'I see things differently': James Damore on his autism and the Google memo | Hacker News Reader

'I see things differently': James Damore on his autism and the Google memo

theguardian.com

It's kind of ironic that Damore is basically trying to put a diversity/victim spin on his own actions, after deriding such concepts at Google. I'm not buying it. Being on the autism spectrum means having trouble interpreting social signals, but even pretty deeply autistic people can learn to recognize signals like being told flat-out that one's behavior is hurtful. Awareness is not Damore's problem. Persisting despite awareness is a whole different issue, and one that he needs to own up to before any real progress can be made. Because I know many people at various points on the spectrum, I find it offensive that he would use that as an excuse. He's continuing to harm others by feeding into stereotypes and misunderstandings that we should be learning to avoid.

Autism, and mental illness is not an excuse, especially for adults. Obviously it can be more challenging to behave correctly, however you must own up to what you did, that it was wrong, and that you do your best to make it up to the wronged parties.

There's another irony in the article:

"Damore’s girlfriend has agreed to meet only after being assured that, like her, I disagree with her boyfriend’s views."

Unfortunately this has become typical in some parts of the left and that is why you see a resurgent right. Trying to maintain a position by refusing to hear arguments against it is not a good long term strategy and gives moral strength to the other side.

What's ironic there? If you're a conservative you don't want to go blabbing to some liberal rag. In the same way if you're a liberal you probably shouldn't speak to conservative tabloids. All media likes to twist and contort narratives, because it's in their economic best interest to do so. So, no it's not ironic, and I wouldn't blame you for doing the same.

So to extrapolate, you believe that she was reasonably concerned that the Guardian might be a right wing tabloid that would twist her words?

I'm not the GP, but I think being unaware of the Guardian's reputation is rather the norm in the United States.

I consider it normal and reasonable to be unwilling to be interviewed by media sources I consider dishonest and disreputable. For me that, that includes Breitbart. For others, the list would be different, but the concept is the same.

There is zero point in meeting with an interviewer when antagonistic bias is known ahead of time. The resulting interviews cannot be anything other than character assassination.

Could you please expand on why you consider Breibart more dishonest than let's say CNN?

Not leaning towards one or another. Just trying to understand why, given the terrible track record of the two, one could choose one over the other.

That's convenient, so you would support people only willing to be interviewed by sympathetic interviewers who agree with them on controversial topics. How are these things supposed to be worked through if no one is willing to engage in a debate about them?

> How are these things supposed to be worked through if no one is willing to engage in a debate about them?

The first step in getting people to engage in a debate is for them to believe that the people in the debate will be acting in good faith. That's often not true—I wouldn't agree to an interview on Fox News, for instance, because I would have no confidence that they'd be acting in good faith.

Do you think media outlets that lean left act in good faith when they interview controversial figures from the right?

Whataboutism is nonsense, and I am going to demonstrate what it's like to refuse to engage with people acting in bad faith... now.

Crying "whataboutism" is just a way to deflect from charges of hypocrisy.

People who are color blind see things differently too. That doesn't mean red doesn't exist; just that they can't see it.

It should be obvious though that Damore wasn't fired for his views per se. There's probably plenty of people still at Google with similar views. He was fired because he aired views in a way that upset a lot of people, and Google is a business that needs to manage a workplace that's collegial and cooperative. Firing Damore was more practical than firing the 20% of the Google workforce that didn't want to work with him anymore.

Just to expand on that, I want to point out that there's two ways to look at people who choose to air controversial opinions.

1) Say they're wrong. Argue the facts. Point out that historically speaking, similar predictions or theories have been presented by others and none of them have proven to be correct.

2) Point out that in an organization the size of Google, even an organization like Google that hires very academic and smart people, only a percentage of them care to debate a particular set of views. Another (larger) percentage are just going to write you off because they don't have the time or the inclination to discuss that thing; they have too many other things on their plate. So you're kind of a moron for antagonizing xx% of the people you need to work with on a daily basis. You're deliberately breaking the "No Brilliant Jerks" rule. So the professional consequences should be perfectly predictable before you ever opened your mouth, and no one is at fault but you for getting fired.

Point 2 is a red herring. No one is arguing that it wasn't in Google's short term interests to suppress thoughts that were controversial to a large part of it's work force. The debate, at least on the surface, is about whether his arguments have merit.

Underneath all that is the real debate: should we able to express ugly, unpleasant, or unfortunate truths in public as facts? The left lately seems to want certain things to be beyond discussion, and that list seems to grow as time goes on.

> Underneath all that is the real debate: should we able to express ugly, unpleasant, or unfortunate truths in public as facts?

I think "the fact" that Damore continues to air his views in public, and no one is stopping him from doing so, is proof that we have this freedom in spades.

The fact that the people at Google don't want to work with Damore anymore is also freedom. Would you force Googlers to work with someone they disagree with so strongly that they cannot be civil?

Of course he still has the legal right to do it. The US hasn't gone so far yet, as other western countries have, to ban "hate" speech, and he hedged his arguments well enough that it would be hard to ban that kind of talk outright without exposing that you really don't care about the arguments, but that it's really about that he's daring to make them at all. That's why, in my opinion, he draws so much seething hatred - he was too careful about hedging and inviting discussion for the left to be able to dismiss him easily as a dumb retrograde hate monger, but they didn't want to address the arguments on the merits either (yes, I'm aware that there were exceptions, no need to list them, this is about the left as a whole). His speech has been effectively banned because he's been made a pariah and dismissed.

Of course the left hasn't completely won yet, so he's found a home in some parts of the right. But that's not the point, it's about what the left ultimately wants, and what we should expect if it wins. This serves as an example - the left is happy and comfortable when certain controversial points are suppressed and their advocates exiled.

"Would you force Googlers to work with someone they disagree with so strongly that they cannot be civil?"

Why can't they be civil? Is there a line where uncivil behavior is permitted because someone's thoughts offend you?

Uncivil is defined as being discourteous or impolite. I thought the right was all about ending PC culture and speaking your mind. Trump ran an entire campaign on being uncivil. Where is the line on uncivil behavior? Is it only appropriate for political enemies and campaigns? Is it okay to Twitter rant about various American’s with whom you disagree? It used to be impolite to bring up politics at work at all..

Isn't it the left that has aggressively pushed politics into the workplace under the guise of fair treatment and equality?

> should we able to express ugly, unpleasant, or unfortunate truths in public as facts?

Truths, yes, but what Damore had was pseudoscientific guff.

> People who are color blind see things differently too. That doesn't mean red doesn't exist; just that they can't see it.

Right - color blindness is a recognized disability.

> He was fired because he aired views in a way that upset a lot of people, and Google is a business that needs to manage a workplace that's collegial and cooperative. Firing Damore was more practical than firing the 20% of the Google workforce that didn't want to work with him anymore.

Could it be argued that Damore's method in airing his views was in fact due to his being on the Autism spectrum, and therefore protected under the ADA as a disability (just like color blindness)?

If so, would that mean that Google's firing of Damore - due to an action resulting from his disability - might have violated the "reasonable accommodation" requirement of the ADA?

To be clear, I'm not stating that I believe this is the case; I'm just considering other angles from which to view the events.

I know several people on the autism spectrum. They all say Damore is just an asshole and are frustrated that so many neurotypical people are ignorant of the difference.

[IANAL]

That's an interesting question. I think Google would have a reasonable argument toward damore creating hostile environment toward a group with a protected status. They then could argue he was unfit for employment. Obviously a jury would then decide, but historical precedent says that no it would not constitute a failure to provide reasonable accommodation because he was unfit for employment.

"Nevertheless, some employees with ASD and related conditions continue to struggle to show that they are qualified for employment.90 Courts continue to assert that the ability to communicate appropriately with customers and coworkers is an essential function of the jobs in question.91 Particularly in cases dealing with employees who have contact with the public or collaborative interaction with colleagues, communication challenges typical for those with autism have been sufficient to derail class coverage.92 This may prove to be a significant hurdle in litigation for employees with ASD in the future."

source: http://harvardcrcl.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Hensel.pdf

If we're talking about what laws should be, I would prefer to see something more about requirements for a good faith effort to help the employee through sensitivity training etc.

Very creative! I'm a lawyer, but not an ADA lawyer. Interesting idea though.

Cool!

I've always been interested in law, but it doesn't much interest me as a career. I am interested in going back to school with the intent of becoming an attorney later in life, though, so it's encouraging to hear that my crazy ideas aren't completely off-base.

I don't know why, but nowadays more often than not I see people ostracised and punished for different beliefs rather than discussed and argued with. I know firing and shutting people down is the easier thing to do in the short term, but discussing and understanding, maybe even convincing or reaching a consensus, is something really good in the long term. It all feels like the balanced, centric attitude has been lost for the exclusive extreme right or left approach. How did we get here?

So his beliefs could be constituted creating a hostile environment for other employees. It's not a new thing. You're free to share your ideas, except the idea that your other employees should not be there because of a protected status such as religion, race, gender etc. It's a liability for Google to keep that employee on if they are unwilling to recant the statement as they would be enabling discrimination. It's been this way since 1964.

But... there was a great deal of discussion about this. You can still find the threads here, every possible aspect of this was argued up and down. It doesn't require an "extreme" approach to disagree with him or his assertions, although it is true that most people who agreed with, or disagreed with, Damore's essay didn't bother to actually read it, or engage with the content. The extremists showed up first, as they tend to, and strawman fought strawman for the high ground, then came the more reasoned, well-researched and thought out criticisms.

Google, however, is a business and isn't obligated to "reach a consensus" on anything, or to try to convince an employee about anything regarding their political views. What Google did was a business decision, because the bad publicity his essay created and its effect on Google's work environment.

We still need to remember that Google bills itself as a company open to new and challenging ideas. Leadership matters and even if the decision to fire was based purely on publicity and work environment concerns, Google showed it cares more about a certain ideology and keeping its employees happy in their ideology than actually having debate.

It is possible that Google is hypocritical in that the public culture it projects doesn't match its actual corporate culture, but they would hardly be the first company for which that was the case.

But it's also possible that Damore wouldn't have been fired if the memo he published hadn't gone viral. I don't know one way or the other but that seemed to me to be more about damage control than suppression of political views.

There’s absolutely nothing new about that. On major topics there were public witch hunts and blacklists, ex McCarthyism.

This guy didn’t engage in debate though, he posted a memo that really doesn’t open a door to dialogue. And as someone who runs an organization, the workplace is not the place for an open debate on gender and diversity. That’s only appropriate for a closed door session.

His decision to quickly go on to make a round of videos with Alt-right activists and anti-feminists spoke volumes in my opionion. He didn’t try to engage with people with alternate views, he engaged with people that hold even more extreme views.

Genuinely concerning that people are trying to shut down your discussion, right after supporting a complaint that people are trying to shut down discussion.

What does "open a door to dialogue" even mean?

Putting up a note on your roommates door to complain about their loud sex then leaving does not invite a discussion. Asking if you can talk about it later does.

Why has this been flagged? Is there something wrong about having a discussion on HN about these topics?

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