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by surveilmebro 3047 days ago
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.
1 comments

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."