Comment by joelrunyon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by joelrunyon | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

C'mon man - take that argument to youtube. He's done plenty of press - maybe some you don't like - but also some very mainstream ones -

WSJ - https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-i-was-fired-by-google-15024...

Reason - http://reason.com/archives/2017/08/14/an-interview-with-jame...

Bloomberg - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-10/fired-goo...

He explicitly says he doesn't endorse "alt-right" ideology - http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/15/technology/culture/james-dam...

The guy is a introverted programmer, not a media strategist.

Debate his memo on the merits + stop doing the name-calling - it actually has the opposite desired outcome. If he's really wrong, take apart his piece line-by-line and show how. If it's so clear-cut and he's obviously racist, it shouldn't be too hard.

BTW, for reference purposes, here's the full memo - http://diversitymemo.com/ - make sure you reference this one and not the Gizmodo one that took out the various citations.

> He's done plenty of press - maybe some you don't like

I didn't say "don't like", I said "hate groups and extremists". Yes, he's also talking to anyone else who will give him a microphone, but those aren't the ones that matter. And what he professes and what he does in practice are two different things.

> If he's really wrong, take apart his piece line-by-line and show how.

Leaving aside how many people have already done so, that is precisely the kind of time-wasting that people who keep dredging up old arguments enjoy. Not a single one of the "arguments" in the memo is new; they're the tired old ones that have been hashed out a thousand times over.

Please link to the extremists you're referencing.

Also - please link to a line-by-line breakdown by someone refuting each point (and importantly: refuting to his actual words, not insinuations of what he might be thinking).

Citations are important and helpful to a productive debate.

Already done elsewhere in this thread; the links from that article in turn provide a mountain of detailed responses.

Also consider whether you hold all refutations of random screeds to the same standard of evidence, or if this one somehow deserves more credence. The memo itself was written by a random engineer with no particular qualifications or expertise or interest in past work on the topic, but somehow anyone wishing to respond to it must write an academic paper with citations? And furthermore, somehow a "line-by-line breakdown" is required, rather than, for instance, finding and refuting the actual points made as in any other normal argument?

Very well said! Damore is not a seasoned press veteran, and even if he was it wouldn't matter because press veterans are constantly being attacked too. I thought he did great in the CNN interview despite being out of his element. Just an introverted, earnest person trying to defend himself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com