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by Goladus 3083 days ago
A person who had made an innocent error generally feels bad about the error and says so.

That's what he did! That is, that's what he did when someone finally got around to asking him about it in an environment where he trusted that he'd be given time to say his side in an unedited manner, which does not include any of the hit pieces you have linked. I believe it's mentioned in his interview with Jordan Peterson, which is the first public interview he gave.

Again you are blaming him for your own error.

This is not a personal attack; this is me pointing out facts of his behavior and reasonable inferences.

First, it is absolutely a personal attack. You're attacking his character and coding ability, which are not relevant to the topic. Ok, technically, you're passively suggesting it via speculative commentary but it amounts to the same thing.

Second, your inferences aren't reasonable, and they're unreasonable in exactly the manner that one would predict based on consumption of inflammatory and deliberately misleading propaganda aimed primarily at smearing Damore. For example, you inferred that he "didn't say anything or apologize," apparently relying on entirely on hostile bloggers to convey that message to you on his behalf. Remember that until this blew up, he was a private individual. He has no platform of his own and no way to offer any response that your chosen sources did not provide to you. So it is completely and utterly unreasonable to hold him accountable in such a way.

Furthermore, the fixation with LinkedIn is unreasonable. LinkedIn profiles are notoriously unreliable and many are neglected and incomplete, since many members are not actively seeking employment (yet retain membership for the social networking). If you had looked at Damore's whole profile rather than just the image, it was clear that not much effort had been put into it. This is consistent with his story that he had not been actively seeking employment when Google offered him an interview based on his Chess playing.

Which brings us to the chess issue. And yes, it seems that Damore stated on his resume that he's a FIDE Master, a term of art that it seems clear that he misused. Specifically he wrote "FIDE Master in Chess (>99th Percentile)". Other claims about chess-playing on his resume seem to check out as far as I can tell[0][1]. So yes, it's an interesting question why does he say that on his resume. I have not found an explanation, but can certainly think of others not mentioned in that stackexchange link, such as he misunderstood proper use of the term. Obviously a mistake, one that shouldn't be made, but nothing like the dishonesty you're accusing him of, especially when you give him no opportunity to explain himself.

Meanwhile, in this obsession with minor errors in an inexperienced young person's first resume or linkedin profile(errors that are easily cleared-up in a phone interview if you actually care), you are apparently giving a pass to someone who anonymously leaked a co-workers' fair and well-reasoned internal posting to outrage media to encourage hit pieces and start a witch hunt. ... which ultimately resulted in the employer being hit with a ton of negative press and a high-profile lawsuit.

So, no, your inferences are not remotely reasonable or appropriate by my estimation.

[0] http://www.uschess.org/results/2003/nya/?page=WINNERS&xsecti...

[1] I don't know what "Board 1 and Conference Champion" means, and "Rise of Nations" is a PC strategy game.

2 comments

I look forward to you pointing out his actual apology to me. I've read a fair bit about Damore and haven't seen it. Your notion that he didn't have a platform is just bizarre. Anybody who works at Google should know that it's not hard to publish things on the Internet. It takes all of 90 seconds to get a Twitter account, and not much longer to set up a blog. He could have also put a note on his LinkedIn profile.

I made no error in parsing his LinkedIn. He may have made an error in writing it, but the common interpretation for what he wrote is that he was claiming a PhD.

I'm glad you finally admit he did the same thing on his resume. Again, there could be an innocent explanation for it, but the reasonable inference is that he said what he meant. If he would like to correct the record on this topic, he's welcome to publish something explaining.

His character and coding ability are both relevant to the topics at hand, his advocacy and subsequent lawsuit lawsuit. The former speaks to his reliability; both speak to motivation. As does, now that you mention it, the fact that the interviews he gave were to right-wing antifeminists.

I also think it's hilarious that when talking about his apparent resume fraud, he's a delicate "inexperienced young person", but when coding and opining on diversity programs he's a brilliant genius who has never done a thing wrong. You're straining at gnats and swallowing camels here.

I just wanted to respond and say how interesting your final claim is, that his fair and reasonable internal posting was leaked to outrage media.

The irony is that in the lawsuit damore filed, he outright names a bunch of people who work at Google and have said various levels of innocent comments. He's leaked out internal information to outrage media in order to punish and start a witch hunt. I've already seen combinations of images containing information about said named employees float around the more witch hunt-y side of the internet.

You need proof to file a lawsuit. A lot of it, especially if you claim must prove a pattern of behavior that is pervasive. If he didn't specify it, you'd say "well, there are no evidence of any specific behavior, only nebulous allegations, and we all know Damore is a liar, so he probably invented all this to justify his poor performance and hate for women". People say it anyway, but now know it's not true, because there is evidence.

Also, there's a bit of difference between "Let's discuss whether diversity is done right in Google" and "I will keep hounding you until one of us fired. Fuck you" (real quote), "We are at a point where the dialogue we need to be having with these people is ‘if you keep talking about this shit, i will hurt you." (again real quote), "We should be willing to give a wink and a nod to other Silicon Valley employers over terminable offenses" (trying to make your opponents unemployable), “You’re being blacklisted by people at companies outside of Google,” and, of course, "How do you let people know you don’t take their ideas seriously? … No-platforming fascists does scale. So does punching one on camera." and "Get in touch with your friendly local antifa" - this one is especially juicy as a lot of people insanely called what Damore did "violence" but then turn around and literally endorse actual physical violence.

You manage to selectively quote the worst offenders in the filing while also ignoring the more benign comments (incl. one that called out Breitbart as being pro-Nazi, which I would hope you would agree that they are trash).

You also ignore the selective censorship of usernames going on, when he could've censored all the names to ignore igniting any potential witch hunts. Can you provide an explanation for this? He could've shown the pattern without putting other people at risk.