The way this whole thing played out makes me sad, because the guy did bring up a good point - current-day social justice leaves little avenue for well-meaning but unaware (perhaps through privilege) people to start conversations and learn about the reasons and motivations for certain efforts such as affirmative action and changes in vocabulary. Damore was indeed punished for speaking out, just as he feared.
Then he started retweeting Breitbart articles and selling "Goolag" t-shirts and threw his credibility out the window, and solving the problem of "how do we bring people on-board with the diversity thing without scaring them off" is again put off to another day.
It wasn't merely that he spoke out. It's not just what you say, it's how you say it. Saying "women, on average, have more neuroticism" is not how you start a dialog. It's how you start an argument.
Let's not debate whether it was a factual statement, but suffice it to say that "what I said was factual so there's nothing wrong with it!" isn't a defense. There are a million statements that are factual that you don't write down and distribute throughout the whole company.
Secondary goals aside, Google's main purpose is to build internet services and make money. If I were Google's management, I'd feel justified in firing him for having the poor judgment to approach things in a way that embroiled the whole company in a fight. The lost productivity alone from the distraction must have been costly to the company.
It's possible he was just trying to help, but you don't hire/employ people for good intentions; you do it so they'll be a functioning gear in a bigger machine. If they can't do that, they aren't fulfilling their purpose at the company.
> "women, on average, have more neuroticism" is provably true.
What does that have to do with anything? It does not support (let alone prove) the idea that they are less capable engineers because of this. Where is the science linking this to ability? I might as well state "men, on average, are more violent", or have narrower hips - this is provably true, but it would equally uncorrelated to suitability to the life of a software engineer.
In the context of the memo, he followed the neuroticism claim with a suggestion to "make tech and leadership less stressful", in order to help make the workplace more inclusive to women. You appear to assume that the whole thrust of the memo was to argue that women aren't suitable. The stated aim of the memo was to explore ways of reducing the gender gap, other than quotas. People are mad because about 4 statements out of 100 imply that women aren't suitable. The intention (road to hell and all that) seems to have been to say the reverse: that tech jobs don't suit women. Too fine a distinction to expect most people to make, I suspect.
> In the context of the memo, he followed the neuroticism claim with a suggestion to "make tech and leadership less stressful", in order to help make the workplace more inclusive to women
While appearing to be very scientific, the memo offers no science to backup the underlying assumption with that line of thought("The reason there is a gender gap is because women can't deal with the high-stress environments of tech/leadership"). This is a massive leap from neuroticism. If anyone has the science to back that assumption, I'll be happy to read it.
That's a leap that he explicitly encourages people not to make: populations have a lot of variation, and to look at a difference in means as a categorical difference, to convert "women have a higher population mean for trait X" into "women are more X", is wrong both mathematically and ethically.
(... And, yeah, I feel kind of pedantic here, but on this particular topic the people who don't think about it in terms of probability distributions are doomed to talk nonsense, and getting this right actually matters. So.)
I was talking in terms of population & probability - but that's neither here nor there because ultimately the distribution of the traits don't matter when the traits are not correlated with success/failure (or representation in C.Sci). That is the leap I am referring to: I'm not prepared to take the same leap (gender traits -> outcomes) others are taking without seeing the supporting literature.
edit: Rayiner's comment[1] explains the lack of scientific rigor way better than I did
For context, one should note that the word "neuroticism" is not used as a regular English word, but is one of the "Big Five" traits in psychology, which comes from factor analysis of personality surveys. Its "definition" would be something like "An underlying quality that correlates with answering 'Agree/Strongly Agree' on these questions and 'Disagree/Strongly Disagree' on those questions". Damore did not note this in his memo, which made the statement more offensive than it should have been.
"A 2013 review found that groups associated with higher levels of neuroticism are young adults who are at high risk for mood disorders and women.[22]
For sex, the same review found that "research in large samples has shown that levels of N (neuroticism) are higher in women than men. This is a robust finding that is consistent across cultures. This is especially the case during the reproductive years, but is also visible in children and elderly." It furthermore said that EEG responses showed clear differences between the sexes in individuals with high N levels, but no functional MRI studies have yet been performed to investigate the differences in sex regarding N. However, there is a reason to suspect physiological differences to play a role because of previous studies that showed for example, a correlation between the size of the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex and N in female teenagers, so "the issue of sex differences in N and the implications for understanding N’s neurobiological basis deserve more detailed and systematic investigation."[22] A 2010 review found personality differences between genders to be between "small and moderate," the largest of those differences being in the traits of agreeableness and neuroticism.[37] Many personality traits were found to have had larger personality differences between men and women in developed countries compared to less developed countries, and differences in three traits—extraversion, neuroticism, and people-versus-thing orientation—showed differences that remained consistent across different levels of economic development, which is also consistent with the "possible influence of biologic factors."[37] Three cross-cultural studies have revealed higher levels of female neuroticism across almost all nations.[37]"
The abstracts of both of the cited studies are visible, though the full articles seem to be behind paywalls.
He kind of did - in fact when he used the word 'Neuroticism' he linked to the exact article you linked to above (the main article, not the sub section on age sex and geographic differences).
Unfortunately Buzzfeed (edit: got this wrong, it was actually Gizmodo) decided to strip all the links (and a few charts) out of the version of the document they published, and so many people didn't realise that was what he was talking about.
To be fair to Buzzfeed it turns out I remembered it wrong and it was Gizmodo who originally published the memo, I've corrected that in my comment, but we do know that they stripped it on purpose, stating in the article: "The text of the post is reproduced in full below, with some minor formatting modifications. Two charts and several hyperlinks are also omitted."
Wow I've only just seen this part (i was only familiar with the headlines of this story I never bothered to look into it until now) Whatever anyone's feelings on the issue one way or another, Gizmodo totally fucked this Damore over and I have to think it was deliberate, it doesn't make sense otherwise. I just browsed the original paper and there are citations all over the place - to strip those out is a deliberate move to influence the narrative, it has to be, I mean hell they edited it. They changed the nature of the guy's argument and there's no way in hell they didn't realize how big of an impact that would make (they're not going for a Pulitzer @ gizmodo, and they never claimed to that i know of, but still they aren't total journalistic imbeciles they had to have thought about it)
Wowwieee, I have to stop reading about this, it's depressing. This is a school bus fire. It sounds (according to Mr. Damore, and I'm not finding any disputes of this fact) like he posted this paper internally @ Google a long time before any of the hubbub and only when it became public did anyone have a problem with it. He claims to have gotten responses both positive and negative internally, which I can believe -- that sounds normal regardless of the issue at hand.
This is all PR bullshit. Is this what we've become?? If you can't have a reasonable, adult, calm discussion or debate on a topic then all hope is lost, almost everything else is moot at that point because the entire bedrock of modern society is crumbling. He presented a reasonable argument, and did it the right way (IMO). He wasn't spewing hate speech or name-calling or anything of the sort. He laid out his argument, cited sources from reputable studies in a professional manner, and asked for input/rebuttal. Only because he's asking questions some people may not be comfortable with did this go down the way it did. This is very, very sad, if we continue down this road it is not going to end well. for anybody.
And men, on average, have a lower emotional quotient (EQ) than women and in the case of software engineers it is significantly lower.
So given that software engineering is a social activity i.e. it involves team work with a wide variety of other people. Perhaps then we should look to hire more women since men are biologically unqualified to do the job.
Not so. First off, we're speaking specifically about Google, which might generalize to the extent of 'high performance' software jobs. Google hiring is selective enough that they can take candidates with exactly the traits they want, which for all we know could co-occur in men at a higher rate than in women.
But we're actually describing the candidate pool for these positions. Having a high EQ is rarely a motivating factor for going into software engineering at Stanford etc. It's people who come out of those programs and just so happens to have the right mix of EQ, drive, talent, and so on that apply to these jobs, and if the applicants are skewed male, the new hires will be as well.
You are silly because huge groups of liberal psychologists use the same technical language "women, on average, have more neuroticism" - you want to fire them too?
Secondary goals aside, Google's main purpose is getting the data right - and if you can't even speak of the data, then how are you going to get it right?
That’s an untenable charitable reading of Damore’s memo. You don’t “start conversations” and “learn” by drawing conclusions, such as the lack of women in tech can be explained by genetic predispositions. And he wasn’t talking about “changes in vocabulary.” He was attacking core assumptions about what a fair society should look like. If you want to learn, you ask questions. You try to understand the other point of view until you can explain it and address it on its own terms. Damore never tried to do that.
To use a technical analogy: it’s like a C++ programmer writing a rant about how JS dynamic typing must be for people too dumb to learn C++, and the ending it with “but I’d love to ‘learn’ more about JS!” Nobody is going to assume good faith.
You strike me as reasonable. I would appreciate if you could answer a couple of questions.
1. If there are indeed biological differences between sexes that could help explain different aptitudes/predispositions for different intellectual pursuits, should it be firable to say so?
2. If boys and men are discriminated against in order to pursue equal outcomes, should they be allowed to voice opposition?
> 1. If there are indeed biological differences between sexes that could help explain different aptitudes/predispositions for different intellectual pursuits, should it be firable to say so?
You need to unpack this into a few different things:
1) Are there cognitive differences between the sexes? Probably true--but we don't have a great idea of what they are.
2) Do those cognitive differences explain different aptitudes for different intellectual pursuits? No evidence for this in the context of computer programming. Which is why Damore's memo was so intellectually weak. The reasoning was basically "studies show women are people oriented" --> ??? --> "men are biologically predisposed to prefer programming."
3) Is it okay to fire people for saying things that are true? Businesses aren't free speech zones. Actions that jeopardize team cohesion, recruiting goals, company image, etc., are and should be fireable offenses. If someone at Google prepared and circulate a memo on how advertising is evil and destroying America, they should be fired, truth of the matter aside.
4) Everyone is entitled to an opinion, to speak on their own behalf, on their own time. People don't have to associate with you if they don't like your opinion. If you make a lot of money and send your kids to private school, you don't tell a room full of democrats "who cares about public education, let's cut the top tax rate." And if you do and people get salty, you don't say "but don't I have a right to speak on behalf of my own interests?"
1) People have been fascinated with this and have studied it for decades. Just because it isn't quantified, doesn't mean we have no idea what they are
2) You are choosing to frame other's arguments incorrectly and then attacking those imperfections. Men and women in the countries "most equal" are polarized even more in their career choices.
3) People high up in Facebook & Google have publicly questioned advertising & social media addictiveness without public backlash. The memo was firing back at policies that jeopardize team cohesion - in Damore's own words. You don't need free speech inside of a company to discuss data and reference studies.
4) Your #4 doesn't make sense but does demonstrate that you think in a very 'partisan politics' style.
> Hard to have a conversation with someone who just flat out lies at every turn
This thread is awful enough without people stooping to personal attack. We ban accounts that do this. Moreover you've violate the site guidelines quite a bit and we've had to warn you before.
> If there are indeed biological differences between sexes that could help explain different aptitudes/predispositions for different intellectual pursuits, should it be firable to say so?
First, I'll note that "should it be firable" in the question is a little bit ambiguous. I'm interpreting it as "should a company be allowed to fire an employee for this", and not as "should a company fire an employee over this".
If you believe in at-will employment, then yes. Truth does not protect you from being fired.
I'm not a huge fan of at-will employment in general, but I think even in this context the 1A freedom of association makes it problematic to prevent companies from firing people for their speech. Even truthful speech.
As an individual has the right to speak, without interference from government actors, the employer has the broad right to choose who they associate with. Restricting that right is problematic.
> 2. If boys and men are discriminated against in order to pursue equal outcomes, should they be allowed to voice opposition?
Of course they should be allowed to voice opposition. The government should not interfere with their speech in any way. Further, the government should not discriminate against those individuals based on that speech.
However, as they are allowed to voice their opposition their may be social consequences for doing so. Speech often carries social consequences—some I agree with and some I don't. For me, how appropriate or proportional those social consequences are depend very significantly on the content and tone of the particular voiced opposition and the social response. That makes it somewhat harder to respond to a general question.
You are free to challenge my responses. I'm happy to discuss these ideas.
Some similarly constructed questions I would return:
1. If there are not biological differences between sexes that could help explain different aptitudes/predispositions for different intellectual pursuits—but a coworker asserts that such differences exist, that your sex is the one with less aptitude—could you see how upset employees and applicants of that sex?
2. If women have traditionally been discriminated against in this industry, and a co-worker voices support for this ongoing discrimination in a way that makes them uncomfortable, should they be allowed to complain about that co-worker? Should their complaints be taken seriously?
You don’t “start conversations” and “learn” by drawing conclusions, such as the lack of women in tech can be explained by genetic predispositions.
No, but you can start conversations and learn by asking questions. What silences conversations and prevents learning is a menacing attitude towards to having conversations and asking questions.
He was attacking core assumptions about what a fair society should look like.
Aren't the assumptions the very things which should be questioned? If your axioms are flawed, then the systems built upon them are invalidated. Why should there be equality of outcomes? Should Asians have representation in the NBA proportional to their population percentage? Why is it that Jewish people have been radically more successful than the general population at tailoring across literally thousands of years of history, in so many different cultures and contexts? Why is there a Scandinavian Gender Equality paradox?
(Watch that video and try and tell me that the "equalists" don't come across as unreasonable, closed minded, and ideologically driven?)
A broad reading of history tells us that cultural human capital is tremendously powerful. It also gives one hope, as the historical record also indicates that cultural human capital is also transferable. The transformation of the Irish diaspora from their utter destitution to their descendant's current place in 21st century society should tell you that. (Some historians would place the average displaced Irish peasant's wealth at something like 1/2 to 1/4th that of the contemporaneous average US slave's.) Such a reading of history also demolishes the ideology of the worst segments of the Alt-Right. (As well as demolishing that of the identity politics US far-left.)
Let's call such a world view, "Cultural Primacy." Given that cultural human capital has such deep-rooted and powerful effects, what conclusions could we draw about Google's policies? It could well be that cultural human capital would have strong and persistent effects on the preferences of groups, so it would be unreasonable to expect immediate 50/50 outcomes. In fact, it would be expected for such changes to be generational, perhaps taking 2 or 3 generations. Such a world view would also emphasize the educational pipeline, and the way the subcultures of professions and fields are perceived by under-represented groups. This also happens to be in line with James Damore's suggestions from the memo. It's also entirely in line with what Google and YouTube execs have said in public:
But he wasn't asking questions. The document wasn't an invitation to explain where he was mistaken. By all accounts he was given feedback on his ideas before the final memo went out. In the very text he says that opposition to these ideas demonstrates bias and he therefore dismisses the very idea of being wrong.
The reactions that were most amplified likely included some namecalling, but I saw a lot of well-reasoned and detailed takedowns of the pseudoscience in the memo.
My guess is that both sides look at the worst of the other to justify themselves.
The reactions that were most amplified likely included some namecalling, but I saw a lot of well-reasoned and detailed takedowns of the pseudoscience in the memo.
[citation needed]
Among the "pseudoscience" in the memo is one of the most important results in psychology of recent years.
The study cited as "The Scandinavian Paradox" was across 55 countries and is one of the statistically strongest results in the social sciences, flat-out.
It’s a core assumption that when it comes to employment, men and women are generally similar at a cognitive level and equally well suited to different white-collar professions. We adopted that presumption as a protective mechanism, when we came out of a long period of invoking pseudo-scientific ideas about differences between men and women to justify sexism.
Can you point to anywhere in his memo where he claims that men and women's cognitive level is different? Again I have read this quite a few times and I don't see it.
So can you point me to exactly where he claims that?
These kinds of objections will draw approving nods from people who already agree with you, but to everyone else, the implication that differences in IQ variance between men and women lead the "top of the curve" to be naturally overpopulated with men is exactly what it sounds like: a claim for the intellectual superiority of men. Sure, there are dumb men; maybe they're even dumber than the dumbest women! But if you're looking for the best, that logic says, you're going to end up mostly with men.
But put that aside and just try to engage with the simultaneously naive and arrogant assumption that the people Google hires --- people, we assume, like Damore --- must somehow represent the top of that curve. Because what they do is just so demanding.
I work in this field, at a pretty deeply technical level, and when I hear other people in it make arguments premised on the notion that what we do demands the pinnacle of human cognitive ability, I just want to hide under a rock from embarrassment.
but to everyone else, the implication that differences in IQ variance between men and women lead the "top of the curve" to be naturally overpopulated with men is exactly what it sounds like: a claim for the intellectual superiority of men. Sure, there are dumb men; maybe they're even dumber than the dumbest women! But if you're looking for the best, that logic says, you're going to end up mostly with men.
The claim is that there are more extreme outliers for men, both at the top and at the bottom. So there are more very stupid men. This is borne out by the research, and by the prevalence of Darwin Awards winners who are male. I don't think this makes men inherently superior, overall. I think it makes men more prone to specialization at the expense of other areas of attention, like social graces. My "lived experience" would seem to bear this out. Nerdy guys are more obnoxious in certain ways than the general populace, and currently express this in way which would tend to affect the preferences of women.
I work in this field, at a pretty deeply technical level, and when I hear other people in it make arguments premised on the notion that what we do demands the pinnacle of human cognitive ability, I just want to hide under a rock from embarrassment.
We've talked about this before, and I did and would still agree that the Bay Area/Silicon Valley's view of itself is overblown. Taking such a view actually deflates the notion of male superiority instead of inflating it.
Re: the online challenge which your company had online for recruitment purposes -- was it gender neutral in its presentation and availability, and what was the gender distribution of the successful takers? What was the gender distribution of the hired population?
Gender and age diversity improved with work sample testing (but we never had to scale it to a point where we challenged our candidate pipeline, which was drawn pretty conventionally from commercial programmers, so, like everyone else, our candidate pipeline was male-dominated).
We tried to do a company premised on scaling it up, so that we could place enough candidates to service a truly large funnel. I looked forward to seeing what that would do for our parity numbers. But we did that startup wrong, and so I haven't found out how it will work out yet.
so, like everyone else, our candidate pipeline was male-dominated
Doesn't a situation where the candidate pipeline is so skewed call to question the desirability of "equality of outcomes?" It would also make me question ideological doubling-down, and mob psychology behaviors like ridiculing managers who hadn't met quotas yet. Such behaviors in such a context, like that of the Google which James Damore described, strike me as every but as illogical and mean-spirited as the parody motivational sign, "the beating will continue until morale improves."
Google has enacted diversity policies which are directed towards the front end of the pipeline -- like directly recruiting at Howard University -- and those are supposed to be backed up by hard numbers showing results.
I do believe in equality of opportunity, and do not believe we have it. You're familiar with what I think of tech management culture. Hiring, in particular, but none of the rest of it is any better. The idea that anyone would feel comfortable making assertions about things our field gets right offends me. As a profession, we're clowns.
As a profession, there is hardly a better one to be in for women. It's one of the highest paid, most flexible and equal opportunity professions there are.
All the biggest tech companies go out of their way to encourage women to the point where they favor women rather than men.
What industry does better when you look at it on a whole?
No one is claiming it's perfect but it's hardly filled with clowns IMO.
And yes, our entire profession is clownish. We produce shitty, unreliable software using ad-hoc methods no two teams agree about, our management processes are folkloric, our hiring procedures random. At the very peak of our profession, on teams building the most important and widely used software, we are at best working around those problems.
And yes, our entire profession is clownish. We produce shitty, unreliable software using ad-hoc methods no two teams agree about, our management processes are folkloric, our hiring procedures random.
In other words, it's exactly the kind of milieu which runs off of ideology, and is ripe for ideological hysteria. I mean, what in the heck do we think language flamewars are?
Neither law nor accounting are better than the tech industry when you put everything together. Medicine might be as good and is already having record level of females.
If you compare working hours, salaries, opportunity, benefits, freedom, vacation, maternity leave etc. I have a hard time seeing law or accounting being better and even with medicine I would claim that tech is still better for women on every step.
Whether your company doesn't live up to this is another question but most other places I have been or worked with in the tech industry are extremely open to both women and minorities.
This is the funny thing. It's one thing to use this distribution to explain the gender disparity among Nobel laureates. Employing it to explain the same disparity in Google employees is just laughable. As someone who teaches college math at what one might call an 'elite' institution, I've found no difference between the abilities of students based on gender. If anything, the girls are better because they have to be better to be taken as seriously as an equivalent guy.
Again I would urge you and others to be specific. Where did he claim intellectual superiority of men?
This memo was written inside of Google, yet you seem to judge it as if it was written to the outside world. Why would you do that?
Even if he was misguided (as far as I know he was a top performer), then by what standard do you mean that your interpretation as an outsider is more relevant than the intent of the memo (which was feedback as encouraged by HR)?
Why should I read it in the light that you want me to look at it in (he is arrogant and think he is the pinnacle of human cognitive ability) rather than the one he intended which was to raise his concern with their hiring process?
> But put that aside and just try to engage with the simultaneously naive and arrogant assumption that the people Google hires --- people, we assume, like Damore --- must somehow represent the top of that curve. Because what they do is just so demanding.
This is fallacious reasoning. The claim that the IQ of men has higher variance implies (given a Gaussian distribution) that there is some IQ threshold beyond which there are many more men having an IQ greater than the threshold than there are women. It doesn't imply anything about whether this threshold is above or below the average IQ of Google employees. In fact, if indeed the claim is correct, the threshold may well be not very much higher than the average IQ of the general population.
When the Damore memo came out, people have calculated that to explain the only 20% women working for google, the average IQ of google engineers needs to be 160. That is laughable.
Interesting. Do you have a link to that calculation? Maybe tptacek was impliticly referencing that calculation. I took what he said at face value but maybe real world numbers make my claim moot.
By way of calculation, apparently 30k software engineers work for Google[1] so there are probably around 15k in the USA. There are 600k software engineers in the USA[2]. I estimate that Google employs about 10% of the engineers that could pass an interview with them if they tried, so the Google-level cohort in the USA is about 150k or 25% of all engineers.
The top 25% of engineers is 0.7 standard deviations above the mean of a normal distribution. Assuming equal means, female engineers would have to have a variance in "software engineering quotient"[3] 45% that of the male engineer variance.
So it seems that if men and women have the same mean propensity to be good software engineers (not just IQ, or even IQ at all, but general propensity) but the variance of the female propensity is 45% of that of the male, then that would entirely explain a 20%/80% ratio at Google.
(Caveat: I've calculated the SWEQ level based on male engineers only but since there is such a small proportion of female engineers I don't think this skews the calculation very much.)
Thanks! A variance ratio of 1.15 is nowhere near the 2.2 that my calculation predicts would be necessary! I think yorwba and I have done the same calculation from opposite directions and reached the same conclusion. A huge difference in variance would be needed to explain an 80/20 split at Google level.
I'm not interested in rereading the version of the memo that was published publicly. I'm working from the direct quotes in the NLRB Advice Memo. I believe that what you read was not what was circulated inside Google, but Damore is not at pains to tell you that.
My understanding is that the version distributed was a draft purposefully leaked, rather than distributed by Damore.
Why should this be representative here? Shouldn't the leaker be punished for the fallout of distributing the draft, if the final version was more nuanced?
You're taking that way out of context. He's not saying that the left denies IQ differences between the sexes, and it's sloppy to quote half a sentence. If you read that section, he's analyzing the psychology of the left and the right.
The full sentence, which you clipped is:
Just as some on the Right deny science that runs counter to the “God > humans
> environment” hierarchy (e.g., evolution and climate change), the Left tends to deny science
concerning biological differences between people (e.g., IQ8 and sex differences).
That is, that the left likes to pretend there are no IQ differences (between any two groups), nor that there are any psychology differences between the sexes [because it undermines their ideology, just as global warming undermines conservative ideology].
Though this may seem ambiguous, it's clear if you consider his footnote. [8]
The correct reading is that there is biological difference both between the sexes and inside each of the sexes.
This is a reference to the identity politics you see especially in 2ndwave/3rd wave feminism which claims that almost everything is a social construct.
He says there are IQ differences between people. Who are these "people" if not men and women? He either means men are smarter or he just randomly went on a tangent.
Let me ask you, when he says there are IQ differences between people, which groups of people do you think he means?
He's referring to a group that is selected based on their intelligence. In that case, it doesn't really matter what the distribution of the larger population is, because you're only talking about a group that is selected for their favorable attributes.
For someone to say that people who are already in a career, that is, already selected for their ability, are less suited because of their sex is kind of absurd.
No he is referring to the claims by the left who claim that there is little biological difference and mostly social constructional. Read the whole thing and the whole sentence.
He's arguing "the left" would never say group A has a higher average IQ than group B, regardless of the groups.
That tidbit is a paranthetical in a sentence about the psychology of left vs right. His thrust is an illustration of how ideology and science are conflated.
Here (section "Why we are blind"):
"[...] the Left tends to deny science concerning biological differences between people (e.g., IQ and sex differences)"
I don't know how else to read that other than "men are smarter". Is there any other reading?
It's just possible to read it as a poorly written attempt to say that the Left ignores science on biological IQ differences (perhaps, as is quite popular to point to on the Right, those associated with race) and also biological sex differences, rather than it being intended to refer to biological, sex-linked, IQ differences.
The correct reading is that there is biological difference both between the sexes and inside each of the sexes.
This is a reference to the identity politics you see especially in 2ndwave/3rd wave feminism which claims that almost everything is a social construct.
He isn't talking about who is better just that there are differences.
What is it you don't get?
He is referencing the people (mostly feminists on the left) who claim there are no biological differences and that almost everything is social constructs.
You are one of these people who can't handle losing an argument that your ideology is a part of. You don't substantiate these claims - have you actually read the memo? Your analogy kind of proves that you didn't read the memo. Furthermore, I bet anyone at Google could make your mistaken analogy and not get in trouble for it. Furthermore, do you even believe someone should be fired if they made your programming language analogy?
I feel like the progressive left THRUST Damore and anyone who might have similar thoughts/questions into the welcoming arms of the alt-right. I'm disappointed with the "Goolag" t-shirts, but he did lose his livelihood, had his professional reputation destroyed, and only a limited time to cash out. So this socially awkward nerd did what any sensible person would do, rode the wave that was sent his way the best he could. Consider his professional options compared to a standard "former Googler." They destroyed him, it was terrible.
As someone who was an actual classmate of Damore, I can attest to his lack of character in this regard. I understand that the tone of his memo made it appear to have come from a thoughtful humanist, but this was a careful deception. In every social or professional encounter I've had with him, he's at least made somebody (particularly women) uncomfortable. In several cases these incidents led to meetings and reprimands. I am certain that he was already fully in the alt right camp, and did not say so aloud because he is a smart person capable of recognizing bad PR.
Well, maybe you have insider knowledge about how much he actually disagrees with those on the left at Google--or maybe you don't.
But either way, those who are fully in the alt-left camp at Google seem to consider themselves completely free to make anyone who disagrees with them uncomfortable and to go far beyond that: to force them to undergo indoctrination "training", or to be fired outright to make examples of them to others who might be tempted to openly question leftist dogma that may or may not actually be correct.
At Google, those on the far left don't seem to feel the need for "careful deception" when it comes to expressing their opinions of/to coworkers they disagree with. They don't act as though they are required to make those with different opinions "feel safe". They have every reason for confidence, because "safety" just means "privilege": We get to blame and criticize you, but you aren't allowed to respond, because we (not you) are entitled to "safety".
Only when it comes to things that the right is is indisputably on the wrong side of history and hasn't figured it out yet (gay rights, gender rights, etc).
Its not like the alt left yet to preach about communism or unions or taxation with the same privileged safety. Subjects like this get a lot of reasonable discussion from both sides at left leaning companies.
But when it comes to things like diversity? And you are a company full of the most intelligent people in the world? Yeah, sorry if you haven't realized that "unconscious bias" is a real thing, you don't deserve a safe space to question it, you are being wilfully ignorant.
>Only when it comes to things that the right is is indisputably on the wrong side of history and hasn't figured it out yet (gay rights, gender rights, etc).
Except that's not how it works the other direction. You mentioned communism. The left is indisputably on the wrong side of history here and hasn't figured it out yet. And yet somehow the right is still willing to engage in reasonable discussion.
A person could take a generous reading of Damore's memo and find plenty of common ground. It doesn't matter if he's right about the differences between genders being biological vs environmental. Survey after survey suggests that part of the reason why women avoid/leave tech is long hours and inflexible schedules. Since men are more willing to accept long hours and inflexible schedules (again, could be socially constructed) then Google is currently set up to maximally benefit men (patriarchy). To help with this situation Damore suggests some new policies like creating more part time positions and offering more telecommute opportunities.
But instead of trying to find common ground and move forward with some policies which might create an environment maximally beneficial to everyone, the ENTIRE NATION needed to stop what we were doing so this socially awkward nobody with no power could be publicly flogged over some potentially incorrect ideas about diversity policy.
> And yet somehow the right is still willing to engage in reasonable discussion.
This is a joke right? Proposing universal health care, paid maternity leave, or raising the minimum wage leads to screams of "SOCIALISM!" and any explicit support of socialism leads to screams about the millions of people killed by Stalin.
There is no reasonable discourse about the idea of weak-link based cultures (rather than strong-link), or government-mandated egalitarianism.
When was the last time you saw a random nobody make national headlines news and have their career ruined for proposing universal healthcare? Yes, debates get heated, but the right generally does not try to destroy you in this way for being "wrong."
he did lose his livelihood, had his professional reputation destroyed
I'm frankly ashamed at the behavior of my classmates, who were so enthusiastically throwing him under the bus, without really knowing anything about him. I found it very odd that people who had no basis of judging his software engineering skills had very strong opinions about them.
I'm reminded of a documentary film about North Korea, where during one segment of a meeting, people went up to the front of the room and took turns condemning the United States, and were cheered the more fanatical they sounded. There is indeed "thought-crime" in the United States, and this category is at times conveniently expanded to to encompass any questioning of the new orthodoxy at all, with no basis but irrational, emotional ones.
Team interaction is a software engineering skill. The ability to work with a diverse set of people and bring them together rather than disparaging and dividing them is a software engineering skill. I would rather have a good programmer who got along with my team than a great one that wrote such memos.
I'm sorry, but some random nobody at Google having some wrong ideas about diversity policy does not deserve to be national front page news. James Damore is about as meek and mild as it gets. He's not some David Duke monster. None of us should have ever heard his name. This was a public assassination of a powerless nobody for cheap political points. That's the part that I have a problem with. I have no problem at all with Google firing him. I have a problem with the way the national media and general public behaved.
This was a public assassination of a powerless nobody for cheap political points. That's the part that I have a problem with.
This willingness to "un-person" someone for reasons of ideological fervor -- this is precisely why I, as a liberal, feel so alienated from so much of the far-left politics going around nowadays. I've personally been a target of such things. (I can't discuss it, but I can say that it was not gender based.)
It's such attitudes and the unreasonable fury behind them which most worries me.
As a conservative I share your feeling of alienation, because look at how the right has responded. It's given us Trump which is really gross. I fear we're in a very precarious position both culturally and politically and I wish I had some insight into how to move back towards a place where we can have rational intelligent discussions again. For the meantime I think we'll all be relegated to the "intellectual dark web," a phrase coined by I believe Eric Weinstein, the left-leaning professor who had to resign out of fear for his life after refusing to stay home during "no whites" day at Evergreen college.
> I'm sorry, but some random nobody at Google having some wrong ideas about diversity policy does not deserve to be national front page news.
Claims of anti-white-male discrimination in tech are man-bites-dog stories, and naturally get more attention for that reason, plus, Damore immediately sought out media with political biases to maximally promote that kind of story. It becoming national front page news and getting the degree of attention it did in part just novelty, and in very large part the foreseeable result of how Damore soguht to promote his story.
> This was a public assassination
No, it wasn't. It was public, but there was no assassination.
If you don't think that the social media / internet whipping that Damore and frankly anyone else that steps outside of several key echo chambers gets isn't real then I strongly doubt how good of faith you are in this conversation.
Software engineering skills are immaterial if you are making a considerable portion of a company with tens of thousands of employees uncomfortable and less productive. There is no way he was a net positive.
Team coherence and psychological safety are important, just as important as engineering skill. This is especially true at a large company.
> but he did lose his livelihood, had his professional reputation destroyed, and only a limited time to cash out.
Why are you writing this in the passive, as if this is an unfortunate thing that happened to him? He did all of that to himself. That memo created a hostile workplace and Google had no choice but to fire him. The outcome here isn't terrible, it's exactly what should have happened.
I asked Damore whether he expected the memo to blow up in his face, implying that he should have. His reply to me indicated he barely understood the question I was asking him. I got the impression he was naive, and a bit too eager to share his Jordan Petersonisms. I really don't think he knew. However, later on, in his Rubin Report interview, he did know exactly which excerpts got him in trouble.
Creating a hostile workplace is not “meaningful conversation”. The memo constituted pretty blatant harassment of all his female colleagues. You don’t have the right to say whatever you want. People absolutely should be fired for harassing and discriminating against their colleagues (which is effectively what the memo was). It’s toxic and incredibly hurtful and cannot be tolerated.
An hostile workplace is one firing an employee for the mere act of sharing an opinion. As the memo was not directly addressed to any female and did not insult them it is clearly not harassment. Questioning the hiring policy is not like attacking people directly. This is sad to see how much everything got conflated in an angry prêt-à-penser ideology that justify every of its excesses against the non believers.
No you're right, he didn't address harass a single coworker. Instead he harassed all of the women he work with at the same time. Just because he didn't name names doesn't mean it's not harassment; he deliberately insulted an entire demographic of people, and then tried to pretend it was "scientific" when it was just a load of bullshit, as if that makes it any better.
If his memo was railing against, say, the Irish, would you still think he wasn't harassing any of his Irish colleagues?
> If his memo was railing against, say, the Irish, would you still think he wasn't harassing any of his Irish colleagues?
If an entreprise I work in would start things such as saying "there is not enough Irish in the entreprise", have a skewed hiring process towards Irish, imposes me lessons about how to behave around Irish, and forbid the use of French even when only French speakers are around, yes I would totally support someone (of every nationality) asking the hierarchy what is going on. Or I may even do it myself.
The only case it would be acceptable is of course a company which makes money based in Irish culture and language, which then require these specific people to be hired. But on the women side of the things, as I consider them totally equals to men and thus apt to do the same technical jobs as men granted we speak of the same education level, I don’t see why they should be favored over men. And some women in my lab totally think that way too. One actually told me she hates this type of policies because it kinda lowered her work to get her job (not that’s easy either to succeed as a man).
> Nobody should be fired for speaking out and/or starting a meaningful conversation.
Do you not live on the same planet as the rest of us ?
Because it is common, legal, socially popular and frankly the status quo for companies to fire you based on what you say during work time. After all companies are paying you during that time to represent them and their values.
Society actually expects people to be fired based on what they say during work.
What do you mean, leaked? He sent it to the company. Whether or not it was released outside of the company has no bearing on whether it created a hostile environment. In fact, it was "leaked" precisely because it was so offensive.
And what misrepresentation? You're deluding yourself. The memo as written is what created the hostile work environment, not any "misrepresentation".
Even at this point, he would likely be easily able to get another engineering job if he wished. So I think you are vastly overstating the damage to his career. For sure, if he had admitted he was wrong or at least naive, and shut up about it, he'd have no problems at all. By doubling down on his statements and participating in lawsuits against Google, he's making himself less and less attractive to future employers. But you severely overestimate the impact this will actually have on his prospects.
But if we're talking about consequences of his actions, what about all the women whose careers he was advocating for destroying? Who, had he continued to work at Google, would have felt entirely unwelcome, untrusted, and unrespected? What is the impact on their careers when they face constant questioning of their very legitimacy merely because of their sex?
Based on your comments it's quite clear that you either did not read his memo or do not understand statistics. Secondly, even if you take the most egregious possible interpretations of every sentence he wrote and try to take them out of context as much as possible to put them in a bad light, the national outcry is still completely unnecessary and disgusting. Fine, fire him, but he's about as meek and mild as they get, not some David Duke monster. He should've never made the news.
You are not allowed to make protected groups feel harassed or discriminated against. Women are a protected group.
Its a federal workplace law. A company will correctly fire you if you cause women to feel harassed or discriminated. Peoples understanding of whats allowable needs to catch up with the implications of the laws.
That is true. But I ask you this: do companies hire less technically capable engineers to boost diversity numbers? Do you believe that it does not happen at all, in any sense?
If you think that this does not happen, then how do companies boost the numbers of non-traditional candidates?
Google, as smart as they are, should be able to easily and conclusively prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this does not happen. Yet they resort to silencing.
> Google, as smart as they are, should be able to easily and conclusively prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this does not happen. Yet they resort to silencing.
You’re suggesting that they should prove a negative. The burden of proof is on the party that accuses them of a given issue.
Could you point out that specific passage? As I read it he specifically went out of his way to say that all of the women he worked with were qualified.
- In the "personality differences" section, Damore repeats broad stereotypes about behavior that might make women less interested or less effective in tech jobs. He admits these are small effects and shouldn't be used to judge individuals, but goes on to propose policy changes that would impact individuals based on the stereotypes. Institutionalizing assumptions about womens' interests and capabilities is exactly what labor laws are designed to avoid.
- His section about discriminatory practices specifically suggests that there has been a lower bar for "diversity candidates", implying some of his more diverse co-workers shouldn't be there.
1. There's another way to interpret this which is that masculine interests and capabilities are already institutionalized (patriarchy). The changes he suggests create a more gender neutral environment where everyone is capable of maximal success. I'm less interested in how labor laws are currently interpreted than I am in trying to find a system that maximally benefits the most people.
2. Yes, his section about discriminatory practices does accuse Google of being guilty of the bigotry of lowered expectations. But that doesn't make Damore or the memo bigoted. Context is important here, he just came out of diversity training classes and was asked his opinion. This memo is in direct response to presumably having been trained to hire in a discriminatory way. It's possible Damore misinterpreted his training, but that's different than making him a bigot.
And further, even if you take the most egregious interpretation of these writings, take everything out of context, and try to paint it in the worst light possible, the reaction is still unreasonable. I'm not talking about him getting fired. That's fine, Google can fire him for wearing the wrong tie as far as I'm concerned, so they can surely fire him for potentially questionable opinions. The position in my original post is about the national media and general public. Fire him sure, but is this really so bad that the entire nation needed to be brought in to witness his public flogging? This is a socially awkward nobody with no power who might have some bad ideas about diversity policy, not David Duke on some white nationalist crusade.
He literally says that those hiring practices can lower the bar.
Sure, maybe he's saying that the bar for white/Asian men is higher than intended rather than that the bar for women and minorities is lower than intended, but you can't honestly argue that he isn't saying that women and minorities could be clearing a lower bar than white/Asian men.
Precisely! So that is your argument for why prohibiting him from saying that was legitimate (firing somebody for behaviour X is pretty much the definition of a company prohibiting behaviour X, I mean, what else can a company do?).
I'm sorry, but you sound like you're using double-speak. If Google has indeed lowered the bar for some minorities then it's Google who is exhibiting the soft bigotry of lowered expectations, not Damore for simply pointing it out. If Damore has simply incorrectly interpreted Google's hiring policy, then Damore is still not a bigot based on this statement. Damore went out of his way to specify that all of his coworkers were qualified and offered suggested policies which would attract more women without the bigotry he interpreted in the current hiring practices.
Damore did not specify that all his coworkers were qualified.
Damore believed Google lowered the bar, hence the statements I've made explaining how he offended his coworkers.
It is reasonable to believe Google _hasn't_ lowered the bar, and if you did, you would be offended by a long document warning about gender-biased consequences of lowering the bar.
I'm not sure how productive this thread is. I'm very surprised by your repeated assertions that there's direct textual evidence I'm mistaken, yet you're willing to accuse me of bad faith repeatedly, instead of just correcting me.
So I'm not afraid to eat crow when it's due. I've re-read the memo and you're right, in the memo he did not specifically state that everyone was qualified. I must have been thinking about an interview I saw of him.
I agree with you that it's reasonable to believe that Google _hasn't_ lowered the bar, but I don't see what difference that makes. There is a very applicable quote here by Albert Maysles, "Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance." With that in mind, I would like to plainly state my position here. I personally don't find Damore's memo to be unsettling, even though I disagree with some of it. If it were my company, I might have stopped at a firm one-on-one in HR with him. But I don't have all the details available internally and it's not my company. I fully support Google's right to fire him over the memo.
The problem I have is that a nobody with no power was publicly destroyed for cheap political points by the national media and general public. None of us here should even be having this discussion because a random nobody at Google with some incorrect ideas about diversity should never make national headlines with phrases like, "anti-diversity manifesto." This is a random socially awkward super-nerd, not David Duke.
The letter does bother me and I would have fired him, but I share some sympathy for having this blow up on a world stage. Is there any good timeline on how that happened? I'm pretty sure the leak (not the firing) is what made it national news... Do we know yet how that happened or how it circulated internally before that?
I think the thing that makes me more sympathetic is that the memo was written in response to him being asked his opinion on the diversity hire training he'd just received. Rightly or wrongly he clearly felt the diversity training was bigoted against him. I feel it's unfair to go out of your way to ask someone's opinion and then fire them for having the "wrong" one. I'm willing to grant someone a lot of leeway if they're genuinely trying to respond to a direct query. Conversely, it's also possible he went on a mini-crusade, in which case I'd definitely have fired him.
With regard to national news, I believe you are correct that the leak is what got it into the national news, not the firing. But that doesn't change the equation. The 4th estate is powerful and I believe it grossly misused its power here.
Yeah, once this got out to the news, it was pretty much guaranteed that this memo was the first thing anyone would know about this guy. I agree that's not "fair" in an objective sense -- everyone should get to learn from their mistakes, especially if they were made in a "safe" space where feedback was encouraged.
That's why I'm very curious exactly how this got distributed early on. Did someone take private feedback and socialize it?
Or was feedback always a public bulletin board, where there's some shared responsibility on both readers and writers to think about the context? Or did Damore socialize it independently to prove support for his ideas?
If feedback was private, I think HR could take a firm line about what policies and principles Damore needs to adopt (at least at the workplace) to participate in his employment community, without helping his name get published with this memo (and possibly even without firing him). But the moment it got published changed the stakes for everyone involved, and not just due to PR. It's fair to ask: "can I require my female and minority employees to work with someone who has asserted that biological differences make them less likely to succeed?"
As far as the media goes, they've done what they're paid to do and socialize the most extreme opinions (most rejecting but some supporting Damore). I think that sucks for society but is a much bigger problem than this case.
From a statistics point of view, this statement is dispositive: "...decrease the false negative rate, not increase the false positive rate."
The interaction between type I and type II errors virtually always have an inverse relationship. You cannot decrease one without increasing the other. It is, for example, one of the difficulties in making good medical diagnostic tests.
P.S. snarky commentary such as 'read the memo yourself', implying I'm lying about having read it, doesn't contribute to civil discussion.
> The interaction between type I and type II errors virtually always have an inverse relationship.
If you're adjusting a dial, yes. But hiring is complex, and having more time to evaluate candidates means you can do a better job. Spending more effort is a simple way to improve false negatives and false positives. It's entirely plausible that a company might have extra time budgeted for double-checking resumes from certain groups.
There was a confusingly-written part that I've seen a lot of people misinterpret in that particular way. My understanding of what he was trying to argue was this:
Imagine you have a skill-based RPG, where you gain skill in some task only by doing it and men and women are completely identical in every single way. Now imagine that more women enjoy alchemy, but more men prefer to spend their time mining. In this game, because of how skill gain works, if you look for really talented alchemists, most of your candidates will be women, even though the sexes are every bit as good as each other.
From a statistics point of view, this statement is dispositive:
"...decrease the false negative rate, not increase the false positive rate."
The interaction between type I and type II errors virtually always have an inverse relationship. You cannot decrease one without increasing the other. It is, for example, one of the difficulties in making good medical diagnostic tests.
I am reasonably mathy and I don't understand the statement. That plus the topic -- sexism in tech generally, especially Damore -- makes me think the motivation for down voting it is probably "political." ie it sounds like it could be supporting Damore's position, much of the world has decided he is an evil sexist pig etc.
I was reasonably mathy too, but stats was pretty different and I only took a couple semesters of it. It wasn't until I was forced to interact with it in a job setting that the inverse relationship between type I & II errors became really apparent to me. Any time I would crank up settings to reduce type I error, keeping all other things the same, type II error would invariably creep up... and v. versa
Then when looking in to it, I saw a lot of the examples given from the medical industry as GP alludes to, where this is a real big problem (e.g. if your test is 99.999% accurate, but has a 0.001% false positive rate, then if your disease actually only affects 1/1000000 people then the overwhelming majority of people who your test select are actually healthy).
And then I went back and actually read the relevant sections on the stats textbooks for my courses and learned that
(a) it was actually in there, and
(b) evidently my stats courses were way, way too easy to pass
As for the reply, I think I figured out why it was downvoted. It was a double-post, and the intended GGP was here:
There was a heavy bias to down voting all of my comments for the first 4-6 hours, which evened out to the opposite over time. I usually see this pattern in gender-related threads
If I believe my employer is discriminating against women, or against black people, that requires that some of my male or non-black coworkers were hired over more capable women or black people.
Should anyone alleging that kind of discrimination be fired? Because they tend not to be.
He has no agency? He chose to speak up and then he chose to go down the path he did. It is an impressive feat of mental gymnastics to both kinda sorta acknowledge the alt-right might not be a great group of guys but then also claim Damore had no choice but to pull into that port in a storm of his own making. Allow me to pour out a beaker of Soylent for the poor, downtrodden white man.
It's a despicable thing to destroy someone over an idea, despite the contents of that idea.
I think tech workers are easy targets. For instance, we've all heard about the need for diversity in tech, but never hear about accredited investors being < 6 % female and < 1 % black.
> It's a despicable thing to destroy someone over an idea, despite the contents of that idea.
Well, if I find out anyone holds nazi ideologies I'm happy to socially "destroy" them over those ideas. I agree that the government shouldn't punish them for those ideas, but I think individual citizens and entities have every right to disassociate and socially punish someone for those ideas.
Now, I'm not saying that Damore's ideas are that extreme. However, it puts an upper bound for me on how much I can agree with your statement. There are ideas that I'm fine imposing social punishments on people for believing.
I agree that Damore probably shouldn't be "destroyed" for his ideas (for whatever a definition of "destroyed" is that obviously isn't literal destruction), but I don't see why being fired is problematic for the way he shared those ideas in the workplace.
Edit: This post previously had a typo that stated: "I agree that Damore probably should be 'destroyed' for his ideas". That was not the original intent, and I've corrected "should" to read "shouldn't"
That serves to do is cause those who have been destroyed to seek out others like themselves and create an echo chamber where they get more extreme, alternatively it gets others to simply go dark in regards to their thoughts -- they still have them (possibly even more re-enforced because now you have given them an enemy) and they will toe the line until they can get into a position to push back.
You stamp this out instead by finding out how the people ended up with those views to begin with, by being able to engage with those who view the world different from you, and by not fueling their hate.
Does this work for ever person - no, but it should be at least attempted.
(fyi - this is more a general comment about social media slayings that are way too common, I'm not being sympathetic to anyone who considers themselves a nazi).
Right. I agree that social media shame parties can overreact to things and create social punishments that I would agree aren't "proportional" (again, for some arbitrary definition of proportional).
My general views on this are derived largely from Popper and the paradox of tolerance (though, to be honest, I've more read about his writing that his work itself; it's next on my reading list). I don't think, as a society, we should tolerate intolerant behavior.
Which means, again as a society†, I think we should aggressively refuse and reject those with nazi ideologies. As an extension of that, I think we should mildly reject and refuse those with mildly intolerant ideologies. In my utopia, those social consequences would be proportional to the degree of intolerance, and I think you're right and fair to note that social shaming can quickly out-escalate the level of intolerance.
†not as a government; all consequences and punishments I'm speaking of should be social consequences and punishments. I'm fairly absolutist when it comes to 1A protections from the government
>I agree that Damore probably should be "destroyed" for his ideas (for whatever a definition of "destroyed" is that obviously isn't literal destruction), but I don't see why being fired is problematic for the way he shared those ideas in the workplace.
I'm the OP whose comment started this mini-firestorm of a discussion and I think you and I are probably very closely aligned. I'll try to state plainly how I feel about the whole situation.
I'll start with a quote by Albert Maysles, "Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance." I can definitely see how a percentage of his memo can be interpreted as offensive. I don't know all the internal information about how everyone was behaving, but I'd like to think that if it were my company I would have treated this as a teachable moment and had a frank discussion with him in HR. That said, I fully support Google's right to fire him even if I take the most generous interpretations of the memo, because frankly I'm a huge supporter of at-will employment.
The problem that I have is the way the national media and general public responded to this situation. Damore is a nobody with no power who might have some incorrect ideas about diversity policy. I should have never heard of him. And I definitely should have never heard of him under national front page headlines with titles about an "anti-diversity manifesto." This is a meek and mild super-nerd, not David Duke. Thrusting him into the national spotlight in this way was clearly going to destroy his career and was completely unnecessary.
Right. I agree that social media shame parties can overreact to things and create social punishments that I would agree aren't "proportional" (again, for some arbitrary definition of proportional).
My general views on this are derived largely from Popper and the paradox of tolerance (though, to be honest, I've more read about his writing that his work itself; it's next on my reading list). I don't think, as a society, we should tolerate intolerant behavior.
Which means, again as a society†, I think we should aggressively refuse and reject those with nazi ideologies. As an extension of that, I think we should mildly reject and refuse those with mildly intolerant ideologies. In my utopia, those social consequences would be proportional to the degree of intolerance, and I think you're right and fair to note that social shaming can quickly out-escalate the level of intolerance.
†not as a government; all consequences and punishments I'm speaking of should be social consequences and punishments. I'm fairly absolutist when it comes to 1A protections from the government
Lets make a distinction in socially destroy. If you found a nazi that worked for someone who knew he was a nazi and was fine with it, his wife was fine with it and all his friends were fine.
In this case how would you socially destroy them beyond pointing out to those around them what they have been hiding?
In my post, I hinted that I don't really have a definition for "socially destroy". I don't really know what it means or how the OP intended by it.
If I knew someone was a nazi, I would inform those around them. If their employer—for example—refused to terminate their employment, I would move "up the chain", and attempt to apply social consequences to that employer. How that works quickly becomes context dependent, but it expresses in things like boycotts, and other refusals to engage economically with those groups.
I think what this Advice memo is about isn't the idea itself, but how he poorly he handled the idea. The disruptive way he handled the idea is not protected from being fired in an at-will employment company. Google even worded that in the termination:
>Your post advanced and relied on offensive gender stereotypes to suggest that
women cannot be successful in the same kinds of jobs at Google as men. I want to make clear that our decision is based solely on the part of your post
that generalizes and advances stereotypes about women versus men. It is not based in any way on the portions of your post that discuss Google's
programs or trainings, or how Google can improve its inclusion of differing political views. Those are important points. I also want to be clear that this is not about you expressing yourself on political issues or having political views that are different than others at the company. Having a different political view is absolutely fine. Advancing gender stereotypes is not.
Gender stereotypes are sometimes supported by fact (even if they may primarily came into being by anecdote or plain ____ism). When they are, it is not fair to dismiss someone as "advancing gender stereotypes" whenever they make an "on average"-type claim (based on evidence) that happens to align with a gender stereotype; the problem comes when you forget the "on average" part of it (which he did not seem to).
Right, nor have I heard anyone mention the monumental irony of a company who makes billions monetizing differences between the sexes and then fires one of its employees for stating there are differences between the sexes.
If you mean the well-understood definition of "accredited investor" in the US, this is an objective measure with an objective barrier to entry (expected income and assets), and we DO hear about the need for diversity in this regard every time we hear about women and people of color making less money and advancing more slowly in their careers. On the other hand, software hiring and "tech diversity" is a subjective process with very, very subjective barriers to entry and so we hear about changing this process through human measures. This isn't a very good comparison.
It is an impressive feat of mental gymnastics to both kinda sorta acknowledge the alt-right might not be a great group of guys but then also claim Damore had no choice but to pull into that port
It's an impressive feat of mental gymnastics to put people like Dave Rubin, Gad Saad, and Steven Pinker into the category of "Alt-Right." (The first two being an openly gay man in a gay marriage, and a Lebanese jew.) There is no logic there. Basically, if you're not a true believer who has drunk the Kool-Aid, you must be one of the lurking enemy harboring evil thoughts. Sorry, but there are a lot of people who are happy to live and let live, but who have different ways of interpreting the world.
The comment you replied to does not describe those figures as alt-right. On the other hand, the very first person Damore engaged after being fired was Stefan Molyneux, who is undeniably alt-right. It's also insipid to suggest that being gay or Jewish precludes being alt-right or otherwise bigoted. What would that make Milo Yiannopoulos?
the very first person Damore engaged after his firing was Stefan Molyneux, who is undeniably alt-right.
I try to avoid Molyneux as much as possible. Keep in mind that the term "alt-right" is overloaded terminology. Roaming Millenial has a video where she outlines 4 broad categories of "alt-right." Not all of them are White Supremacist. Molyneux, I would just categorize as a very cultish Libertarian. Molyneaux should be rejected because of observations of his actual morality, with regards to questions of free inquiry. You might know additional bad things about him. However, it's "insipid" (your word) to judge James Damore's ideas based on association.
It's also insipid to suggest that being gay or Jewish precludes being alt-right
Just as insipid to put Gad Saad, Dave Rubin, and Steven Pinker into that category, based on what they say and the positions they take. The fact that they are gay or Jewish should at least get you to question the narratives pushed by media and take into account their actual positions. Hint: The narratives with regards to those 3 are false, and are unprincipled attempts to silence through association, probably because the critiques and information they supply pretty much demolish those narratives.
What would that make Milo Yiannopoulos?
Milo is, as far as I can tell, genuinely is anti Alt-Right, where that term encompasses the more radical 3/4ths of Roaming Millenial's categorization. He may well line up politically with some segment of the online community which rejects identity politics, but which is still far right. He also displays a problematic morality as evidenced by some of his actions. In my estimation, he's half activist and half opportunist.
Stefan Molyneux is not alt-right where do you get that idea from?
Milo was one of the most hated people by the alt-right, his husband is black, how much more do you need for him to most probably no being alt-right?.
I refuse to believe that anyone who sincerely and honestly spent any time looking into the actual opinions of Milo, Ben Shapiro, Molyneux etc and not just cherry-picked soundbites would make such claims about them. Milo is extreme in his provocations but he is hardly anything close to alt-right.
I certainly don't agree with everything these guys have to say but I would urge you to actually listen to what they are trying to say before you judge them.
To the downvoters. At least provide me with a reason for the downvote. What did I say that's so wrong?
The downvoters are mindless ideologues who can't argue, only mash arrow buttons.
Re: Ben Shapiro -- As far as I can tell, he's a religious conservative, with a certain cosmopolitan flavor of rationalist deism, which completely falls in line with his particular religious beliefs. He's also one of the most effective and vocal critics of the Alt-Right. He's actively regarded as an enemy by most of the Alt-Right. Anyone who tries and tell you that Ben Shapiro is Alt-Right is an unprincipled ideologue who doesn't care about facts, only political power.
People are throwing around such terms as a means of trying to scare others into silence. Such cherry picking is breath-taking in its sheer intellectual dishonesty.
Yet, in your reply, you question the fellow's literacy?? That's not acceptable.
We have taken the art of discourse and replaced it with barbs designed wholly to get likes, or whatever the hell Twitter calls them now. This does not help anyone.
Not sure what you think I should have replied. He claims I have a love for the alt-right and his attempt is to shame me. I wrote that message and then muted him.
I look crazy for saying he didn't learn to read when he claimed I love the alt-right based on that post I wrote?
Maybe I shouldn't have replied but he was basically trying to start a mob against me. Not that I care but just wanted for the record that his claim was wrong and didn't want to engage in any civil manor when not spoken to that way either.
Your reply is a case of putting out the fire with gasoline. When you know nothing else to do, but you are absolutely sure this will make things vastly worse, standing idly by and watching the fire burn is the least worst thing you can do.
Maybe I shouldn't have replied but he was basically trying to start a mob against me.
This is precisely how they operate. They are trying to use a tactic of persuasion by repetition simultaneously with a tactic of tarring by association. Far left ideologues are currently engaging in this behavior towards DC Comics artist Ethan Van Sciver, claiming he's an actual Nazi based on his drawing the Green Lantern villain Sinestro with a Hitler mustache and titling it "My Struggle" -- ten years ago. It is conscious and deliberate. And it has been going on that way since 2012 or so.
He's an active and vocal critic of the Alt-Right. He devoted an entire chapter of his book to criticism of the Alt-Right. Just what views of his would you cite as "Alt-Right?" Can you back those up with quotes? As far as I can tell, he's an amoral opportunist who will stoop to saying vile things, but he's not Alt-Right.
I just find it amusing that in a thread about someone who stated maybe all women are genetically less suited to engineering, we are supposed to understand the differences among four or five distinct fringe right-wing ideologies, and refrain from general remarks based on the behaviors of one group or another.
It's actually a thread about someone who didn't state that. You can only emotionally impute that to him.
we are supposed to understand the differences among four or five distinct fringe right-wing ideologies
No, you're supposed to be informed, and you're not supposed to impute views on others they don't actually have, just because you think you can get away with it. You know, intellectual honesty?
refrain from general remarks based on the behaviors of one group or another.
Yes, please don't tar people through stereotypes or anything which is not factually or rationally founded. Furthermore, judge people on the merit of what they do and say as individuals. Don't lump people into groups because you are incensed and you feel like it. That sort of behavior is precisely the moral downfall of the Alt-Right.
Can you please point to anywhere in the memo where he claimed that? I am not asking about your interpretation but where he actually claims that women are genentically less suited for engineering.
I hope you realize how important it is to be precise here. The man lost his job for providing feedback as encouraged by HR after he did a diversity course.
Just making claims that isn't backed up about by what he is actually saying isn't very helpful.
Listen to an interview with him and here he present his opinions. He is provocative but mostly just an annoying showman. His harshest stance is on islam which given he is gay seems fairly understandable.
Joe Rogan has a good interview with him (which is the one that got him fired from Breibart.)
He resigned under pressure when controversy erupted over his past comments that were viewed as supporting, or at least minimizing the significance of, pedophilia.
He didn't leave because he suddenly realized, after years of association, that Breitbart was an alt-right outlet, so the fact that he left is not really germane to what his voluntary association with Breitbart says about his ideology.
What neo-nazi, neo-white supremacy, neo-fascist, neo-fascists or another hate-group view have you heard Milo consistently claim?
I am aware of his provocations and yes he can be extreme but calling him alt-right while he is at the same time one of the most hated on the alt-right.
Breitbart was a more of an alt-media rather than alt-right. He didn't care about peoples political views he was after the existing media.
Do they make distinctions between the 4 major sub-groups? Molyneux is, as far as I know, a kooky Libertarian. Mainstream media is getting pretty skewed and desperate for eyeballs. If you're not shocked and dismayed, you're not looking very hard. Basically, in these death-throe days of old media news, you have to do your own fact checking.
I have no idea and honestly, at this point, I don't really care. For some reason, politics has become a game of zingers and one liners. Actual respectful discourse has gone out of style.
Hell, I hopped over to Twitter to defend ThomPete against a very tasteless tweet. I dreamed that maybe, just maybe I could be involved in a conversation that revolved around mutual respect and well worded arguments. Instead, there was ThomPete questioning his critic's literacy???
This shit has to stop. When I was younger, we used to be able to have conversations like:
Me - I believe ________.
You - I disagree because ________, __________, and __________.
Me - Good points, but what about _______?
Today, conversations like that just don't exist. I'm sick and tired of this shit and frankly, I want to disengage.
But seriously, we need genuine discourse. We have to leave the hurtful barbs at the schoolyard and actually speak to each other like respectful adults. Fuck all of this division. It's leading us all down a horrible path.
I'm right there with you. I'm in my 40s, and to me, your dialog is the normal and expected way for adults to discuss. I truly don't understand this brave new world of 'you're either with us, presenting a unified, jargon-tastic front, or you're a nazi/marxist'. So I mostly just don't speak to anyone anymore.
They're coming for you next. Soon behaving ethically will be insufficient, you'll be required to make public statements in support of the party or be presumed to be with the enemy.
I have no idea and honestly, at this point, I don't really care. For some reason, politics has become a game of zingers and one liners. Actual respectful discourse has gone out of style.
It's precisely this sort of apathy which far-left ideologues are using. Given that you are an advocate of good old fashioned rational dialogue, it might not be too long before they come after you next and try to lump you into the "Alt-Right." They're already doing that to people who are basically just Republicans, like Ben Shapiro.
I agree with you, although I had never heard of Stefan Molyneux until that interview came out, and I wouldn't be surprised if Damore hadn't either. He was probably really glad to be able to speak his mind, and may not have realized what he was doing. I'm definitely giving him the benefit of the doubt here, a position which I admit is somewhat undermined by him (apparently) tweeting out Breitbart articles.
I listened to most of his interviews tho, and he didn't sound alt-right to me at all. He sounded pretty Libertarian/Classical Liberal (he describes himself as a Classical Liberal)
I read the memo. There is no way that any normal company would have tolerated something like that being posted on work servers. It was far away from views that normal society tolerates.
If Damore was really concerned about a lack of ability to "start conversations", then he should've approached his memo with a shred of humility. He decries Google's diversity efforts but does little to suggest he's done much research into that topic itself. In fact, he barely mentions their specific programs at all.
Here [1], by the way, is an interesting overview of diversity programs. It mentions that voluntary diversity training (contrasted with mandatory training) is among the more effective tools for this. IIRC, it was Damore's attendance of such that got him all riled up.
He is writing it as feedback (which was encouraged by the HR team) to the very people who set up the program, why on earth would he need to do mention that specifically? He wasn't writing it to you.
What in that memo makes you feel that you can claim he didn't start with a shred of humulity? Can you point to any specifics?
If he had stuck to the point about how ignorant-but-well-meaning people can trip over rapidly changing "acceptable" discourse, then none of this would have escalated as it did. That's an argument that can be made, and there's definitely things Google and other companies could do to address that problem.
He went much further, though, basically asserting that women engineers didn't belong at Google, and that in fact the job of software engineer is (and should be) designed to exclude women's typical strengths and preferences (as if general traits of the biological sexes have anything to do with individuals' aptitude and preferences). By so doing, he created a hostile workplace for women at Google. If that type of talk is tolerated within the company, what woman would feel comfortable working in a technical role?
Women on average show a higher interest in people
and men in things
We can make software engineering more people-oriented
with pair programming and more collaboration.
Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-
oriented certain roles at Google can be and we
shouldn't deceive ourselves or students into
thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get
female students into coding might be doing this).
Women on average are more cooperative
[...but] Competitiveness and self reliance can be
valuable traits and we shouldn't necessarily
disadvantage those that have them
As it happens, this excerpt is borne out at all points by the research on the "Big 5" personality traits, which to date are the clearest results in psychology outside of the power of General Intelligence to affect life outcomes.
How does pointing out difference in interest and a pretty well-established fact that women on average are more cooperative by any metrics prove that he should have claimed that women do not belong on google?
In fact, his point is that technology is not even for most men which he has made clear in other interviews.
The problem is the assumption that being cooperative is somehow a liability rather than a strength in a profession that's much more about cooperation than other engineering fields. (E.g. the trope that software is more complicated than an aircraft carrier because unlike in software, the toilet doesn't have modes of interaction with the steam launcher.)
Where does he claim it's a liability? As far as I remember I claim that this difference means that men and women generally make different choices. Can you point to where he says it's a liability?
His ultimate conclusion is that biological differences explain, at least by enough to reconsider diversity efforts, the difference in self selection into programming. Given that conclusion, your reading is even less charitable than mine. Under that reading, he’s literally just throwing out an unrelated difference between men and women, then asserting that’s why men disproportionately choose programming. Classic: premise -> ??? -> conclusion.
Reading his memo charitably, I think he’s assuming that cooperativeness contraindicates for programming preference, so at least he has a complete chain of reasoning, even if that assumption is wrong:
Women -> cooperative; cooperative -/-> programming; women -/-> programming.
> Then he started retweeting Breitbart articles and selling "Goolag" t-shirts and threw his credibility out the window
What does that have to do with his credibility or his arguments? His arguments stand on its own merits. Externalities has no bearing on argument. If he said 1+1=2 and then retweeted a breitbart article, does that mean 1+1 no longer equal 2?
Given that Breitbart, Stephen Molynieux, etc, all basically support the least charitable interpretation of the memo (that women are genetically less predisposed to engineering), his active association with them makes the claim that the memo was a good-faith attempt to improve diversity rather hard to swallow.
> Given that Breitbart, Stephen Molynieux, etc, all basically support the least charitable interpretation of the memo (that women are genetically less predisposed to engineering)
So? Are you saying you disagree? Then state your case.
> his active association with them makes the claim that the memo was a good-faith attempt to improve diversity rather hard to swallow.
Why does it make it hard to swallow? What does damore stating a fact that women being more predisposed to more social careers rather than engineering have anything to do with his stance on diversity? Are you saying that men should be forced out of engineering and women should be forced into it?
So should we take over norway, get rid of women's rights and force the norwegian women to go into engineering?
> What does damore stating a fact that women being more predisposed to more social careers rather than engineering have anything to do with his stance on diversity?
This memo only helps this narrative of 'being predisposed' and that is the issue we are trying to get at.
From your last article: "Ladies, apparently, find the aggressively competitive nature of these subjects too “uninviting,” so they drop out." So many assumptions in those articles that I had to stop reading. Please look up logical fallacies.
So regardless of the facts here, you're on the bandwagon of "guilt by association." That is, "we caught you being friends with communists so we're going to take your job away"?
I can't edit my original comment anymore, but I'd like to clarify that I mistook the claim of the comment to which I was replying as "association doesn't imply Damore espoused a genetic predisposition between men and women with regard to engineering", which is something other commenters are making in this thread.
I'm not on the bandwagon of "guilt by association"; Damore's claims are ridiculous on their face.
Damore cherry-picked Wikipedia articles to claim women are biologically inferior with the intent of causing an uproar, that's not at all "well-meaning".
Buried deep, deep down, he had somewhat of a point, but it wasn't at all the point he was trying to argue for.
We're not talking about children, we're talking about adults. Literate, tech savvy, affluent, college graduates.
How would you imagine those folks educate themselves? Easily, by relying on the abundant resources available to them. The internet, books, youtube, etc. There's a ton of material out there, if you actually care, if you think it's important to educate yourself the resources are available. He did not do that, because he wasn't seeking to inform himself, he was seeking to advance an agenda, to encourage others to adopt a prejudice that he held.
Also, I'm getting really sick and tired of these comments that bemoan the fates that have befallen these individuals who have substantially brought it upon themselves and give short shrift to the impact they've had on others. Damore was "merely asking questions" but the questions he was asking were things like "do women deserve to be the equals of men in this field?" and so forth. As both google management and the judge here have correctly pointed out, communicating in that way is incredibly damaging. It's unprofessional, it's discriminatory on its face, and it has no place in a modern work environment. The man is a grown-up, he should be smart enough to know how to broach a difficult subject of conversation if he is seeking to learn more about it or to explore controversial topics. Similarly, you can't just blunder into a discussion about race relations in the 21st century by leading off with questions like "are people of color equal to whites?" or "was slavery really wrong?" Because, again, those are on their face discriminatory, exclusionary, and harmful.
And to claim that Damore was in any way trying to advance the cause of diversity is just plain counter-factual. It is clear, especially after the end of his google employment, that he has a much different agenda.
I think one has to factor in the fact that we are in an industry that lionizes people who spend every waking moment concentrating on their field of expertise and nothing else.
Doubly so for Google.
Not because “how can you find the time” is an excuse, but because it’s a symptom of the problem. We have an industry that enables people with no sense of perspective. It’s not just the outliers that need to ‘wake uo’. It’s on all of us.
His agenda was to make Google aware of some of the consequence of their diversity politics, something they themselves had asked for feedback on.
He didn't ask whether women deserved to be equals and just the fact that you think that shows just how ignorant many commentators are in this case.
If you actually are interested in hearing his version of the story, not just your own wrongly informed and biased one here is a good interview to provide you with some of the proper contexts. Then tell me what exactly it is that he has done wrong.
If someone is parroting a Peter Thiel quote in November of 2017 it's pretty obvious what agenda they are pushing.
Whoa, association by identity proves agenda? Can you get anymore witch-hunt than that? (Or have any less intellectual honesty?) I didn't agree with Peter Thiel's position on Trump, and I met one of his "fellows" and was pretty unimpressed. But those 3 quotes are pretty astute in my opinion. They are also fairly innocuous.
You, and Damore and so many others, are trying to dress up the regressive status quo...
If you can't do any better than name-calling, you don't even deserve a response. In fact, if you think you are impressing anyone outside of your echo-chamber instead of doing the exact opposite, then I'm kind of embarrassed for you.
Then he started retweeting Breitbart articles and selling "Goolag" t-shirts and threw his credibility out the window, and solving the problem of "how do we bring people on-board with the diversity thing without scaring them off" is again put off to another day.