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I read James' document. I did not have the impression that this is his thesis.
by greendesk 9y ago
I read James' document. I did not have the impression that this is his thesis.
- rednerrus 9y agoWhat was your impression?
- bhouston 9y agoDocuments filled with political hot buttons screw up people's emotions and they can not process such documents rationally or in a balanced fashion, many people see only what offends them or what they want to defend. It is just screwed up...
- bduerst 9y agoYep, it even rambles about the failure of Marxist communism at one point. It's a rant with cherry picked evidence, but people find something it in to confirm their beliefs and try to defend/attack it.
- greendesk 9y agoA country I used to live in had political steps as a prerequisite for professional life. To me, it does seem like an important point...
- greendesk 9y agoI was left with the impression he wants the introduction of a quota for sympathizers for a political organization. My takeaway was that he wants to work with people who are officially representing political parties. Maybe it is that I have lived in a country where carrying party cards to work was a step in professional life. But the point that stuck to me was painting the situation along political spectrum.
- lisper 9y agoThen you should read it again. Focus on the title and the bullet points in the TL;DR section.
- s73ver 9y agoThis idea that one can only disagree with it because they haven't read it is extremely uncivil, and does nothing but attempt to shut down the discussion here.
- humanrebar 9y agoThesis or not, this is right at the beginning: "Google’s political bias has equated the freedom from offense with psychological safety, but shaming into silence is the antithesis of psychological safety. This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed." ...firing him, at least the way they did it, confirmed that position.
- bduerst 9y agoThere's nothing revelationary about that statement. Anyone could read Google's code of conduct and know that Google would fire/reprimand someone for being toxic to their coworkers. Employees are free to debate and cherry pick evidence about their opinions on the world being flat, 9/11 being an inside job, even a fake moon landing. James decided he wanted to debate about his opinion on his workers being biologically inferior (among other opinions). He had a chance to receive feedback on this from coworkers and change his position, the problem was he didn't and continued to broadcast his opinion which was toxic to his coworkers. It's a strange hill to pick to die on because nothing is surprising about how this played out, other than how the media is still talking about it.
- humanrebar 9y agoIf he has the opinion that his coworkers are biologically inferior, I didn't see that in the memo. Can you explain how you came to that conclusion?
- bduerst 9y agoThat's a loaded question. I didn't come to the conclusion, many others have based on his premise of using personality constructs as being caused by evolutionary psychology. You can see it in the paper how he starts with the obvious, "Men and Women are biologically different" and then jumps into observable personality differences, which are not proven to be biologically driven. It wouldn't be so bad if he didn't attribute these "biologically-caused" personality differences (neuroticism, agreeableness, less ambition, etc.) to women being the ones to blame for their problems in tech. This opinion is toxic to his coworkers, which is a violation of the Google Code of Conduct.