4 ms·

It's interesting how many tech guys consider this guy some kind of martyr. People are upset about his odious "Google Memo" because it's not their first rodeo w

It's interesting how many tech guys consider this guy some kind of martyr. People are upset about his odious "Google Memo" because it's not their first rodeo with a dude who weasels around and justifies his racism/sexism with pseudoscience, not because they were "misled" by "clickbait media" or whatever. They weren't incorrect. The 32 supposedly-critical citation links point ovewhelmingly to garbage, including 5 wikipedia links, a dozen opinion pieces, some more "academic" essays, a link to MRA-founder Warren Farrell's blog, and, perhaps best of all, a link that simply points to a google search for the term "political correctness" (lol). The "graphs" are made in powerpoint with the curve tool (one of them the infamous bell curve), and the axes don't even have ticks on them. It's evident to anyone familiar with "the scene" that the dude got all his info from anti-feminist YouTube/Reddit, and this was proven beyond a doubt when he went on to speak at anti-feminist YouTube channels immediately after getting fired. he wasn't widely misunderstood, people just saw right through his multiple disclaimers. This Quora answer was pretty final for me: https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-biological-claims-made-in-the-document-about-diversity-written-by-a-Google-employee-in-August-2017 https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio...

Sinidir 9y ago
It was actual science if you bothered to read. But keep seeing the world through your heavily tinted ideological lense.
- Qwertious 9y ago
  Did you read the Quora link? It provided scientific sources for all its claims in refuting the google employee document. If the Quora article is nonsense, then please refute the Quora article instead of throwing around "if you bothered to read" phrases.
  - Sinidir 9y ago
    No i didn't. But it doesn't even matter because your argument is invalid. Two articles/texts can be based in science and oppose each other. You know why? Because scientific literature can also disagree with each other. But again your ideoligical lense doesn't allow you to even consider this possibility and instead automatically classifies anything that opposes your beliefs and what you have read as pseudo science.
  - alphapapa 9y ago
    Here's a comment that refutes the use of those "scientific" sources in the Quora post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021735 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021735
algorias 9y ago
Even if all you say is true and the guy is an odious anti-feminist, the points he made should be debated and refuted, not silenced. Even if most people that make similar points are just "weaseling around" and justifying their racism/sexism, this is not reason enough to assume the worst. That's how you get thoughtcrime, were the faintest association with unorthodox thought self-evidently makes you a despicable person who should be punished and whose ideas should be ignored. Many tech guys are waking up to the farcical, oppressive way in which some leftists spread their ideas and silence their opponents, and won't stand for it any longer.
- virtuabhi 9y ago
  > Even if all you say is true and the guy is an odious anti-feminist, the points he made should be debated and refuted, not silenced. Why? Why should everyone debate ideas which are made up by biased sources[1]? Should we also discuss why people from country X are more intelligent than people of race Y who immigrated from continent Z? Sorry, but not all ideas are gold. > Many tech guys are waking up to the farcical, oppressive way in which some leftists spread their ideas and silence their opponents, and won't stand for it any longer. At least it is fine till "leftists" are spreading ideas for peace, tolerance, and harmony, right? They are not calling for people of race/religion/country/sex X to leave country Y, right? [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/13/james-damore-google-memo-youtube-white-men-radicalization https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/13/james-dam...
  - alphapapa 9y ago
    Are you saying that there exist unbiased sources? Who has the authority to determine which ideas are worth discussing? Are the rest of us obligated to comply with their judgments?
- jellicle 9y ago
  > should be debated and refuted If you have even a passing acquaintance with the subject, this has been "debated and refuted" for hundreds of years. Should "did NASA land on the Moon?" also be debated and refuted? Why or why not? If major TV networks ran hour-long specials, where each side gets to present their case for/against moon landings for 30 minutes, would this be beneficial to the world?
dragonwriter 9y ago
Not really surprising from a guy who, up until notoriety focussed attention on him and exposed it, was apparently claiming a Ph.D. he never earned on his LinkedIn resume.
matthewbauer 9y ago
One thing I would push back on is that science is never really final. It seems pretty clear that Damore misrepresented a lot of the research, though.
kottayam 9y ago
The final answer so far for me is from heterodox academy (Sean Stevens and Jonathan Haidt). They reference all relevant meta analysis papers directly. https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what-does-the-research-say-about-gender-differences/ https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what...

Sinidir 9y ago

It was actual science if you bothered to read. But keep seeing the world through your heavily tinted ideological lense.

Qwertious 9y ago
Did you read the Quora link? It provided scientific sources for all its claims in refuting the google employee document. If the Quora article is nonsense, then please refute the Quora article instead of throwing around "if you bothered to read" phrases.
- Sinidir 9y ago
  No i didn't. But it doesn't even matter because your argument is invalid. Two articles/texts can be based in science and oppose each other. You know why? Because scientific literature can also disagree with each other. But again your ideoligical lense doesn't allow you to even consider this possibility and instead automatically classifies anything that opposes your beliefs and what you have read as pseudo science.
- alphapapa 9y ago
  Here's a comment that refutes the use of those "scientific" sources in the Quora post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021735 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021735

algorias 9y ago

Even if all you say is true and the guy is an odious anti-feminist, the points he made should be debated and refuted, not silenced. Even if most people that make similar points are just "weaseling around" and justifying their racism/sexism, this is not reason enough to assume the worst. That's how you get thoughtcrime, were the faintest association with unorthodox thought self-evidently makes you a despicable person who should be punished and whose ideas should be ignored. Many tech guys are waking up to the farcical, oppressive way in which some leftists spread their ideas and silence their opponents, and won't stand for it any longer.

virtuabhi 9y ago
> Even if all you say is true and the guy is an odious anti-feminist, the points he made should be debated and refuted, not silenced. Why? Why should everyone debate ideas which are made up by biased sources[1]? Should we also discuss why people from country X are more intelligent than people of race Y who immigrated from continent Z? Sorry, but not all ideas are gold. > Many tech guys are waking up to the farcical, oppressive way in which some leftists spread their ideas and silence their opponents, and won't stand for it any longer. At least it is fine till "leftists" are spreading ideas for peace, tolerance, and harmony, right? They are not calling for people of race/religion/country/sex X to leave country Y, right? [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/13/james-damore-google-memo-youtube-white-men-radicalization https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/13/james-dam...
- alphapapa 9y ago
  Are you saying that there exist unbiased sources? Who has the authority to determine which ideas are worth discussing? Are the rest of us obligated to comply with their judgments?
jellicle 9y ago
> should be debated and refuted If you have even a passing acquaintance with the subject, this has been "debated and refuted" for hundreds of years. Should "did NASA land on the Moon?" also be debated and refuted? Why or why not? If major TV networks ran hour-long specials, where each side gets to present their case for/against moon landings for 30 minutes, would this be beneficial to the world?

dragonwriter 9y ago

Not really surprising from a guy who, up until notoriety focussed attention on him and exposed it, was apparently claiming a Ph.D. he never earned on his LinkedIn resume.

matthewbauer 9y ago

One thing I would push back on is that science is never really final. It seems pretty clear that Damore misrepresented a lot of the research, though.

kottayam 9y ago

The final answer so far for me is from heterodox academy (Sean Stevens and Jonathan Haidt). They reference all relevant meta analysis papers directly. https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what-does-the-research-say-about-gender-differences/ https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what...