20 ms·

Let's say this is about the Google memo. And let's say, for the sake of argument, you're a person who thinks Damore had some good points and some bad points but

Let's say this is about the Google memo. And let's say, for the sake of argument, you're a person who thinks Damore had some good points and some bad points but you think the hysterically censorious response to him was way over the line. But you don't want to become a pariah yourself, so you stay quiet about it. The argument Damore was making was fiddly, kind of subtle and takes a long time to explain, it's not worth the trouble you're going to get into. You take the Kolmogorov option and decide to wait out this insane time period. Only it turns out, when you don't decide to argue for that subtle and qualified defense of Damore, a bunch of alt-right internet trolls make some terrible fallacious defenses of things he didn't say. Suddenly, the original censorious instincts seem much more righteous and justified. After all, "Now there are only full-throated red-pillers arguing in Damore's defense! We were right all along!" Now there are two sides to this issue, and they're both identity politics and brain-dead shouting. Because no one stopped and offered a third option: actually discussing his argument, acknowledging where he was right, and discussing what he got wrong.

mjw1007 9y ago
So: subtle and qualified defence under a pseudonym; stay quiet under your own name?
- danarmak 9y ago
  The ability to doxx is too great today for pseudonyms to work well enough. The necessary opsec is more akin to that used when publishing illegal things the (real) government actively persecutes.
  - hellopier 9y ago
    What would you need to do to limit doxxing potential?
    - danarmak 9y ago
      Most of all, consistently apply the maximum level opsec right from the beginning. Even if the first hundred posts on your new blog are inoccuous, you can't let them be connected to you when five years from now you find out that you actually want to write about something controversial for once. The hardest part is planning ahead and investing a lot of time and effort before the point where you actually publish the dangerous thing you don't want to be doxxed for. A blog (or any other publishing mechanism) needs an audience, assuming your goal is to affect public discourse. You can post anonymously or using a short-lived pseudonym on Hacker News and other forums, or on any blogging/publishing platform like Medium, and this is very secure if you never use the same identity before or after. But you're very unlikely to affect many people with your writing that way. You can't use your regular identity's reputation to drive attention to a one-off post ("Steven Pinker responds to the Google Memo controversy!"). And you can't (reliably) produce one or a few posts so well written and timed that they spread virally and affect many people even though you've never published under that identity before. So you need to spend a lot of time and effort publishing other things under that identity to acquire a following. You need to be able to consistently write things that attract the kind of people you want to reach and give you the right reputation. Obviously regular good IT security is needed: don't let your server / publishing account be compromised, vet your hosting service's security, etc. Access it via Tor, setup posts to go up at unpredictable times not tied to your timezone or what you're doing at the time (work/leisure), cultivate a style of writing that's clearly similar across that identity's posts and dissimilar from other things you write. Don't refer to the pseudonym when in any other identity; even if others mention it, don't say you've read it or discuss it. And so on.
      - hellopier 9y ago
        Is there some kind of guide about this? How can you beat a linguistic analysis? If you publish elsewhere and someone guesses to compare your work, are you screwed? Are there any programs that scan writing to determine if the writer's english is Canadian or American or British etc? Or maybe your gender? Could you use that to weed out any regional phrases, or use regional phrases from other places to confuse the text? How do you make sure you don't sound the same in your real life, using similar phrases (For example, if Scott Alexander from Slate Star Codex had another blog that was not anonymous, would it be nessecary to not use expressions like 'Steelman' or refer to effective altruism? Should you look in the academic literature about language, and try to make it so your style can't be detected by theoretical methods of linguistic analysis that haven't yet been implimented computationally? How do you deal with private communication? Does it make sense to simply have no possible way of privately emailing you, making all communication public (thus giving you plausible deniability if you click any links phishing for your identity). Should you not even interact with public comments? What about any information you might giveaway even when you are being a VPN or something (browser info? Some kind of computer associated seriel number? internet cookies?). Is it overkill to simply have one device dedicated to researching/blogging, and restricting yourself from doing normal day to day work on that computer? What about a virtual machine? Can you buy and pay for a domain anonymously? Should you make a list of things you are willing to reveal about yourself, and stick to it? For example, A/S/L and then make sure never to reveal other details (former locations, trips with dates, schooling, etc) Should you change details of anecdotes if you share them? If you trust someone, perhaps a girlfriend, or wife, or really good friend, is it too risky to share with them your identity, even if you agree to never discuss any of it digitally? Assuming they also keep a wall between themselves and that identity (not sharing posts, not telling friends, etc) is that safe? If you do break up, should you create a new blog, and if so, is it worth it to make the writing style clearly different from the old blog? Are there any high profile, clearly psuedonymous people who have remained so for long periods of time? By making this post, should I now do none of these things?
- Chris2048 9y ago
  Memo authored used his own name, was fired anyway. What is the point? While he may still have legal options, what does opening yourself up to harm prove? It's only reasonable to insist you use your own name is a rational, fair system; which the internet, and court of popular opinion is not; As such, anonymity is something of a right, and should be a standard on the wild-west environment of the internet. Plus, since the author provided citations, there is no value in providing his own name - the authority doesn't come from the author. He is inviting a discussion on the topic, and it doesn't really matter who he is to do that - anyone wanting to join the discussion should still be free to do so.
AndrewOMartin 9y ago
A problem with this kind of analysis of the situation is that everyone thinks they're in the "subtle and qualified" camp.
- benchaney 9y ago
  It should be obvious that anyone arguing against having a rational discussion is wrong about being in that camp.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    Not all subjects are amenable to "rational discussion", since it's inherently a restricted format which has implicit rules about what does and does not count as "rational". It also tends to presume its own weightlessness. Men seem very unwilling to recognise that the memo and the discussion itself is harmful.
    - smallnamespace 9y ago
      > Men seem very unwilling to recognise Honest question: Are we willing apply micro-aggression theory in a uniform and consistent way, or are presumably privileged groups immune to them?
      - pjc50 9y ago
        Oh, that was entirely deliberate. But are your feelings of upset about that generalisation rational, in the sense used by the memo author?
    - benchaney 9y ago
      > Not all subjects are amenable to "rational discussion", since it's inherently a restricted format which has implicit rules about what does and does not count as "rational". I don't see how this follows. Are you suggesting that some topics can only be discussed if the discussion includes a non-sequitur. > Men seem very unwilling to recognise that the memo and the discussion itself is harmful. On the balance it seems like trying to censor the discussion causes way more harm than having it. Particularly since trying to prevent the discussion inevitably produces a significantly more intense discussion.
FrozenVoid 9y ago
Once its crimethink to entertain a certain position, the cost of defending such position must be balanced with cost of just accepting this position and moving on. I don't think you can change cultural values and entire political climate with just facts and logic. Its a naive reductionism to assume "right ideas always win". Most people don't 'believe' in that, they have ideas, beliefs and emotions. Facts and logic come second to rationalize the above.
icebraining 9y ago
Counterpoint: even if you want to defend a "middle" position, that doesn't mean every argument roughly in that area is worthy defending. I didn't read the memo, so I have no opinion its merits on their own, but considering the immediate response it had, I'd argue it's not worth defending, because it clearly wasn't written in a way that could ever have a hope of convincing anyone not already on the fence.
- Confusion 9y ago
  I think 'considering the immediate response' used to be a valuable heuristic, but isn't any more. Too many people have become too polarized. There are a bunch of folks from the tech industry on Twitter that I have followed for years, including some HN regulars, that are now, IMHO, in the 'too polarized' group. I no longer trust their opinion on various 'political' subjects to be the result of deliberate consideration, like I did for years. Scott Alexander wrote another one of his great considerations of this sensitive subject [1], but he wisely disabled comments. To quote Scott: A lot of people without connections to the tech industry don’t realize how bad it’s gotten. This [he quotes an example before this paragraph] is how bad. It would be pointless trying to do anything about this person in particular. This is the climate. [..] This is the world we’ve built. Where making people live in fear is a feature, not a bug. Every suggestion that maybe this Google guy wrote something reasonable was met with derision, including by these people I follow, effectively shouting down anyone who responded in a moderating way. They are implicit in creating this climate, this world. I bet none of them actually read the memo and know if the things this guy was saying were actually that bad. They were reacting this way because others were reacting this way, assuming someone down the line would be correct that there was a good reason to be angry. Yet I doubt anyone not already polarized knew. As far as I can see this was a lynching and whether the guy was actually guilty, and how guilty, is irrelevant. [1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...
  - beaconstudios 9y ago
    > There are a bunch of folks from the tech industry on Twitter that I have followed for years, including some HN regulars, that are now, IMHO, in the 'too polarized' group. Thank god, I thought it was just me. This place (or at least, popular members of this place) seems to have become more ideological in recent times. I used to be pretty comfortable in knowing that most here were of the classical liberal/enlightenment ilk and would discuss the majority of reasonable ideas with open eyes and ears. Now I see a lot of angry and dismissive reactions that would have been uncharacteristic of this community only a few years ago.
pjc50 9y ago
Damore is himself deeply buried in identity politics, as can be determined by his use of the codeword "Marxist intellectuals" in one of his footnotes.
- SidiousL 9y ago
  I think using "deeply buried in identity politics" is overstating facts. And I'm sure you can find many people in academia and otherwise who will clearly identify as Marxists and who advance the points of view that he was against. If being against a certain current of thought makes you "deeply buried in identity politics", then count me in.
  - ZeroGravitas 9y ago
    I've now seen several defences of this, and it confuses me. The whole "Marxist Intellectuals are destroying our society from the inside by promoting the gay lifestyle" thing only makes sense in terms of being a dog-whistle for people who don't like jews or gays or liberals generally. It doesn't make any sense to me if I take it literally. How is Peter Thiel or Tim Cook being able to be open about their sexuality bad for capitalism? Why is it basically large corporations that are holding the line against anti-LGBT legislation in the united states. Has the devious Marxist plan backfired totally? Can you outline for me exactly what these "Marxist intellectuals" are up to in terms of supporting gay rights, and how it differs from say the Log-cabin Republicans?
    - lmm 9y ago
      I think it's meant to evoke Marxism in terms of being dogmatic and not tolerating dissent, rather than actually anti-capitalism? Either way it's an extremely poor choice of term.
    - akvadrako 9y ago
      Your comment is dishonest. That isn't a quote from the memo. It is: [7] Communism promised to be both morally and economically superior to capitalism, but every attempt became morally corrupt and an economic failure. As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy.” I can find some meaning in his footnote which isn't anything like a dog-whistle. He is saying that the group of people fighting for a economically left system changed tactics. Instead of arguing about class, they are coopting gender and race to try to change society. I'm not sure I buy it, but it's reasonable to suggest.
tpeo 9y ago
Putting Damore's stuff aside for a while (I haven't even read it yet), reasonably discussing anything and having some sort of "Bohm dialogue" is one of the hardest things in the world. Not only it takes quite a bit of mental effort, but it's also easily disrupted. The loudest and most obnoxious people in the room can very well misrepresent or ignore whatever you said, take a few bits of it and use it to build their own straw-man to bash. It's as if they weren't satisfied enough to just talk/shout past you, but also feel the need to climb over you and make you their soapbox. And it takes a bit of rhetorical smarts to defuse or avoid this sort of stuff, whereas the people who are in favor of actual discussion tend to be a bit naïve when it comes to rhetoric. Academics, for instance, are often in danger of being eaten alive by the public if their research is even a little bit controversial. In my opinion, all because of this.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  Mostly because our lifestyles rely to much on blurry knowledge and social inertia. People are not ready nor trained to discuss in depth.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
manicdee 9y ago
The Kolmogorov Option is not to simply stay quiet, it is to not participate in activities where the only outcomes are negative. So while avoiding the Red Pill brigade, participate in team building and reinforcing relationships with the people you want to keep around you. So you have a safe area (a domain of your life, not a physical constraint) where you relate to people with protected attributes the way they wish to be related to (usually: with respect, openness and with no attention paid to protected attributes) When dealing with people outside your safe areas, do not mention the protected attributes of those inside your safe areas. Choose your battles. Don't try sacrificing yourself over a hill that nobody needs. You can still discuss the nuances with people who are open to frank discussions about contentious issues. Just be prepared to have your own assumptions challenged by the people you think you are protecting.
- brighteyes 9y ago
  "Choose your battles" does make sense, and I think the Kolmogorov option is an honorable one. But I'm not sure it should apply here: First, Kolmogorov lived in a dictatorship. Most people talking here live in a democracy. We have many more options for fighting incorrect but widely-accepted beliefs. Second, Kolmogorov lived before the internet. Internet anonymity helps minorities speak up and get organized (as we can see across the political spectrum).
  - hellopier 9y ago
    If this is referring to the google memo though, a company IS a dictatorship.
    - brighteyes 9y ago
      Fair point, yeah. I took the article here to be talking about society more broadly, but I could be wrong.
      - hellopier 9y ago
        I think you are right, as Scott is an academic. But it is clearly inspired by the google memo, and a larger portion of society sustain themselves by selling labour to micro dictatorships.
pavlov 9y ago
Because no one stopped and offered a third option: actually discussing his argument, acknowledging where he was right, and discussing what he got wrong. You're assuming Damore's argument exists in a vacuum. But it doesn't. It had a stated purpose of changing HR and hiring policies at Google, and with that, the unavoidable implication that some of Damore's colleagues actually shouldn't be with the company. When you throw that kind of poison grenade into a work environment and back it up with unsupported biological claims, it's not a surprise that any good points in the argument will be ignored. I'm reminded of Wiio's law, "All human communication fails except by accident." [1] If you want to make a subtle point, you must communicate it very clearly -- for some reason many writers like Damore take the opposite approach. And if you want an argument to be debated from first principles, isolate it from real-world consequences like stepping on established workplace legislation. (Damore's firing was unavoidable under current US law.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiio%27s_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiio%27s_laws
- moduspol 9y ago
  > the unavoidable implication that some of Damore's colleagues actually shouldn't be with the company. Any criticism of existing hiring policy would logically result in the same implication. If it's fair at all to question a hiring policy, this needs to be not taken personally. Besides, presumably at one point, all the "pro-diversity" initiatives mentioned in the memo didn't exist, yet someone was able to make the case that they should. This, too, would be an implication that some of the existing colleagues shouldn't be there, because there should have been more diverse selections. Yet nobody was making lists of people they "can't possibly work with" for having that opinion.
  - pavlov 9y ago
    ... at one point, all the "pro-diversity" initiatives mentioned in the memo didn't exist, yet someone was able to make the case that they should. Yes -- the management of the company decided this. I don't really understand why Google engineers would assume that they should have free rein to debate company policies, on company networks and on company time...? A public corporation is not a democracy. Publicly second-guessing HR practices is completely outside of a software engineer's job at a place like Google. If you want to make your own rules, go start your own company. It's strange that the right is always in favor of giving corporations more power over employees -- except this time, when someone gets fired for doing their style of politics on company time.
empath75 9y ago
I think it's more that his argument was muddled and I'm not going to bother arguing for or against a paper that isn't saying anything particularly new or interesting.
skybrian 9y ago
"Speak out or remain silent" is a false choice. The assumption is that writing competently about complicated hot-button subjects is somehow easy and it's just a matter of courage. What if it's actually hard, and most people will screw it up? Resharing the best stuff out there often makes more sense than writing something new.
samirillian 9y ago
Having read the memo, I disagree. I think the censorious response was warranted, and I think there was little subtlety in his arguments or worth in debating them per se. Obviously, these issues are worth discussing, but why on this one disgruntled software engineer's terms? There is an equal and opposite danger to the one you're describing, which is that one cranks musings get vested with undue dignity just because the mainstream media does condemn him.
kaitai 9y ago
To go back to the post under discussion here, how does your comment interact with Aaronson's Amendment to his Law? His Law is he will work to discover & share the truth, no matter what, while his Amendment is that he'll go to lengths to avoid hurting people. I really am not sure myself.
kafkaesq 9y ago
Let's say this is about the Google memo. Let's just say this - whatever one thinks about Google's snap decision to fire that guy, he ain't no Kolmogorov. Or even a "little Kolmogorov". And as to the suggestion that there might be some thematic overlap between his "struggle for the truth" and the struggles against Stalin or the Nazis... let's please not go there. No one stopped and offered a third option: actually discussing his argument, acknowledging where he was right, and discussing what he got wrong. Probably because it wasn't cogently presented, and has some quite glaring gaps in the basic logic of what it does present. And in its tone, was more than a bit inflammatory.

mjw1007 9y ago

So: subtle and qualified defence under a pseudonym; stay quiet under your own name?

danarmak 9y ago
The ability to doxx is too great today for pseudonyms to work well enough. The necessary opsec is more akin to that used when publishing illegal things the (real) government actively persecutes.
- hellopier 9y ago
  What would you need to do to limit doxxing potential?
  - danarmak 9y ago
    Most of all, consistently apply the maximum level opsec right from the beginning. Even if the first hundred posts on your new blog are inoccuous, you can't let them be connected to you when five years from now you find out that you actually want to write about something controversial for once. The hardest part is planning ahead and investing a lot of time and effort before the point where you actually publish the dangerous thing you don't want to be doxxed for. A blog (or any other publishing mechanism) needs an audience, assuming your goal is to affect public discourse. You can post anonymously or using a short-lived pseudonym on Hacker News and other forums, or on any blogging/publishing platform like Medium, and this is very secure if you never use the same identity before or after. But you're very unlikely to affect many people with your writing that way. You can't use your regular identity's reputation to drive attention to a one-off post ("Steven Pinker responds to the Google Memo controversy!"). And you can't (reliably) produce one or a few posts so well written and timed that they spread virally and affect many people even though you've never published under that identity before. So you need to spend a lot of time and effort publishing other things under that identity to acquire a following. You need to be able to consistently write things that attract the kind of people you want to reach and give you the right reputation. Obviously regular good IT security is needed: don't let your server / publishing account be compromised, vet your hosting service's security, etc. Access it via Tor, setup posts to go up at unpredictable times not tied to your timezone or what you're doing at the time (work/leisure), cultivate a style of writing that's clearly similar across that identity's posts and dissimilar from other things you write. Don't refer to the pseudonym when in any other identity; even if others mention it, don't say you've read it or discuss it. And so on.
    - hellopier 9y ago
      Is there some kind of guide about this? How can you beat a linguistic analysis? If you publish elsewhere and someone guesses to compare your work, are you screwed? Are there any programs that scan writing to determine if the writer's english is Canadian or American or British etc? Or maybe your gender? Could you use that to weed out any regional phrases, or use regional phrases from other places to confuse the text? How do you make sure you don't sound the same in your real life, using similar phrases (For example, if Scott Alexander from Slate Star Codex had another blog that was not anonymous, would it be nessecary to not use expressions like 'Steelman' or refer to effective altruism? Should you look in the academic literature about language, and try to make it so your style can't be detected by theoretical methods of linguistic analysis that haven't yet been implimented computationally? How do you deal with private communication? Does it make sense to simply have no possible way of privately emailing you, making all communication public (thus giving you plausible deniability if you click any links phishing for your identity). Should you not even interact with public comments? What about any information you might giveaway even when you are being a VPN or something (browser info? Some kind of computer associated seriel number? internet cookies?). Is it overkill to simply have one device dedicated to researching/blogging, and restricting yourself from doing normal day to day work on that computer? What about a virtual machine? Can you buy and pay for a domain anonymously? Should you make a list of things you are willing to reveal about yourself, and stick to it? For example, A/S/L and then make sure never to reveal other details (former locations, trips with dates, schooling, etc) Should you change details of anecdotes if you share them? If you trust someone, perhaps a girlfriend, or wife, or really good friend, is it too risky to share with them your identity, even if you agree to never discuss any of it digitally? Assuming they also keep a wall between themselves and that identity (not sharing posts, not telling friends, etc) is that safe? If you do break up, should you create a new blog, and if so, is it worth it to make the writing style clearly different from the old blog? Are there any high profile, clearly psuedonymous people who have remained so for long periods of time? By making this post, should I now do none of these things?
Chris2048 9y ago
Memo authored used his own name, was fired anyway. What is the point? While he may still have legal options, what does opening yourself up to harm prove? It's only reasonable to insist you use your own name is a rational, fair system; which the internet, and court of popular opinion is not; As such, anonymity is something of a right, and should be a standard on the wild-west environment of the internet. Plus, since the author provided citations, there is no value in providing his own name - the authority doesn't come from the author. He is inviting a discussion on the topic, and it doesn't really matter who he is to do that - anyone wanting to join the discussion should still be free to do so.

AndrewOMartin 9y ago

A problem with this kind of analysis of the situation is that everyone thinks they're in the "subtle and qualified" camp.

benchaney 9y ago
It should be obvious that anyone arguing against having a rational discussion is wrong about being in that camp.
- pjc50 9y ago
  Not all subjects are amenable to "rational discussion", since it's inherently a restricted format which has implicit rules about what does and does not count as "rational". It also tends to presume its own weightlessness. Men seem very unwilling to recognise that the memo and the discussion itself is harmful.
  - smallnamespace 9y ago
    > Men seem very unwilling to recognise Honest question: Are we willing apply micro-aggression theory in a uniform and consistent way, or are presumably privileged groups immune to them?
    - pjc50 9y ago
      Oh, that was entirely deliberate. But are your feelings of upset about that generalisation rational, in the sense used by the memo author?
  - benchaney 9y ago
    > Not all subjects are amenable to "rational discussion", since it's inherently a restricted format which has implicit rules about what does and does not count as "rational". I don't see how this follows. Are you suggesting that some topics can only be discussed if the discussion includes a non-sequitur. > Men seem very unwilling to recognise that the memo and the discussion itself is harmful. On the balance it seems like trying to censor the discussion causes way more harm than having it. Particularly since trying to prevent the discussion inevitably produces a significantly more intense discussion.

FrozenVoid 9y ago

Once its crimethink to entertain a certain position, the cost of defending such position must be balanced with cost of just accepting this position and moving on. I don't think you can change cultural values and entire political climate with just facts and logic. Its a naive reductionism to assume "right ideas always win". Most people don't 'believe' in that, they have ideas, beliefs and emotions. Facts and logic come second to rationalize the above.

icebraining 9y ago

Counterpoint: even if you want to defend a "middle" position, that doesn't mean every argument roughly in that area is worthy defending. I didn't read the memo, so I have no opinion its merits on their own, but considering the immediate response it had, I'd argue it's not worth defending, because it clearly wasn't written in a way that could ever have a hope of convincing anyone not already on the fence.

Confusion 9y ago
I think 'considering the immediate response' used to be a valuable heuristic, but isn't any more. Too many people have become too polarized. There are a bunch of folks from the tech industry on Twitter that I have followed for years, including some HN regulars, that are now, IMHO, in the 'too polarized' group. I no longer trust their opinion on various 'political' subjects to be the result of deliberate consideration, like I did for years. Scott Alexander wrote another one of his great considerations of this sensitive subject [1], but he wisely disabled comments. To quote Scott: A lot of people without connections to the tech industry don’t realize how bad it’s gotten. This [he quotes an example before this paragraph] is how bad. It would be pointless trying to do anything about this person in particular. This is the climate. [..] This is the world we’ve built. Where making people live in fear is a feature, not a bug. Every suggestion that maybe this Google guy wrote something reasonable was met with derision, including by these people I follow, effectively shouting down anyone who responded in a moderating way. They are implicit in creating this climate, this world. I bet none of them actually read the memo and know if the things this guy was saying were actually that bad. They were reacting this way because others were reacting this way, assuming someone down the line would be correct that there was a good reason to be angry. Yet I doubt anyone not already polarized knew. As far as I can see this was a lynching and whether the guy was actually guilty, and how guilty, is irrelevant. [1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...
- beaconstudios 9y ago
  > There are a bunch of folks from the tech industry on Twitter that I have followed for years, including some HN regulars, that are now, IMHO, in the 'too polarized' group. Thank god, I thought it was just me. This place (or at least, popular members of this place) seems to have become more ideological in recent times. I used to be pretty comfortable in knowing that most here were of the classical liberal/enlightenment ilk and would discuss the majority of reasonable ideas with open eyes and ears. Now I see a lot of angry and dismissive reactions that would have been uncharacteristic of this community only a few years ago.

pjc50 9y ago

Damore is himself deeply buried in identity politics, as can be determined by his use of the codeword "Marxist intellectuals" in one of his footnotes.

SidiousL 9y ago
I think using "deeply buried in identity politics" is overstating facts. And I'm sure you can find many people in academia and otherwise who will clearly identify as Marxists and who advance the points of view that he was against. If being against a certain current of thought makes you "deeply buried in identity politics", then count me in.
- ZeroGravitas 9y ago
  I've now seen several defences of this, and it confuses me. The whole "Marxist Intellectuals are destroying our society from the inside by promoting the gay lifestyle" thing only makes sense in terms of being a dog-whistle for people who don't like jews or gays or liberals generally. It doesn't make any sense to me if I take it literally. How is Peter Thiel or Tim Cook being able to be open about their sexuality bad for capitalism? Why is it basically large corporations that are holding the line against anti-LGBT legislation in the united states. Has the devious Marxist plan backfired totally? Can you outline for me exactly what these "Marxist intellectuals" are up to in terms of supporting gay rights, and how it differs from say the Log-cabin Republicans?
  - lmm 9y ago
    I think it's meant to evoke Marxism in terms of being dogmatic and not tolerating dissent, rather than actually anti-capitalism? Either way it's an extremely poor choice of term.
  - akvadrako 9y ago
    Your comment is dishonest. That isn't a quote from the memo. It is: [7] Communism promised to be both morally and economically superior to capitalism, but every attempt became morally corrupt and an economic failure. As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy.” I can find some meaning in his footnote which isn't anything like a dog-whistle. He is saying that the group of people fighting for a economically left system changed tactics. Instead of arguing about class, they are coopting gender and race to try to change society. I'm not sure I buy it, but it's reasonable to suggest.

tpeo 9y ago

Putting Damore's stuff aside for a while (I haven't even read it yet), reasonably discussing anything and having some sort of "Bohm dialogue" is one of the hardest things in the world. Not only it takes quite a bit of mental effort, but it's also easily disrupted. The loudest and most obnoxious people in the room can very well misrepresent or ignore whatever you said, take a few bits of it and use it to build their own straw-man to bash. It's as if they weren't satisfied enough to just talk/shout past you, but also feel the need to climb over you and make you their soapbox. And it takes a bit of rhetorical smarts to defuse or avoid this sort of stuff, whereas the people who are in favor of actual discussion tend to be a bit naïve when it comes to rhetoric. Academics, for instance, are often in danger of being eaten alive by the public if their research is even a little bit controversial. In my opinion, all because of this.

agumonkey 9y ago
Mostly because our lifestyles rely to much on blurry knowledge and social inertia. People are not ready nor trained to discuss in depth.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

manicdee 9y ago

The Kolmogorov Option is not to simply stay quiet, it is to not participate in activities where the only outcomes are negative. So while avoiding the Red Pill brigade, participate in team building and reinforcing relationships with the people you want to keep around you. So you have a safe area (a domain of your life, not a physical constraint) where you relate to people with protected attributes the way they wish to be related to (usually: with respect, openness and with no attention paid to protected attributes) When dealing with people outside your safe areas, do not mention the protected attributes of those inside your safe areas. Choose your battles. Don't try sacrificing yourself over a hill that nobody needs. You can still discuss the nuances with people who are open to frank discussions about contentious issues. Just be prepared to have your own assumptions challenged by the people you think you are protecting.

brighteyes 9y ago
"Choose your battles" does make sense, and I think the Kolmogorov option is an honorable one. But I'm not sure it should apply here: First, Kolmogorov lived in a dictatorship. Most people talking here live in a democracy. We have many more options for fighting incorrect but widely-accepted beliefs. Second, Kolmogorov lived before the internet. Internet anonymity helps minorities speak up and get organized (as we can see across the political spectrum).
- hellopier 9y ago
  If this is referring to the google memo though, a company IS a dictatorship.
  - brighteyes 9y ago
    Fair point, yeah. I took the article here to be talking about society more broadly, but I could be wrong.
    - hellopier 9y ago
      I think you are right, as Scott is an academic. But it is clearly inspired by the google memo, and a larger portion of society sustain themselves by selling labour to micro dictatorships.

pavlov 9y ago

Because no one stopped and offered a third option: actually discussing his argument, acknowledging where he was right, and discussing what he got wrong. You're assuming Damore's argument exists in a vacuum. But it doesn't. It had a stated purpose of changing HR and hiring policies at Google, and with that, the unavoidable implication that some of Damore's colleagues actually shouldn't be with the company. When you throw that kind of poison grenade into a work environment and back it up with unsupported biological claims, it's not a surprise that any good points in the argument will be ignored. I'm reminded of Wiio's law, "All human communication fails except by accident." [1] If you want to make a subtle point, you must communicate it very clearly -- for some reason many writers like Damore take the opposite approach. And if you want an argument to be debated from first principles, isolate it from real-world consequences like stepping on established workplace legislation. (Damore's firing was unavoidable under current US law.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiio%27s_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiio%27s_laws

moduspol 9y ago
> the unavoidable implication that some of Damore's colleagues actually shouldn't be with the company. Any criticism of existing hiring policy would logically result in the same implication. If it's fair at all to question a hiring policy, this needs to be not taken personally. Besides, presumably at one point, all the "pro-diversity" initiatives mentioned in the memo didn't exist, yet someone was able to make the case that they should. This, too, would be an implication that some of the existing colleagues shouldn't be there, because there should have been more diverse selections. Yet nobody was making lists of people they "can't possibly work with" for having that opinion.
- pavlov 9y ago
  ... at one point, all the "pro-diversity" initiatives mentioned in the memo didn't exist, yet someone was able to make the case that they should. Yes -- the management of the company decided this. I don't really understand why Google engineers would assume that they should have free rein to debate company policies, on company networks and on company time...? A public corporation is not a democracy. Publicly second-guessing HR practices is completely outside of a software engineer's job at a place like Google. If you want to make your own rules, go start your own company. It's strange that the right is always in favor of giving corporations more power over employees -- except this time, when someone gets fired for doing their style of politics on company time.

empath75 9y ago

I think it's more that his argument was muddled and I'm not going to bother arguing for or against a paper that isn't saying anything particularly new or interesting.

skybrian 9y ago

"Speak out or remain silent" is a false choice. The assumption is that writing competently about complicated hot-button subjects is somehow easy and it's just a matter of courage. What if it's actually hard, and most people will screw it up? Resharing the best stuff out there often makes more sense than writing something new.

samirillian 9y ago

Having read the memo, I disagree. I think the censorious response was warranted, and I think there was little subtlety in his arguments or worth in debating them per se. Obviously, these issues are worth discussing, but why on this one disgruntled software engineer's terms? There is an equal and opposite danger to the one you're describing, which is that one cranks musings get vested with undue dignity just because the mainstream media does condemn him.

kaitai 9y ago

To go back to the post under discussion here, how does your comment interact with Aaronson's Amendment to his Law? His Law is he will work to discover & share the truth, no matter what, while his Amendment is that he'll go to lengths to avoid hurting people. I really am not sure myself.

kafkaesq 9y ago

Let's say this is about the Google memo. Let's just say this - whatever one thinks about Google's snap decision to fire that guy, he ain't no Kolmogorov. Or even a "little Kolmogorov". And as to the suggestion that there might be some thematic overlap between his "struggle for the truth" and the struggles against Stalin or the Nazis... let's please not go there. No one stopped and offered a third option: actually discussing his argument, acknowledging where he was right, and discussing what he got wrong. Probably because it wasn't cogently presented, and has some quite glaring gaps in the basic logic of what it does present. And in its tone, was more than a bit inflammatory.