In my previous articles about the Google memo, I mentioned repeatedly the existence of an international gap in the proportion of women in STEM education. Some people criticised this, citing examples of, for example, United Arab Emirates, India, or Saudi Arabia. I tried to answer some of those critiques in previous posts, but I gather from some reactions that it wasn't very convincing, and I admit it was disorganised. So here is a more structured exploration of that. The conclusion is still the same: Women a…

Two recent articles, published here and here claim to debunk the Google memo. They are wrong. Here is why. [This is my third post about the Googlegate (Post 1, Post 2)] Article 1: Science Totally Debunks That Shocking Manifesto That Got a Google Employee Fired Current research generally does not find evidence that variations in preferences, psychology, or personality stem from genetic or biological factors. Rather, they're primarily attributed to culture and socialisation. In his manifesto, however, Damore…

In my previous post here I explained why the Google memo is fundamentally right in its factual claims about the broad population, which in turn explains the proportion of women in Google itself. Here I discuss some arguments against what has already been explained. The first argument is the Argument ad Asia The argument here is that there are many countries where women are the majority among students in science. Most of these countries are not what one could call gender egalitarian. As I explained in the p…

It is, and it is not sexist. So recently a software engineer at Google published this, where he says a bunch of things about why it is wrong to assume that there are less women in Google because of discrimination. The author doesn't deny that sexism exist, but says that one doesn't need sexism to explain the % of women at google.  The article initially had links to evidence to (presumably) back what it says. These were removed by Gizmodo when they published it. EDIT:LINK TO THE ORIGINAL TEXT The manifesto, …

Enough manipulation with the definition of man, and freedom can be made to mean whatever the manipulator wishes (Matt Zwolinski) John Rawls (1921 - 2002) was one of the most important philosophers in the History of modern political philosophy. Robert Nozick, who is broadly considered an intellectual rival of Rawls even wrote that "political philosophers must work within Rawls's conceptual framework or explain why they don't". Rawls also ended the reign of utilitarianism as the most popular mora…

Collection of papers and articles that I’ve spotted since my previous links post that seem interesting. Economics Quid pro quo? Corporate returns to campaign contributions  A replication of Education and catch-up in the Industrial Revolution The practitioner's challenge Evolving_moloch The entire twitter account. Interesting stuff about cultural evolution The private production of roads The stupidity of libertarian privatised roads Does social insurance crowd out? The case of Bismarck's system of soc…