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Google software engineer fired for writing memo questioning diversity

Jun 15, 2015
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This case is turning into a nightmare where the main focus becoming who can sue who, and what will the settlements be, and what new and intrusive and pain in the ass company policies will be created to balance the rights of the company versus the rights of the employee. No useful product or service will come from it, just more "corporate" hassle for all the employees and less profit for shareholders.

I agree no matter what your opinion is. Once the memo came out, it fell in to the legal nightmare world. Google had no choice but to cut its losses.
 

EagerBeaver

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Just watched the interview with Damore. My opinion is he needs to spend more time getting laid and less time writing manifestos. With the coin he was making at Google could have been getting his dick sucked many times during the hours he spent writing the manifesto.
 

CaptRenault

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...A former president of Harvard made a more academic, more nuanced argument for the difference in numbers of males and females in tenured positions on math/engineering/etc in universities. He received a LOT of flak and resigned the next year...

Too bad the Google enginner, Damore, was too young to remember what happened to Harvard president Larry Summers when he dared to speculate about the possible reasons that men and women differ in their presence in STEM fields.

Why Feminist Careerists Neutered Larry Summers
The hysteria about Summers furthers the career agendas of feminists who seek quotas for themselves and their friends.
theatlantic.com
Feb. 2005


Like religious fundamentalists seeking to stamp out the teaching of evolution, feminists stomped Harvard University President Lawrence Summers for mentioning at a January 14 academic conference the entirely reasonable theory that innate male-female differences might possibly help explain why so many mathematics, engineering, and hard-science faculties remain so heavily male.

Unlike most religious fundamentalists, these feminists were pursuing a careerist, self-serving agenda. This cause can put money in their pockets.

Summers's suggestion—now ignominiously retracted, with groveling, Soviet-show-trial-style apologies—was that sex discrimination and the reluctance of mothers to work 80 hours a week are not the only possible explanations for gender imbalances in the math-science area. He noted that high school boys have many more of the highest math scores than girls, and suggested that this might reflect genetic differences. He also stressed the need for further research into all three possible explanations....

For all its foolishness and irrationality, the feminist hysteria about Summers furthers the career agendas of feminists who seek thinly veiled job preferences or quotas for themselves and their friends. Such preferences are most easily justified as a remedy for male bias. And bias can more easily be blamed for gender imbalances if the possibility that more men than women are gifted with math-science brilliance is banished from public discourse.
This feminist-careerist agenda is conveniently ignored by the less hysterical critics of Summers, who make no claim that he said anything inaccurate but nonetheless reproach him for what a Los Angeles Times editorial portrayed as a gratuitous and insensitive ego trip. To the contrary, until his disgraceful capitulation to the power of political correctness, Summers was making a much-needed effort to break the self-serving feminist-careerist stranglehold on honest discussion of gender imbalances...

Inconveniently for preference-seeking feminists, scientific evidence shows that while women do better than men at certain verbal skills, men do better than women at some other intellectual tasks. These include visualizing three-dimensional subjects in space—essential to much engineering and science work—and mathematical reasoning. More than twice as many boys as girls scored in the top range (750-800) on last year's SAT math test, for example. Among serious scholars, the only debate is about whether the pattern reflects acculturation or genetics. A substantial body of work suggests genetics...

In the November 2000 issue of Psychological Science, for example, a team headed by Vanderbilt University's Camilla Persson Benbow summarized earlier research showing "sex differences in mathematical precocity before kindergarten"; "sex differences in mathematical reasoning as early as the second grade (among intellectually gifted students)"; and "pronounced sex differences in mathematical reasoning ability" in a 1980 study of 9,927 intellectually talented 12-to-14-year-olds.
New data collected 20 years later from 1,975 of these 9,927 people, the article said, showed "the predictive value" of early SAT scores "for identifying students with promise for math and science careers."

None of this is to suggest that men are biologically better suited than women (on average) for success in medicine, law, business, politics, journalism, liberal arts, languages, or the vast majority of other academic and professional fields. Indeed, some 57 percent of all four-year college degrees go to women. Nor is it to suggest that all mathematical geniuses are men, or that women cannot reach the top, or that sex discrimination has been completely eradicated.

But if most mathematical geniuses are men, as many studies suggest, then the fact that men still dominate the few academic fields requiring mathematical brilliance is not entirely attributable either to sex discrimination or to the reluctance of mothers to work 80-hour weeks. (This reluctance is itself seen by some feminists as a sign of discrimination, including society's failure to pressure fathers to spend as much time with their kids as mothers.)

This is why so many feminists have personal stakes in silencing talk, and stigmatizing study, of possible gender differences in mathematical-reasoning ability. It was an awesome display of their power that lobotomized Summers—brilliant economist and possessor of the most prestigious post in all of academia. Amid serial apologies, he contradicted his January 14 remarks by swearing allegiance to the feminist dogma that "the human potential to excel in science" clearly has nothing to do with gender.
It is ironic that while shouting down any hint that men might be more capable than women in mathematics, many so-called "difference feminists" have long contended that women are morally superior to and more caring than men. This, says Daphne Patai, a former professor of women's studies at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), illustrates "the opportunism, inconsistency, and double standards that abound in contemporary feminism, often feebly justified by attacks on logic and reason as 'masculinist.'"

Boston civil-liberties lawyer Harvey A. Silverglate placed this episode in its larger context in a piece in the Boston Phoenix:
"The modern university is the culmination of a 20-year trend of irrationalism marked by an increasingly totalitarian approach to highly politicized issues. Students are subjected to mandatory gender-and racial-sensitivity training akin to thought reform.... Faculty members and administrators are made to understand that their careers are at risk if they deviate from the accepted viewpoint."
 

westwoody

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Where is the wit? She makes several ignorant statements.

"Circulate the memo throughtout the entire company" for example. Did he do that, or did he just post it on an internal bulletin board?
"Everyone needs to see this". Again, where did he say that?

Professional victims wil love it though, it panders to them and makes the guy look like the misogynistic monster they love to hate and blame their own career failures on.
 

CaptRenault

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Jordan Peterson made an interview of that guy, James Damore, and goes though the memo with him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEDuVF7kiPU

Thanks for the link, Gugu. It's a good interview. The list of scholarly articles that Prof. Peterson supplies in the description of the video (click "read more") is even more impressive. Though Damore's critics fault him for making unsubstantiated claims about differences between the sexes, they don't provide any references to support their argument. Peterson provides a long list of scholarly articles that support Damore's arguments.

Damore's main point was to show that the minds of the diversity bureaucrats and the executives who cower in fear of them are completely closed. They accept as a matter of faith, as a kind of religious teaching, the belief that there are no essential differences between different groups of people (such as men and women or East Asians and Eskimos). The diversity bureaucrats maintain that any observed differences between groups of people must be due to discrimination. The diversity bureaucrats have the solution to discrimination-diversity programs! (i.e. quotas, separate standards, reeducation programs, diversity consultants, etc.) The diversity bureaucrats don't want to even consider or discuss other reasonable explanations for the differences between groups of people.

Reasonable people can argue about how great are the differences, how to measure them, what causes the differences, what are the consequences of the differences and to what degree different groups of people should be treated differently or not. Remember, we are talking about groups of people and not individuals. As Damore suggested an individual woman might be a better engineer than most male engineers, but that would not negate the fact that men as a group tend to be more talented engineers than women as a group and tend to prefer engineering as a career more than women do.

All individuals are equal in a moral sense with the same rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," but that does not mean that all groups of people are the same in their preferences, talents, and average intellectual and physical abilities. People should always be judged first and foremost as individuals and not as a member of a group. That is all that Damore is suggesting and that is what the diversity bureaucrats refuse to even consider. Put forward such an argument and YOU'RE FIRED! :mad:
 

Kasey Jones

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its biological determinism and it has been debunked over and over again... here is a link that explains it pretty well... https://xkcd.com/1357/

Maybe if Google employees had a union he wouldn't have gotten fired...


Otto: Apes don't read philosophy.
Wanda: Yes they do, Otto, they just don't understand it!
 

Kasey Jones

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Carmine Falcone

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Thanks for the link, Gugu. It's a good interview. The list of scholarly articles that Prof. Peterson supplies in the description of the video (click "read more") is even more impressive. Though Damore's critics fault him for making unsubstantiated claims about differences between the sexes, they don't provide any references to support their argument. Peterson provides a long list of scholarly articles that support Damore's arguments.

You do realize that computer programming in the UK from the late 50s to early 60s was predominantly done by (wait for it).... women? It's possible that social or industry constraints may steer contemporary women away from tech. However, to say women inherently lack the intellect sounds a lot to me like when it was conventional wisdom that black people didn't have what it takes to be a successful NFL quarterback or coach. Plus, the author paints women with a broad brush of personality traits, like how women are more neurotic than men. I previously conceded that Damore had some good points but even Stevie Wonder can see dude has some women baggage he needs to work out. Maybe, next time develop your brain AND social skills so you'll know to successfully approach women instead of sublimating that into an anti-diversity manifesto.
 

gugu

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You do realize that computer programming in the UK from the late 50s to early 60s was predominantly done by (wait for it).... women?

You should stop getting your info on gender issues from The Guardian. Not only is this factually false, not even claimed in the article, but we're talking about advanced high achieving engeneering at Google. It does not compare.

However, to say women inherently lack the intellect

That is so typical of people, like most journalists commenting, who have not read the memo. He does not say that nor anything close to that. Go read the memo and pay attention to the curves he provides and what he says about those curves.
 

CaptRenault

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Progessives love SCIENCE! (at least when they think science supports their values). So here are a link to and some excerprts from the responses of four scientists to the Google memo.

The Google Memo: Four Scientists Respond


Professor Lee Jussim

Lee Jussim is a professor of social psychology at Rutgers University and was a Fellow and Consulting Scholar at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (2013-15)....

The author of the Google essay on issues related to diversity gets nearly all of the science and its implications exactly right. Its main points are that: 1. Neither the left nor the right gets diversity completely right; 2. The social science evidence on implicit and explicit bias has been wildly oversold and is far weaker than most people seem to realize; 3. Google has, perhaps unintentionally, created an authoritarian atmosphere that has stifled discussion of these issues by stigmatizing anyone who disagrees as a bigot and instituted authoritarian policies of reverse discrimination; 4. The policies and atmosphere systematically ignore biological, cognitive, educational, and social science research on the nature and sources of individual and group differences. I cannot speak to the atmosphere at Google, but: 1. Give that the author gets everything else right, I am pretty confident he is right about that too; 2. It is a painfully familiar atmosphere, one that is a lot like academia.

Here, I mainly focus on the reactions to the essay on the Gizmodo site, which indirectly and ironically validate much of the author’s analysis. Very few of the comments actually engage the arguments; they just fling insults and slurs. Yes, slurs. In 1960, the most common slurs were insulting labels for demographic groups. In 2017, the most common slurs involve labelling anyone who you disagree with on issues such as affirmative action, diversity, gaps, and inequality as a racist, sexist, homophobe, or bigot.

This starts with the title of the Gizmodo post, which labels the article as a “screed,” which dictionary.com defines as a “rant.”

This essay may not get everything 100% right, but it is certainly not a rant. And it stands in sharp contrast to most of the comments, which are little more than snarky modern slurs. The arrogance of most of the comments reflects exactly the type of smug self-appointed superiority that has led to widespread resentment of the left among reasonable people. To the extent that such views correspond to those at Google, they vindicate the essayist’s claims about the authoritarian and repressive atmosphere there. Even the response by Google’s new VP in charge of diversity simply ignores all of the author’s arguments, and vacuously affirms Google’s commitment to diversity. The essay is vastly more thoughtful, linked to the science, and well-reasoned than nearly all of the comments. If I had one recommendation, it would be this: That, before commenting on these issues, Google executives read two books: John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty and Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind.

Mill: “…unmeasured vituperation employed on the side of the prevailing opinion, really does deter people from professing contrary opinions, and from listening to those who profess them.”
Haidt: “If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you.”

David P Schmitt

Since earning his bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. in personality psychology from the University of Michigan David P. Schmitt has authored or co-authored more than 50 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters...

A Google employee recently shared a memo that referenced some of my scholarly research on psychological sex differences (e.g., personality traits, mate preferences, status-seeking). Alongside other evidence, the employee argued, in part, that this research indicates affirmative action policies based on biological sex are misguided. Maybe, maybe not. Let me explain.

I think it’s really important to discuss this topic scientifically, keeping an open mind and using informed skepticism when evaluating claims about evidence. In the case of personality traits, evidence that men and women may have different average levels of certain traits is rather strong. For instance, sex differences in negative emotionality are universal across cultures; developmentally emerge across all cultures at exactly the same time; are linked to diagnosed (not just self-reported) mental health issues; appear rooted in sex differences in neurology, gene activation, and hormones; are larger in more gender egalitarian nations; and so forth (for a short review of this evidence, see here.)...

Geoffrey Miller

Geoffrey Miller is an evolutionary psychology professor at University of New Mexico. He is the author of The Mating Mind, Mating Intelligence, Spent, and What Women Want. His research has focused on sexual selection, mate choice, human sexuality, intelligence, humor, creativity, personality traits, evolutionary psychopathology, behavior genetics, consumer behavior, evolutionary aesthetics, research ethics, virtue signaling, and Effective Altruism.

For what it’s worth, I think that almost all of the Google memo’s empirical claims are scientifically accurate. Moreover, they are stated quite carefully and dispassionately. Its key claims about sex differences are especially well-supported by large volumes of research across species, cultures, and history. . . .

Here, I just want to take a step back from the memo controversy, to highlight a paradox at the heart of the ‘equality and diversity’ dogma that dominates American corporate life. The memo didn’t address this paradox directly, but I think it’s implicit in the author’s critique of Google’s diversity programs. This dogma relies on two core assumptions:

• The human sexes and races have exactly the same minds, with precisely identical distributions of traits, aptitudes, interests, and motivations; therefore, any inequalities of outcome in hiring and promotion must be due to systemic sexism and racism;
• The human sexes and races have such radically different minds, backgrounds, perspectives, and insights, that companies must increase their demographic diversity in order to be competitive; any lack of demographic diversity must be due to short-sighted management that favors groupthink.

The obvious problem is that these two core assumptions are diametrically opposed...

Debra W Soh

Debra W Soh is a Toronto based science writer who has a PhD in sexual neuroscience from the University of York. Her dissertation used four types of neuroimaging, including structural and functional MRI, to investigate brain differences associated with sexual orientation, paraphilias (or unusual sexual interests), and hypersexuality. You can find her columns in The Globe and Mail, Playboy, LA Times and elsewhere. You can also follow her on Twitter @DrDebraSoh

As a woman who’s worked in academia and within STEM, I didn’t find the memo offensive or sexist in the least. I found it to be a well thought out document, asking for greater tolerance for differences in opinion, and treating people as individuals instead of based on group membership.

Within the field of neuroscience, sex differences between women and men—when it comes to brain structure and function and associated differences in personality and occupational preferences—are understood to be true, because the evidence for them (thousands of studies) is strong. This is not information that’s considered controversial or up for debate; if you tried to argue otherwise, or for purely social influences, you’d be laughed at.
Sex researchers recognize that these differences are not inherently supportive of sexism or stratifying opportunities based on sex. It is only because a group of individuals have chosen to interpret them that way, and to subsequently deny the science around them, that we have to have this conversation at a public level. Some of these ideas have been published in neuroscientific journals—despite having faulty study methodology—because they’ve been deemed socially pleasing and “progressive.” As a result, there’s so much misinformation out there now that people genuinely don’t know what to believe.
No matter how controversial it is or how great the pushback, I believe it’s important to speak out, because if we can’t discuss scientific truths, where does that leave us?
 

CaptRenault

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I am confused as to what the issue here is.
Are some posters saying that he shouldn't have been fired because essentially the first amendment should be extended to the workplace?

I'm definitely not saying that and I think it's important to emphasize that the First Amendment prohibits only the government from censoring speech. "Congress shall make no law ...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."

In general, Google and other employers have the right to regulate the speech of their employees and to fire people for expressing views that the management of the company disapproves of. Nevertheless, for an information company like Google, which prides itself on its openness and support for easy access to almost any kind of information, it is dishonorable to fire someone for respectfully criticizing company policy, especially when the company itself invites such internal criticism and disagreement. As I noted previously, Damore (the memo writer) fucked up-he trusted Google.

Are some saying that his memo is correct? Even if it is, I have some practical objections. It does not apply to the supposed minority of women at Google, most of whom outrank him, who are very talented and have sacrificed a lot of other things in life to work long hours in an incredibly stressful field. I had the displeasure of once working with a militant feminist who was always stereotyping men. I was very glad when she left the company. I certainly didn't think she was correct in the psychobabble nonsense she spouted? People like that are irritating and destructive to morale and productivity...

Yes, some are saying that the memo is more or less correct (for example see the views of the scientists that I posted below). Furthermore, Damore is not some rabid polemicist who harasses his fellow employees. Look at the video interviews with him (like the one Gugu posted). He is a mild mannered, introverted computer engineer. The polemicists are the the Google employees who leaked the internal memo and their supporters outside the company and screamed "Off with his head" and got him fired.
 

Kasey Jones

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I'm definitely not saying that and I think it's important to emphasize that the First Amendment prohibits only the government from censoring speech. "Congress shall make no law ...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."

In general, Google and other employers have the right to regulate the speech of their employees and to fire people for expressing views that the management of the company disapproves of. Nevertheless, for an information company like Google, which prides itself on its openness and support for easy access to almost any kind of information, it is dishonorable to fire someone for respectfully criticizing company policy, especially when the company itself invites such internal criticism and disagreement. As I noted previously, Damore (the memo writer) fucked up-he trusted Google.



Yes, some are saying that the memo is more or less correct (for example see the views of the scientists that I posted below). Furthermore, Damore is not some rabid polemicist who harasses his fellow employees. Look at the video interviews with him (like the one Gugu posted). He is a mild mannered, introverted computer engineer. The polemicists are the the Google employees who leaked the internal memo and their supporters outside the company and screamed "Off with his head" and got him fired.

most scientists claim that it is a load of hogwash, but please, carry on.

I'm still not clear on why blacks don't make good quarterbacks... the same research you cite must have something to say about that as well... please educate me...
 

EagerBeaver

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most scientists claim that it is a load of hogwash, but please, carry on.

I'm still not clear on why blacks don't make good quarterbacks... the same research you cite must have something to say about that as well... please educate me...

There are some very good black QBs in the NFL right now, although admittedly none of the premiere QBs in the NFL over the course of time have been black. Russell Wilson and Dak Prescott are two young black QBs who may change that, depending on how their careers develop. Wilson, in particular, has already won a Super Bowl and has shown flashes of elite status. Prescott just completed one of the best rookie QB seasons in NFL history. He needs to put together a few more great seasons, but he had a sensational rookie season.

Cam Newton was NFL MVP a couple years ago.......he is a little erratic and injury prone but still very good..........
 
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