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Before we proceed, please provide a clear, coherent, short summary of what you personally believe Damore's argument is, and then agree to personally commit to t

Before we proceed, please provide a clear, coherent, short summary of what you personally believe Damore's argument is, and then agree to personally commit to that belief for the duration of debate. 99% of the problem of this debate is that his "memo" was so vague in places -- despite being so allegedly well-written! -- that we end up being able to attribute zero claims and zero positions to him, since any alleged position can be disclaimed on vagueness/indirectness, leading to the conclusion that, until someone will commit to interpreting him as making a claim, he apparently wrote a memo which said literally nothing whatsoever.

deepnotderp 9y ago
I'll bite. Damore says that there are possible non-bias reasons that women display less affinity towards the tech industry thus possibly partially explaining the difference in gender representation.
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  OK. So what do you believe is the logical course of action to take based on this? Since he mentioned diversity programs, presumably he thinks there is some logical link between his argument and some proposed course of action, though of course for any such proposed course someone will pop up and say that he didn't advocate that and obviously anyone claiming he did must never have read what he wrote. Do you believe that, if this position were to be conceded for sake of argument, there would be any logical change to be made to, say, how Google approaches interviewing and hiring?
  - deepnotderp 9y ago
    Stop illegally preferring less qualified women over more qualified men to meet quotas. (Before i get straw manned, I'm NOT saying that all women at Google are less qualified, just that it does happen, and Google even apparently makes its diversity meetings secret)
    - ubernostrum 9y ago
      The specific hiring approach Damore objected to was "reducing the false negative rate" for women. A false negative in hiring occurs when a qualified candidate is rejected (as opposed to a false positive, where an unqualified candidate is hired). So Damore's objection was not to "preferring less qualified women", it was to an attempt to raise the proportion of qualified women being hired. So I'm curious why you chose to jump to "preferring less qualified women".
mpweiher 9y ago
How about the reverse: you commit to what you believe the memo said, because all you've written so far makes me doubt you've even read it.
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  Oh, I've read the whole thing several times. But suppose I were coming to it fresh, with no background whatsoever, and simply reading it through, and let's try to Socratically figure out what's going on in it. Since you're apparently very concerned with people misinterpreting it, perhaps you'd like to help. So, first off: would you agree that the memo was intended by Damore to communicate some type of argument, reasoning from evidence, in support of some particular conclusion, and that he felt this was not merely idle speculation but something genuinely important in need of attention from many people? I'm asking this because: 1. I'm attempting to be charitable, and assume that his choice of what to write was inspired by what he believed to be a logical argument structure, and to convince readers of something he himself believed to be the conclusion of that argument. In other words, I'm assuming that if something is in there, it's not a non sequitur -- it's in there because he believed it was relevant to or supported the argument he was making. 2. He chose a wide distribution channel within Google, and now appears to have chosen an even wider distribution channel outside of Google. My experience is that people generally don't do this for things they believe are idle or trivial, but rather for things they believe are genuinely important. Do you agree so far?
  - mpweiher 9y ago
    Again, dodging and weaving. And not doing what you demand of others. All the old tricks.
    - ubernostrum 9y ago
      Oh, I intend to advance an interpretation based on the actual words that Damore actually wrote and actually published. But since you're going to fight every step of the way to kick and scream and move goalposts and argue that "he didn't actually say that!" in response to basically anything, I have to start from first principles on you. So: would you agree that the memo was intended by Damore to communicate some type of argument, reasoning from evidence, in support of some particular conclusion, and that he felt this was not merely idle speculation but something genuinely important in need of attention from many people?

deepnotderp 9y ago

I'll bite. Damore says that there are possible non-bias reasons that women display less affinity towards the tech industry thus possibly partially explaining the difference in gender representation.

ubernostrum 9y ago
OK. So what do you believe is the logical course of action to take based on this? Since he mentioned diversity programs, presumably he thinks there is some logical link between his argument and some proposed course of action, though of course for any such proposed course someone will pop up and say that he didn't advocate that and obviously anyone claiming he did must never have read what he wrote. Do you believe that, if this position were to be conceded for sake of argument, there would be any logical change to be made to, say, how Google approaches interviewing and hiring?
- deepnotderp 9y ago
  Stop illegally preferring less qualified women over more qualified men to meet quotas. (Before i get straw manned, I'm NOT saying that all women at Google are less qualified, just that it does happen, and Google even apparently makes its diversity meetings secret)
  - ubernostrum 9y ago
    The specific hiring approach Damore objected to was "reducing the false negative rate" for women. A false negative in hiring occurs when a qualified candidate is rejected (as opposed to a false positive, where an unqualified candidate is hired). So Damore's objection was not to "preferring less qualified women", it was to an attempt to raise the proportion of qualified women being hired. So I'm curious why you chose to jump to "preferring less qualified women".

mpweiher 9y ago

How about the reverse: you commit to what you believe the memo said, because all you've written so far makes me doubt you've even read it.

ubernostrum 9y ago
Oh, I've read the whole thing several times. But suppose I were coming to it fresh, with no background whatsoever, and simply reading it through, and let's try to Socratically figure out what's going on in it. Since you're apparently very concerned with people misinterpreting it, perhaps you'd like to help. So, first off: would you agree that the memo was intended by Damore to communicate some type of argument, reasoning from evidence, in support of some particular conclusion, and that he felt this was not merely idle speculation but something genuinely important in need of attention from many people? I'm asking this because: 1. I'm attempting to be charitable, and assume that his choice of what to write was inspired by what he believed to be a logical argument structure, and to convince readers of something he himself believed to be the conclusion of that argument. In other words, I'm assuming that if something is in there, it's not a non sequitur -- it's in there because he believed it was relevant to or supported the argument he was making. 2. He chose a wide distribution channel within Google, and now appears to have chosen an even wider distribution channel outside of Google. My experience is that people generally don't do this for things they believe are idle or trivial, but rather for things they believe are genuinely important. Do you agree so far?
- mpweiher 9y ago
  Again, dodging and weaving. And not doing what you demand of others. All the old tricks.
  - ubernostrum 9y ago
    Oh, I intend to advance an interpretation based on the actual words that Damore actually wrote and actually published. But since you're going to fight every step of the way to kick and scream and move goalposts and argue that "he didn't actually say that!" in response to basically anything, I have to start from first principles on you. So: would you agree that the memo was intended by Damore to communicate some type of argument, reasoning from evidence, in support of some particular conclusion, and that he felt this was not merely idle speculation but something genuinely important in need of attention from many people?