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It's not the quality, it's the intent. He went for an adversarial debate, not a discussion. The memo reads as him knowingly and intentionally starting a fight.
by ianmiers 9y ago
It's not the quality, it's the intent. He went for an adversarial debate, not a discussion.
The memo reads as him knowingly and intentionally starting a fight. My assumption, from reading the memo, was that he was expressing an opinion he knew to be controversial, knew would upset people, but wanted to make a point of proving he was right anyway in the face of those upset people. It reads a lot like the vaguely provocative way people write about such things on twitter/reddit/here.
In a work environment, that approach can and will get you fired. It should cause you career problems even if you do it for mundane things like type theory, or memory management, or distributed systems. Do it on something controversial and cause a huge problem for the company, and of course they are going to fire you. Especially since in this context adversarial = hostile work environment.
- nsnick 9y agoWhy is a debate worse than a discussion? We strive for debate on all other topics? If you actually want to challenge assumptions you must debate and evaluate the merits of someone else's argument. A discussion would just be you think x and I think y. A debate puts warrants behind the claims in those beliefs.
- bduerst 9y agoAdversarial debate is worse than discussion for reasons that these interviewees said: >The discussion around this has followed the trajectory of most of the polarizing mass discussion in the last few years; everyone comes out the other side with their opinions more calcified than ever, and more convinced than before of the intractability of the other side. Damore wasn't walking into this ready to discuss and/or learn, he wanted to blast his opinion internally with no intention of attempting to change it.
- throwawayjava 9y ago> Why is a debate worse than a discussion? Debate works really well in two situations: 1. All parties are experienced with debates and enjoy debates. In particular, they can partake in a debate and then, afterward, dispassionately evaluate the arc of the debate; OR 2. The setting is inherently adversarial and there is a third party who will ultimately decide the outcome. Almost all workplace conversations -- and indeed almost all life conversations -- do not fall into one of these two buckets. In particular: 1. Making use of debate in a search for truth is a difficult and non-universal skill. For individual debaters to get something out of a debate, they need to know how to disengage from their advocacy and evaluate the arc of the debate from an objective vantage point. This is a skill that requires training. Discussions, on the other hand, allow people to perform this switching between viewpoints as the discussion unfolds. This is much more natural. 2. Adversarial settings create emotional attachment. In debates, people very often become emotionally attached to their arguments and advocacy, causing ego to get in the way of a search for truth. In contrast, discussions do not require a stable advocacy, they are non-adversarial, and no one "wins". These characteristics de-emphasize ego and place the emphasis on whatever actually important issue is at hand. 3. Debates often end up confusing quality of argument with ground truth. It's always important to remember that constructing arguments is a skill and is time-consuming. It's certainly possible to "win" a debate and still be dead wrong about ground truths -- either by refining debating skill or by throwing more resources into argument construction. 4. Most people don't enjoy debates. I don't have any evidence here, but I think it's probably true. And in a work place, keeping your co-workers happy is probably a lot more important to achieving the company's goals than whatever epsilon benefit debate has over discussion. Maybe if universities looked more like The Academy everyone would be competent and comfortable in debates, and also understand their inherent limitations as a mechanism in the search for truth. But that's not the world we live in. So, although I enjoy a good debate as much as the next person, I've found that debates are a truly terrible method for making decisions in most professional settings.
- nsnick 9y agoYou are actually trying to stifle debate on a topic you think is so self evident that it does not need any... and you are doing it by debating.
- jshevek 9y agoI don't get any of that from the memo. Neither did the woman developer who made me aware of it's existence. She marveled at the media response, saying she found nothing provocative or adversarial about the memo.
- ianmiers 9y agoMany people did though. See for example "Edith's" point in the linked article "Edith: There’s a difference between “let’s have a discussion” and “let me tell you what’s up, all you wrong people.”" To me, it's really hard not to imagine the author being the type of person who would have a "I'm an Atheist, debate me" shirt. It's written in that style. Beyond that I don't really know what to say. Technical discussions unfortunately frequently end up this way too, so maybe its easy to get used to it. But its counter-productive. And note, I'm suggesting why it pissed people off at google and should have got him fired. It isn't an explanation of the media reaction per-say because in the context of a public discussion there is no precept that you are cooperating with people (unlike your co-workers) and your audience isn't going to repeatedly interact with you. So adversarial arguments are common and generally accepted. It would have been fine as an op-ed in a news paper (though IMHO doesn't make the quality bar). Its not in a discussion with co workers.
- rpiguy 9y agoMany people initially responded angrily because it was reported on by the media as an anti-diversity memo and purposely mischaracterized Damore's intentions. Also the versions initially published had all citations removed making it look like he was just pontificating.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mindways 9y agoI don't get any of that from the memo. Neither did the woman developer who made me aware of it's existence. If we're going with anecdote, the memo sure read as a hostile dropped-bombshell to every female Googler I've talked to on the subject. Regardless of whether it was the author's intent to do harm, or to be antagonistic, he absolutely did - both to individuals and the company as a whole.