Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore

I do think it will come to pass that Google will lose a unlawful termination lawsuit (or settle)

This engineer was further, exploring the question in what appears to be a very scientific manner based on the latest academic research into these questions, as best as I can discern that appears accurate.

This entire conversation is tainted by so many numerous other items that it is almost impossible to discuss without bringing in emotion, tangential arguments, anecdotes, and just random statements. This really is a category 5 hurricane of our current political/cultural battles brought to light.

I'm coming from a very liberal perspective, and I found it really hard to agree with others on how this is a very sexist memo. It appears that this young man is truly trying to explore the nature of these issues, and how it applied to his former company - who ostensibly wanted to encourage curiosity and a range of discussion.

I often find myself very upset at the fringe right for many of their ideas, but I've usually treated the far left (are they fringe now?) as more just annoying and irrelevant and harmless (the anti-vaxxers(maybe not harmless here), safe space, microaggression proponents) I really think the loose liberal group - that I self select to be a member of - really screwed the pooch on this one. This whole debacle does appear to be a rush to judgement and virtue-signaling. Ugh - I'm not usually on the side of the alt-right/conservatives, but on the merits of this issue - there is a point they are making that is important. HOWEVER and this is important - all the other awful truly sexist and misogynist things that is part of the alt-right is detestable, but as famously said elsewhere - This is not the droid you are looking for.

The reality is that most people go with the majority opinion even when the facts go against them.

The memo was lambasted in the media and I didn't really read it and I myself thought that it was hair-brained and while it might have some kernels of facts or link to some sources, it was highly opinionated and the screed of a misogynist. I believed this because EVERYONE was saying this.

Watching this video, I was wrong, way wrong. The only way to know for sure was to read the thing. If I had, I would have seen it and had my opinion changed.

So few people actually read the memo. The science used to back it's claims is roughly and mainly solid evidence. It asks for a conversation.

Any time you have people using morality to object to repeatable scientific literature and shut down a conversation even before it can start, you have to notice and question it. The people against even discussing this topic are more like the Anti-Vaxxers than they would like to admit. The see their kids with incurable, terrible afflictions and are looking for something, anything to blame.

Human nature took millions of years to evolve to what we see today in an environment that was far different from our own. We accept that humans sitting and typing all day will get backpain and maybe carpal-tunnel syndrome. Yet, we somehow thing that millions of years of sexual selection for different features between the genders would yield different biology, that could lead to different biases toward occupations and reaction to stimuli?

I don't presume to have an answer but, I think it's a perfectly reasonable line of questioning, especially if there is relevant, well regarded research on the topic. What people are afraid of is the outcome.

Google specifically and tech in general tend to select for the top percentile in specific dimensions. If there is any differences between groups, that top percentile will show it to an extreme degree. It isn't hard to imagine that might be partially the cause of what is going on. Furthermore, societies and social norms form around patterns that are in the environment already. Social norms and competition in the environment that those social norms create can reinforce those social norms to work against outside or atypical competitors in those social environments.

I'd like to see more of what Google is learning from this incident from either the 'diversity director' or the CEO directly. Getting employee culture all together and efficiently cooperating is theoretically one of the highest priorities of the top management and why they get paid ridiculous sums of money. Although I guess it's fine they do most of that work out of public eye, the very public perception is a big part of it (and recruiting and customer relations etc).

Also, I was glad to find I was right that James Damore had been listening a lot to Jordan Peterson but I had to wait until the end of the interview just to get my 'I WAS RIGHT!' moment.

Thanks James, for being the canary in the goldmine.