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Every repugnant conclusion has always come coated in a veneer of rationality. No racist, sexist, islamophobe or any other kind of bigot has ever called themselv

Every repugnant conclusion has always come coated in a veneer of rationality. No racist, sexist, islamophobe or any other kind of bigot has ever called themselves by these appellations or expressed their opinions without being able to bring in piles of dubious evidence to back up their opinions. Let's take the example of the Men's Rights Movement discussed in the article. While there are of course many factions within the MRM, the very existence of something that arose specifically to counteract the rise of feminism is a slap in the face to the struggles brought forth by women. With the same veneer of rationality, its purpose is to drown out women's concerns by raising the voices of men to a raucous cry. This is not to say that men do not experience problems, but the MRM is almost exclusively a reaction to feminism. It's an age-old divisionary tactic, of pitting an oppressed group against an even more oppressed group. The English American colonists considered the genocided Native Americans to be one of their biggest oppressors, the war-torn Germans took to blaming the Jews who have already been persecuted for centuries. It's easier to find a weaker target than to look for the deeper causes of oppression. The problem with Damore is not that his stats are wrong, but their veneer of rationality. Disagreeing with his repugnant conclusions (such as, eliminating Google's diversity programmes), is not because we hate scientific discourse, but because his veneer of rationality is just that: a veneer. The causes and explanations are far more complicated than what he cites or could cite in the space of 11 pages, and in the meantime it's far better to err in the side of caution and offer an advantage to the underrepresented group.

creaghpatr 9y ago
Note the veneer of rationality in the above comment.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- WaxProlix 9y ago
  I must have missed it - could you elaborate a bit?
  - alexandercrohde 9y ago
    I think his point is that "veneer of rationality" almost serves solely as ad-hominem, because there is no way to establish which side is truly rational other than through debate itself.
ithilglin909 9y ago
Can you explain more about what you find repugnant about Mr. Damore's conclusions? Repugnant is pretty loaded (emotive) word.
- jordigh 9y ago
  Let's begin by why Damore felt the need to write this in the first place: he was taking a diversity workshop. He was so offended by having to attend a lecture on how to be nice to disadvantaged groups that he wrote that wall of text. "These discriminatory practices are both unfair and divisive. Instead focus on some of the non-discriminatory practices I outlined." The discriminatory practices he's referring is to have a few women-only classes. From my understanding, there also exist classes for everyone. Requesting to remove women-only is repugnant because those classes and similar initiatives have increased women's participation without reducing the number of men nor the opportunities for men. Wanting to get rid of those classes is just the holders of the status quo fighting to keep the status quo. "Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts. " This is beyond stupid, having more women in something positive isn't the same thing as having more women in something negative. There are nuances and differences and wanting to have more women murdered is nothing like wanting to have more women in tech. "In highly progressive environments, conservatives are a minority that feel like they need to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility" This is just an example, but the whole memo is written in a conservatives vs progressives or right vs left. This is divisive and confrontational. Bringing in more people shouldn't be a matter of two warring tribes, of which we must all pick a side. I don't know about you but there are some things I like about how things are now (conservative?) and some things I want to change (liberal?) We're all a mishmash of opinions, not football teams. "Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts." It's impossible to be emotionally unengaged. There isn't some kind of division between thought and emotion, and emotion isn't the antithesis of rationality. We're all frail creatures with biases, emotions, thoughts. We're not machines, and even the machines we build exhibit our own emotions and biases. So, no we should not de-emphasise empathy like he says. We're humans and we should be empathetic towards each other. "Reconsider making Unconscious Bias training mandatory for promo committees." We all have biases. I have them, and so does Damore but he calls them rationality. By trying to remove training about those biases, he's trying to safeguard his biases even further. Then there's the further damage that his document did... it has created a hostile atmosphere. Damore was right to be fired because who would want to work with a guy who is very rational about why women aren't statistically suited by nature for certain roles within the company?
tomjen3 9y ago
>very existence of something that arose specifically to counteract the rise of feminism is a slap in the face to the struggles brought forth by women Alternatively it is a group of people who disagree with what feminism has created and who considers themselves unjustly harmed by that movement. You can choose to smear them, of course, but if you do they are unlikely to want to help you and you should not be surprised when somebody else gets their support by trumping their course. Or you could engage with them, try to understand their point of view and maybe, just maybe, reach some sort of common understanding.
belorn 9y ago
Part of Men's Rights Movement can be historically describe as the Equality feminism[1] division the feminism movement when the "equality-versus-difference debate" in American feminism concluded in the early 1980. Its not without reason that before this, Men's Rights Movement did not exist. Their activism would be squarely within the goals of the feminism movement. Here in Sweden we saw a bunch of laws being removed that distinguished between gender in the period of 1960-1980. Alimony was removed, and laws was drafted to address social problems in a gender neutral way. Divorce law and family law was also changed. Practically all those changes stopped at the end of the 1970, with the only exception being gender equal conscription in 2017 (which the feminist movement has been mostly against and the MRA movement mostly in favor). As with any movement there are extremes and splinter factions, but MRM is mostly a reaction to feminism leaving behind the theory of being undifferentiated. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equality_feminism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equality_feminism

creaghpatr 9y ago

Note the veneer of rationality in the above comment.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
WaxProlix 9y ago
I must have missed it - could you elaborate a bit?
- alexandercrohde 9y ago
  I think his point is that "veneer of rationality" almost serves solely as ad-hominem, because there is no way to establish which side is truly rational other than through debate itself.

ithilglin909 9y ago

Can you explain more about what you find repugnant about Mr. Damore's conclusions? Repugnant is pretty loaded (emotive) word.

jordigh 9y ago
Let's begin by why Damore felt the need to write this in the first place: he was taking a diversity workshop. He was so offended by having to attend a lecture on how to be nice to disadvantaged groups that he wrote that wall of text. "These discriminatory practices are both unfair and divisive. Instead focus on some of the non-discriminatory practices I outlined." The discriminatory practices he's referring is to have a few women-only classes. From my understanding, there also exist classes for everyone. Requesting to remove women-only is repugnant because those classes and similar initiatives have increased women's participation without reducing the number of men nor the opportunities for men. Wanting to get rid of those classes is just the holders of the status quo fighting to keep the status quo. "Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts. " This is beyond stupid, having more women in something positive isn't the same thing as having more women in something negative. There are nuances and differences and wanting to have more women murdered is nothing like wanting to have more women in tech. "In highly progressive environments, conservatives are a minority that feel like they need to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility" This is just an example, but the whole memo is written in a conservatives vs progressives or right vs left. This is divisive and confrontational. Bringing in more people shouldn't be a matter of two warring tribes, of which we must all pick a side. I don't know about you but there are some things I like about how things are now (conservative?) and some things I want to change (liberal?) We're all a mishmash of opinions, not football teams. "Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts." It's impossible to be emotionally unengaged. There isn't some kind of division between thought and emotion, and emotion isn't the antithesis of rationality. We're all frail creatures with biases, emotions, thoughts. We're not machines, and even the machines we build exhibit our own emotions and biases. So, no we should not de-emphasise empathy like he says. We're humans and we should be empathetic towards each other. "Reconsider making Unconscious Bias training mandatory for promo committees." We all have biases. I have them, and so does Damore but he calls them rationality. By trying to remove training about those biases, he's trying to safeguard his biases even further. Then there's the further damage that his document did... it has created a hostile atmosphere. Damore was right to be fired because who would want to work with a guy who is very rational about why women aren't statistically suited by nature for certain roles within the company?

tomjen3 9y ago

>very existence of something that arose specifically to counteract the rise of feminism is a slap in the face to the struggles brought forth by women Alternatively it is a group of people who disagree with what feminism has created and who considers themselves unjustly harmed by that movement. You can choose to smear them, of course, but if you do they are unlikely to want to help you and you should not be surprised when somebody else gets their support by trumping their course. Or you could engage with them, try to understand their point of view and maybe, just maybe, reach some sort of common understanding.

belorn 9y ago

Part of Men's Rights Movement can be historically describe as the Equality feminism[1] division the feminism movement when the "equality-versus-difference debate" in American feminism concluded in the early 1980. Its not without reason that before this, Men's Rights Movement did not exist. Their activism would be squarely within the goals of the feminism movement. Here in Sweden we saw a bunch of laws being removed that distinguished between gender in the period of 1960-1980. Alimony was removed, and laws was drafted to address social problems in a gender neutral way. Divorce law and family law was also changed. Practically all those changes stopped at the end of the 1970, with the only exception being gender equal conscription in 2017 (which the feminist movement has been mostly against and the MRA movement mostly in favor). As with any movement there are extremes and splinter factions, but MRM is mostly a reaction to feminism leaving behind the theory of being undifferentiated. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equality_feminism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equality_feminism