Critics Debate Autism's Role in James Damore's Google Memo (themarysue.com) 353
James Damore "wants you to know he isn't using autism as an excuse," reports a Silicon Valley newspaper, commenting on the fired Google engineer's new interview with the Guardian. But they also note that "he says being on the spectrum means he 'sees things differently'," and the weekend editor at the entertainment and "geek culture" site The Mary Sue sees a problem in the way that interview was framed.
It's the author of this Guardian article, not James Damore himself, who makes the harmful suggestion that Damore's infamous Google memo and subsequent doubling-down are somehow caused by his autism... It frames autism as some sort of basic decency deficiency, rather than a neurological condition shared by millions of people.... This whole article is peppered with weird suggestions like this, suggestions which detract from an otherwise interesting piece.. All these weird suggestions that autism and misogyny/bigotry are somehow tied (as if autistic feminists didn't exist) do unfortunately detract from one of the article's great points.
Having worked at a number of companies large and small, I can at least anecdotally confirm that their diversity training rarely includes a discussion of neurodiversity, and when it does, it's not particularly empathetic or helpful... Many corporate cultures are plainly designed for neurotypical extroverts and no one else -- and that should change. I really do think Lewis meant well in pointing that out. But the other thing that should change? The way the media scapegoats autism as a source of anti-social behavior.
Having worked at a number of companies large and small, I can at least anecdotally confirm that their diversity training rarely includes a discussion of neurodiversity, and when it does, it's not particularly empathetic or helpful... Many corporate cultures are plainly designed for neurotypical extroverts and no one else -- and that should change. I really do think Lewis meant well in pointing that out. But the other thing that should change? The way the media scapegoats autism as a source of anti-social behavior.
The medicalization of dissent (Score:4, Insightful)
that is all.
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After they tried to shame him as "conservative" for discussing social science research, they tried to shame him sexaully by releasing a photo of the guy at the Folsom Street Fair. Hint: conservatives do not attend the Folsom Street Fair.
Now they're trying to claim that his uncontroversial memo (did you read it? There was nothing wrong with it.) was a product of mental illness. Like you said, "medicalization of dissent." I bet they have a different take on the mentally ill people who claim they are a differe
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'This guy needs a few lawyers to go after everyone who is attacking his reputation.'
Might be counter productive (except for the lawyers) since he's the first guy to go after.
First rule of being in a hole is to stop digging.
If you are still learning how the world works and you say something that makes a bunch of folks mad, then saying more to defend yourself is unlikey to improve the situation. Kind of like the definition of insanity of doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome. Better to lay
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That's only true for most situations, not this situation. It's already escalated far past the lay low and let it blow over stage, and turned into part of the culture war. His choices now are bow to the orthodoxy or fight for the truth.
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What part do you think I don't understand?
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No, he has a litany of choices. The choice he made was to speak the truth as he sees it, making reasonable and fair but debatable points.
An alternative choice would have been to keep silent or do what many early Christians did in the Roman Empire - pay homage to the cult of the Emperor to keep from being thrown to the lions while believing something else.
Another choice would have been to repudiate his own be
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That is not the definition of insanity. Normally this "definition" is just inane, but in a discussion specifically centered around a cognitive disorder it seems almost irresponsible.
Re:The medicalization of dissent (Score:5, Interesting)
- He released a company wide memo which predictably upset a lot of his coworkers
- The right wing media was taking a break from lecturing about personal responsibility to champion him as a poster boy for political speech run amok
- He might be claiming to have a PhD when he didn't actually finish it
- He performed a lewd skit in front of his grad program and got in trouble for it
- He might be going on conservative media playing up the "I'm a victim of liberals!" angle.
I'll admit all of that is behavior I've come to expect from republicans, but I heard ZERO indictments of him about his political leanings. Maybe that was just because there was too much material to get to boring stuff like that in his 15 minutes of fame.
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Straw man argument there. What I (a flaming liberal compared to the entire US government) heard in my circles was:
- He released a company wide memo which predictably upset a lot of his coworkers
I don't know about the other points you made, but from the start, what you're 'circles' told you is a lie. The memo was leaked from a internal message board designed to be used by employees to offer feedback. The memo didn't go company-wide/public until someone else abused their position and leaked it.
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I heard ZERO indictments of him about his political leanings
https://qz.com/1055466/the-alt... [qz.com] basically calls him a liar when he denies being 'alt right'.
Then there are the suspicious string of articles all basically going, "Damore is an alt-right [hero|martyr]":
https://www.theguardian.com/co... [theguardian.com]
https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
https://www.recode.net/2017/8/... [recode.net]
https://www.huffingtonpost.com... [huffingtonpost.com]
https://www.vox.com/culture/20... [vox.com]
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
http://www.newsweek.com/who-ja... [newsweek.com]
http://nymag.com/selectall/201... [nymag.com]
Maybe that was just because there was too much material to get to boring stuff like that in his 15 minutes of fame.
No, it's because his political leanings are
Re:The medicalization of dissent (Score:5, Informative)
Damore is the one who brought up his autism. Go check the interview.
SJW are weird (Score:4, Insightful)
They call for tolerance on all views on life except when it doesn't suit their own agenda. I call BS.
Re:SJW are weird (Score:4, Insightful)
They're also misrepresenting what he says. As usual.
Re:SJW are weird (Score:5, Insightful)
What I find most interesting is that Damore's memo is full of things that your run-of-the-mill, narrative toting, brainwashed SJW should be able to identify with and support.
Damore said, if you read with some clarity and intelligence, that the patriarchy has, at a fundamental level, influenced and controlled the structure of jobs in the tech sector. His position is that because of male domination in that industry the parts of the job that are not related to the actual work of being a software engineer are more easily tolerated by those with Y chromosomes.
Long hours, little time off, working weekends, high stress, and recognition based on being noisy and self promoting are all artifacts of a overtly male occupied industry, which is now permeated by decades of entrenched male-oriented business structures. His tentative proposal was to rearrange these parts of the business to better accommodate individuals that do not thrive in that environment.
I think it was in Google's best interests to tar and feather him. The changes he points to would severely alter the corporate business structure and cost Google an incredible amount of money. Working anyone, not just women, 6-7 days a week for 12 hour days (or more!) would become verboten. Promoting people would require taking a deeper look at each eligible candidate, rather than quickly sifting through the handful of shameless self promoters who constantly squak for promotion. Reducing stress would require redundancy in more positions and necessitate additional employees.
He is right though. If the tech industry were to change these antiquated ideas of what it takes to make it big at Google, more women would find working there attractive. Lowering standards wouldn't be necessary to increase female participation in their workforce. The drawbacks of the industry that have the best and brightest women choosing other fields would no longer be a barrier. I also think that more men would want to work there too, but as there has been no shortage of men who are willing to sacrifice their entire lives to the company for 70 hours a week plus, this is irrelevant. If the objective is to attract a more diverse pool of qualified candidates, and to keep the ones you already have happy, these changes would certainly do it.
So yeah, Google dodged a bullet there. Damore's changes would certainly accomplish the goal of attracting more diverse qualified candidates. Unfortunately, Google is too attached to a patriarchal system that preys on the "bread-winner" drive of males for profitability and market dominance. If exploiting their employees wasn't such a big part of their successful business model they could easily change their business structures to make their company more attractive to women.
Google also got really lucky that there are so many "feminists" that took the "he's a sexist" bait and ran with it. If they had bothered to actually think about what he said, rather than using it as an opportunity to rant and scold, his points could have spurred a debate that may have ultimately become an important turning point in the all too silent war that has been simmering between workers and corporate America. Alas, useful idiots are available by the millions and they are always looking for an opportunity to be offended in a loud and public voice. The end result is that Google gets to maintain their antiquated, male-centric, patriarchal business structure and at the same time receive the support of women everywhere.
What a damn shame.
Re:SJW are weird (Score:5, Interesting)
I could write an incredibly thought-provoking essay on race relations, which happened to include "White men, on average, are more: Racist..." and 97.3% of all of you would tune out.
No. We'd either agree, invite you to demonstrate some evidence, or provide evidence to the contrary.
Meanwhile if you were also making recommendations based on your flawed arguments that were intended to make the workplace a more productive and constructive environment for everybody, white, male or otherwise, then we'd explore those recommendations as interesting options.
Let it go man, he fucked up.
Yes. He expected people to respond rationally and with an assumption of positive intent, and instead encountered the emotive cunts that ruin any fucking workplace. Google should've sacked the sad shits that went, "He's making this place so hostile" for being too fucking retarded to engage in modern business.
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You could at least read TFA before making bizarre claims like that. It's not even very long.
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All the comments I have posted here have been about how he isn't evil. You just proved that you didn't read them, and make a completely unfounded accusation.
If you want to argue about this, please start by posting a link to a post made by me, on this story, where I say he is evil.
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Worst conspiracy theory ever.
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Ok, so your problem is he is an anonymous coward. I'm a bit less of one. I'm on the spectrum and this is the ONLY site I use a pseudonym for- one picked when I was younger and more liberal.
What I learned from that time, is that I like Groucho Marx far better than I like Karl Marx. And that SJWs who claim to be tolerant, but are intolerant of truth, are simply liars, unworthy of my respect or trust.
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"Let's see, anonymous coward whining about SJWs," - Gee, I wonder where I got the idea that maybe you had a problem with anonymous cowards whining about SJWs?
All SJWs don't have truth. Their claims are based in falsehood from the get-go; there is nothing worthwhile in their whining. There is no more reason to trust them, than to trust yet another Anonymous Coward.
Re:SJW are weird (Score:5, Informative)
Well look at the title
"Nope, James Damore's Autism Is Not the Cause of His Misogyny"
He didn't say that, as they admit
"Now, let me start off this article by emphasizing something: it's the author of this Guardian article, not James Damore himself, who makes the harmful suggestion that Damore's infamous Google memo and subsequent doubling-down are somehow caused by his autism. This is yet another example of the harmful ways that our culture writes about autistic people - and how damaging that narrative can be."
So why pick that headline?
Secondly there's nothing misogynistic in his memo. He's not suggesting Google should not hire women coders for example. If you read the tl;dr you see this
https://firedfortruth.com/ [firedfortruth.com]
TL;DR
* Google's political bias has equated the freedom from offense with psychological safety, but shaming into silence is the antithesis of psychological safety.
* This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed.
* The lack of discussion fosters the most extreme and authoritarian elements of this ideology.
Extreme: all disparities in representation are due to oppression
Authoritarian: we should discriminate to correct for this oppression
* Differences in distributions of traits between men and women (and not "socially constructed oppression") may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership.
* Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.
and he ends like this
Suggestions
I hope it's clear that I'm not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that we shouldn't try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority. My larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas and evidence that don't fit a certain ideology. I'm also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I'm advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).
My concrete suggestions are to:
De-moralize diversity.
As soon as we start to moralize an issue, we stop thinking about it in terms of costs and benefits, dismiss anyone that disagrees as immoral, and harshly punish those we see as villains to protect the "victims."
Stop alienating conservatives.
Viewpoint diversity is arguably the most important type of diversity and political orientation is one of the most fundamental and significant ways in which people view things differently.
In highly progressive environments, conservatives are a minority that feel like they need to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility. We should empower those with different ideologies to be able to express themselves.
Alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is required for much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company.
Confront Google's biases.
I've mostly concentrated on how our biases cloud our thinking about diversity and inclusion, but our moral biases are farther reaching than that.
I would start by breaking down Googlegeist scores by political orientation to give a fuller picture into how our biases are affecting our culture.
Stop restricting programs and classes to certain genders or races.
These discriminatory practices are both unfair and divisive. Instead focus on some of the non-discriminatory practices I outlined.
Have an open and honest discussion about the costs and benefits of our diversity programs.
Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women's representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, p
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SJW asshole here (check my jprevious posts if you want evidence) -
I read his memo within a day or two of the scandal erupting. I saw nothing overtly objectionable in it upon reading it. I tried to discuss the topic with my fellow SJW co-workers, they didn't read it and refused to read it, kept on parroting the shit being put out by the media. I was saddened.
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Except what constitutes "bigotry" for the left is simply stating the obvious fact that people of different biological genders have different preferences that affect candidate pool quality when hiring for specific genders.
Willfully missing the point (Score:5, Interesting)
The point of the (well written) original article was that Damore had handled things poorly due to his condition, not that his opinions arose due to his condition. E.g. he describes how he was associated with people he had never supported following the media backlash, and his poor social skills prevented him from being able to properly articulate his true position. Also he described how aspects of the wording in his memo could have been improved if he had been able to better predict the reactions of those around him.
It seems to me that this Mary Sue article has an axe to grind, perhaps not surprising given the source.
Re: Willfully missing the point (Score:2)
He didn't handle the situation poorly. He actually handled it quite well, despite being burned by a very loud public.
This autism thing he brought up is, of course, a bad move, but I guess he's in duress and not a PR pro. ... He should probably get one.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Willfully missing the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Criticism is not mobbing.
He wasn't mobbed. Mobbing is when someone gets a torrent of harassment when someone targeted them. He has not reported being harassed.
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He wasn't mobbed
This is almost textbook online mobbing.
Mobbing is when someone gets a torrent of harassment when someone targeted them.
He's had a torrent of harassment and multiple major media outlets targeting - and continuing to target him. This isn't just textbook harassment. this could make the dictionary.
He has not reported being harassed.
Maybe that's because unlike the special fucking snowflakes mobbing and harassing him he's got the balls to stand up for himself and deal with this shit.
Maybe it's because he has the sense to know that if he claims harassment everybody will go, "Oh, you pathetic snowflake" and dismiss him, or go "
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Ah, I see... It was not what he WROTE, it was how the reporting you read about it made you FEEL.
Got it..
It's your FEELS that matter, not facts.
Thanks for clarifying.
Re:Willfully missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
he's a jerk because he's a jerk.
I always wonder which people are bigger jerks: the ones being called jerks, or the ones calling them that.
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Re:Willfully missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
he's a jerk because he's a jerk.
Damore didn't post his memo publicly.
Also, some actual jerk (who has not been punished) leaked Damore's internal board memo to the world and started this.
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Aspergers/Autism (Score:2)
I think some aspects of Aspergers or other Autism spectrum disorders have it RIGHT in that emotion has no place in decision making. Do the right things for quantifiable reasons and don't expect everyone to read between the lines and come to same conclusions because people are too chicken shit to say what they mean.
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A tiny majority? 50.01%, then?
Or did you really mean "tiny minority"?
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Early days (Score:5, Interesting)
The media "broke coverage" of Autism with Rain Man in 1988, and other than a few brief echos on Oprah and such it didn't say much again until the new millennium.
Would you think that with 17 years of practice, they'd have it down to a graceful sensitive socially correct science by now? I wouldn't. There was 10 years of "AWARENESS" beating the drum as loudly as possible while the "diagnosed" rates climbed from 1:10,000 through 1:150 and settled down around 1:68. Now that everybody is AWARE, there's been scant attempt to teach the nuance between Aspergers' and the various levels of dysfunctionality.
Give it another generation, when people who were AWARE in elementary school start framing the message it might take on a more human tone. For now, we're still getting our stories from the barely clued in.
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What makes it problematic is the amount of assholes who label themselves "Autistic" to get away with being arrogant assholes with zero concern for their environment, bordering on being a psychopath (though I leave it open for debate what side of the border they're on). Which is the absolute opposite of what you'll find in a highly functional Autist who is actually trying what he can to appear "normal" and blend in.
It's a bit like the shit those transtrender assholes pull. Trust me in one thing: Someone who
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Give it another generation, when people who were AWARE in elementary school start framing the message it might take on a more human tone. For now, we're still getting our stories from the barely clued in.
That's a generous description of Slashdot :)
High functioning autists dont know when to shut up (Score:4, Insightful)
His mistake was to speak up. Autism doesn't turn people into idiots, often quite the opposite, but it makes it difficult to predict how other people will react. Social customs are highly illogical and usually not codified, but they govern everyday life to a high degree. Autists often speak their mind and offend without intent to offend. It is difficult to understand that it could be wrong to say what you truly believe and can corroborate with facts. It's not a "basic decency" deficiency. Autists are typically honest people, simply because they are bad at deceiving other people. An honest person who doesn't know when to shut up can be quite exhausting however.
Re:High functioning autists dont know when to shut (Score:5, Informative)
Autists usually believe you when you tell them something and they will respond honestly. So if you tell them that you want an "open and frank discussion", they will give you one. And they will of course not understand when you react in a hostile way because all they did was to give you what you wanted.
In other words, never ask an Autist for something you don't want because you WILL get it.
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This is so true. My son and I are both on the spectrum and both have trouble lying. He will try to lie, but is horrible at it and crumbles on even the most basic questioning. Personally, I find lying extremely hard to do. I can do it if it's a small lie like "No, honey, I didn't buy you a birthday present" when I really did and am keeping it as a surprise, they're fine. If it's something bigger like trading in a car for a new one and I think the old car's transmission is shot, the
Yeah (Score:2)
Greetings from Soviet Russia (Score:2)
Another place where everyone dissenting with the obvious glorious achievements of the glorious revolution were labeled insane. I mean, you have to be insane to not realize you're living in the best of all possible worlds!
(I wish I was kidding) [wikipedia.org]
Stats, Perception & "the Spectrum" (Score:2)
First, let's spin the time-o-meter back a bit and remember that Damore's original premise was impaired based on technical factors ALONE. This was a deficit of analysis, nothing psychological. He tried to mis-apply population and sub-group statistics without quantifying any null hypothesis or larger context.
Technical issues aside, the specific wording and tone used in his note is a separate issue. I'm no linguist or lit-crit person, but he seemed to be very abstract, as if he had no direct, personal invol
oh my fucking god who gives a shit? (Score:2)
why is anyone paying any attention to this? at all?
i remember back when the whole point of so-called "nerd culture" was to, you know, avoid sensationalistic tabloid culture bullshit.
If not for double standards... (Score:2, Insightful)
If not for double standards, the left would have no standards at all.
He "self identifies" as autistic. According to the left's rules, that's good enough for him to qualify as a woman [breitbart.com] or black [urbandictionary.com]. But not autistic?
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That Dolezal women was pretty much universally criticised and "the left" rejected her. Also, Damore says he was diagnosed.
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When did Slashdot become a subsidiary of Breitbart?
Then again, with a name like "Orgasmatron" I guess no one should be surprised where you stand. You're not one of the pro-pedo republicans are you?
He should be sent to an insane asylum. (Score:2)
This is incredibly troubling, because it takes a legitimate if somewhat controversial statement, and wonders what mental disease or syndrome the speaker might have, as a cause, rather than dealing with the arguments directly.
In other words, it's a fancy way of saying, "All right-minded people would never even consider that, so something must be wrong with him."
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Further, it supposes that having Autism means there's something "wrong" with you. "He said something I don't agree with or something unpopular, therefore let's blame Autism. While we're at it, let's look at everyone with Autism as suspect for this in the future,"
This happened after the Sandy Hook shooting where reports surfaced that the shooter had Autism and the news media went on a "Does Autism Cause Shootings" frenzy. The answer? No, it doesn't. People with Autism are more likely to be victims of violenc
Wait, why is Jame's Damore's memo a problem? (Score:2)
Nobody wants shades of grey (Score:2)
The problem isn't autism, it's genderism ... (Score:2)
... and the totalitarian climate that comes with it.
The MarySue? (Score:2)
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It's an iteration of "immature women playing dollhouse into their adulthood". Reasonable people disregard it immediately.
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The Guardian was last good ca. '07. Since then they've faithfully tiptoed around matters like income inequality (also known as the distribution of wealth), socioeconomic mobility, the new serf class, economic stagnation due to the infallible derivatives market, and the knee-jerk cancer that controls discussion to prevent debate on these topics and others.
In a nutshell, the Guardian has been a "hip left" alternative to the BBC for over a decade now.
I must be cognitively impaired... (Score:5, Insightful)
... because I read Damore's memo and found it to be perfectly reasonable.
James Damore was asked to provide feedback after attending a diversity event at Google; he provided feedback, and then like the crazy nutcases of the Communist Revolution in China, the "feminist" SJWs used that feedback to identify Damore as a prime candidate for destruction in their Cultural Revolution.
Seriously. If you've spent any time reading about the timeline of Damore's internal document, or listening to Damore speak, you'd realize that he was very badly mistreated by an insidious group of harpies who have zero interest in improving our world.
Re: I must be cognitively impaired... (Score:4, Interesting)
I work at a large tech company, not one most folks immediately think of, but most in the industry are reasonably aware of. Thought we were, not isolated from this angry back and forth, but at least collectively smart enough not to step into the muck. And generally good people who can just not be dicks to each other.
Well, internal email discussions suggest at least some of my co-workers really want to be more like Google. It's like, not being a dick isn't enough, we need to be "aggressively tolerant" of diversity. Not sure what that even means, but aggressive anything seems counter productive. I fear we're going to find another Damore at my employer, sooner than later. Simply because someone feels the need to hunt for him.
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Re:I must be cognitively impaired... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing wrong with the memo. Writing it while employed in a nest of authoritarian leftists will obviously get you fired though.
It's Galileo wasn't wrong about physics. He would however have been very naive if he expected the church to change its views rather than crushing him like a bug.
"the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alters their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit the views, which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering"
Re:I must be cognitively impaired... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing wrong with the memo. Writing it while employed in a nest of authoritarian leftists will obviously get you fired though.
Minor quibble - there are leftist men. They are also considered the enemy. Right now they are the left's equivalant of useful idiots.
It's Galileo wasn't wrong about physics. He would however have been very naive if he expected the church to change its views rather than crushing him like a bug.
Perfect analogy!
"the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alters their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit the views, which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering"
To me, the issue is not whether he was right or wrong. Every group has ideas that won't work. Right wingers have the silly trickle down theory. Left has some well known ones as well.
An issue is when asked to provide discussion, rather than refute Damore's statements, Google took the appeasement tactic of firing him. And that is a real problem. Suppression of opinions do not weaken them, they make them stronger. That means that what Damore had to say was so dangerous that his views had to be crushed.
Let us know how that works out for ya Google, the group that won this little battle will be back again to let you know what oyu have to do next to stay in their favor.
I hate ideologues of any stripe.
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Would you say the same if a woman had written something similar, along the lines of women have a better natural grasp of social complexity and therefore women should be the managers, CEOs, heads of government, etc.?
Of course not. Because you're fragile male ego can't stand the thought that women might actually be better at something than you are.
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That's not actually what he said though. He said that 'the fact that software development is not 50% male, 50% female might be due to men and women on average having different preferences and not discrimination, and discriminating against men and in favour of women is not the best way to fix things'.
There are lots of areas which are female dominated. I'd oppose a system which rejected qualified women from getting into those and instead let in less qualified men.
And in general if group X is overrepresented a
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Look at this story and the previous one about Damore. The majority of up-voted comments are conservative an support him. The majority of down-voted comments disagree with him.
If there is evidence of anything here, it's that disagreement with conservative views is not tolerated and his supporters attempt to silence them.
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That's people talking pseudonymously on slashdot. If they wrote what they wrote here in an email to their boss or even on a website under their own names they'd be shitcanned from places like Google if the media talked about it.
As it was with Damore. According to the Guardian there was a lot of debate inside Google about his memo. Only when someone leaked it and the media started talking about it did they fire him.
In fact after he was fired people said that inside Google a majority of people agreed with him
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Which I think is the reason people downmod you. They see you as actively defending a pack of lies even in a pseudonymous forum instead of simply not challenging them in public for the good of your career like they do.
Bingo. Disagreement is not simply a differing point of view or counter-argument, not even devil's advocate or an opportunity to debate and explore the issue to those people. They consider it lying and trolling. They will not tolerate it.
Re:I must be cognitively impaired... (Score:4, Insightful)
... because I read Damore's memo and found it to be perfectly reasonable.
James Damore was asked to provide feedback after attending a diversity event at Google; he provided feedback, and then like the crazy nutcases of the Communist Revolution in China, the "feminist" SJWs used that feedback to identify Damore as a prime candidate for destruction in their Cultural Revolution.
Here comes that narrative thing again. Those who demanded and successfully had Damore fired are in the end, not the least bit interested in equality. They want ultimate authority based upon their ideology. The problem of course is that ideologues do not stop. Ideologues, upon getting one concession granted, are emboldened and demand the next step toward whatever their utopia state is.
Today it is elimination of a person who does not agree with their ideals. Tomorrow we start to look like France, who is making it illegal for a man to talk to women. https://qz.com/1106465/a-new-f... [qz.com] Or making it illegal to employ slender women as models https://blog.lawinfo.com/2015/... [lawinfo.com] She must take a test that proves the has a Body Mass Index of 18 or higher. If you have a woman working for you with less, you are fined and imprisoned.
The question that must be asked is that if women are equal to men in all ways, why must we have a plethora of laws to protect them?
The answer of course, is not that women are inferior to men, but that there are female ideologues who demand that women look and act as they demand and use men as the villains in all cases. In the end, if women were dominated by men, they are just trading that for being dominated by misandrist females.
Good luck Google. Today you have made a move Chamberlain would have been proud of, well done, now go back and wait for our next demand.
Re:I must be cognitively impaired... (Score:5, Informative)
Tomorrow we start to look like France, who is making it illegal for a man to talk to women.
The link says: "France is considering a new law that fines men on-the-spot for catcalling and other forms of street harassment."
Or making it illegal to employ slender women as models
The link says: "The law requires models to show medical documentation that their body mass indices (BMIs) are 18 percent or higher. The law was passed on April 3 and it is just part of a nation-wide effort to stop eating disorders."
I normally enjoy your posts Ol, but come on, this is just dishonest.
Actually they just want cheap labor (Score:3)
Anything that upsets that growing apple cart
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and have zero knowledge of the last 100 years of study in the areas of equality, women's rights and diversity
I sure hope those fields have at least 1% of the applicability and reproducibility as the fields of mathematics and physics. So far, the practitioners of other similar fields have offered very little predictive value.
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Do you have the same concern over the sources that Damore cites? Because those are all sociobiology as well. That field was hot 20 years ago, but science has largely moved past it now because the results were so poor at modelling reality.
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The authors of some of the papers that Damore cited seem to think the conclusions he draws are unwarranted: https://www.wired.com/story/th... [wired.com]
Sociobiology has fallen out of fashion because its results are far from solid, and today it is understood that the human brain is extremely malleable. As an example of this, girls in the 80s lagged behind boys in maths. This was often taken as a biological limitation, particularly in areas like geometry that it was thought male brains were better at. But actually when
Autism doesn't excuse being a dick (Score:2)
It is one of the first rules that AS people need to learn.
Don't be a dick and that includes treating people how you expect to be treated. If you act like a dick, then expect to be treated like a dick.
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Most people act like dicks towards the autistic, especially if they express any desires or ideas outside of what NTs deem acceptable and normal. Plus, NTs have this tendency towards non-literal usage of language, which tends to be unintuitive outside of the cultural or subcultural context. That's why we are so bad at handling immigrants, or relations with people who are in any way different from us.
Yes, learning how to avoid pissing off others is one of the most important skills for autistics to succeed
BULLSHIT (Score:5, Informative)
Damore's arguments are exactly the same ones Google is going to use to defend itself from sexual discrimination claims levied against it by women working there who don't get paid as much as men [bbc.com].
Google really stepped in it when they claimed Damore was full of shit, and then doubled down on the SJW bullshit that all pay differences between men and women are the result of discrimination.
Well, now Google has to defend itself from the women who work at Google and get paid less than the men there.
Google is screwed either way. If Damore is wrong, Google owes a lot of women a shitload of back pay. And if Google uses anything like Damore's arguments to defend themselves from sexual discrimination claims, they wrongfully fired Damore and owe him both money and likely some serious punitive damages.
Couldn't happen to a better bunch of SJWs.
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Re:He's a dick, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Boy, it's really telling that our reaction is, "They asked that man for his honest opinion about how they could get better, and DAMN he was an idiot to answer honestly! What was he thinking!?"
You can tell who is really in charge these days by saying "women are good X, men are good at Y, women are bad at Z, men are bad at Q" and the only part people care about is that you said women are bad at something.
He said many women were not as drawn to the current work environment that tends to exist around software engineering. He even suggested changing that environment to better suit women so more would be more interested in working there. You can argue against the science, but you cannot say that that is a misogynistic viewpoint. But that's exactly what he was fired for. It's sad, Google used to be such an awesome company before they went evil. I used to really cheer for them when they succeeded. Now, Google just like all the rest of the corporate bastards, I just want them to lose.
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It's not that Google is evil per se, it's that their definition of good and evil is very, very different than yours. Hint: you are evil to them.
Naive perhaps but he's not the one impaired (Score:2)
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He was probably told the "this is an open environment encouraging frank discussion of points of view" bullshit. And if he's a HFA he probably believed it, considered it and wrote his statement accordingly, honestly believing that there is actual interest in creating a "better" working environment instead of pushing an agenda.
It's a bit like Luther and his 95 theses. That man, too, believed that he could have an academic discussion with the Pope over his main income source...
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Are you talking about his use of the word 'hysteria'? That's a technical term used in the Meyers Briggs types. He did not come up with that term on his own. Granted, he could have been a lot more careful at introducing his ideas, but he wasn't sharing that paper with thousands of people, he wasn't twitting it out like some people we know, he was just sharing it with seven other Googlers.
Those seven other Googlers should have discussed that paper with him, helped him refine it, not send it out to the World.
James Damore is the only one citing research! (Score:4, Insightful)
Damore's memo is the only thing in this whole debacle that is explicitly based on well established research.
What is wrong with you people? Have you even read his memo, or did you just take some "properly" interpreted version from leftist rags like Salon?
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Damore's memo is the only thing in this whole debacle that is explicitly based on well established research.
What is wrong with you people? Have you even read his memo, or did you just take some "properly" interpreted version from leftist rags like Salon?
Different people have different narratives that they will support no matter what.
Re:He's a dick, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
If there's this 100 years of research on the subject that shows everything that he said was utter nonsense, please start telling us where to find it. Even climate change skeptics around here have a better record of citing something. All you've done is to try to bury your head in the sand and try to convince everyone else that none of this can possibly be true because you don't like the conclusion. I don't really expect anyone here to change your mind because it already seems quite made up, but I'd ask you to actually try to back up some of your assertions.
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I can't speak for other posters, only myself. Please try not to lump us together.
There are two issues here, and I have been consistent about this. Firstly, while the studies he cites do have some interesting and valid results, he interprets them in a way that isn't justified in order to make his argument. For example, David Schmitt, the author of the "Why Canâ(TM)t a Man Be More Like a Woman? Sex Difference in Big Five Personality Traits Across 55 Cultures" paper that Damore cites, states that the biol
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Read a little further down the article and they address that point. It's actually Damore's memo that conflates preference and ability, and those two statements are addressing parts of it.
Re:He's a dick, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm starting to think the same thing as well. He seems unaware of both the last 100 years of research on the subject and that people would assume that not addressing it is a deliberate attempt to misdirect the reader, in the way that anti-diversity activists have also been doing for the last 100 years.
The initial assumption was that he must have done it deliberately, but perhaps it is possible that he really didn't mean to.
You constantly call all the egalitarians "anti-diversity", "racist", "misogynist", etc.
It doesn't take much for an idea to take off. People read something that makes sense and they repeat it - my constant assertions that there is a correlation between weak rights for women and high female CS enrollment is getting repeated everywhere (saw it repeatedly on Quora, for example). Another thought that got repeated a lot was the list of objective "privileges" enjoyed by western women (higher avg salary, better health, etc)
Here's another idea that I wish to gain traction: there are two separate concepts -
1. We must treat everyone equally
2. We must fix the injustices of the past (affirmative action)
You, and people like you, are trying to convince the rest of the world that those two separate concepts are the same. That is not true. For example, most people will get behind the concept of "Lets treat everyone equally", but not support affirmative action.
What you are doing, and what you (and the rest of the peanut gallery) always do is try to convince us that ignoring injustices of the past is the same as not treating everyone equally.. That is not true.
We all agree to treat everyone equally. We do not agree with affirmative action.
Disagreeing with affirmative action is not agreement with bigotry!
Disagreeing with affirmative action is not support for racism!
Disagreeing with affirmative action is not support for sexism!
We disagree with your methods because they are discriminatory.
Re:He's a dick, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
You constantly call all the egalitarians "anti-diversity", "racist", "misogynist", etc.
I do not. I am an egalitarian.
1. We must treat everyone equally
2. We must fix the injustices of the past (affirmative action)
You, and people like you, are trying to convince the rest of the world that those two separate concepts are the same. That is not true. For example, most people will get behind the concept of "Lets treat everyone equally", but not support affirmative action.
Simply treating everyone equally has been tried, in fact it has been law for decades in many places, but it hasn't addressed the inequalities. That's because the issues are often entrenched in systems and in the starting positions of all the players. It's like saying that a game of chess treats both players equally because the rules are the same for everyone, even though white doesn't start with a queen.
Having said that, I fully appreciate that affirmative action is highly controversial. To be absolutely clear I don't think everyone who opposes it is a bigot, that's silly. And sometimes affirmative action can be wrong, it can have unintended negative consequences, or even be malicious. But blanket rejection of it is also wrong, because it ignores reality and evidence in pursuit of some pure philosophical ideal.
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It hasn't addressed the inequalities because people aren't equal. But even if they were, the pools are not equal and so there is not enough women or blacks or whatevers to balance out the liberal progressive equation of proper employment ratios. I swear,
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When most people talk about inequality they mean inequality of opportunity, not that everyone is literally equal to everyone else in every measurable way.
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For example, the EEOC will look at hiring aptitude tests and if the distribution curve for black or female candidates is different than white or male candidates, it's presumed to be discriminatory. Additionally, even though the Affirmative Action law is proscript
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I never once said "you" in my reply.
You don't have to be a member of the left to agree with what I wrote, but the difference between the left and say, a moderate, is the left treats it as incontrovertible dogma and the only ones who would dispute that are mysoginists or racists.
As an aside, I'm not sure what you think about my assertion(s) is ridiculous. Care to clarify so I can clarify or back off the ledge if I stepped onto one?
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I agree that no censorship can be a double-edged sword. I'll post in Reddit a lot. One of the good things is that there are subreddits for all opinions so "deplorables" can go to their own subreddit instead of flooding the ones I frequent. The bad thing is that this results in an echo chamber where everyone you interact with agrees with you (both on my side and on the side of the "deplorables"). It's almost a no-win situation: If you moderate too much, you create an echo chamber and punish people for their
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If you haven't seen this essay [shirky.com] by Clay Shirky, you might find it interesting.