Author Topic: Google facing multiple lawsuits  (Read 49356 times)

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Offline The_Queen

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Re: Google facing multiple lawsuits
« Reply #60 on: August 15, 2017, 06:23:56 am »
The rebuttal to rebuttal dismisses some of her points with little more than an emote when it can't defend the original text, focuses on nitpicking little details while using similarly dubious statements to make their own points.

Then why not take that up with the article's author? They have a comments section.

Yeah, why focus criticisms of the piece at the person presenting and relying on that piece?
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Offline Murdin

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Re: Google facing multiple lawsuits
« Reply #61 on: August 15, 2017, 06:27:00 am »
Then why not take that up with the article's author? They have a comments section.

This is a tad disingenuous. If you bring a new element to the table, then you should be ready to defend it yourself. Maybe the author made a few missteps in his reasoning, but he's not part of the discussion. You are. He has already put a lot more thought and effort into promoting your position than you yourself did ; defending your own use of his statements is the least you can do.

So, once again, direct question: do you agree with the article or not? Is there anything you would like to add to, or remove from it?

Offline Lana Reverse

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Re: Google facing multiple lawsuits
« Reply #62 on: August 15, 2017, 05:54:10 pm »
...Because YOU linked it here as an answer to the question I made.

If you're gonna use gish gallop as your debate style at the very leaat expect others to look at the sources you provide.

I just think the person who wrote the article would do a better job of defending it than me, if only because he or she is the author.

Then why not take that up with the article's author? They have a comments section.

This is a tad disingenuous. If you bring a new element to the table, then you should be ready to defend it yourself. Maybe the author made a few missteps in his reasoning, but he's not part of the discussion. You are. He has already put a lot more thought and effort into promoting your position than you yourself did ; defending your own use of his statements is the least you can do.

So, once again, direct question: do you agree with the article or not? Is there anything you would like to add to, or remove from it?

There are a few things I'd have liked for it to cover in more depth, but overall, I think I agree with it.
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Offline Svata

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Re: Google facing multiple lawsuits
« Reply #63 on: August 15, 2017, 07:47:52 pm »
YOU are the one we're debating against. YOU are the one who brought it up. It is YOUR job to defend your side of the argument. The author of that piece isn't here. YOU are.




Now, stop being a disingenuous fuck, and defend. your. argument.
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Offline The_Queen

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Re: Google facing multiple lawsuits
« Reply #64 on: August 15, 2017, 08:07:33 pm »
...Because YOU linked it here as an answer to the question I made.

If you're gonna use gish gallop as your debate style at the very leaat expect others to look at the sources you provide.

I just think the person who wrote the article would do a better job of defending it than me, if only because he or she is the author.

Well, DUH! But you presented it here as evidence that should lead to your ultimate conclusion. Therefore, if someone undermines the evidence, as Murdin has, then your conclusion is not logically sound.* Therefore, it is your job to either (1) admit the source was flawed and provide additional reasoning for your conclusion or (2) re-establish that source so your conclusion is logically sound. Telling someone to argue on the link's chat is disingenuous as you are not making the argument, you do not know what argument the discussion itself is making, and the prevalence of alt-right trolls that will inevitably show up on anything dealing with sexism and pseudo-science.

*While keeping in mind that not being logically sound does not necessarily mean that it is wrong. For example, the sky is blue because Damore is a dick. The sky is in fact blue, but the conclusion rests on a non-sequitur.
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Offline davedan

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Re: Google facing multiple lawsuits
« Reply #65 on: August 15, 2017, 08:26:39 pm »
what are the unspecified things you want dealt with in more depth?

Offline Askold

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Re: Google facing multiple lawsuits
« Reply #66 on: August 16, 2017, 12:43:19 am »
Direct question to Lana: Why aren't you taking part in this debate?

You send links to long texts written by other people and claim that as evidence that you are correct. But you do not articulate any arguments of your own. You claim that articles we have provided aren't quite up to your standards but refuse to explain which parts you agree or disagree with. The most hypocritical part still is not that after I explained which parts of the counter-counter-argument of yours I can see to be bad you told me to argue with them -usually that in itself would be the laziest way to deal with a debate- instead what I have the biggest beef with you is that you refuse to say if you agree or disagree with that particular text...

Because you show the link and claim victory over the one I had, but then refuse to admit what parts, if any, you agree with and by doing so you can later backpedal. You refuse to take a stance.

In fact, here's another direct question: What do you think about the topic of this thread? You never said who you agree if any of the people who sue or plan to sue Google.
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Offline RavynousHunter

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Re: Google facing multiple lawsuits
« Reply #67 on: August 16, 2017, 10:10:42 am »
Man, I'm glad I got that peach brandy when I did...
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Offline Murdin

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Re: Google facing multiple lawsuits
« Reply #68 on: August 16, 2017, 10:02:08 pm »
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Askold already pointed out how the article resorts to lowbrow nitpicking to make its lame points. That's certainly true, but it won't be the focus of my criticism. There's worse, so much worse than that to be found in this Gish gallop, and this time our buddy will NOT be able to hide behind weak as shit reservations such as "there are a few things I'd have liked for it to cover in more depth, but overall, I think I agree with it". I wasn't lying when I said it was a very interesting read. There's a lot to learn here about the so-called "rationalist" mindset, and how it can become so utterly detached from the scientific enterprise.

And what better way to introduce this assassination of science, than with this audacious dismissal of the idea that correlations made by people the author agree with do not imply causation?

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This is a case of what Garett Jones calls the Everest regression. He says that controlling for height, the atmospheric pressure there is not low. Or as I say, controlling for latitude, the Sahara desert has good weather.

The error here is that HDI and gender equality are substantially linked. Controlling for HDI or GDP is like controlling for gender equality. As a general case, all good things are correlated: technology, moral progress, GDP, country IQ, industrialisation tend to be coupled. We don’t need power to explain those differences.

Okay, let's follow his reasoning through. After controlling for height, the atmospheric pressure at the summit of the Everest is normal. This is obviously because altitude is the only factor (it actually isn't but w/e) that affects pressure at this position on the surface of Earth ; there's no need for an alternate explanation. Therefore, if after controlling for HDI the gender differences are normal for any set of gender-equality factors, it means... OH SH-

This would also be a questionable cause fallacy, of course. The entire point of Dr. Sadedin was to give an alternative interpretation of the same results (high HDI causes men to act more stereotypically masculine) that makes at least as much sense as the one this study was clearly designed around (gender equality causes people to act more stereotypically gendered), just to show that you can't easily conclude any causation from a mess of correlations that are also correlated with each other. The same mess of correlation that the blog's author actually mention while completely ignoring its actual implications. Science is fucking hard, guys.

The concept behind the "Everest regression" itself is a massive fallacy. Its implication that controlling for known external factors is fallacious is... beyond insane. You can't even argue that it denounces somehow "abusive" or "illegitimate" forms of control, either, because its textbook case IS logically sound and scientifically meaningful. We can evaluate the correlation between pressure and height (and maybe also temperature...) from other measurements. If the pressure at Mt Everest is NOT normal controlling for height, then there has to be an additional factor to explain this discrepancy.

Jones is an associate professor in economics at the Koch-funded George Mason University. From what I can guess, he invented his fallacy in order to defend IQ as some essential measurement of man, against trained psychologists who mostly see it as a tool which nicely correlates with many factors of social success. I'll let you make your own opinion of the man, his works, and whether his layman's stances on natural sciences are worth your consideration. Besides Googling his name, his Twitter is a good source of information ; Here's a reblog demonstrating his vision on what makes good science.

Incidentally, cursory knowledge of world geography would tell you the Sahara's weather is, in fact, particularly inhospitable even when accounting for latitude. Unless you define "good weather" as "sunny", in which case the Sahara has excellent weather regardless of latitude.

Quote
The paper says that initially, mental rotation differences were moderaly large, d=.59, for men primed male and women rimed female. (p=0.01).  For men and women both primed male, the effect was d=0.01. But what is the p-value or that? Well, p=0.94. Yes, 19 times larger than the standard 0.05 cutoff commonly accepted for statistical significance. For the whole set they report statistical significant results, but no effect size. We can also study statistical significance in the extreme case: female primed men and male primed women. If we plug in their data in a Welch’s t-test calculator, we get a p-value of 0.61. Again, not statistically significant.

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Like David Silverman in his interview by Bill O'Reilly, I... genuinely can't explain what I have in front of me. This is faux-scientific fetishism of the dumbest fucking kind, the end result of years of smug rationalist cargo cult enabled by the likes of Scott Alexander. That man's understanding of p-values is apparently limited to "low good, high bad".

The difference in test results between men and women both primed male is tiny. This results in a very high p-value. A valid interpretation of this p-value is that this kind of result would be very likely to be found if there was no difference between the two studied groups with regard to the studied characteristic. Or, to use a handy "Everest regression": when controlling for male priming, there's no observed difference in tests results between men and women. This tends to corroborate Dr. Sadedin's hypothesis that gender priming, not biological sex, is to blame for the widely measured disparity between men and women on spatial reasoning skills.

Meanwhile, I'm calculating a p-value around 0.014 for women primed female vs women primed male. I can't get the exact value without the group sizes, but my other calculations fit quite well with the blog author's numbers. In any case, that's actually quite significant. Obviously, this is also good for Dr. Sadedin's claim that gendered priming has an influence on test results.

I'm aware this study cannot be the be-all end-all on the subject. In fact, I'm almost certain more data will come out or already exist, that directly contradicts these results. It doesn't matter. Even if the scores behind this study were found to be completely forged, it does not excuse or justify the blog author's hatchet job in any way whatsoever.

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There is a significant overlap, yes. But if we look at the tails, as I’ve been stressing over and over, one can still see massive differences.

The defilement of science is less eye-gouging than in the two previous exhibits, but there's a lot of different wrongs in this single point.
  • The linked article was written by an economist. Incidentally, the same economist with no background in natural sciences that pulled the Everest regression out of his ass.
  • It is, in fact, a libertarian political tract poorly disguised as a scientific study. Which is admittedly par for the course for an economist.
  • The blog author was trying to address the differences in software engineering skill between men and women. The relevant part of the article is about IQ instead.
  • Said part is based on a survey from Scotland, made in... 1932. That's right, 85 year old data from a fairly small and culturally homogeneous population.
  • On 11 year old kids.
  • The "massive differences" touted by the blog author... simply aren't that massive. Even at the very tail end of the chart, we have 277 boys for 203 girls, which is a bit over four boys for every three girls.
  • Inflated claims and abusive use of IQ as a measure for skill notwithstanding, this number does not even come close to explaining the truly massive gender disparities in software engineering.
From a more personal perspective, as a software engineer myself, I'm highly skeptical of the underlying claim that doing my job competently actually requires such extraordinary mental prowess.

As for the rest of the article past this point... it becomes pretty boring, to be quite honest. The author keeps talking past Dr. Sadedin's points, often rephrasing what she just said in a marginally more favorable way and then calling it a win. For a while, he just quotes relevant studies from actual scientists, wisely abstaining himself from adding his own commentary or conclusions. Then both the original response and the blog post drift into politics and I can finally be excused for not giving a shit. There isn't much to say about the author's self-congratulating conclusion, either.


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Obviously not a direct question this time, buddy, but... why do you hate science so much? Why do you keep using it as a blunt weapon against your rhetorical opponents, without showing any respect to its most fundamental principles? Why do you spew self-righteous bullshit like "I guess science is sexist now" or "rather than approaching this ideologically, let's look at it scientifically", only to effectively disown it by including such enormities in your narrative?

I mean... is it really worth it? What are you even trying to achieve here, and I actually do mean, here? You've already claimed Religion and Philosophy, Politics and Government, Society and History, was that not enough for you? Did you really have to bring your usual drivel to Science&Tech, incidentally the only place where I would give a fuck about it in in the first place, and then gloat openly over Queen taking the bait? And then take a blatant bait yourself, deliberately or not? Did you think you were the only one "clever" enough for that kind of dirty trick, or did you just decide to go along with the ride?

Because, unless making people exhaust themselves was somehow actually part of your goal, I'm pretty sure you haven't achieved anything here.

Offline Eiki-mun

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Re: Google facing multiple lawsuits
« Reply #69 on: August 16, 2017, 10:56:32 pm »
Correction: Religion and Philosophy is being reclaimed by people from FSTDT who talk about the Christian News Network. It's actually kinda fun to watch them.

Other than that, very well written post, Murdin.
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Offline Lana Reverse

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Re: Google facing multiple lawsuits
« Reply #70 on: August 17, 2017, 12:17:44 am »
You know what? Fine, I admit it. I felt like I was getting dogpiled, and I wanted to redirect some heat away from me.
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Offline Svata

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Re: Google facing multiple lawsuits
« Reply #71 on: August 17, 2017, 12:30:38 am »
You mean you debated on the side of an argument that most people here disagree with, and those same people all criticized your position, asked you to debate in good faith, and called you on your shit when you didn't? Shock! Horror!
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Offline Lana Reverse

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Re: Google facing multiple lawsuits
« Reply #72 on: August 17, 2017, 12:49:33 am »
You mean you debated on the side of an argument that most people here disagree with, and those same people all criticized your position, asked you to debate in good faith, and called you on your shit when you didn't? Shock! Horror!

Okay, how did I not debate in good faith?

And that "criticism" of my position? I'll admit that Murdin is actually using science, and Askold actually criticized the memo itself, but the others were ridiculous. Between Cloud trying to debunk an article by attacking its authors and the website that hosted it, Queen snarking about alleged sexism, and niam Godwinning all over the place, their "criticism" is hardly worth even acknowledging. What I want is a scientific discussion. If I wanted to discuss politics, I'd have put this on the political board.
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Offline Askold

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Re: Google facing multiple lawsuits
« Reply #73 on: August 17, 2017, 08:21:16 am »
Lana, what do you think of the original manifesto? What do you think of the stuff that you linked? Do you agree with them?
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Offline Sigmaleph

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Re: Google facing multiple lawsuits
« Reply #74 on: August 17, 2017, 09:31:48 pm »
Quote
Of course, as Grey Tribe faiths usually involve a transcendental impersonal absolute, there's also a strong messianic current either way. As a capitalist hero, enemy of political correctness, denouncer of leftist lies and destroyer of public institutions, the current POTUS is currently the clear ecumenical pretender to this title, though opinions are still divided over his actual status.

Most of your criticisms are at least arguably correct but this one is really odd. I have not met a single rationalist/grey triber/whatever you want to call 'em that likes Trump. I'm sure some exist, but it's not at all a general trait of the subculture.
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