL learned behavior).

I took the bait and watched your documentary. The video posted is not a refutation of anything I've posted, even though you want it very much to be that. 

Yes, there are real biological differences between men and women. But what are they? Which ones are relevant to working as an engineer at Google? Do you realize that engineering, Google, and even working are socially constructed concepts? I doubt that we evolved sex differences in being able to code in Java or Python. Again, unless you’re banging out code with your balls these are not relevant to working as an engineer at Google. The factors that do affect competence at engineering, again, do not have clear biological causes.

I agree that sex differences aren’t just socially constructed. If you’re born with a penis, you will experience a different social environment than if you’re born with a vagina. You will then experience a cascade of influences that shape how you think about the world, including how you think about sex, and sometimes you’re born with, or acquire responses to gender that do not match narrow preconceptions about how men and women should be. It is flatly absurd to try and reduce the factors that make up a human being to “biological” or “social”. Biology modifies culture, and culture modifies biology. Neither stand alone.

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The bias in your second article from the "evolutionary biologist" is evident immediately from the numerous references to "alt-right" and "racism".  You can watch a 45 minute interview with the guy who wrote the memo on Stefan Molyneux's Youtube channel; its evident immediately that he is about as  "alt-right" and chauvinistic as Hillary Clinton is.  To conclude that his memo had anything to do with politics or misogyny  is an immediate admission that one completely misinterpreted his viewpoints or even the purpose of his memo.  There are even responses debunking your evolutionary biologist right on your same page; including this one which goes over several suggestions: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/

He's done several interviews with alt-right outlets. Looks like he's happy to be their martyr. And speaking of racism, and since you linked Scott Alexander, am I allowed to mention his love of "The Bell Curve?" Oh, and again, there's nothing in that link refuting that idea that women can't also be effective engineers at Google.

My take? It is indeed a pipeline issue. Take a higher level look at that question. What are you basing the premise that such things do not appeal to women (or to go further, girls)? Is this based on gender or is this based on gender expectation (which is set by how parents rear their children)? 

There are more women in nursing. This is true. (Full disclosure, my dad has been a triage nurse for 35 years. In fact, my entire family has worked in healthcare).

There are more men in software development. This is also true.

Why it's like that is so cut and dry though. We know that most women don't choose software development. But is it just because they're "wired differently" or is it because they've been conditioned to prefer certain things? Same goes with men.

And that conditioning may be unintentional and unconscious.

And there are ways to address it. The push to get women more involved in engineering fields is a relatively recent phenomenon, morese than other STEM fields like medicine and the like, and the fruits of that effort will hopefully be visible within a generation or two. 

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