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Stealing from myself from an old comment [1]: there is a difference between what Damore intended to say (assuming the best case) and what his memo actually said
by probably_wrong 8y ago
Stealing from myself from an old comment [1]: there is a difference between what Damore intended to say (assuming the best case) and what his memo actually said. He might have wanted to say "women tend like other things", but his memo ended up saying "women are incapable of doing this thing".
He may have had good intentions, but in writing the difference matters. A similar result is seen when authors argue that widely assumed interpretations of their literary characters are not what they intended. That, I believe, is what got him fired.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14984758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14984758
- jki275 8y agoI just went back and read Damore's memo, and that idea does not appear anywhere in it. I'm curious how you tortured that out of his words.
- probably_wrong 8y agoI don't want to copy-paste from myself, so I would suggest checking the comment I linked, or even better, the article where I commented.
- jki275 8y agoIt's still not in what he wrote. Perhaps you see it there, but it's not. In fact, it's the opposite of what he wrote.
- zwischenzug 8y agoWhere did he say that?
- naasking 8y ago> there is a difference between what Damore intended to say (assuming the best case) and what his memo actually said. He might have wanted to say "women tend like other things", but his memo ended up saying "women are incapable of doing this thing". No he didn't. Go ahead and search for "ability", "abilities", "capable" or any other synonyms in this whole document: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I... The only place "abilities" appears is where Damore very explicitly said that while there are differences in preferences and abilities, there's so much overlap that you can't make any judgments about individuals. Every reason he cited as possibly influencing gender the disparity was all about preferences and psychological traits that are common to women that would make them dislike STEM-like work, rather than be incapable of performing it. He also very explicitly suggested measures to improve female engagement based on the actual science available on this issue. There was a lot of misinformation spread about this document.