August 10, 2017

Why did Google fire James Damore?

If you read the note that went out on the 8th from Google CEO Sindar Pichai, it comes across as so conciliatory and inclusive that it's hard to understand the abrupt disinclusion of Damore.

Looking for an answer, I found this at Recode, which went up about an hour ago:
Pichai made the final decision about Damore’s fate, after what several sources with knowledge of the meeting characterized as a tough debate by top management, with initial disagreement over... what to do about Google’s continual and complex balancing act between free speech and fostering a safe workplace.... “But Sundar had to make a call about what kind of Google he wanted to stress and he did.”...

“I think the problem and also benefit of Google has been that we’ve created and encouraged an environment where everyone thinks they can say what they want, because that is what has always been the way it has been,” said another top exec. “But, at some point, if we really want to change, we have to think harder about what impact that has, especially when it makes women or others feel unsafe in the environment we have created.”...
Note that "or others" and consider this:
“It was a cordial discussion, considering the topic, and you could see how you could argue both sides on the face of it,” said one source. “But I think Damore’s focus on biology really made it clear that he had crossed the line.” What turned the tide, said sources, was when it was noted that if Damore’s dubious contentions about women’s skills were replaced by those about race or religion, there would be no debate.

In fact, [another longtime Google leader, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, wrote in Fortune]: “For instance, what if we replaced the word ‘women’ in the memo with another group? What if the memo said that biological differences amongst Black, Hispanic, or LGBTQ employees explained their underrepresentation in tech and leadership roles? Would some people still be discussing the merit of the memo’s arguments or would there be a universal call for swift action against its author? I don’t ask this to compare one group to another, but rather to point out that the language of discrimination can take many different forms and none are acceptable or productive.”...

Pichai wrote to employees on Monday...: “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK.”
Maybe what is really freaking out Google management is race. I noticed this, in Damore's discussion with Jordan B. Peterson. Damore was provoked by "super-secret" meetings about "potentially illegal practices that they've been doing to try to increase diversity... basically treating people differently based on what their race is" (pause) "or gender are" (sic):

256 comments:

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Martha said...

Why women do what they do:

"Women drop out of fields when they find you can't do it at a world class level without sustaining illusions about its importance that males embrace. The illusions displace for example a social life, which they prefer.
The cold abstraction, which means just abstraction, aims at the feeling that at least here, at last, everything will be settled once and for all.
It's a male interest.
Women are comfortable with things unsettled, the more complexity the better. It's more interesting.

So no women in philosophy, chess, math. It's an interest thing."

(Analysis by Vicki Hearne, _Bandit_, chapter "Beastly Behaviors")

Gahrie said...

How can a child growing up in a modern country not realise that literally everything around them was designed by engineers? That sounds like a massive failure of basic education.

The same way that fish take water for granted...it's something they literally never think about....until it's gone.

mikesixes said...

From time to time, we all have to confront ideas that we're uncomfortable with. Sometimes, you consider the ideas and reject them. Sometimes, you consider them and accept them. The process helps you understand what's important to you, and helps you understand why you think whatever it is that you think. The "safety" that Google is trying to provide for its employees is the true danger to their mental health.

MaxedOutMama said...

I find the equating of sexual biological differences with the suggestion that there are racial biological differences so offensive!

While there are big racial differences in IT at this time, some of them are primarily based upon group US cultural differences partly based on past discrimination, and some of them are based on the countries from which most H1-B hiring is done. There's no evidence that biological differences play a role in IT ability or interest.

There is, however, ample evidence that sexual dimorphism of the brain/personality (AND NOT JUST SOCIAL CONDITIONING) play a huge role in IT interest. I don't know any woman who has done much in IT who doesn't believe this. I am sure there are some, but they are the ones who don't have much of an interest in the field, even if they work in it.

So Damore proved that Google is afraid to talk about reality. I'm not sure where that gets Google, legally or otherwise. How much stupid money has Google spent on stuff that that their inner circle thinks is so wonderful but that the average person doesn't much like? A lot. A shitload. Damore was trying to say something terribly important for the organization, and now he's pounding the pavement. His most ferocious critics have rapidly devolved to trying to deny reality and scientific study, and in the end, Google will be a less successful company.

Gahrie said...

It took thousands of years - tens of thousands of years - for humans to do any of those things.

Actually it took hundreds of thousands of years. Modern Man first appeared anywhere from 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. We discovered agriculture somewhere around 10,000 years ago. This allowed us to develop civilization and culture about 6,000 years ago.

However life on Earth began 4.2 billion years ago, and in all of that time, no other species has accomplished even a small fraction of what we have accomplished in a mere 300,000 years.

glenn said...

I think Sundar was just making room for one of his relatives from the call center in fumbucistan

SukieTawdry said...

I can't for the life of me find anything in that memo that would make me feel the least bit unsafe. What is the matter with these people. This is a mental illness, a mass psychosis.

The thing is, Mr. Pichai, there are no biological differences amongst the various races and ethnicities. There are, however, real biological (and chemical) differences between the sexes. How far in denial do you have to be not to see that?

Laslo Spatula said...

I'm surprised that no one has yet done the obvious.

Althouse asks "Why did Google fire James Damore?"

So I Googled "Why did Google fire James Damore?"

The first selection is:

Althouse: Why did Google fire James Damore?
althouse.blogspot.com/2017/08/why-did-google-fire-james-damore.html
7 hours ago - Tags: employment discrimination, gender difference, Google, James ... So they fired him for something he did not say or write, but someone ...

The first selection at Bing:

Of Course Google Had To Fire James Damore - buzzfeed.com
BuzzFeed
2 days ago
Aug 08, 2017 · Of Course Google Had To Fire James Damore This wasn ... Google could and should have been clearer about why Damore was fired.


That is also the first selection at DuckDuckGo.


Google is trying to get on Althouse's good side.


I also Googled:

Why are people who work at Google so bitchy?

First selection:

Why are some people who work at Google so mean? - Quora
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-some-people-who-work-at-Google-so-mean
In my experience they aren't. In 2014 I worked with Googlers in Kirkland, Fremont , Mountain View, NYC, and (briefly) LA. I wouldn't describe any of them as mean.

I had hoped for more.

I am Laslo.

Laslo Spatula said...

The sensitivity about women in the workplace reminds me of an old Sam Kinison joke:

"Whoopi Goldberg: a nation collectively decides not to hurt someone's feelings."

Extrapolate from there.

I am Laslo.

Narayanan said...

Two different or parallel take?
https://ari.aynrand.org/blog/2016/11/17/one-small-step-for-dictatorship

http://thefederalist.com/2017/08/09/hey-google-how-do-you-prepare-a-country-for-totalitarianism/

Gospace said...

SukieTawdry said...
I can't for the life of me find anything in that memo that would make me feel the least bit unsafe. What is the matter with these people. This is a mental illness, a mass psychosis.

The thing is, Mr. Pichai, there are no biological differences amongst the various races and ethnicities. There are, however, real biological (and chemical) differences between the sexes. How far in denial do you have to be not to see that?


No real biological difference amongst the various races? So, if I take a group of random whites and blacks and ask someone to tell which is which they won't be able to tell by looking at their skin?

gg6 said...

Well, other than confirming what I already surmised and/or thought, the only truly new thing that I learned in this excellent posting is that "longtime Google leader, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki" believes that a Gender issue is the same as an 'Ethnicity'issue. My sympathy goes out to her and her family, friends , employer and employees.

readering said...

In California by law managers have to attend diversity training seminars every two years. I think, what's the point, we all know this stuff. Then I read posts following the Google incident. Looking forward to my next session.

Francisco D said...

@rhhardin

"IQ means what you score on an IQ test. They're geneticists so interested in genes, not culture. So they have to use statistical methods to take culture out of the measurement."

I do not intend to disrespect you, but it is obvious that you know very little about IQ testing and the cultural origins of defining intelligence. I would direct you to research by Frank Hunter, John Schmidt and Paul Sackett. "The Bell Curve" is a good summary of the extensive empirical research on intelligence testing.

It is another area where it is forbidden to speak the truth.

Narayanan said...

https://campus.aynrand.org/lexicon/unit

Ability to abstract sets us apart from other animals.

Henry said...

"Why did Google fire James Damore?"

To get to the other side.

Gospace said...

ThomasD said...
Simple questions:

1. How many sexes are there?

Two. All the others are mental disorders, a common photo meme.

2. How many races are there?
Depends on how you define race. In a Canadian census in which I found an ancestor listed, the races of people on the page included the following: Scottish, Irish, English, Assyrian, Indian. In the U.S. census of the same decade, the choices were White, Black, or Asian for the census taker. Leaves one to wonder what the U.S. census taker would classify Assyrian as...

3. Which number is subject to change?
See answer to #2.

In a comment section of a different website, someone commented that in the rare marriages between whites and Australian Aborigines there was often problems with the female getting pregnant. Along with another, I challenged that. Turns out it is true if you google it, but no one says it directly. Turns out there are a lot of medical problems with mixed race children, and a lot of differences that wouldn't exist if there were no "REAL" differences between the races. It's only discussed openly on websites that really are identifiably racist. On the ones that aren't, it's gingerly approached and you have to do a lot of reading between the lines to see them saying it. This one: http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/mixed-race-babies-with-asian-dads-are-born-smaller-1.2693364 is actually quite open, possibly because birth weight differences don't seem controversial to most people.

Are there differences between races besides skin color? Yes. Is it forbidden to research and discover what they are? Yes. Not de jure forbidden, but de facto forbidden.

And the differences mean that a society can either have equal rights and opportunity or equal outcomes. They're not compatible. And my vote is for equal rights.

Henry said...

"Why did Google fire James Damore?"

Coddleston Coddleston Coddleston pie.

David53 said...

Google is no longer my search engine, join me.

Mr. Majestyk said...

Okay, so what's the best non-Google internet browswer out there?

Henry said...

Lynx

walter said...

readering said...In California by law managers have to attend diversity training seminars every two years. I think, what's the point, we all know this stuff.
-
Wrongthink requires constant vigilance.

rhhardin said...

Epstein says the guy might win against Google for defamation, based on what Google said about him in the note. He has no chance on labor law.

http://www.hoover.org/research/libertarian-google-controversy

Leigh said...

@ Richard Dolan said (emph. added):

“To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK.”

Damore's memo was pretty clear in arguing that biological factors make some people less inclined to pursue one form of work rather than another. Whether biological factors are at work in influencing such inclinations may be right or not (I suspect they are, but I also think it makes no difference), it's beyond question that men and women (considered as groups) are inclined to pursue different intellectual interests. Those differing inclinations show up in, e.g., the different areas of study they elect (more men in engineering, more women in languages) and the different career paths they choose to follow. Damore noted, quite rightly I think, that these considerations are irrelevant in considering any individual, but are useful in talking about different populations generally.

***

What jumped out for me in Google's defense of its defenestration of Damore was this: "we have to think harder about what impact that [free and open discussion] has, especially when it makes women or others feel unsafe in the environment we have created." Damore was describing what he sees in front of him, in terms of the differentiations between the various populations from which Google draws its employees. He wasn't engaged in figurative cross-burning. It's fair to contest whether he was observing reality accurately. But the criticism is that his talking about what he sees makes others feel "unsafe." We've certainly seen that movie before, mostly in universities. As in the academic context, the invocation of "safety" is intended to shut down discussion, which Google certainly did by firing Damore.

In the short term, that approach hasn't hurt the universities much, and it's unlikely to hurt Google. Whether it will prove otherwise in the longer term is anyone's guess.


8/10/17, 3:17 PM
__________________________________

Agree with much of what you said, but this "your speech makes me feel unsafe" paradigm has irreparably hurt universities and it will hurt Google. And in the long term -- it's already happening in the short term -- it will retard societal advance. It is from the Dark Ages: anti-intellectual at its core. It shuts down all speech because no speech, as Damore learned (and as the SJWs, a divided lot, will learn soon) is "safe." Its pernicious effects are no longer "anyone's guess."

The end-game is clear:

1) agreement = safety
2) dissent = hate
3) hate speech = violence, and finally ...
4) violent speech is not constitutionally protected and must be suppressed.

It's rapidly penetrating our culture. Total self-censorship and external suppression will happen fast. After all, people need to eat.

Mr. Majestyk said...

I am pretty sure women as a group less interested in football than men. Whoops! Where's the nearest reeducation camp?

Leland said...

Isn't Google, by having a diversity program, admitting differences between women, men, and others? If those differences are not biologically based, then what are the differentiating factors?

Gahrie said...

The thing is, Mr. Pichai, there are no biological differences amongst the various races and ethnicities.

Three words for you: Sickle Cell Anemia.

Two more: Tay Sachs

Mr. Majestyk said...

Leland, the only approved differences are the crass physical ones (penises, vaginas etc.). Intellectual differences are verboten. Get with the program, please.

Dante said...

I did my bit. Google was trying to recruit me (discussed with several managers, and next up was the famed "hard-core" google interview process). I was all set to do it in the next couple of weeks. I told them to fuck off.

I cannot abide PC leftists stringing up innocents, like they did with Duke Lacrosse, Zimmerman, Phi Kappa Psi, Odell Beckham, Damore, Clarence Thomas.

You want to see how bad it is? Google "american inventors.", what I learned two days ago.

I have always liked what Google was doing, especially their DARPA like projects that take interesting ideas and try to do something with them.

I'm going to change my browser again. What a pain, but it's worth it, even though it's only one voice.

Gospace said...

Mr. Majestyk said...
Okay, so what's the best non-Google internet browswer out there?


Brave is pretty good.And designed by people who are avowedly both alt-right and who openly favor free speech.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

I am pretty sure women as a group less interested in football than men. Whoops! Where's the nearest reeducation camp?


I'm suing you for distress and the impact wounds suffered to my fainting sofa.

bagoh20 said...

Why was he fired? In all this, has anyone asked what would have happened if the whole story was identical, but the author was a woman employee, or how about a woman of color? Forgetaboutit. He was fired because he was a white man speaking truth to power. White men can be openly discriminated against without repercussions, even with the glee of euphoric self-righteousness. They were just born wrong, that's all.

sane_voter said...

Dante,

That is shocking. Sailer has an interesting article about it.

Meade said...

"Are there differences between races besides skin color? Yes. Is it forbidden to research and discover what they are? Yes. Not de jure forbidden, but de facto forbidden."

Not true. What's forbidden is the presentation of the differences between races, sexes, etc. as unfavorable to the historically oppressed group. As a white male, Damore could be lacking the genetic trait that would neurobiologically allow him to understand that simple cultural concept. As such, Google needs to rehire him in order bring back true diversity to their company.

Mr. Majestyk said...

All I know is that Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.

Who knew that Cyndi Lauper was a hateful sexist tool of the dickocracy? (And probably a Nazi homophobic racist to boot?)

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

This is from the same article:
Dr. Callie Babbitt, an Assistant Professor at the Golisano Institute for Sustainability at the 
Rochester Institute of Technology, says one key reason female students do not pursue engineering and industrial careers is because they often don’t have a clear understanding of what engineers do or how jobs in these fields directly contribute to solving societal problems. “From an early age, students see the tangible contributions of healthcare and education professions, but may not be aware that engineers are directly involved in creating the clean water we drink, the innovative products we use, and the technology surrounding our every-day lives,” says Babbitt.

But I don't see how this accounts for a difference, because how would male students have a better idea of what engineers do than female students do?
That would be a more socioeconomic difference than a male/female difference.


Nice find, MayBee. Can we just read between the lines to find the assertion that girls are too damn stupid to wonder where bridges come from?

Why is that OK to say, but we can't say that some girls wonder where bridges come from, sure, but most are interested in other things, and neither condition (interest in bridges vs. interest in children or animals or sales) is the same thing as intelligence?

wholelottasplainin said...

For me, the really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, serious issue is:

what the FUCK are we going to do with the 10% of our insanely totalitarian population--not just the SJWs, but the CEO's of google, Facebook and the rest---for the rest of our lives?

Should we attempt to re-educate them? Make them wear armbands? Medicate them? Put them in camps?

I say this because I believe this is the second time in human history that a mass psychosis has infected an entire country.

But it's not a case of, say, the Nazis persecuting and killing their minority Jewish populations.

It's a case where a tiny minority are attempting to silence, persecute and destroy the MAJORITY.

This will not end well.

jg said...

Women in science have a 4:1 advantage in hiring decisions.

walter said...

Impossible, Meade.
Not in the era of the "White male tears" meme.

walter said...

Jonathan,

Women preferred 2:1 over men for STEM faculty positions
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/04/women-preferred-21-over-men-stem-faculty-positions
Women preferred 2:1 over men for STEM faculty positions ...
www.news.cornell.edu
For decades, sexism in higher education has been blamed for blocking women from landing academic positions in STEM (science, technology, engineering and ...

"The only evidence of bias the authors discovered was in favor of women; faculty in all four disciplines preferred female applicants to male candidates, with the exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference."

SukieTawdry said...

Three words for you: Sickle Cell Anemia.

Two more: Tay Sachs


Those are genetic disorders, mutations. Sickle Cell most commonly affects people who have sub-Saharan Africa origins, but not exclusively. It's also found in Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Indian and South American populations in areas where malaria is prevalent. People who carry Sickle Cell are less vulnerable to malaria and have a higher survival rate.

Tay Sachs is not exclusive to Jews. They believed at one time that Tay Sachs came from a single mutation but they've discovered over 100 other mutations causing the disease reported from all ethnic groups (including the Irish and Louisiana Cajuns). The mutation carried by the Louisiana families was traced to an 18th century non-Jewish French couple.

walter said...

Sukie,
Do you have any figures detailing prevalence of those among "races"?

SukieTawdry said...

No real biological difference amongst the various races? So, if I take a group of random whites and blacks and ask someone to tell which is which they won't be able to tell by looking at their skin?

Of course they can tell who has black skin and who has white skin. Does skin color determine race?

Skin color is governed by the amount and kinds of melanin produced in several genes. None of those genes is dominant and when combined form a new phenotype. The lighter skin shades that evolved in Europe and Asia were the result of genetic mutations. We all share those genes. We all have different combinations of melanin. Since the color of our skin results from the formation of a new phenotype, you could say that each of us is biologically different from each of us. But biologically speaking, these are inconsequential differences.

SukieTawdry said...

No, Walter, I don't have any one place to point you to. I've seen rates of occurrence for various ethnicities here and there over time, but nothing specific sticks. Sickle cell is most prevalent, of course, among sub-Saharan Africans and descendants of sub-Saharan Africans. And Tay-Sachs is most prevalent among Ashkenazi Jews and descendants of Ashkenazi Jews.

As our knowledge of genetics expands and increases, I think we'll have to reconsider of notions of what constitutes race. Geneticists believe human DNA will be traced to a single female in Africa (Eve?). When last I knew, they had traced European DNA to eight females scattered around the continent. Some maintain there are no "races," only ethnicities. Things were a lot simpler when I was a kid and we were taught there were three races of humans: Negroid, Occidental and Oriental. Today that just seems kind of simple-minded.

Alex said...

So women peaked around 1984 with 35% of computer science degrees and has been going down ever since. Of course if you listen to the SJWs in the media and Google, they will insist it's the 'dude-bro' culture that drove them out instead of a decrease in interest in mathematics. Is it a coincidence that 'gender studies' and similar type nonsense degrees became prominent in the 1990s and a decrease of women in tech?

So SJWs want transgender basket weaving degrees and computer science in equal numbers? Who the fuck are they kidding?

Clyde said...

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...
Nice find, MayBee. Can we just read between the lines to find the assertion that girls are too damn stupid to wonder where bridges come from?

Why is that OK to say, but we can't say that some girls wonder where bridges come from, sure, but most are interested in other things, and neither condition (interest in bridges vs. interest in children or animals or sales) is the same thing as intelligence?


Interestingly, wondering where bridges came from is exactly how my niece got into engineering. She was visiting my mother in the summers when she was a girl and sailing on the Great Lakes, and was fascinated by the various types of bridges the boat went under on their travels. She ended up getting an engineering degree because of it.

tim in vermont said...

Forbidden science from that hotbed of racism, Michigan State: You can tell someone's ancestry by the structure of their brain using scans but not their race, on account of reasons.

Obviously, issues of racial disparity in tech cannot be untangled from our detestable treatment of enslaved Africans and their descendants through much of our history, but to suggest that the races are identical in all areas beyond the obvious is not really supportable.

MayBee said...

Why is that OK to say, but we can't say that some girls wonder where bridges come from, sure, but most are interested in other things, and neither condition (interest in bridges vs. interest in children or animals or sales) is the same thing as intelligence?

Exactly.
And yeah, what do we do about it if women aren't interested? Do we start rationing who can study what in college? Can we simply not trust girls to choose the field that is best for them?
I don't believe women simply aren't encouraged to go after whatever they want to be- including IT, math, and science. I was, and I was a girl decades ago!
BUT...I also didn't like my IT job. I was sorry I hadn't gone into teaching.

CStanley said...

Thinking about this made me realize that I'm not in the loop about current affirmative action law. My general assumptions are that there are still quota requirements for certain government jobs and for university admissions, but not for corporate hiring practices.

I'm not sure if any of that is accurate-I know there's been debate about overturning affirmative action where it has been required in the past, but don't know if the laws have been changed. And I know that corporations can be sued for discrimination and have incentive to make their workforce reflect the population percentages but I don't think they are required by law to do so (but I may be wrong?)

My thinking on this is that if corporations truly aren't under quota requirements it would be very interesting if Damore would get backing to start his own tech organization which hired solely on merit but had robust protections against real discrimination and also created a work environment that addressed needs of family caretakers-flex time, job sharing options and such, available to fathers as well as mothers. Since this seems to me the right approach, I would love to see someone really implement it and fight vigorously against any lawsuits that claim discrimination when what is really happening is an underqualified applicant or underperforming employee trying to use anti-discrimination law inappropriately.

tim in vermont said...

My favorite excuse from Google is that the "small differences" could not account for the magnitude of the disparity in a company that hires only the top .2 percent of their applicants. It's almost like they don't know math, which we know isn't true, maybe they have no feel for it even though they can do it. More likely, it's that they don't want to think about the implications of their own hiring practices in a quantitative way.

If you often get asked why there are few women in physics, it's pretty painful that you have made no progress in understanding the answer – even though it's so simple. The average women's IQ is only smaller by 2-3 points than men's and wouldn't make a big impact. What's more important is that the IQ distribution (much like distributions of many other quantities) is wider among men, by about 10%, relatively to the women. And this makes the number of men above the (math-related) IQ score of 140 greater than the number of women by almost one order of magnitude. See e.g. this article by La Griffe du Lion for some simple numbers extracted from the normal distribution. http://motls.blogspot.com/2017/05/ann-nelsons-embarrassing-essay-about.html

None of this is to say that there aren't lots of women who might do well in tech were they so inclined. I remember each of the women I went to school with for STEM, or worked with in a truly technical job, fondly, all of us guys loved to death the few their were, except maybe the autistic guys, IDK. Maybe the hostile environment was that women didn't like being adored by so many geeky guys who couldn't throw a football properly. Google, however, is the top of the top, and just because people claim "anybody can code" anybody who has coded on a team of any size knows this is not true, and just being able to code doesn't mean that one can conceptualize complex solutions to problems, or even identify problems that are amenable to programatic solutions.

Mansplanation over.

Balfegor said...

Re: SukieTawdry:

Since the color of our skin results from the formation of a new phenotype, you could say that each of us is biologically different from each of us. But biologically speaking, these are inconsequential differences.

On the one hand, there aren't "true" biological differences between races since we're all extremely close genetically. While there are a handful of mutations that arose after geographic dispersion that are thus mostly unique to one lineage or another (those lineages loosely correlating with "race" as it is generally understood), for the most part we're all drawing from the same pool of genes. The distribution curves all overlap. So in that sense, it's trivially true that there are no significant differences between the races.

But to believe that the frequency of every salient allele, every salient trait is exactly identical between all human lines of descent would be absurd. If humans first migrated out of Africa about 100,000 years ago, that would be 4,000 to 5,000 generations of comparative isolation. A divergence between European lineages and Asian lineages 50,000 years ago would be something like 2,000 generations. Genetic drift alone would lead to divergences in allele frequencies between those different human populations breeding in comparative isolation.

When you consider that we descended in different environmental conditions, subject to different environmental pressures, it becomes even harder to believe that allele frequencies remained static all those many millenia. And once you hit about 5,000 years ago the environmental differences become even more marked as cultures became more and more distinct. That may seem like very little -- a comparatively paltry 200~250 generations -- but remember the Russian fox experiment? Under heavy selection pressures, he bred wild foxes into tame foxes in just three generations, no mutations needed, just changing frequency of alleles. My ancestors' reproductive success for the past 40 generations or so has been heavily affected by their ability to take standardised exams. Did that really have no effect whatsoever on the frequency of whatever alleles help people do well on standardised exams? That's difficult to believe.

And if the frequency of traits differs between the races (however you slice them), that doesn't matter much biologically (a handful of genetic diseases excluded), but it could have an effect on the distribution of performance in various tasks among different slices of the population. Maybe it doesn't! And maybe the performance differences are swamped by other differences in culture and so on. But it's the logical inference to draw from what we know of evolution. Think of us as animals, as livestock, not as creations separate and apart. We're subject to the same laws of nature as the beasts.

tim in vermont said...

But it's the logical inference to draw from what we know of evolution.

There's your problem, Sukie is looking for an 'ideological inference' and you are offering a 'logical' one. That's why she will refuse to respond.

Gahrie said...

for the most part we're all drawing from the same pool of genes.

Incorrect. There are at least three distinct genetic populations of humans. Africans who are almost pure humans. Europeans who crossbred with the Neanderthal and Asians who crossbred with Neanderthal and a third hominid.

walter said...

Blogger MaxedOutMama said...I find the equating of sexual biological differences with the suggestion that there are racial biological differences so offensive!
--
Rachel Dolezal ponders this...

bagoh20 said...

"...Asians who crossbred with Neanderthal and a third hominid."

Ahah! That must of been Nanuk. That dude could slow down any hunting party. He would get in front and walk so damned so that the rest of us would eventually have to shuck and jive to get around him or we would never get home for dinner.

Unknown said...

You don't criticize the boss. No matter if the boss says they want to hear the truth, they don't.

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