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Comment by h0l0cube | Hacker News Reader

I had the same thought reading this article as I did when reading Damore's memo: to what end?

I'm not sold on the benefits purported by this article for talking about the statistical variances between different cohorts for people, but I can see how it's very capable of stoking prejudice in ways that are very harmful. The article makes a vague attempt at balance by noting that individual differences are more important than these statistical variances, but it's easy enough to just leap-frog to this conclusion and just treat each other as human beings.

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It's hard not to read this comment as, "I don't like the conclusion, so it'd be better if we simply stayed ignorant of these facts."

Why do you need to be 'sold' on scientifically verified knowledge?

> The article makes a vague attempt at balance by noting that individual differences are more important than these statistical variances

This is not an "attempt at balance", because individual variance and group averages are not competing ideas or opposing ideologies that must be balanced against each other.

> Why do you need to be 'sold' on scientifically verified knowledge?

Nothing wrong with scientific inquiry, but when such facts are placed in context of, say, an internal memo at Google, or, an opinion piece in popular scientific press, it has rhetorical impact. You have to wonder 'to what end' they are hoping for with their exposition.

With the Google memo, did they hope to change hiring strategies? Would this have had any real impact on the operations at Google? Did Damore feel that the hiring strategies at the company were having any tangible negative outcomes... if so, he didn't care to mention that. So why then?

Same with this article. What is the author's concern here? What is really lost when we cease to generalize people's behavior by sex? The article gave no compelling answers.

> it has rhetorical impact. You have to wonder 'to what end' they are hoping for with their exposition.

I think the difference between scientific mindset and political mindset is that the former doesn't ask this question or consider it relevant.

> With the Google memo, did they hope to change hiring strategies? Would this have had any real impact on the operations at Google?

Yes, this was kind of the reason this memo was written - and remember, it was written in response to Google soliciting ideas on the topic.

> Did Damore feel that the hiring strategies at the company were having any tangible negative outcomes... if so, he didn't care to mention that. So why then?

Did you read the memo? It's whole text was arguing that diversity efforts at Google are misguided and harmful, and what should be done instead.

> I think the difference between scientific mindset and political mindset

This article is a rhetorical play, for the average person to consider more this point of view. It's arguments to do so were weak at best.

> Did you read the memo? It's whole text was arguing that diversity efforts at Google are misguided and harmful, and what should be done instead.

Did you? Because I don't recall him stating any actual harms, but speculation. No even an anecdote to back his claims.

> Because I don't recall him stating any actual harms, but speculation. No even an anecdote to back his claims.

To be fair, the memo argued that the specific way Google goes about in trying to increase diversity was not going to work, because the underlying assumptions of the cause of the differences was wrong, and proposed specific other ways to increase diversity.

Did you read the memo as it was written, replete with links to supporting research? Or did you only read the maliciously leaked version which had stripped out all the links?

You’re desperately looking for an agenda beyond “more knowledge is good”, and seemingly frustrated that you’re not finding it. Why?

Scientists don’t need to have an end goal in mind to dispel myths or discover new truths. Sometimes they do, and that’s fine, but it’s hardly a requirement. Reducing ignorance is itself A Good Thing.

> Scientists don’t need to have an end goal

I agree. Also, the article isn't a scientific paper.

It's an article by a scientist that summarizes scientific papers and the scientific consensus, is it not?

Yep, those things are true, but it doesn't negate the fact that the 'article' is journalism.

From a social perspective, allowing an issue to breathe can act as an inoculation against groups who might harbor extreme interpretations. Alternatively, sidelining the issue is likely to offer these groups time and space to fester in their echo chambers. Perhaps the mere fact that a thing is controversial is an indication it needs to be "aired out".

Sam Harris is sympathetic to this view point (famous for his defence of James Damore and hosting Charles Murray on his podcast), but he also cedes that individual differences are far more important than statistical brackets. This article gives heavy weight to the idea that the brackets are useful, and doesn't really give a compelling reason why, and I think it ought to, or at least give greater weight to the value of judging people in isolation of their superficial characteristics.

Looking at people as individuals is what people and organizations do in everyday life, but "brackets" and averages explain large-scale social phenomena such as the way people tend to sort in occupational fields, making them "more" or "less" diverse. The two perspectives are quite compatible, indeed complementary.

> The two perspectives are quite compatible, indeed complementary.

I think you're being quite sanguine here. The two ideas are not perfectly orthogonal, and I've already explained why in other comments. If you were to, for example, use these 'brackets' to inform company policy, or city planning, you'd be only reinforcing the stereotype by increasing the activation energy for people to chose different.

We can live in a pluralistic, cosmopolitan societies, where people are truly judged by the content of their characters and find their way to where they fit best. Our ability to personalize services and institutions to the unique abilities of the individual has been bolstered by modern information technology. Why bother using the blunt tools of prejudice? We've already been down that path. And how can we predict that society, and the brackets, would not shift in the future if given half the chance?

Once again, what's the utility of this kind of thinking? And further to that, what could we be missing out on by reasserting this mode of thinking?

The search for scientific truth is an end all to itself.

It's not the truth that there are statistical differences between population based on sex that irks me, it's that the author claims it has more value than evaluating someone as an individual, and outweighs the harms. I'm not sure why people are defending science here, because I'm not attacking it.

I don't see the author claiming that. You evaluate someone as an individual when you're specifically talking about an individual. In this case it's about groups so those are the results being discussed.

Group level analysis is also useful as a backdrop before diving into specifics even when discussing a specific individual and has been shown to have predictive power at every level.

I think you must have missed it because the author mentions several times that it is more important to evaluate the individual.

Here:

> First and foremost, I think this requires a recognition that none of the findings I presented in this article, nor any findings that will ever come out-- justifies individual discrimination. We should treat all people as unique individuals first and foremost.

Here:

> I am a strong believer that individual differences are more important than sex differences.

And here, on the topic of male-female classification based on whole brain data:

> In fact, some recent studies using the most sophisticated techniques have consistently found greater than 90% accuracy rates looking at whole brain data. While this level of prediction is definitely not perfect-- and by no means do those findings justify individual stereotyping or discrimination-- that's really high accuracy as far science goes.

No, I didn't miss any of those remarks. But I did note they were drowned in rhetoric to the opposite. I could go further, but I'd be just repeating things I've said in other comments.

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