[magic5227]

She's not wrong.

He shared a manifesto about gender differences in the workplace. In it, he calls women neurotic.

Whether people's read on the manifesto is reductive of his overall argument isn't the point.

He showed a serious lack of judgement writing and posting that in his workplace. He should not have played the part of expert gender/psychology expert. A researcher he cites specifically disagrees with his takeaways.

There are productive ways to have these kinds of conversations, he chose to go to the opposite wrong end of that spectrum.

Women have enough BS to deal with in tech, the last thing they need is a tech bro mis-using uncertain psych research to justify telling them they should find more appropriate roles.

[koheripbal]

Calling it a "manifesto" is trying to give reader here some bias against it. Like he was some alt-right madman.

He wrote a post. Not a manifesto.

"There are productive ways to have these kinds of conversations"

Well obviously there aren't when posting a comment in an internal company forum gets you fired.

[jashmatthews]

He skipped over classical liberal and very quickly gave interviews to prominent alt-right figures like Stefan Molyneaux.

[manigandham]

He interviewed with Dave Rubin and Joe Rogan. Also who on the left would interview him? That's the issue with claiming that he only talked to one side.

[jashmatthews]

As he said in his interview with Peterson, he declined interviews with any centrist media. He filed an NLRB complaint before posting, hired Charles Johnson (who is a professional conspiracy dude and claims to know where MH370 is) to run PR and made a bee-line directly for maximum exposure with people like Molyneaux.

That's a very deliberate choice. He's no martyr of rational thought.

[reroute1]

"Centrist media" kind of took a dump on him... Why would he run to them?

Is Joe Rogan not a centrist? He is self proclaimed liberal on most topics, right wing is a silly label

[uxcolumbo]

What makes you think Joe Rogan is alt right?

Watching his interviews with various people who are more left leaning doesn't give me the impression that he is alt-right.

[manigandham]

Joe Rogan is not alt right, far from it. That was my point, that the interviews were not from one side.

[dirtydroog]

Rogan was labelled alt-right after he interviewed Gavin McInness and Alex Jones again (a comical interview btw). That may have been cancelled out by him interviewing Bernie Sanders though.

[free_rms]

Rogan is aesthetically a bro, that's all this comes down to.

If he were more 'soy' and less 'bro', while having the same mostly-liberal opinions, he'd get an entirely different reaction from the elite cultural left.

[jashmatthews]

He didn’t appear on Rogan until a long time after his first interviews.

[hckr_news]

He also tweeted during the middle of this, "The KKK is horrible and I don't support them in any way, but can we admit that their internal title names are cool, e.g. 'Grand Wizard'?"

So...shrugs

[implements]

He sounds like he may be on the autistic spectrum, which if treated as a form of social disability would (or should, IMO) grant him some leeway.

If his intent wasn’t sexist then his failure to perfectly negotiate the complex social way those points have to be expressed isn’t a moral failing on his part.

Edit: I’d rather posters took the time to argue against rather than downvote. My point is just that ‘socially colourblind’ people probably shouldn’t be punished for lacking perceptual and expressive subtlety. It doesn’t mean they can’t be corrected or educated, of-course.

[ikeyany]

Why shouldn't people get punished for lacking perceptual and expressive subtlety? I doubt you would have a problem with rewarding people for possessing such skills (e.g. well-paid actors, or clever detectives).

[hackissimo123]

> He sounds like he may be on the autistic spectrum

That's because he is: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/16/james-dam...

[Udik]

> He sounds like he may be on the autistic spectrum, which if treated as a form of social disability would (or should, IMO) grant him some leeway.

This attitude leaves me almost speechless. When someone makes an argument that at least tries to be well reasoned, and people attack him based on misunderstandings and how it makes them feel, maybe the problem is not that he's autistic. Maybe it's those who are offended and refuse to engage in a civilized debate that have some form of disability.

It used to be that dispassionate reason was the highest form of discourse (the only one on which it's possible to reach agreements). What happened to that standard, when the responses boil down to "how does it make you feel"?

[FeepingCreature]

I mean.

He's not wrong.

[jack1243star]

Can't disagree with that.

[manigandham]

That's called a joke.

[zozbot234]

That's obviously a joke, though. (It's also on Twitter. Everyone acts weird on Twitter.)

[magic5227]

There obviously ARE more productive ways, because most people aren't fired for having discussions at work.

[alexpetralia]

> He calls women neurotic.

Neurotic, as he uses it, is not the same way it is used in everyday parlance.

Neurotic is part of the Big 5 personality traits, for which there is substantial academic evidence. The traits are: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

He is using "neurotic" in the psychological and clinical sense. I believe he specifies as much in his actual paper.

[spangry]

Quite so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Ge...

"A study of gender differences in 55 nations using the Big Five Inventory found that women tended to be somewhat higher than men in neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. The difference in neuroticism was the most prominent and consistent, with significant differences found in 49 of the 55 nations surveyed."

[judofyr]

> He is using "neurotic" in the psychological and clinical sense. I believe he specifies as much in his actual paper.

Eh. He's using the psychological/clinical definition, but then draws conclusions on no scientific basis.

This is what he said in the memo:

> [Women, on average, have more] neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance): This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.

And this is a quote from the person who actually did the meta-analysis which Damore cites (emphasis is mine):

> These sex differences in neuroticism are not very large, with biological sex perhaps accounting for only 10 percent of the variance.

> It is unclear to me that this sex difference would play a role in success within the Google workplace (in particular, not being able to handle stresses of leadership in the workplace. That’s a huge stretch to me),

[1]: https://www.wired.com/story/the-pernicious-science-of-james-...

[6gvONxR4sf7o]

Regardless of the correctness of his overall argument, he wasn't saying "women are neurotic" in the colloquial sense, which was a common condemnation against him.

Also, and fact check me on this, does accounting for 10% of variance (aka 0.1 * sig^2) mean accounting for sqrt(0.1) * sig, aka 32% of the standard deviation?

[manigandham]

Google has always had a very open culture with lots of political discussion and encouraged these kinds of internal debates. This was a memo written specifically for a private internal forum that was focused on that specific discussion. The widely shared version was leaked and edited, but never meant for a public audience.

Saying that men and women tend to have different preferences doesn't make a statement about their capabilities, nor is it really that controversial. The pursuit of a 50/50 ratio is counter-productive to free and open choice. Encouragement and opportunity should be the goal, not a forced ratio outcome.

[magic5227]

The research the post cites strongly implies women would be better qualified for other roles. That suggestion was (and is) both inaccurate and inappropriate to send in a workplace.

[reroute1]

Less interested/"qualified" compared on average to males by virtue of their interests and biology not their intelligence. Ignoring this is like sticking your fingers in your ears to the argument

How is the statement in a general population inaccurate? I agree it can make people uncomfortable but it looks pretty accurate to me

[magic5227]

"How is the statement in a general population inaccurate?"

um, because there is no credible science behind his assumptions. Many of the researchers he cites dispute his conclusions.

I'm not ignoring his argument, I'm saying it's a really bad argument with almost no evidence to support it.

[reroute1]

Actually it's pretty basic biology and psychology.

What "conclusions" are disagreed?

Can you really not see how this would apply in real life with personality differences? It seems obvious and intuitive not even mentioning the science, women are more social on average, men more into things that make a whirring noise. What data am I missing?

[magic5227]

"...men more into things that make a whirring noise."

You are proving my argument. Nonsense like this has prevented women from feeling like equal participants (and equally capable) in many fields for decades.

[Udik]

> In it, he calls women neurotic.

No, he says that on average they score higher on "neuroticism", one of the Big Five personality traits. [1] And it is an empirical fact. [2]

If you say "he said women are neurotics" it means you didn't understand neither the language nor the logic of what you were reading, something that should give you pause.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroticism

[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1751-9004....

[vmception]

It was a draft. Have the conversation. Address the flaws. Find a common ground, you don't have to be a conservative Manchurian candidate infiltrating the bay area to acknowledge where tech companies are failing on inclusivity goals in ways that stretch the imagination of being out of touch.

Big Tech's contrived and readjusted and out of touch practices have been written about in NY Times, Wapo, even freaking SFGate ad nauseum.

Adding some points that overlap with misogynist communities means address the misogyny in isolation, and also factor in the points.

[dgrin91]

What is a productive way to have this discussion? I can't think of any plausible way to have a discussion in this realm without serious risk of being ostracized.

[james_s_tayler]

>He showed a serious lack of judgement writing and posting that in his workplace

Probably doesn't help being autistic.