[fach]

> This smells like sour apples from an employee who focused more on their plans to take down their employer than their actual job.

The story didn't read as "sour apples" to me but rather an employee pointing out evidence that contradicts the "two strikes" policy Zuckerberg explained at the company Q&A. It's tough to write that off as "Facebook isn't perfect".

[smart_jackal]

A google employee had also similarly pointed out evidence in an internal company memo few years ago. That employee was promptly fired and last I heard, he is struggling to make a living and ends meet in the US.

[gumby]

That employee argued that people, such as people like me, were inherently less competent than others due to aspects of their gestation. Frankly I wouldn’t want to work with someone with such an attitude, and based on his writing vice versa.

If he actually cannot get a job due to his stated opinions, well, frankly I’m not surprised. Why would you hire someone who publically says up front he scorns many of his potential coworkers?

[jcims]

edit: you've already been lumped on, no need to reply to more of the same here.

Now that the dust has settled a bit on the memo, I'm curious about this take:

>That employee argued that people, such as people like me, were inherently less competent than others due to aspects of their gestation.

I didn't get that much of a dichotomy from the memo. To me he focused much more on interests than competency or capability, and he went through some effort to indicate that the effect was limited, including this summary at the top:

>Many of these differences are small and there's significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.

Then followed with a little chart showing two distributions with a lot of overlap.

I felt like the story of the memo overtook the memo itself, which seemed to be a ham-fisted attempt at exploring how we prioritize various metrics with diversity and inclusion. It was obviously premature as well, based on his own charts the effects he was discussing wouldn't come into play until we're approaching something much more even than we have today.

Ultimately the way Google handled it seemed rather cowardly. Damore's personal story adds a little complexity to the situation and I really feel that he touched a third rail that might not have been as obvious to him at the time.

[sjwright]

> I felt like the story of the memo overtook the memo itself

And that story was mostly fictional. The memo itself bares little resemblance to most of the reporting about it.

[jcims]

I think there's something to be learned from that difference though, which is what drove me to ask about it. It's easy to assume that zero of it was in good faith and discredit everyone that echoes that sentiment as a deliberate manipulator. I just have a hard time accepting that. I do believe there is a lot of deliberate manipulation, but there are also a lot of folks that are frustrated and disappointed based on their own lived experience and I can see how the memo could be read entirely differently.

Squaring off over unfalsifiable claims about intent and impact isn't going to get us anywhere, in the Damore case it's literally 'he said/she said'. We need to navigate it piece by piece and try to apply a balance of reason and empathy to try to get to a place of understanding.

[sjwright]

> I can see how the memo could be read entirely differently

Sure, but you can't hold the original author responsible for how it is being rewritten and reinterpreted in other people's minds. It's not a reasonable expectation that everyone should write everything with concern for how every cultural intersection might interpret it. That simply can't scale.

[xupybd]

I don't think he argued that anyone was inherently less competent.

From what I understand it was about preferences not competencies.

[oefnak]

Can you explain what you mean by gestation?

I thought at first you meant gender, but then I looked up the word and it means "the process or period of developing inside the womb between conception and birth" and now I'm not sure.

[googthrowaway42]

It's amazing that even years later people are still mischaracterizing his argument in the exact same way.

[gumby]

I know many people comment on any topic second hand, but I read what he wrote and I’m quite familiar with the meaning.

It’s the same as when people protest building housing: “oh it will not align with the character of our neighborhood”. I know what they are really talking about, and I know full well what he was talking about — he was making the same argument, in the same terms, as plenty have before him. I assume he read those arguments before, himself.

[DuskStar]

Is it possible to make an argument to those ends without being accused of being a racist/sexist/etc in your mind? Is there any way that someone could convince you that they were sincere?

> oh it will not align with the character of our neighborhood

Is there no situation where this is obviously, trivially true? If someone wants to replace a traditional cottage in the middle of an Irish village with a glass and steel modernist masterpiece, would you accept the argument then?

[AnimalMuppet]

Probably not; I suspect that gumby would say that the position is inherently sexist, no matter how sincerely held.

I read the memo as sincerely asking whether the data showed a sexist conclusion. Either it is inherently sexist to ask the question, or it isn't. If it is, then... what? Is it inherently sexist to note that men are faster than women? (Yes, I am aware that there are 12-year-old girls who can beat me in the 100 meters. No, that doesn't invalidate my point.) Then is reality sexist? Or is it only sexist to notice? Or to admit that you noticed?

If it isn't inherently sexist to ask the question, then we start into judgment on whether he asked it in good faith. That's a different question, on which I will not pass judgment. But I suspect that what's happening is that people have decided that it is sexist to ask the question, and therefore he couldn't have asked it in good faith.

[TeaDrunk]

I think to some degree what is being argued is that a genuinely sincere concern along this line relies on assumptions perpetuate social inequality and continued oppression of humans. It is similar to a constant suspicion of men around children perpetuates continued discomfort of men to be strong, loving, present father figures to their children whom they genuinely care for, and from this a concern based on assumptions harms the family structure overall.

[read_if_gay_]

So basically you’re putting words in his mouth and using those to argue he’s sexist?

[sjwright]

Pretty much exactly that. I doubt many people here actually bothered to read it for themselves.

[muglug]

Not really.

Right after the (somewhat-carefully-worded) memo was punished, the author showed his hand by appearing as a guest on the YouTube show of Stefan Molyneux who, even then, was well-known for his white nationalism and "men's rights" activism.

[googthrowaway42]

I actually watched that interview and he just said the same thing he said in the memo. Damore went on a lot of alternative media platforms such as Joe Rogan.

In any case your underlying argument is really bizarre.

[muglug]

If I wrote a long memo about how there are too many immigrants in America, and afterwards accepted an interview request from VDare, people would be right to wonder whether my private views were a little more racist than the memo let on.

[three_seagrass]

They're referring to James Damore being alt-right.

Kind of like how he soon after sued Google for discrimination for being "white male conservative" (which has not aged well).

[AnimalMuppet]

"Guilty by association". That's the argument.

[three_seagrass]

What's amazing is that people, to this day, take a personal weakly-worded memo as scientific fact.

[googthrowaway42]

I don't think anyone really considers the memo itself to be a scientific fact. The scientific papers cited and arguments contained therein people might take as scientific facts.

[three_seagrass]

Considering 'the arguments therin' to be scientific is considering the memo to be scientific, which it's not.

When they're not conservative opinion pieces, they're cherry picked articles, even going to far as to misrepresent the data they support.

[baggy_trough]

A vicious mischaracterization.

[pkaye]

Do you mean James Damore? According to LinkedIn he is working at a startup.