It is amusing that you accuse me of lacking reading comprehension, but then read things into my comment that I explicitly did not include because I'm tired of listing all the ways I agree with the memo.
>>things he mentions have a large enough effect to measurably affect the gender distribution among Google's employees,
> That's not one of the points of the memo. One of (the primary) point is to potentially explain a gap
So one of the points is to potentially explain a gap, and I think his potential explanation involves mentioning some effects that might be strong enough to explain the gap. I'm not sure why you singled out that point to disagree with me.
I especially limited my statement to Google employees because for Damore's purpose of influencing Google's diversity policy, effects on software engineering in general only matter in so far as they affect Google. I have not excluded the possibility that the majority of the gap is "inherited" through the hiring pool (in fact I think it likely).
However, you should not be so quick to exclude discrimination from the possible effects that have to be taken into account. In fact, Damore himself alleges that discrimination is happening, just in favor of women instead of against them. Had he actually crunched the numbers to estimate the expected gender distribution and compare it to reality, it would have been easy to see whether discrimination is involved and in which direction. But he didn't (maybe the data isn't precise enough to allow it), and now we are left arguing about possibilities and what was said.
Lastly, while I mostly agree with the content of your comment, you would do better to exclude the name-calling. It doesn't help to convince anyone who doesn't already share your views, and it alienates others who would otherwise be willing to engage in a level-headed debate with you.
>>things he mentions have a large enough effect to measurably affect the gender distribution among Google's employees,
> That's not one of the points of the memo. One of (the primary) point is to potentially explain a gap
So one of the points is to potentially explain a gap, and I think his potential explanation involves mentioning some effects that might be strong enough to explain the gap. I'm not sure why you singled out that point to disagree with me.
I especially limited my statement to Google employees because for Damore's purpose of influencing Google's diversity policy, effects on software engineering in general only matter in so far as they affect Google. I have not excluded the possibility that the majority of the gap is "inherited" through the hiring pool (in fact I think it likely).
However, you should not be so quick to exclude discrimination from the possible effects that have to be taken into account. In fact, Damore himself alleges that discrimination is happening, just in favor of women instead of against them. Had he actually crunched the numbers to estimate the expected gender distribution and compare it to reality, it would have been easy to see whether discrimination is involved and in which direction. But he didn't (maybe the data isn't precise enough to allow it), and now we are left arguing about possibilities and what was said.
Lastly, while I mostly agree with the content of your comment, you would do better to exclude the name-calling. It doesn't help to convince anyone who doesn't already share your views, and it alienates others who would otherwise be willing to engage in a level-headed debate with you.