I think a lot of this has to do with parenting. When crying always gets you everything, you don't learn to work hard or have a debate to get what you want. There's a whole generation of full-grown babies.
I'm not sure whether it's lack of intelligence or a desire for self-gain/self-promotion (seeing as how loads of people proudly plastered their pictures and names in the ensuing twitter debates, trying to paint themselves as brave crusaders for whatever movement they want to lead).
This often involves being deceptive, which would explain both of your points. For many people, status is everything and it doesn't matter how they get there. Selling yourself is often more important than having the actual skills required for a position.
And let's face it: Not everyone at Google needs to be a rocket scientist. We've also seen how shallow Google's hiring practices are.* Ticking check boxes is more important than correct answers, which perfectly fits with everything we're currently seeing.
That's not true. _Everyone_ acts like this, including me and you (except we don't notice it when we do). The key factor is whether or not there's emotion involved in the beliefs that are challenged when presented with facts to the contrary, which then provokes cognitive dissosance. Look up "the backfire effect".
That doesn't invalidate what I said. I said "What disturbs me most about this incident is how many people's first instinct..." I never said that literally every single person's response was like this. Are you trying to argue that there weren't a lot of people doing what I said?
He wasn't silenced in any way. His message reached way more people than he probably ever imagined.
I didn't say anything about literally preventing someone from expressing their views. There were lots of views expressed that equated to saying it was wrong to even try to discuss certain matters.
And let's not forget that he was fired, and many people were approving of that. That's creating, and celebrating, an environment where you should be afraid to express unpopular opinions
However, the main criticism I've seen directed towards the author of the manifesto, is that he contributes to creating a toxic work environment where women feel less welcome, which makes it hard to keep him employed in a company that wants women to feel welcome in engineering. Also that he doesn't understand the need for diversity in modern companies, that he doesn't understand the need for empathy and interpersonal skills in engineering, and that he's wrong about many of his assertions about gender differences (many gender differences are the result of cultural bias, for example).
> I didn't say anything about literally preventing someone from expressing their views.
You said:
> many people's first instinct, when faced with views they strongly disagree with, is to try and suppress those views and the person speaking them
The views weren't suppressed, they were spread, and then criticised. No doubt there are people who want to silence people they disagree with; that is nothing new unfortunately.
Whether his firing was justified or not depends primarily on whether this manifesto indeed contributed to a toxic work environment where women feel less welcome. Many people think it did. And if it did, then it's kinda hard to Google to keep him employed.
That's really the core issue here: is his manifesto intolerant of women in engineering, and does it contribute to intolerance of women in engineering? There's a vital difference between merely expressing an unpopular opinion, and expressing intolerance towards your coworkers. He's not merely supporting an unpopular sports club or liking unpopular music, he is talking about his coworkers. And that changes everything.
I didn't say they were suppressed. I said "try and suppress". Big difference. Also, what you say is equating "suppress" with "silence". They're not the same thing. I have read literally hundreds of comments, across HN and other forums, where people have made comments designed to suppress views they don't like (I've already given examples of the kinds of things I'm talking about, so won't repeat them here). Lots have literally said that people should not be allowed or should be punished for daring to even talk about such topics.
> Also that he doesn't understand the need for diversity in modern companies
If you've been reading these threads on HN, you'd know that many people would dispute that. Lots of people have argued that the memo is pro-diversity.
I read the memo entirely. It was half-baked, ideologically, but also creepy. I've heard what it had to say a million times before and it's still stupid.
The point is, it's neither and I think it deserves a proper dismissal instead of ad-hominems and insults.
Surely there is someone that can perform a point by point analysis and disprove the memo? I have not seen one comment doing that. Not one.
So no, you don't get to say it's stupid and call it a day. Prove it.
That's a pretty strong accusation. What is your evidence for that claim? Show me what I wrote that attempts to do that.
Again, I read the article, many others read the article and wrote detailed responses. It's not my job to point these out. Someone making a stupid argument does not obligate anyone to engage or correct them. A massive popular backlash against a shitty idea isn't "trying to shut it down".
If I submitted an internal memo advocating pedophilia or something everyone would rightfully dismiss me. No one would be obligated to engage with my dumb ass, and you're all acting like that would be some kind of tragedy or moral failing on the part of everyone around me, rather than me for writing a stupid memo in the first place.
You should just say "I think women are inferior" rather than trying to dictate how people approach an incident adjacent to your agenda, just like white nationalists should just come out rather than being coy and hiding behind "free speech" issues.
If the backlash is devoid of logic and facts, consisting mainly of character attacks and shaming....ya, that's "shutting it down". And if that's not enough, how about being fired from your job?
It's amazing how differently people perceive the very same facts.
Also, Google firing him did not shut the argument down. He can happily draft more memos or expand on it. Google Docs is free.
I'd be interested to read a few if you could provide some links. This assumes they exist of course, from the reading I've done on the topic I haven't seen any substantial rebuttal linked anywhere, but I've heard more than one person complain that the only rebuttal they've seen is "sexist!".
I have no particular horse in the race so if you do have content to back up your assertion I'd love to read it.
Can you link to one?
There were many people doing exactly what I said in the HN comment threads, and, for another example, in the comments under George Takei's Facebook post on the incident.