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I feel like the progressive left THRUST Damore and anyone who might have similar thoughts/questions into the welcoming arms of the alt-right. I'm disappointed

• tclancy 9y ago
  He has no agency? He chose to speak up and then he chose to go down the path he did. It is an impressive feat of mental gymnastics to both kinda sorta acknowledge the alt-right might not be a great group of guys but then also claim Damore had no choice but to pull into that port in a storm of his own making. Allow me to pour out a beaker of Soylent for the poor, downtrodden white man.
  • stcredzero 9y ago
    It is an impressive feat of mental gymnastics to both kinda sorta acknowledge the alt-right might not be a great group of guys but then also claim Damore had no choice but to pull into that port It's an impressive feat of mental gymnastics to put people like Dave Rubin, Gad Saad, and Steven Pinker into the category of "Alt-Right." (The first two being an openly gay man in a gay marriage, and a Lebanese jew.) There is no logic there. Basically, if you're not a true believer who has drunk the Kool-Aid, you must be one of the lurking enemy harboring evil thoughts. Sorry, but there are a lot of people who are happy to live and let live, but who have different ways of interpreting the world.
    • Buldak 9y ago
      The comment you replied to does not describe those figures as alt-right. On the other hand, the very first person Damore engaged after being fired was Stefan Molyneux, who is undeniably alt-right. It's also insipid to suggest that being gay or Jewish precludes being alt-right or otherwise bigoted. What would that make Milo Yiannopoulos?
      • freedomben 9y ago
        I agree with you, although I had never heard of Stefan Molyneux until that interview came out, and I wouldn't be surprised if Damore hadn't either. He was probably really glad to be able to speak his mind, and may not have realized what he was doing. I'm definitely giving him the benefit of the doubt here, a position which I admit is somewhat undermined by him (apparently) tweeting out Breitbart articles. I listened to most of his interviews tho, and he didn't sound alt-right to me at all. He sounded pretty Libertarian/Classical Liberal (he describes himself as a Classical Liberal)
      • stcredzero 9y ago
        the very first person Damore engaged after his firing was Stefan Molyneux, who is undeniably alt-right. I try to avoid Molyneux as much as possible. Keep in mind that the term "alt-right" is overloaded terminology. Roaming Millenial has a video where she outlines 4 broad categories of "alt-right." Not all of them are White Supremacist. Molyneux, I would just categorize as a very cultish Libertarian. Molyneaux should be rejected because of observations of his actual morality, with regards to questions of free inquiry. You might know additional bad things about him. However, it's "insipid" (your word) to judge James Damore's ideas based on association. It's also insipid to suggest that being gay or Jewish precludes being alt-right Just as insipid to put Gad Saad, Dave Rubin, and Steven Pinker into that category, based on what they say and the positions they take. The fact that they are gay or Jewish should at least get you to question the narratives pushed by media and take into account their actual positions. Hint: The narratives with regards to those 3 are false, and are unprincipled attempts to silence through association, probably because the critiques and information they supply pretty much demolish those narratives. What would that make Milo Yiannopoulos? Milo is, as far as I can tell, genuinely is anti Alt-Right, where that term encompasses the more radical 3/4ths of Roaming Millenial's categorization. He may well line up politically with some segment of the online community which rejects identity politics, but which is still far right. He also displays a problematic morality as evidenced by some of his actions. In my estimation, he's half activist and half opportunist.
      • ThomPete 9y ago
        Stefan Molyneux is not alt-right where do you get that idea from? Milo was one of the most hated people by the alt-right, his husband is black, how much more do you need for him to most probably no being alt-right?. I refuse to believe that anyone who sincerely and honestly spent any time looking into the actual opinions of Milo, Ben Shapiro, Molyneux etc and not just cherry-picked soundbites would make such claims about them. Milo is extreme in his provocations but he is hardly anything close to alt-right. I certainly don't agree with everything these guys have to say but I would urge you to actually listen to what they are trying to say before you judge them. To the downvoters. At least provide me with a reason for the downvote. What did I say that's so wrong?
    • fjsolwmv 9y ago
      Not judging these people at all, but being Gay or Jewish is no way incompatible with being racist.
  • Consultant32452 9y ago
    He has just as much agency and culpability for his actions as the people who were all too happy to dehumanize him publicly for a cheap political win.
  • whataretensors 9y ago
    It's a despicable thing to destroy someone over an idea, despite the contents of that idea. I think tech workers are easy targets. For instance, we've all heard about the need for diversity in tech, but never hear about accredited investors being < 6 % female and < 1 % black.
    • bduerst 9y ago
      I think what this Advice memo is about isn't the idea itself, but how he poorly he handled the idea. The disruptive way he handled the idea is not protected from being fired in an at-will employment company. Google even worded that in the termination: >Your post advanced and relied on offensive gender stereotypes to suggest that women cannot be successful in the same kinds of jobs at Google as men. I want to make clear that our decision is based solely on the part of your post that generalizes and advances stereotypes about women versus men. It is not based in any way on the portions of your post that discuss Google's programs or trainings, or how Google can improve its inclusion of differing political views. Those are important points. I also want to be clear that this is not about you expressing yourself on political issues or having political views that are different than others at the company. Having a different political view is absolutely fine. Advancing gender stereotypes is not.
      • ThrowAwayFSp 9y ago
        so saying "women cannot be successful in the same kinds of jobs at Google as men" is Heretic now? How about "women cannot be successful as chess masters at the same level than men" also heretic?
      • Majora320 9y ago
        Gender stereotypes are sometimes supported by fact (even if they may primarily came into being by anecdote or plain ____ism). When they are, it is not fair to dismiss someone as "advancing gender stereotypes" whenever they make an "on average"-type claim (based on evidence) that happens to align with a gender stereotype; the problem comes when you forget the "on average" part of it (which he did not seem to).
  • maroonblazer 9y ago
    I think it's plausible that had the memo not been leaked externally he'd still have his job. In that respect he truly didn't have agency.
    • asterius 9y ago
      That memo was never intended to remain private correspondance. And I'd hope that Google would have terminated his employment in any case.
    • threeseed 9y ago
      I read the memo. There is no way that any normal company would have tolerated something like that being posted on work servers. It was far away from views that normal society tolerates.
  • fjsolwmv 9y ago
    Your crypto racism would slide by more easily if you weren't do explicit in your closing.
• eridius 9y ago
  > but he did lose his livelihood, had his professional reputation destroyed, and only a limited time to cash out. Why are you writing this in the passive, as if this is an unfortunate thing that happened to him? He did all of that to himself. That memo created a hostile workplace and Google had no choice but to fire him. The outcome here isn't terrible, it's exactly what should have happened.
  • simonebrunozzi 9y ago
    Nope. 100% disagree with you. Nobody should be fired for speaking out and/or starting a meaningful conversation. The opposite is censorship.
    • eridius 9y ago
      Creating a hostile workplace is not “meaningful conversation”. The memo constituted pretty blatant harassment of all his female colleagues. You don’t have the right to say whatever you want. People absolutely should be fired for harassing and discriminating against their colleagues (which is effectively what the memo was). It’s toxic and incredibly hurtful and cannot be tolerated.
      • titanix2 9y ago
        An hostile workplace is one firing an employee for the mere act of sharing an opinion. As the memo was not directly addressed to any female and did not insult them it is clearly not harassment. Questioning the hiring policy is not like attacking people directly. This is sad to see how much everything got conflated in an angry prêt-à-penser ideology that justify every of its excesses against the non believers.
        • deleted 9y ago
          [deleted]
        • eridius 9y ago
          No you're right, he didn't address harass a single coworker. Instead he harassed all of the women he work with at the same time. Just because he didn't name names doesn't mean it's not harassment; he deliberately insulted an entire demographic of people, and then tried to pretend it was "scientific" when it was just a load of bullshit, as if that makes it any better. If his memo was railing against, say, the Irish, would you still think he wasn't harassing any of his Irish colleagues? > any female Now I understand. Go back to redpill please.
• stcredzero 9y ago
  he did lose his livelihood, had his professional reputation destroyed I'm frankly ashamed at the behavior of my classmates, who were so enthusiastically throwing him under the bus, without really knowing anything about him. I found it very odd that people who had no basis of judging his software engineering skills had very strong opinions about them. I'm reminded of a documentary film about North Korea, where during one segment of a meeting, people went up to the front of the room and took turns condemning the United States, and were cheered the more fanatical they sounded. There is indeed "thought-crime" in the United States, and this category is at times conveniently expanded to to encompass any questioning of the new orthodoxy at all, with no basis but irrational, emotional ones.
  • throwawaymanbot 9y ago
    He did not commit thought crime. He espoused out of date views in a company that is modern, and trying to harness the future. They did not like it. End of story.. Poor Social Conservative Justice Warriors need to stop whining already. Everyones out of tears for you since trump won.
  • Arainach 9y ago
    Team interaction is a software engineering skill. The ability to work with a diverse set of people and bring them together rather than disparaging and dividing them is a software engineering skill. I would rather have a good programmer who got along with my team than a great one that wrote such memos.
    • ThomPete 9y ago
      Then perhaps Google shouldn't ask for feedback on their courses. Seems rather disingenuous to say the least.
      • alsetmusic 9y ago
        > Then perhaps Google shouldn't ask for feedback on their courses. Seems rather disingenuous to say the least. My impression is that he circulated his “feedback” among employees. I would be surprised if that was requested by Google.
• ikeyany 9y ago
  For a company supposedly full of smart people, you'd think they'd be able to gracefully handle so called "problematic" views like Damore's.
  • refulgentis 9y ago
    His views _as stated_ necessarily meant _some_ women he worked with weren't qualified to be his coworkers because of their gender. You have a right to free speech, not to alienate your coworkers.
    • Consultant32452 9y ago
      Could you point out that specific passage? As I read it he specifically went out of his way to say that all of the women he worked with were qualified.
      • refulgentis 9y ago
        He literally says that those hiring practices can lower the bar. Sure, maybe he's saying that the bar for white/Asian men is higher than intended rather than that the bar for women and minorities is lower than intended, but you can't honestly argue that he isn't saying that women and minorities could be clearing a lower bar than white/Asian men.
        • said 9y ago
          I urge you read the memo yourself. He said Google lowers the false negative rate for women.
          • refulgentis 9y ago
            From a statistics point of view, this statement is dispositive: "...decrease the false negative rate, not increase the false positive rate." The interaction between type I and type II errors virtually always have an inverse relationship. You cannot decrease one without increasing the other. It is, for example, one of the difficulties in making good medical diagnostic tests. P.S. snarky commentary such as 'read the memo yourself', implying I'm lying about having read it, doesn't contribute to civil discussion.
• throwawaymanbot 9y ago
  You lot are always blaming others, such as the "Progressive Left", for your own dumb decisions. The "you made me this monster" whinging does not hold water. It's the typical pathetic argument of the pathology. James Damore chose to speak and do these things. "They" (Whoever they are) did not destroy him, He is not destroyed in anyway, he just made a total fool of himself in a lawsuit, that's all. Any damage caused to him or his reputation he did so with his OWN words and actions, and those who are really at fault are those who got him giddy with victimhood by egging him on and told him he could take on one of the worlds biggest private companies, instead of telling him to wise up and chill out.
• skywhopper 9y ago
  Even at this point, he would likely be easily able to get another engineering job if he wished. So I think you are vastly overstating the damage to his career. For sure, if he had admitted he was wrong or at least naive, and shut up about it, he'd have no problems at all. By doubling down on his statements and participating in lawsuits against Google, he's making himself less and less attractive to future employers. But you severely overestimate the impact this will actually have on his prospects. But if we're talking about consequences of his actions, what about all the women whose careers he was advocating for destroying? Who, had he continued to work at Google, would have felt entirely unwelcome, untrusted, and unrespected? What is the impact on their careers when they face constant questioning of their very legitimacy merely because of their sex?
  • freedomben 9y ago
    > what about all the women whose careers he was advocating for destroying? Would you kindly provide a source for this? Preferably from the memo itself?
  • Consultant32452 9y ago
    Based on your comments it's quite clear that you either did not read his memo or do not understand statistics. Secondly, even if you take the most egregious possible interpretations of every sentence he wrote and try to take them out of context as much as possible to put them in a bad light, the national outcry is still completely unnecessary and disgusting. Fine, fire him, but he's about as meek and mild as they get, not some David Duke monster. He should've never made the news.
• surveilmebro 9y ago
  As someone who was an actual classmate of Damore, I can attest to his lack of character in this regard. I understand that the tone of his memo made it appear to have come from a thoughtful humanist, but this was a careful deception. In every social or professional encounter I've had with him, he's at least made somebody (particularly women) uncomfortable. In several cases these incidents led to meetings and reprimands. I am certain that he was already fully in the alt right camp, and did not say so aloud because he is a smart person capable of recognizing bad PR.
  • SiVal 9y ago
    Well, maybe you have insider knowledge about how much he actually disagrees with those on the left at Google--or maybe you don't. But either way, those who are fully in the alt-left camp at Google seem to consider themselves completely free to make anyone who disagrees with them uncomfortable and to go far beyond that: to force them to undergo indoctrination "training", or to be fired outright to make examples of them to others who might be tempted to openly question leftist dogma that may or may not actually be correct. At Google, those on the far left don't seem to feel the need for "careful deception" when it comes to expressing their opinions of/to coworkers they disagree with. They don't act as though they are required to make those with different opinions "feel safe". They have every reason for confidence, because "safety" just means "privilege": We get to blame and criticize you, but you aren't allowed to respond, because we (not you) are entitled to "safety".
    • deanCommie 9y ago
      Only when it comes to things that the right is is indisputably on the wrong side of history and hasn't figured it out yet (gay rights, gender rights, etc). Its not like the alt left yet to preach about communism or unions or taxation with the same privileged safety. Subjects like this get a lot of reasonable discussion from both sides at left leaning companies. But when it comes to things like diversity? And you are a company full of the most intelligent people in the world? Yeah, sorry if you haven't realized that "unconscious bias" is a real thing, you don't deserve a safe space to question it, you are being wilfully ignorant.