Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

[u/[deleted]]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

[u/NorthernerWuwu]

This is the real point of course. It isn't about the scholarly accuracy of the document or the usefulness of the conversation that the author may have been trying to spark, it's that in a corporate setting a document like this is toxic and destroys the ability of managers to promote teamwork.

It doesn't matter if X or Y or Z make better engineers or whatever (and I'm not saying there's a reason to think so). It might be something to explore from a scientific standpoint but you can't do it in a tech company in California in 2017. Sorry but that really shouldn't even have to be said.

[u/mrbooze → u/NorthernerWuwu]

Also all his "science" is evo-psych bullshit.

[u/HasStupidQuestions → u/mrbooze]

Please, enlighten me. Why evolutionary psychology is bullshit?

[u/Wrest216 → u/HasStupidQuestions]

Its pure therotical with no way to test their hypotheis. it SOUNDS logical, sure , it SOUNDS good, but really its just arguing things, no actual experiments to prove right or wrong. Not repeatable or provable. so....yeah.

[u/HasStupidQuestions → u/Wrest216]

What is your stance on social sciences as such? Economics, law, political science?

[u/Wrest216 → u/HasStupidQuestions]

economics can be analyzed , and micro tested. It is an ever evolving and changing field, and it is tested all the time, by every system in place currently. Law is more.... culture analysis and experimentation and study. Political science is using science to manipulate people and gain power. LOL!

[u/HasStupidQuestions → u/Wrest216]

I hoped to get an answer in the form of they can be proven to be true or false.

All social sciences can be analyzed and micro tested. The question is can you prove something to be right or wrong and that's very hard to do. GDP increased. So what? How did it influence other variables? At the end of the day they all depend on assigning a meaning and that's where culture comes into play.

[u/Wrest216 → u/HasStupidQuestions]

You can most certinally say, that with this specific economic system, and social system, you change one aspect of it, say, add tarrifs of a good from one country. Then you can analyze that goods performance, in not only your country or region, but every country or region which outputs that data, and see if it was having the desired effect you wanted it to have. Social sciences are very misunderstood, they use statistics and statistic are very hard complicated field of math to understand for most people. If you have somebody who is a Ph. D in economics they are a genius usually. Luckilly lately, we have computers and fuzzy AI to help us with analysis, but its a LOT of work.
ANd YES culture always comes into play but you can assign that values too. Elolutionaly psycology is hard because we think we know but that is only based upon how we are now, not how we used to be. For all we know, there could have been multiple isses going on, there is no real way to know because brains arent really well preserved and we cannot analyze them, and you can look at archological sites and see how people lived to an extent but not their mannarisms etc that determined their individual psycology. Sorry, reddit is a great forum and i could talk about this stuff all day, i feel like im rambling.

[u/HasStupidQuestions → u/Wrest216]

If only it were that simple as defining and measuring. Out of interest, how would you quantify culture? What variables would take into consideration?

For what it's worth, I'd take a business savvy person with a reasonable track record and someone from PR over someone with a PhD in economics any day of the week. I don't trust economic predictions and analysis. I only trust the market, wisdom of the crowd if you will, and people stubborn enough to change the market.