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> Or perhaps more specifically, can you present an example of cancelling that was done "specifically [...] for reasons of anger, revenge or control", and not du

• joshuamorton 6y ago
  You aren't reading carefully. I said and not due to other reasons. There are legitimate reasons to complain to someone's employer about their behavior. Damore's employer for example wasn't really targeted. I know, I worked there during the event. I commented on his doc before it was leaked to the press. Coworkers complained to Google leadership because Damore's document made them feel unwelcome. Ultimately it was for that reason that Damore was fired. Anger? No. Revenge? No. Harassing employers? Not really. Scare tactics? I can't recall anyone threatening Damore inside Google. It might have happened externally, but wasn't widespread. The issue that I keep trying to point out is that you're taking people's legitimate airing of concerns and claiming that it is done illegitimately. Ultimately you can't see other people's intentions. Framing all grievances you disagree with as illegitimate and made with only ill intent is a questionable practice. You can make the argument that everyone lied: that no one really felt unwelcome due to Damore's document, and that Google leadership agrees with you that he did nothing wrong but felt pressured to fire him anyway and that... But at that point you're taking your own preconceptions and applying them to everyone else, and assuming that only your view of the world is valid and that everyone who doesn't take the same meaning away from something that you do is acting in bad faith. That's not solid ground for claiming that someone is a criminal (you can apply the same reasoning and get "everyone who disagrees with me is a criminal", which I hope you'd agree isn't just).
  • Udik 6y ago
    > You aren't reading carefully. I said and not due to other reasons. I read it and ignored it as a completely arbitrary constraint that you added. > There are legitimate reasons to complain to someone's employer about their behavior. Sure. > Coworkers complained to Google leadership because Damore's document made them feel unwelcome. This is not a legitimate reason. First of all, because no one can tell whether it's actually true, since it's an entirely subjective feeling, justified by an aberrant interpretation of what he wrote. Andf then because "makes me feel unwelcome" is ridiculous when it's the opinion of a single employee in a company of 120 thousand. The objective fact is that a number of employees were angry at someone who expressed a political opinion they didn't like and mobbed their employer to have him fired. They can claim whatever subjective feeling as a reason for this. > Anger? No. Revenge? No. Harassing employers? Not really. Scare tactics? I can't recall anyone threatening Damore inside Google. So, you deny that the people who asked for him to be fired were angry? That's pretty curious. You believe they were "feeling unwelcome", a pretty vague feeling, but you aren't able to detect a primal, generic anger in their actions. The firing can easily be interpreted as a revenge against someone who expressed a political opinion they didn't like. They mobbed the employers until they had to do something as drastic as firing him. And finally, they didn't threat Damore, they actually damaged him, implicitly threatening everyone else who might want to voice similar opinions. > You can make the argument that everyone lied: that no one really felt unwelcome due to Damore's document, and that Google leadership agrees with you that he did nothing wrong but felt pressured to fire him anyway and that... Exactly. And sorry, but I think that what happened is extremely plain, and it requires a lot of ideological contorsions to deny the anger, the harassment and the revenge, all based on vague purported "feelings", "asked for drastic action but not harassed", etc. > is acting in bad faith An individual acting in bad faith lies to others; an adherent to an ideology might lie to him/herself first.
    • joshuamorton 6y ago
      > I read it and ignored it as a completely arbitrary constraint that you added. Legally, it's quite an important constraint. If you're accusing people of criminal acts, you should, you know, actually be certain that the acts are criminal. > This is not a legitimate reason. Bluntly: of course it is. If I feel unwelcome in my workplace, I am encouraged to report it to my management. Psychological safety is incredibly valuable and is something that a lot of companies don't do enough to foster. Put another way, if someone started posting swastikas around the office, I would be well within my rights to complain to the higher ups that those things made me feel unwelcome. There's no difference except that you feel one complaint is more legitimate than the other. They're still both complaints, made in good faith by those making them. > So, you deny that the people who asked for him to be fired were angry? Sure they were angry. But anger was not the specific reason the complaints were made. > The firing can easily be interpreted as a revenge against someone who expressed a political opinion they didn't like. Indeed, one is free to interpret the events that way. But that interpretation is no more valid than any other. In fact, it might be less valid given that courts ruled that that isn't why he was fired ;) > They mobbed the employers until they had to do something as drastic as firing him. Google was free to not fire him. My understanding is that it was debated, and that eventually executives decided that ethically firing him was the right decision. Could they be lying? Sure. But what makes you so certain that executives agree with you, but feel that their hands were forced? Is it so really unbelievable that a company might feel that it was ethically correct to fire Damore? I'm not asking if it's harder for you, personally, to face that. Clearly you don't want to believe that, but your unwillingness doesn't make it false. Like, clearly a lot of people thought Damore did a bad thing. So many in fact that there were, to quote you, "mobs". Isn't it feasible that some of the decision makers were among them? > and it requires a lot of ideological contorsions to deny the anger, the harassment and the revenge But once again, the question isn't what you believe their goals to have been, it's what they believe their goals to have been. If the goal wasn't to harass, wasn't to get revenge, but instead to improve their workplace, it's not criminal. And I'll reiterate: courts have, on more than one occasion, ruled that Google was within their rights to terminate Damore for the stated reason of making others unwelcome. You're creating a sort of thoughtcrime: if I complain about someone for the wrong reasons, I'm actually harassing the person that I'm complaining about, and I should go to jail. Also I don't get to decide what the wrong reasons are. You do. That's not just.