Google's Ideological Echo Chamber
Google's Ideological Echo Chamber
Background1
People generally have good intentions, but we all have biases which are invisible to us.
Thankfully, open and honest discussion with those who disagree can highlight our blind spots
and help us grow, which is why I wrote this document2. Google has several biases and honest
discussion about these biases is being silenced by the dominant ideology. What follows is by no
means the complete story, but it’s a perspective that desperately needs to be told at Google.
Google’s biases
At Google, we talk so much about unconscious bias as it applies to race and gender, but we
rarely discuss our moral biases. Political orientation is actually a result of deep moral
preferences and thus biases. Considering that the overwhelming majority of the social sciences,
media, and Google lean left, we should critically examine these prejudices:
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1 This document is mostly written from the perspective of Google’s Mountain View campus, I can’t speak
about other offices or countries.
2 Of course, I may be biased and only see evidence that supports my viewpoint. In terms of political
biases, I consider myself a classical liberal and strongly value individualism and reason. I'd be very happy
to discuss any of the document further and provide more citations.
Neither side is 100% correct and both viewpoints are necessary for a functioning society or, in
this case, company. A company too far to the right may be slow to react, overly hierarchical, and
untrusting of others. In contrast, a company too far to the left will constantly be changing
(deprecating much loved services), over diversify its interests (ignoring or being ashamed of its
core business), and overly trust its employees and competitors.
Only facts and reason can shed light on these biases, but when it comes to diversity and
inclusion, Google’s left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold
by shaming dissenters into silence. This silence removes any checks against encroaching
extremist and authoritarian policies. For the rest of this document, I’ll concentrate on the
extreme stance that all differences in outcome are due to differential treatment and the
authoritarian element that’s required to actually discriminate to create equal representation.
On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just
socially constructed because:
● They’re universal across human cultures
● They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone
● Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still identify
and act like males
● The underlying traits are highly heritable
● They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective
Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these
differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men
and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why
we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences
are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything
about an individual given these population level distributions.
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3 Throughout the document, by “tech”, I mostly mean software engineering.
Personality differences
Women, on average, have more:
● Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally
also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also
interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing).
○ These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social
or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even
within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both
people and aesthetics.
● Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher
agreeableness.
○ This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for
raises, speaking up, and leading. Note that these are just average differences
and there’s overlap between men and women, but this is seen solely as a
women’s issue. This leads to exclusory programs like Stretch and swaths of men
without support.
● Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).
○ This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist
and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.
Note that contrary to what a social constructionist would argue, research suggests that "greater
nation-level gender equality leads to psychological dissimilarity in men’s and women’s
personality traits." Because as “society becomes more prosperous and more egalitarian, innate
dispositional differences between men and women have more space to develop and the gap
that exists between men and women in their personality traits becomes wider.” We need to stop
assuming that gender gaps imply sexism.
Status is the primary metric that men are judged on4, pushing many men into these higher
paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail. Note, the same forces that lead men
into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and
dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of
work-related deaths.
Philosophically, I don't think we should do arbitrary social engineering of tech just to make it
appealing to equal portions of both men and women. For each of these changes, we need
principled reasons for why it helps Google; that is, we should be optimizing for Google—with
Google's diversity being a component of that. For example, currently those willing to work extra
hours or take extra stress will inevitably get ahead and if we try to change that too much, it may
have disastrous consequences. Also, when considering the costs and benefits, we should keep
in mind that Google's funding is finite so its allocation is more zero-sum than is generally
acknowledged.
In addition to the Left’s affinity for those it sees as weak, humans are generally biased towards
protecting females. As mentioned before, this likely evolved because males are biologically
disposable and because women are generally more cooperative and agreeable than men. We
have extensive government and Google programs, fields of study, and legal and social norms to
protect women, but when a man complains about a gender issue issue affecting men, he’s
labelled as a misogynist and a whiner10. Nearly every difference between men and women is
interpreted as a form of women’s oppression. As with many things in life, gender differences are
often a case of “grass being greener on the other side”; unfortunately, taxpayer and Google
money is being spent to water only one side of the lawn.
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7 Communism promised to be both morally and economically superior to capitalism, but every attempt
became morally corrupt and an economic failure. As it became clear that the working class of the liberal
democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned
from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but
now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy.”
8 Ironically, IQ tests were initially championed by the Left when meritocracy meant helping the victims of
aristocracy.
9 Yes, in a national aggregate, women have lower salaries than men for a variety of reasons. For the
same work though, women get paid just as much as men. Considering women spend more money than
men and that salary represents how much the employee sacrifices (e.g. more hours, stress, and danger),
we really need to rethink our stereotypes around power.
10 “The traditionalist system of gender does not deal well with the idea of men needing support. Men are
expected to be strong, to not complain, and to deal with problems on their own. Men’s problems are more
often seen as personal failings rather than victimhood, due to our gendered idea of agency. This
discourages men from bringing attention to their issues (whether individual or group-wide issues), for fear
of being seen as whiners, complainers, or weak.”
This same compassion for those seen as weak creates political correctness11, which constrains
discourse and is complacent to the extremely sensitive PC-authoritarians that use violence and
shaming to advance their cause. While Google hasn’t harbored the violent leftist protests that
we’re seeing at universities, the frequent shaming in TGIF and in our culture has created the
same silent, psychologically unsafe environment.
Suggestions
I hope it’s clear that I'm not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that
we shouldn't try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of
those in the majority. My larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas and evidence that
don’t fit a certain ideology. I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender
roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another
member of their group (tribalism).
My concrete suggestions are to:
● De-moralize diversity.
○ As soon as we start to moralize an issue, we stop thinking about it in terms of
costs and benefits, dismiss anyone that disagrees as immoral, and harshly
punish those we see as villains to protect the “victims.”
● Stop alienating conservatives.
○ Viewpoint diversity is arguably the most important type of diversity and political
orientation is one of the most fundamental and significant ways in which people
view things differently.
○ In highly progressive environments, conservatives are a minority that feel like
they need to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility. We should empower those
with different ideologies to be able to express themselves.
○ Alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad business
because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is required
for much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature
company.
● Confront Google’s biases.
○ I’ve mostly concentrated on how our biases cloud our thinking about diversity and
inclusion, but our moral biases are farther reaching than that.
○ I would start by breaking down Googlegeist scores by political orientation and
personality to give a fuller picture into how our biases are affecting our culture.
● Stop restricting programs and classes to certain genders or races.
○ These discriminatory practices are both unfair and divisive. Instead focus on
some of the non-discriminatory practices I outlined.
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11 Political correctness is defined as “the avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or
insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against,” which makes it clear why it’s a phenomenon of the
Left and a tool of authoritarians.
● Have an open and honest discussion about the costs and benefits of our diversity
programs.
○ Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as
misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the
homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts.
○ There’s currently very little transparency into the extent of our diversity programs
which keeps it immune to criticism from those outside its ideological echo
chamber.
○ These programs are highly politicized which further alienates non-progressives.
○ I realize that some of our programs may be precautions against government
accusations of discrimination, but that can easily backfire since they incentivize
illegal discrimination.
● Focus on psychological safety, not just race/gender diversity.
○ We should focus on psychological safety, which has shown positive effects and
should (hopefully) not lead to unfair discrimination.
○ We need psychological safety and shared values to gain the benefits of diversity.
○ Having representative viewpoints is important for those designing and testing our
products, but the benefits are less clear for those more removed from UX.
● De-emphasize empathy.
○ I’ve heard several calls for increased empathy on diversity issues. While I
strongly support trying to understand how and why people think the way they do,
relying on affective empathy—feeling another’s pain—causes us to focus on
anecdotes, favor individuals similar to us, and harbor other irrational and
dangerous biases. Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about
the facts.
● Prioritize intention.
○ Our focus on microaggressions and other unintentional transgressions increases
our sensitivity, which is not universally positive: sensitivity increases both our
tendency to take offence and our self censorship, leading to authoritarian
policies. Speaking up without the fear of being harshly judged is central to
psychological safety, but these practices can remove that safety by judging
unintentional transgressions.
○ Microaggression training incorrectly and dangerously equates speech with
violence and isn’t backed by evidence.
● Be open about the science of human nature.
○ Once we acknowledge that not all differences are socially constructed or due to
discrimination, we open our eyes to a more accurate view of the human condition
which is necessary if we actually want to solve problems.
● Reconsider making Unconscious Bias training mandatory for promo committees.
○ We haven’t been able to measure any effect of our Unconscious Bias training
and it has the potential for overcorrecting or backlash, especially if made
mandatory.
○ Some of the suggested methods of the current training (v2.3) are likely useful,
but the political bias of the presentation is clear from the factual inaccuracies and
the examples shown.
○ Spend more time on the many other types of biases besides stereotypes.
Stereotypes are much more accurate and responsive to new information than the
training suggests (I’m not advocating for using stereotypes, I just pointing out the
factual inaccuracy of what’s said in the training).