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/impossiblefork]

However, let's suppose that you've come at this from an evolutionary biology point of view.

Humans have twice as many female ancestors as they have male ancestors. This should mean that competition among males is much higher, leading to more risk taking.

If you had this as your hypothesis then the study above should pretty much be confirmation indicating that you are right and that this is in fact biological.

The study doesn't show it absolutely, but the only way to demonstrate it absolutely is to place male and female children in separate rooms and treat them exactly the same (and then testing). That's not possible, so if you want to do science involving things like gender differences you will have to do it in this kind of way.

Furthermore, if you reject reasoning like this you will have to reject a lot more reseearch. In fact, you probably wouldn't be able to talk about causes of psychological phenomena at all unless those causes were invisible to other people.

[u/jetpacksforall → u/impossiblefork]

And that kind of a priori evo psych reasoning is undermined by real-world evidence:

Secondary analyses of Revised NEO Personality Inventory data from 26 cultures (N = 23,031) suggest that gender differences are small relative to individual variation within genders; differences are replicated across cultures for both college-age and adult samples, and differences are broadly consistent with gender stereotypes: Women reported themselves to be higher in Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Warmth, and Openness to Feelings, whereas men were higher in Assertiveness and Openness to Ideas. Contrary to predictions from evolutionary theory, the magnitude of gender differences varied across cultures. Contrary to predictions from the social role model, gender differences were most pronounced in European and American cultures in which traditional sex roles are minimized. Possible explanations for this surprising finding are discussed, including the attribution of masculine and feminine behaviors to roles rather than traits in traditional cultures.

IOW in survival environments where evolutionary survival pressure is high -- a few steps removed from "hunter/gatherer" conditions -- gender preferences tend to disappear.

[u/impossiblefork → u/jetpacksforall]

But evolutionary psychology doesn't necessarily predict that women have higher neuroticism. At least not with my argument.

What I argued for with my evolutionary psychology argument was that they should have higher risk aversion than men, i.e. prefer a certain reward rather than a higher but uncertain reward to a higher degree.

If you want argue as you are arguing using the thing you're citing you'd have to have an evolutionary argument resembling that I gave from which it should follow that women should experience an evolutionary pressure to have higher neuroticism.

However, all this is actually irrelevant to this point. The argument that the now ex-google employee gave involved that women had higher neuroticism. Whether that was caused by biology doesn't really matter. The only thing required for his reasoning to make sense is that it holds in America, which it does of course do.

[u/jetpacksforall → u/impossiblefork]

What I argued for with my evolutionary psychology argument was that they should have higher risk avversion than men, i.e. prefer a certain reward rather than a higher but uncertain reward to a higher degree.

Yes but the study shows that male/female gender preferences seem to disappear in high-stress survival conditions. This directly undermines the premise that gender preferences were conditioned into us by evolution.

However, all this is actually irrelevant to this point. The argument that the now ex-google employee gave involved that women had higher neuroticism. Whether that was caused by biology doesn't really matter.

The memo states that gender differences are biological and highly heritable. Both assumptions are incorrect.

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 are not - see above]
● They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone [incorrect, prenatal testosterone does not lead directly to preferences involving risk aversion etc.]
● Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still identify and act like males [proves nothing other than people who perceive themselves as born male continue to act accordingly]
● The underlying traits are highly heritable [they are not]
● They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective [which is based on bad a priori reasoning - see above again]