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> So you think he wrote the memo in bad faith and/or ignorance By now I'm convinced he wrote the memo in bad faith. The moment he beelined to every alt-right m

> So you think he wrote the memo in bad faith and/or ignorance By now I'm convinced he wrote the memo in bad faith. The moment he beelined to every alt-right media outlet wearing a "Goolag" t-shirt it was clear this wasn't just an honest mistake. Even an idiot would understand that writing a memo setting up a "left vs. right" argument and then attacking Googlers as "repressors misguided by leftist ideals", while laying out a flawed biological argument for why "women are not well suited for engineering" is not going to go down smoothly. It's no coincidence that he admittedly kept pushing this around when it got ignored until it eventually "made it to the public." Had he really wanted to have an honest discussion with HR about practices, he could've emailed them directly. Then he sued immediately after getting fired. Very tight timeline for a well-intentioned snafu. > Why argue that it says things it doesn't? Where did I do that? > At least be honest about what he literally said and what additional context and inferences add to the picture. At least be honest about the actual content of the memo. The additional context and inferences are just fluff to mask the base premise: "women are biologically different, that means they probably don't want to work here, please stop trying reaching out to them, you are discriminating against everyone else."

mistermann 9y ago
> Where did I do that? Here: "while laying out a flawed biological argument for why "women are not well suited for engineering" is not going to go down smoothly" Do you actually not realize that's what he said? Since we're on HN, I bet you wouldn't make such a sloppy mistake of imprecision if the topic was something other than gender/race/sexuality.
- dguaraglia 9y ago
  OK, let's assume I'm wrong: what did he say? If he didn't try to highlight the biological difference why bring it up at all? Why claim Google is "a leftist ecochamber" for trying to increase diversity when the population is clearly not 80% men? So far I've gotten a lot of people saying "he didn't day that!" but without explaining what he said. Please clarify.
  - mistermann 9y ago
    > So far I've gotten a lot of people saying "he didn't day that!" but without explaining what he said. There have been at least two large threads on HN on this topic. You would have me believe everyone is saying "he didn't say that!" but with no explanation of what he he said? What he said was that in the aggregate, women and men statistically have different interests, behaviors, and performance in different fields. I can't imagine how sheltered of a life you'd have to live to not be exposed to this in real life, or more appropriately, how intellectually dishonest you'd have to be to pretend you've never noticed. To me, this rise of anti-intellectualism in the west is rather scary.
    - dguaraglia 9y ago
      > women and men statistically have different interests, behaviors, and performance in different fields Fair enough. That's a valid theory to entertain, and I'm sure there's a growing body of science supporting both sides of the debate. Now, the question is this: if that was the case, how do we determine the extent to which the biological factors affect career selection, when we live in a society that encourages gender stereotypes? If we don't know the extent, how can we jump to conclusions about outreach generating "a discriminatory framework"? That, at the end of the day, is my main complaint about Damore's memo. It's just a weak attempt at generating outrage. > To me, this rise of anti-intellectualism in the west is rather scary. Anti-intellectualism has many faces. The fact that we are discussing this in an open forum, and that we could probably sit on a coffee shop and have a civilized discussion about it is proof that the whole narrative about "liberal values = cultural Marxism" is at least partially bogus. Meanwhile, the same people who complained about stifling free speech at Google are threatening to leak the names of liberal Googlers to alt-right websites. Where's the outrage about that?
      - mistermann 9y ago
        > That's a valid theory to entertain There is extensive study on this topic going back several decades, if you're interested in the topic, there's not shortage of material. There's also plentiful anecdotal material where college educated forward thinking mothers very quickly learned the reality of nature vs nature after bearing children of different genders. > Meanwhile, the same people who complained about stifling free speech at Google are threatening to leak the names of liberal Googlers to alt-right websites. Where's the outrage about that? I'd have absolutely no problem condemning that whatsoever. Imagining your philosophical "opponents" as some sort of one dimensional monsters isn't doing yourself or your movement any favors.

mistermann 9y ago

> Where did I do that? Here: "while laying out a flawed biological argument for why "women are not well suited for engineering" is not going to go down smoothly" Do you actually not realize that's what he said? Since we're on HN, I bet you wouldn't make such a sloppy mistake of imprecision if the topic was something other than gender/race/sexuality.

dguaraglia 9y ago
OK, let's assume I'm wrong: what did he say? If he didn't try to highlight the biological difference why bring it up at all? Why claim Google is "a leftist ecochamber" for trying to increase diversity when the population is clearly not 80% men? So far I've gotten a lot of people saying "he didn't day that!" but without explaining what he said. Please clarify.
- mistermann 9y ago
  > So far I've gotten a lot of people saying "he didn't day that!" but without explaining what he said. There have been at least two large threads on HN on this topic. You would have me believe everyone is saying "he didn't say that!" but with no explanation of what he he said? What he said was that in the aggregate, women and men statistically have different interests, behaviors, and performance in different fields. I can't imagine how sheltered of a life you'd have to live to not be exposed to this in real life, or more appropriately, how intellectually dishonest you'd have to be to pretend you've never noticed. To me, this rise of anti-intellectualism in the west is rather scary.
  - dguaraglia 9y ago
    > women and men statistically have different interests, behaviors, and performance in different fields Fair enough. That's a valid theory to entertain, and I'm sure there's a growing body of science supporting both sides of the debate. Now, the question is this: if that was the case, how do we determine the extent to which the biological factors affect career selection, when we live in a society that encourages gender stereotypes? If we don't know the extent, how can we jump to conclusions about outreach generating "a discriminatory framework"? That, at the end of the day, is my main complaint about Damore's memo. It's just a weak attempt at generating outrage. > To me, this rise of anti-intellectualism in the west is rather scary. Anti-intellectualism has many faces. The fact that we are discussing this in an open forum, and that we could probably sit on a coffee shop and have a civilized discussion about it is proof that the whole narrative about "liberal values = cultural Marxism" is at least partially bogus. Meanwhile, the same people who complained about stifling free speech at Google are threatening to leak the names of liberal Googlers to alt-right websites. Where's the outrage about that?
    - mistermann 9y ago
      > That's a valid theory to entertain There is extensive study on this topic going back several decades, if you're interested in the topic, there's not shortage of material. There's also plentiful anecdotal material where college educated forward thinking mothers very quickly learned the reality of nature vs nature after bearing children of different genders. > Meanwhile, the same people who complained about stifling free speech at Google are threatening to leak the names of liberal Googlers to alt-right websites. Where's the outrage about that? I'd have absolutely no problem condemning that whatsoever. Imagining your philosophical "opponents" as some sort of one dimensional monsters isn't doing yourself or your movement any favors.