Hacker News Reader

Comment by ejlangev | Hacker News Reader

He doesn't have a monopoly on truth, that sort of presupposes that he was completely right and handled the situation perfectly. Perhaps he'll feel differently when the dust settles as another commenter suggested.

View on HN

He handled the situation poorly IMO. Didn't consider the consequences of what he was saying true or not and didn't present it in an appropriate way for how sensitive the issue was. Ultimately that's a self defeating way to get your points across.

Showing up to a photo shoot in a Goolag shirt also just undermines him as a person. It's totally hyperbolic and ridiculous and will further discredit him in other people's minds because it's an insane overreaction to make that comparison.

Again, what should he apologize for?

You seem to really want him to repent for something. What is it?

How about for the things in his memo that were not truth? Sure, there's a bit of truth in it. There's much more that's debatable at best, and some that's pretty clearly false. How about for the totally off-topic nastiness toward the left, and diversity advocates, and others? Even in a memo about the driest of technical minutiae, comments like "honest discussion is being silenced" and "X tends to deny science" (with not even an attempt at proof on either point) would be worthy of censure. The memo was clearly written in a style more likely to escalate conflict than to create any positive outcome, so the reaction when Damore or one of his cronies leaked it beyond its supposed original distribution was entirely predictable. If you do something that simple diligence and common sense say would lead to a massive productivity-destroying flame war, you have something to apologize for.

> "honest discussion is being silenced"

I'm pretty sure that being fired - having pitchfork crowds go after you and people who agree - is close enough to being silenced.

The memo was written before that, and one extreme case does not prove a general trend. If one person is ejected from a concert or rally or trial for being disruptive, does that prove there's a general conspiracy against people with the same beliefs?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com