[cderwin]

I don't really think it is debatable. Just the fact the the memo and the firing were so controversial, in both directions, implies that a number of strong critical thinkers are on both sides of this issue. Assuming that is the case, it's not reasonable to use the memo as evidence of a lack of critical thinking.

And I think we all know Google didn't fire him because they believed him to be incompetent. In fact, Google didn't even claim as much, they fired him for "advancing harmful gender stereotypes." How can we ever have a genuine conversation about the under-representation of women in tech if people with a certain "undesirable" opinion get fired for expressing it?

[jacalata]

Climate change is controversial. That doesn't indicate that there are strong critical thinkers on either side.

[moduspol]

Apparently the idea that there are biological differences between men and women that could result in unequal outcomes is also controversial.

Although, to your point, that doesn't really require critical thinking. It just requires impressive mental gymnastics to dispute.

[geofft]

I don't think anyone is disputing that there are biological differences between men and women (on the average) that result in unequal distributions of some outcomes. An easy example is "fastest marathon" or "number of babies".

The dispute is that there are biological differences between men and women that are relevant to qualification to work at Google in software engineering.

[moduspol]

Nobody is questioning their qualification. The memo doesn't.

There quite possibly are biological (and cultural) differences that ultimately affect the representation of women among Google software engineers that are not sexism. As a result, a diversity / hiring policy that assumes sexism is far and away the only relevant cause is not likely to work well.

Is this really that much of a stretch?

[cderwin]

That's the argument alt-right folk who actually deserve our hostility are trying to use Damore to make. Damore, however, is instead arguing that those biological differences make women less likely to pursue engineering as a field, not that those difference make them inferior.

[geofft]

Then why are the programs he's criticizing all about either successfully hiring or retaining women who are already interested in working at Google?

He also explicitly mentions ability: "Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership."

(Also, let's be clear, someone who seeks out the support of Stefan Molyneux to advocate his viewpoint cannot be meaningfully distinguished from alt-right folks who supposedly want to distort his viewpoint.)

[Aapjes]

People's qualifications are not all the same. Imagine that Google wants to hire 1,000 people, but 10,000 people apply for a job. Then Google logically ought to take the best 1,000 people that apply.

With diversity quota's, the company may decide to hire a less able woman in favor of a more able man.

[geofft]

> How can we ever have a genuine conversation about the under-representation of women in tech if people with a certain "undesirable" opinion get fired for expressing it?

The same way we can have a genuine conversation about the best web stack to use if people with a certain "undesirable" opinion get fired for expressing it.

(I don't think the fact that other Google employees supported the document is strong evidence that you can think critically and reach the same conclusions. If Google reached one mishire in James Damore, they almost certainly reached many others. If you listen to the YouTube interview with him that was flagkilled off the front page earlier today, he says he was recruited for his puzzle-solving skills and ability to code; presumably Google recruits lots of people that way, and none of them have ever been examined for critical thinking in the interview process. I can certainly attest that at no point in my Google interview earlier this year was I asked to do anything that evaluated whether I could combine a couple of sources and reach a defensible conclusion and defend it, which is a pretty common engineering skill.)

The very meaning of "advancing harmful gender stereotypes" is that he said things about gender that were so wrong that they have only the most tangential connection to reality and would seriously harm the business if time were spent to even demonstrate that they're wrong. That's exactly the same reason that if I advocate for Classic ASP on NT Server, you don't spend the time and effort to set up a test network and benchmark if IIS is getting you better performance.

[danarmak]

> The same way we can have a genuine conversation about the best web stack to use if people with a certain "undesirable" opinion get fired for expressing it.

If a bunch of people fired for pro-ASP opinions got together, started their own company that used ASP, and produced a successful product, they would get a lot of money, everyone involved would be happy including Google who would sell them ad services, and perhaps the market would shift in favor of ASP.

If a bunch of people fired for anti-"diversity" opinions got together, started their own company that did not discriminate in favor of women and minorities in hiring, and produced a successful product, there would be a media storm and probably a boycott and demands for the company to not be allowed to use the Google Ad network.

This is why I think you're wrong when you say the reasons for firing are "exactly the same" in both cases.

[cderwin]

Say I work at a business that uses python exclusively. If I see my coworker get fired for suggesting we use haskell (or some other very different stack) for performance-critical code, how likely is it that I would later suggest we rewrite some stuff in go? or even python 3? or use https?

The opinion that biological differences between the sexes result in different career preferences isn't exactly wildly uncommon, extreme, or nonsensical.

[geofft]

I guess the question here is whether we think that the opinions in the memo are more like advocating Haskell or advocating ASP. They seem like the latter to me; if they seemed like the former, I'd agree with you. I don't think it's weird to think that there exist both rare defensible opinions and rare indefensible ones.

Note that the opinion in the memo isn't restricted to different career preferences correlated with gender (at least some of those opinions in the memo, like women wanting better work/life balance and men having rigid gender roles, are so uncontroversial that they're part of the standard feminist position too). The opinion also includes the claim of different abilities correlated with gender, because that's what's relevant to the business practices he's arguing in favor of changing, and in particular abilities relevant to qualification for engineering roles at Google. That's a much more extreme position.