Sister blog of Physicists of the Caribbean in which I babble about non-astronomy stuff, because everyone needs a hobby

Friday, 11 August 2017

Google's sexist memo is sexist, says biologist

Here we have a genuine expert in the field presenting their commentary. An evolutionary biologist, not a certain popular female theoretical physicist. Here's the TLDR from the article, but it's well worth reading in its entirety.

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.

https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-biological-claims-made-in-the-anti-diversity-document-written-by-a-Google-employee-in-August-2017/answer/Suzanne-Sadedin

1 comment:

  1. so this is one of "those" claims..I wonder for how long will the field deny the stereotype based growth/education jumping straight to the status quo which is a stereotype on its own...

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