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Comment by Consultant32452 | Hacker News Reader

I feel like the progressive left THRUST Damore and anyone who might have similar thoughts/questions into the welcoming arms of the alt-right. I'm disappointed with the "Goolag" t-shirts, but he did lose his livelihood, had his professional reputation destroyed, and only a limited time to cash out. So this socially awkward nerd did what any sensible person would do, rode the wave that was sent his way the best he could. Consider his professional options compared to a standard "former Googler." They destroyed him, it was terrible.

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As someone who was an actual classmate of Damore, I can attest to his lack of character in this regard. I understand that the tone of his memo made it appear to have come from a thoughtful humanist, but this was a careful deception. In every social or professional encounter I've had with him, he's at least made somebody (particularly women) uncomfortable. In several cases these incidents led to meetings and reprimands. I am certain that he was already fully in the alt right camp, and did not say so aloud because he is a smart person capable of recognizing bad PR.

Well, maybe you have insider knowledge about how much he actually disagrees with those on the left at Google--or maybe you don't.

But either way, those who are fully in the alt-left camp at Google seem to consider themselves completely free to make anyone who disagrees with them uncomfortable and to go far beyond that: to force them to undergo indoctrination "training", or to be fired outright to make examples of them to others who might be tempted to openly question leftist dogma that may or may not actually be correct.

At Google, those on the far left don't seem to feel the need for "careful deception" when it comes to expressing their opinions of/to coworkers they disagree with. They don't act as though they are required to make those with different opinions "feel safe". They have every reason for confidence, because "safety" just means "privilege": We get to blame and criticize you, but you aren't allowed to respond, because we (not you) are entitled to "safety".

Only when it comes to things that the right is is indisputably on the wrong side of history and hasn't figured it out yet (gay rights, gender rights, etc).

Its not like the alt left yet to preach about communism or unions or taxation with the same privileged safety. Subjects like this get a lot of reasonable discussion from both sides at left leaning companies.

But when it comes to things like diversity? And you are a company full of the most intelligent people in the world? Yeah, sorry if you haven't realized that "unconscious bias" is a real thing, you don't deserve a safe space to question it, you are being wilfully ignorant.

>Only when it comes to things that the right is is indisputably on the wrong side of history and hasn't figured it out yet (gay rights, gender rights, etc).

Except that's not how it works the other direction. You mentioned communism. The left is indisputably on the wrong side of history here and hasn't figured it out yet. And yet somehow the right is still willing to engage in reasonable discussion.

A person could take a generous reading of Damore's memo and find plenty of common ground. It doesn't matter if he's right about the differences between genders being biological vs environmental. Survey after survey suggests that part of the reason why women avoid/leave tech is long hours and inflexible schedules. Since men are more willing to accept long hours and inflexible schedules (again, could be socially constructed) then Google is currently set up to maximally benefit men (patriarchy). To help with this situation Damore suggests some new policies like creating more part time positions and offering more telecommute opportunities.

But instead of trying to find common ground and move forward with some policies which might create an environment maximally beneficial to everyone, the ENTIRE NATION needed to stop what we were doing so this socially awkward nobody with no power could be publicly flogged over some potentially incorrect ideas about diversity policy.

> And yet somehow the right is still willing to engage in reasonable discussion.

This is a joke right? Proposing universal health care, paid maternity leave, or raising the minimum wage leads to screams of "SOCIALISM!" and any explicit support of socialism leads to screams about the millions of people killed by Stalin.

There is no reasonable discourse about the idea of weak-link based cultures (rather than strong-link), or government-mandated egalitarianism.

When was the last time you saw a random nobody make national headlines news and have their career ruined for proposing universal healthcare? Yes, debates get heated, but the right generally does not try to destroy you in this way for being "wrong."

he did lose his livelihood, had his professional reputation destroyed

I'm frankly ashamed at the behavior of my classmates, who were so enthusiastically throwing him under the bus, without really knowing anything about him. I found it very odd that people who had no basis of judging his software engineering skills had very strong opinions about them.

I'm reminded of a documentary film about North Korea, where during one segment of a meeting, people went up to the front of the room and took turns condemning the United States, and were cheered the more fanatical they sounded. There is indeed "thought-crime" in the United States, and this category is at times conveniently expanded to to encompass any questioning of the new orthodoxy at all, with no basis but irrational, emotional ones.

Team interaction is a software engineering skill. The ability to work with a diverse set of people and bring them together rather than disparaging and dividing them is a software engineering skill. I would rather have a good programmer who got along with my team than a great one that wrote such memos.

Can we differentiate between firing Damore and participating in a nation-wide metaphorical public hanging?

> Can we differentiate between firing Damore and participating in a nation-wide metaphorical public hanging?

Yes. Starting with the first is a thing that actually happened, and the second is not, so it's not worth talking about.

I'm sorry, but some random nobody at Google having some wrong ideas about diversity policy does not deserve to be national front page news. James Damore is about as meek and mild as it gets. He's not some David Duke monster. None of us should have ever heard his name. This was a public assassination of a powerless nobody for cheap political points. That's the part that I have a problem with. I have no problem at all with Google firing him. I have a problem with the way the national media and general public behaved.

This was a public assassination of a powerless nobody for cheap political points. That's the part that I have a problem with.

This willingness to "un-person" someone for reasons of ideological fervor -- this is precisely why I, as a liberal, feel so alienated from so much of the far-left politics going around nowadays. I've personally been a target of such things. (I can't discuss it, but I can say that it was not gender based.)

It's such attitudes and the unreasonable fury behind them which most worries me.

As a conservative I share your feeling of alienation, because look at how the right has responded. It's given us Trump which is really gross. I fear we're in a very precarious position both culturally and politically and I wish I had some insight into how to move back towards a place where we can have rational intelligent discussions again. For the meantime I think we'll all be relegated to the "intellectual dark web," a phrase coined by I believe Eric Weinstein, the left-leaning professor who had to resign out of fear for his life after refusing to stay home during "no whites" day at Evergreen college.

Actually, that was Bret. Eric is his brother.

> I'm sorry, but some random nobody at Google having some wrong ideas about diversity policy does not deserve to be national front page news.

Claims of anti-white-male discrimination in tech are man-bites-dog stories, and naturally get more attention for that reason, plus, Damore immediately sought out media with political biases to maximally promote that kind of story. It becoming national front page news and getting the degree of attention it did in part just novelty, and in very large part the foreseeable result of how Damore soguht to promote his story.

> This was a public assassination

No, it wasn't. It was public, but there was no assassination.

No, it wasn't. It was public, but there was no assassination.

It sure looked like an intellectually dishonest, ideologically fervent character assassination to me.

can you elaborate on what you mean by intellectually dishonest?

Amongst other things, the original publication of the memo by Gizmodo stripped it of all the charts, citations and references Damore included.

>Damore immediately sought out media with political biases to maximally promote that kind of story

Was this before or after he'd already made national headlines for having written an "anti-diversity manifesto?"

If you don't think that the social media / internet whipping that Damore and frankly anyone else that steps outside of several key echo chambers gets isn't real then I strongly doubt how good of faith you are in this conversation.

Then perhaps Google shouldn't ask for feedback on their courses. Seems rather disingenuous to say the least.

> Then perhaps Google shouldn't ask for feedback on their courses. Seems rather disingenuous to say the least.

My impression is that he circulated his “feedback” among employees. I would be surprised if that was requested by Google.

He was encouraged like anyone else who took the course to provide feedback after a diversity program that he attended.

That's how it started.

Software engineering skills are immaterial if you are making a considerable portion of a company with tens of thousands of employees uncomfortable and less productive. There is no way he was a net positive.

Team coherence and psychological safety are important, just as important as engineering skill. This is especially true at a large company.

> but he did lose his livelihood, had his professional reputation destroyed, and only a limited time to cash out.

Why are you writing this in the passive, as if this is an unfortunate thing that happened to him? He did all of that to himself. That memo created a hostile workplace and Google had no choice but to fire him. The outcome here isn't terrible, it's exactly what should have happened.

I asked Damore whether he expected the memo to blow up in his face, implying that he should have. His reply to me indicated he barely understood the question I was asking him. I got the impression he was naive, and a bit too eager to share his Jordan Petersonisms. I really don't think he knew. However, later on, in his Rubin Report interview, he did know exactly which excerpts got him in trouble.

Nope. 100% disagree with you. Nobody should be fired for speaking out and/or starting a meaningful conversation. The opposite is censorship.

Creating a hostile workplace is not “meaningful conversation”. The memo constituted pretty blatant harassment of all his female colleagues. You don’t have the right to say whatever you want. People absolutely should be fired for harassing and discriminating against their colleagues (which is effectively what the memo was). It’s toxic and incredibly hurtful and cannot be tolerated.

An hostile workplace is one firing an employee for the mere act of sharing an opinion. As the memo was not directly addressed to any female and did not insult them it is clearly not harassment. Questioning the hiring policy is not like attacking people directly. This is sad to see how much everything got conflated in an angry prêt-à-penser ideology that justify every of its excesses against the non believers.

No you're right, he didn't address harass a single coworker. Instead he harassed all of the women he work with at the same time. Just because he didn't name names doesn't mean it's not harassment; he deliberately insulted an entire demographic of people, and then tried to pretend it was "scientific" when it was just a load of bullshit, as if that makes it any better.

If his memo was railing against, say, the Irish, would you still think he wasn't harassing any of his Irish colleagues?

> any female

Now I understand. Go back to redpill please.

> If his memo was railing against, say, the Irish, would you still think he wasn't harassing any of his Irish colleagues?

If an entreprise I work in would start things such as saying "there is not enough Irish in the entreprise", have a skewed hiring process towards Irish, imposes me lessons about how to behave around Irish, and forbid the use of French even when only French speakers are around, yes I would totally support someone (of every nationality) asking the hierarchy what is going on. Or I may even do it myself.

The only case it would be acceptable is of course a company which makes money based in Irish culture and language, which then require these specific people to be hired. But on the women side of the things, as I consider them totally equals to men and thus apt to do the same technical jobs as men granted we speak of the same education level, I don’t see why they should be favored over men. And some women in my lab totally think that way too. One actually told me she hates this type of policies because it kinda lowered her work to get her job (not that’s easy either to succeed as a man).

> Nobody should be fired for speaking out and/or starting a meaningful conversation

Do you also strongly disagree with the concept of at-will employment?

If not, how do you reconcile the concept of at-will employment with this statement?

You really think the memo was "starting a meaningful conversation"? Did you even read it?

> Nobody should be fired for speaking out and/or starting a meaningful conversation.

Do you not live on the same planet as the rest of us ?

Because it is common, legal, socially popular and frankly the status quo for companies to fire you based on what you say during work time. After all companies are paying you during that time to represent them and their values.

Society actually expects people to be fired based on what they say during work.

For better or worse, this is precisely the sort of freedom of association that at-will employment allows.

I think it's probably for the better myself.

The memo was leaked, and its (willful?) misrepresentation created a "hostile" environment. Google did have a choice.

What do you mean, leaked? He sent it to the company. Whether or not it was released outside of the company has no bearing on whether it created a hostile environment. In fact, it was "leaked" precisely because it was so offensive.

And what misrepresentation? You're deluding yourself. The memo as written is what created the hostile work environment, not any "misrepresentation".

It was leaked company-wide (outside a forum dedicated to the subject) before publically.

Few people apparently read the memo.

Even at this point, he would likely be easily able to get another engineering job if he wished. So I think you are vastly overstating the damage to his career. For sure, if he had admitted he was wrong or at least naive, and shut up about it, he'd have no problems at all. By doubling down on his statements and participating in lawsuits against Google, he's making himself less and less attractive to future employers. But you severely overestimate the impact this will actually have on his prospects.

But if we're talking about consequences of his actions, what about all the women whose careers he was advocating for destroying? Who, had he continued to work at Google, would have felt entirely unwelcome, untrusted, and unrespected? What is the impact on their careers when they face constant questioning of their very legitimacy merely because of their sex?

Based on your comments it's quite clear that you either did not read his memo or do not understand statistics. Secondly, even if you take the most egregious possible interpretations of every sentence he wrote and try to take them out of context as much as possible to put them in a bad light, the national outcry is still completely unnecessary and disgusting. Fine, fire him, but he's about as meek and mild as they get, not some David Duke monster. He should've never made the news.

> what about all the women whose careers he was advocating for destroying?

Would you kindly provide a source for this? Preferably from the memo itself?

For a company supposedly full of smart people, you'd think they'd be able to gracefully handle so called "problematic" views like Damore's.

You are not allowed to make protected groups feel harassed or discriminated against. Women are a protected group.

Its a federal workplace law. A company will correctly fire you if you cause women to feel harassed or discriminated. Peoples understanding of whats allowable needs to catch up with the implications of the laws.

That is true. But I ask you this: do companies hire less technically capable engineers to boost diversity numbers? Do you believe that it does not happen at all, in any sense?

If you think that this does not happen, then how do companies boost the numbers of non-traditional candidates?

Google, as smart as they are, should be able to easily and conclusively prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this does not happen. Yet they resort to silencing.

> Google, as smart as they are, should be able to easily and conclusively prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this does not happen. Yet they resort to silencing.

You’re suggesting that they should prove a negative. The burden of proof is on the party that accuses them of a given issue.

No, I'm suggesting that they aren't smart at handling certain topics.

His views _as stated_ necessarily meant _some_ women he worked with weren't qualified to be his coworkers because of their gender.

You have a right to free speech, not to alienate your coworkers.

Could you point out that specific passage? As I read it he specifically went out of his way to say that all of the women he worked with were qualified.

Two sections:

- In the "personality differences" section, Damore repeats broad stereotypes about behavior that might make women less interested or less effective in tech jobs. He admits these are small effects and shouldn't be used to judge individuals, but goes on to propose policy changes that would impact individuals based on the stereotypes. Institutionalizing assumptions about womens' interests and capabilities is exactly what labor laws are designed to avoid.

- His section about discriminatory practices specifically suggests that there has been a lower bar for "diversity candidates", implying some of his more diverse co-workers shouldn't be there.

1. There's another way to interpret this which is that masculine interests and capabilities are already institutionalized (patriarchy). The changes he suggests create a more gender neutral environment where everyone is capable of maximal success. I'm less interested in how labor laws are currently interpreted than I am in trying to find a system that maximally benefits the most people.

2. Yes, his section about discriminatory practices does accuse Google of being guilty of the bigotry of lowered expectations. But that doesn't make Damore or the memo bigoted. Context is important here, he just came out of diversity training classes and was asked his opinion. This memo is in direct response to presumably having been trained to hire in a discriminatory way. It's possible Damore misinterpreted his training, but that's different than making him a bigot.

And further, even if you take the most egregious interpretation of these writings, take everything out of context, and try to paint it in the worst light possible, the reaction is still unreasonable. I'm not talking about him getting fired. That's fine, Google can fire him for wearing the wrong tie as far as I'm concerned, so they can surely fire him for potentially questionable opinions. The position in my original post is about the national media and general public. Fire him sure, but is this really so bad that the entire nation needed to be brought in to witness his public flogging? This is a socially awkward nobody with no power who might have some bad ideas about diversity policy, not David Duke on some white nationalist crusade.

He literally says that those hiring practices can lower the bar.

Sure, maybe he's saying that the bar for white/Asian men is higher than intended rather than that the bar for women and minorities is lower than intended, but you can't honestly argue that he isn't saying that women and minorities could be clearing a lower bar than white/Asian men.

If the hiring practices do in fact lower the bar, should he still be prohibited from saying that?

Was he?

That's your argument!

It's explicitly _not_ my argument! :)

"You have a right to free speech, not to alienate your coworkers."

Precisely! So that is your argument for why prohibiting him from saying that was legitimate (firing somebody for behaviour X is pretty much the definition of a company prohibiting behaviour X, I mean, what else can a company do?).

He wasn't prohibited from saying anything.

I'm sorry, but you sound like you're using double-speak. If Google has indeed lowered the bar for some minorities then it's Google who is exhibiting the soft bigotry of lowered expectations, not Damore for simply pointing it out. If Damore has simply incorrectly interpreted Google's hiring policy, then Damore is still not a bigot based on this statement. Damore went out of his way to specify that all of his coworkers were qualified and offered suggested policies which would attract more women without the bigotry he interpreted in the current hiring practices.

Damore did not specify that all his coworkers were qualified.

Damore believed Google lowered the bar, hence the statements I've made explaining how he offended his coworkers.

It is reasonable to believe Google _hasn't_ lowered the bar, and if you did, you would be offended by a long document warning about gender-biased consequences of lowering the bar.

I'm not sure how productive this thread is. I'm very surprised by your repeated assertions that there's direct textual evidence I'm mistaken, yet you're willing to accuse me of bad faith repeatedly, instead of just correcting me.

So I'm not afraid to eat crow when it's due. I've re-read the memo and you're right, in the memo he did not specifically state that everyone was qualified. I must have been thinking about an interview I saw of him.

I agree with you that it's reasonable to believe that Google _hasn't_ lowered the bar, but I don't see what difference that makes. There is a very applicable quote here by Albert Maysles, "Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance." With that in mind, I would like to plainly state my position here. I personally don't find Damore's memo to be unsettling, even though I disagree with some of it. If it were my company, I might have stopped at a firm one-on-one in HR with him. But I don't have all the details available internally and it's not my company. I fully support Google's right to fire him over the memo.

The problem I have is that a nobody with no power was publicly destroyed for cheap political points by the national media and general public. None of us here should even be having this discussion because a random nobody at Google with some incorrect ideas about diversity should never make national headlines with phrases like, "anti-diversity manifesto." This is a random socially awkward super-nerd, not David Duke.

The letter does bother me and I would have fired him, but I share some sympathy for having this blow up on a world stage. Is there any good timeline on how that happened? I'm pretty sure the leak (not the firing) is what made it national news... Do we know yet how that happened or how it circulated internally before that?

I think the thing that makes me more sympathetic is that the memo was written in response to him being asked his opinion on the diversity hire training he'd just received. Rightly or wrongly he clearly felt the diversity training was bigoted against him. I feel it's unfair to go out of your way to ask someone's opinion and then fire them for having the "wrong" one. I'm willing to grant someone a lot of leeway if they're genuinely trying to respond to a direct query. Conversely, it's also possible he went on a mini-crusade, in which case I'd definitely have fired him.

With regard to national news, I believe you are correct that the leak is what got it into the national news, not the firing. But that doesn't change the equation. The 4th estate is powerful and I believe it grossly misused its power here.

Yeah, once this got out to the news, it was pretty much guaranteed that this memo was the first thing anyone would know about this guy. I agree that's not "fair" in an objective sense -- everyone should get to learn from their mistakes, especially if they were made in a "safe" space where feedback was encouraged.

That's why I'm very curious exactly how this got distributed early on. Did someone take private feedback and socialize it? Or was feedback always a public bulletin board, where there's some shared responsibility on both readers and writers to think about the context? Or did Damore socialize it independently to prove support for his ideas?

If feedback was private, I think HR could take a firm line about what policies and principles Damore needs to adopt (at least at the workplace) to participate in his employment community, without helping his name get published with this memo (and possibly even without firing him). But the moment it got published changed the stakes for everyone involved, and not just due to PR. It's fair to ask: "can I require my female and minority employees to work with someone who has asserted that biological differences make them less likely to succeed?"

As far as the media goes, they've done what they're paid to do and socialize the most extreme opinions (most rejecting but some supporting Damore). I think that sucks for society but is a much bigger problem than this case.

I urge you read the memo yourself.

He said Google lowers the false negative rate for women.

From a statistics point of view, this statement is dispositive: "...decrease the false negative rate, not increase the false positive rate."

The interaction between type I and type II errors virtually always have an inverse relationship. You cannot decrease one without increasing the other. It is, for example, one of the difficulties in making good medical diagnostic tests.

P.S. snarky commentary such as 'read the memo yourself', implying I'm lying about having read it, doesn't contribute to civil discussion.

> The interaction between type I and type II errors virtually always have an inverse relationship.

If you're adjusting a dial, yes. But hiring is complex, and having more time to evaluate candidates means you can do a better job. Spending more effort is a simple way to improve false negatives and false positives. It's entirely plausible that a company might have extra time budgeted for double-checking resumes from certain groups.

He never stated that anywhere.

There was a confusingly-written part that I've seen a lot of people misinterpret in that particular way. My understanding of what he was trying to argue was this:

Imagine you have a skill-based RPG, where you gain skill in some task only by doing it and men and women are completely identical in every single way. Now imagine that more women enjoy alchemy, but more men prefer to spend their time mining. In this game, because of how skill gain works, if you look for really talented alchemists, most of your candidates will be women, even though the sexes are every bit as good as each other.

From a statistics point of view, this statement is dispositive: "...decrease the false negative rate, not increase the false positive rate."

I'm not clear why this is being down voted, this was drilled pretty hard into my head the first time I had a job that relied on stats.

I am reasonably mathy and I don't understand the statement. That plus the topic -- sexism in tech generally, especially Damore -- makes me think the motivation for down voting it is probably "political." ie it sounds like it could be supporting Damore's position, much of the world has decided he is an evil sexist pig etc.

I was reasonably mathy too, but stats was pretty different and I only took a couple semesters of it. It wasn't until I was forced to interact with it in a job setting that the inverse relationship between type I & II errors became really apparent to me. Any time I would crank up settings to reduce type I error, keeping all other things the same, type II error would invariably creep up... and v. versa

Then when looking in to it, I saw a lot of the examples given from the medical industry as GP alludes to, where this is a real big problem (e.g. if your test is 99.999% accurate, but has a 0.001% false positive rate, then if your disease actually only affects 1/1000000 people then the overwhelming majority of people who your test select are actually healthy).

And then I went back and actually read the relevant sections on the stats textbooks for my courses and learned that

(a) it was actually in there, and (b) evidently my stats courses were way, way too easy to pass

As for the reply, I think I figured out why it was downvoted. It was a double-post, and the intended GGP was here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16398560

Where it makes much more sense.

Alas, this is the 1st time I posted it.

There was a heavy bias to down voting all of my comments for the first 4-6 hours, which evened out to the opposite over time. I usually see this pattern in gender-related threads

FWIW, I upvoted your comment for being mathematically correct, even though I was a bit confused as you meant to reply to someone else.

If I believe my employer is discriminating against women, or against black people, that requires that some of my male or non-black coworkers were hired over more capable women or black people.

Should anyone alleging that kind of discrimination be fired? Because they tend not to be.

He has no agency? He chose to speak up and then he chose to go down the path he did. It is an impressive feat of mental gymnastics to both kinda sorta acknowledge the alt-right might not be a great group of guys but then also claim Damore had no choice but to pull into that port in a storm of his own making. Allow me to pour out a beaker of Soylent for the poor, downtrodden white man.

It's a despicable thing to destroy someone over an idea, despite the contents of that idea.

I think tech workers are easy targets. For instance, we've all heard about the need for diversity in tech, but never hear about accredited investors being < 6 % female and < 1 % black.

> It's a despicable thing to destroy someone over an idea, despite the contents of that idea.

Well, if I find out anyone holds nazi ideologies I'm happy to socially "destroy" them over those ideas. I agree that the government shouldn't punish them for those ideas, but I think individual citizens and entities have every right to disassociate and socially punish someone for those ideas.

Now, I'm not saying that Damore's ideas are that extreme. However, it puts an upper bound for me on how much I can agree with your statement. There are ideas that I'm fine imposing social punishments on people for believing.

I agree that Damore probably shouldn't be "destroyed" for his ideas (for whatever a definition of "destroyed" is that obviously isn't literal destruction), but I don't see why being fired is problematic for the way he shared those ideas in the workplace.

Edit: This post previously had a typo that stated: "I agree that Damore probably should be 'destroyed' for his ideas". That was not the original intent, and I've corrected "should" to read "shouldn't"

That serves to do is cause those who have been destroyed to seek out others like themselves and create an echo chamber where they get more extreme, alternatively it gets others to simply go dark in regards to their thoughts -- they still have them (possibly even more re-enforced because now you have given them an enemy) and they will toe the line until they can get into a position to push back.

You stamp this out instead by finding out how the people ended up with those views to begin with, by being able to engage with those who view the world different from you, and by not fueling their hate.

Does this work for ever person - no, but it should be at least attempted.

(fyi - this is more a general comment about social media slayings that are way too common, I'm not being sympathetic to anyone who considers themselves a nazi).

Right. I agree that social media shame parties can overreact to things and create social punishments that I would agree aren't "proportional" (again, for some arbitrary definition of proportional).

My general views on this are derived largely from Popper and the paradox of tolerance (though, to be honest, I've more read about his writing that his work itself; it's next on my reading list). I don't think, as a society, we should tolerate intolerant behavior.

Which means, again as a society†, I think we should aggressively refuse and reject those with nazi ideologies. As an extension of that, I think we should mildly reject and refuse those with mildly intolerant ideologies. In my utopia, those social consequences would be proportional to the degree of intolerance, and I think you're right and fair to note that social shaming can quickly out-escalate the level of intolerance.

†not as a government; all consequences and punishments I'm speaking of should be social consequences and punishments. I'm fairly absolutist when it comes to 1A protections from the government

>I agree that Damore probably should be "destroyed" for his ideas (for whatever a definition of "destroyed" is that obviously isn't literal destruction), but I don't see why being fired is problematic for the way he shared those ideas in the workplace.

I'm the OP whose comment started this mini-firestorm of a discussion and I think you and I are probably very closely aligned. I'll try to state plainly how I feel about the whole situation.

I'll start with a quote by Albert Maysles, "Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance." I can definitely see how a percentage of his memo can be interpreted as offensive. I don't know all the internal information about how everyone was behaving, but I'd like to think that if it were my company I would have treated this as a teachable moment and had a frank discussion with him in HR. That said, I fully support Google's right to fire him even if I take the most generous interpretations of the memo, because frankly I'm a huge supporter of at-will employment.

The problem that I have is the way the national media and general public responded to this situation. Damore is a nobody with no power who might have some incorrect ideas about diversity policy. I should have never heard of him. And I definitely should have never heard of him under national front page headlines with titles about an "anti-diversity manifesto." This is a meek and mild super-nerd, not David Duke. Thrusting him into the national spotlight in this way was clearly going to destroy his career and was completely unnecessary.

Right. I agree that social media shame parties can overreact to things and create social punishments that I would agree aren't "proportional" (again, for some arbitrary definition of proportional). My general views on this are derived largely from Popper and the paradox of tolerance (though, to be honest, I've more read about his writing that his work itself; it's next on my reading list). I don't think, as a society, we should tolerate intolerant behavior.

†not as a government; all consequences and punishments I'm speaking of should be social consequences and punishments. I'm fairly absolutist when it comes to 1A protections from the government

Lets make a distinction in socially destroy. If you found a nazi that worked for someone who knew he was a nazi and was fine with it, his wife was fine with it and all his friends were fine.

In this case how would you socially destroy them beyond pointing out to those around them what they have been hiding?

In my post, I hinted that I don't really have a definition for "socially destroy". I don't really know what it means or how the OP intended by it.

If I knew someone was a nazi, I would inform those around them. If their employer—for example—refused to terminate their employment, I would move "up the chain", and attempt to apply social consequences to that employer. How that works quickly becomes context dependent, but it expresses in things like boycotts, and other refusals to engage economically with those groups.

I think what this Advice memo is about isn't the idea itself, but how he poorly he handled the idea. The disruptive way he handled the idea is not protected from being fired in an at-will employment company. Google even worded that in the termination:

>Your post advanced and relied on offensive gender stereotypes to suggest that women cannot be successful in the same kinds of jobs at Google as men. I want to make clear that our decision is based solely on the part of your post that generalizes and advances stereotypes about women versus men. It is not based in any way on the portions of your post that discuss Google's programs or trainings, or how Google can improve its inclusion of differing political views. Those are important points. I also want to be clear that this is not about you expressing yourself on political issues or having political views that are different than others at the company. Having a different political view is absolutely fine. Advancing gender stereotypes is not.

Gender stereotypes are sometimes supported by fact (even if they may primarily came into being by anecdote or plain ____ism). When they are, it is not fair to dismiss someone as "advancing gender stereotypes" whenever they make an "on average"-type claim (based on evidence) that happens to align with a gender stereotype; the problem comes when you forget the "on average" part of it (which he did not seem to).

Again, it's not about the validity of the idea, but how Damore handled himself with it.

Right, nor have I heard anyone mention the monumental irony of a company who makes billions monetizing differences between the sexes and then fires one of its employees for stating there are differences between the sexes.

If you mean the well-understood definition of "accredited investor" in the US, this is an objective measure with an objective barrier to entry (expected income and assets), and we DO hear about the need for diversity in this regard every time we hear about women and people of color making less money and advancing more slowly in their careers. On the other hand, software hiring and "tech diversity" is a subjective process with very, very subjective barriers to entry and so we hear about changing this process through human measures. This isn't a very good comparison.

It is an impressive feat of mental gymnastics to both kinda sorta acknowledge the alt-right might not be a great group of guys but then also claim Damore had no choice but to pull into that port

It's an impressive feat of mental gymnastics to put people like Dave Rubin, Gad Saad, and Steven Pinker into the category of "Alt-Right." (The first two being an openly gay man in a gay marriage, and a Lebanese jew.) There is no logic there. Basically, if you're not a true believer who has drunk the Kool-Aid, you must be one of the lurking enemy harboring evil thoughts. Sorry, but there are a lot of people who are happy to live and let live, but who have different ways of interpreting the world.

The comment you replied to does not describe those figures as alt-right. On the other hand, the very first person Damore engaged after being fired was Stefan Molyneux, who is undeniably alt-right. It's also insipid to suggest that being gay or Jewish precludes being alt-right or otherwise bigoted. What would that make Milo Yiannopoulos?

the very first person Damore engaged after his firing was Stefan Molyneux, who is undeniably alt-right.

I try to avoid Molyneux as much as possible. Keep in mind that the term "alt-right" is overloaded terminology. Roaming Millenial has a video where she outlines 4 broad categories of "alt-right." Not all of them are White Supremacist. Molyneux, I would just categorize as a very cultish Libertarian. Molyneaux should be rejected because of observations of his actual morality, with regards to questions of free inquiry. You might know additional bad things about him. However, it's "insipid" (your word) to judge James Damore's ideas based on association.

It's also insipid to suggest that being gay or Jewish precludes being alt-right

Just as insipid to put Gad Saad, Dave Rubin, and Steven Pinker into that category, based on what they say and the positions they take. The fact that they are gay or Jewish should at least get you to question the narratives pushed by media and take into account their actual positions. Hint: The narratives with regards to those 3 are false, and are unprincipled attempts to silence through association, probably because the critiques and information they supply pretty much demolish those narratives.

What would that make Milo Yiannopoulos?

Milo is, as far as I can tell, genuinely is anti Alt-Right, where that term encompasses the more radical 3/4ths of Roaming Millenial's categorization. He may well line up politically with some segment of the online community which rejects identity politics, but which is still far right. He also displays a problematic morality as evidenced by some of his actions. In my estimation, he's half activist and half opportunist.

Stefan Molyneux is not alt-right where do you get that idea from?

Milo was one of the most hated people by the alt-right, his husband is black, how much more do you need for him to most probably no being alt-right?.

I refuse to believe that anyone who sincerely and honestly spent any time looking into the actual opinions of Milo, Ben Shapiro, Molyneux etc and not just cherry-picked soundbites would make such claims about them. Milo is extreme in his provocations but he is hardly anything close to alt-right.

I certainly don't agree with everything these guys have to say but I would urge you to actually listen to what they are trying to say before you judge them.

To the downvoters. At least provide me with a reason for the downvote. What did I say that's so wrong?

The downvoters are mindless ideologues who can't argue, only mash arrow buttons.

Re: Ben Shapiro -- As far as I can tell, he's a religious conservative, with a certain cosmopolitan flavor of rationalist deism, which completely falls in line with his particular religious beliefs. He's also one of the most effective and vocal critics of the Alt-Right. He's actively regarded as an enemy by most of the Alt-Right. Anyone who tries and tell you that Ben Shapiro is Alt-Right is an unprincipled ideologue who doesn't care about facts, only political power.

If you want to see how easy it is to be defined as alt-right take a look at this tweet from someone here on HN who now claims that I love alt-right.

https://twitter.com/albedoa/status/964709008559964161

That's how little it takes.

It's really absurd.

People are throwing around such terms as a means of trying to scare others into silence. Such cherry picking is breath-taking in its sheer intellectual dishonesty.

Yet, in your reply, you question the fellow's literacy?? That's not acceptable.

We have taken the art of discourse and replaced it with barbs designed wholly to get likes, or whatever the hell Twitter calls them now. This does not help anyone.

Not sure what you think I should have replied. He claims I have a love for the alt-right and his attempt is to shame me. I wrote that message and then muted him.

You shouldn't have replied. You and the other guy are both out of your gourds, and you don't understand how crazy you look.

I look crazy for saying he didn't learn to read when he claimed I love the alt-right based on that post I wrote?

Maybe I shouldn't have replied but he was basically trying to start a mob against me. Not that I care but just wanted for the record that his claim was wrong and didn't want to engage in any civil manor when not spoken to that way either.

Your reply is a case of putting out the fire with gasoline. When you know nothing else to do, but you are absolutely sure this will make things vastly worse, standing idly by and watching the fire burn is the least worst thing you can do.

Granted, it's a horrible experience.

You failed to achieve your goals and just made things worse by replying. Block and move on.

Maybe I shouldn't have replied but he was basically trying to start a mob against me.

This is precisely how they operate. They are trying to use a tactic of persuasion by repetition simultaneously with a tactic of tarring by association. Far left ideologues are currently engaging in this behavior towards DC Comics artist Ethan Van Sciver, claiming he's an actual Nazi based on his drawing the Green Lantern villain Sinestro with a Hitler mustache and titling it "My Struggle" -- ten years ago. It is conscious and deliberate. And it has been going on that way since 2012 or so.

How is Milo not espousing alt right views? He was employed by Breitbart.

How is Milo not espousing alt right views?

He's an active and vocal critic of the Alt-Right. He devoted an entire chapter of his book to criticism of the Alt-Right. Just what views of his would you cite as "Alt-Right?" Can you back those up with quotes? As far as I can tell, he's an amoral opportunist who will stoop to saying vile things, but he's not Alt-Right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blJfibQnTgU

He was employed by Breitbart.

He left.

I just find it amusing that in a thread about someone who stated maybe all women are genetically less suited to engineering, we are supposed to understand the differences among four or five distinct fringe right-wing ideologies, and refrain from general remarks based on the behaviors of one group or another.

It's actually a thread about someone who didn't state that. You can only emotionally impute that to him.

we are supposed to understand the differences among four or five distinct fringe right-wing ideologies

No, you're supposed to be informed, and you're not supposed to impute views on others they don't actually have, just because you think you can get away with it. You know, intellectual honesty?

refrain from general remarks based on the behaviors of one group or another.

Yes, please don't tar people through stereotypes or anything which is not factually or rationally founded. Furthermore, judge people on the merit of what they do and say as individuals. Don't lump people into groups because you are incensed and you feel like it. That sort of behavior is precisely the moral downfall of the Alt-Right.

Can you please point to anywhere in the memo where he claimed that? I am not asking about your interpretation but where he actually claims that women are genentically less suited for engineering.

I hope you realize how important it is to be precise here. The man lost his job for providing feedback as encouraged by HR after he did a diversity course.

Just making claims that isn't backed up about by what he is actually saying isn't very helpful.

The leaked emails documenting his correspondence with various alt-right figureheads paints a different picture.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart...

One suggestion.

Listen to an interview with him and here he present his opinions. He is provocative but mostly just an annoying showman. His harshest stance is on islam which given he is gay seems fairly understandable.

Joe Rogan has a good interview with him (which is the one that got him fired from Breibart.)

I've already seen that interview. How people behave behind closed doors is a more trustworthy guide to their sympathies.

But you don't know how they behave behind closed doors as you only have access to very little and out of context.

> He was employed by Breitbart.

> He left

He resigned under pressure when controversy erupted over his past comments that were viewed as supporting, or at least minimizing the significance of, pedophilia.

He didn't leave because he suddenly realized, after years of association, that Breitbart was an alt-right outlet, so the fact that he left is not really germane to what his voluntary association with Breitbart says about his ideology.

Actually not really and I would challenge you to say exactly what he says that is alt-right.

He is a conservative who knows how to provoke that's about it.

What neo-nazi, neo-white supremacy, neo-fascist, neo-fascists or another hate-group view have you heard Milo consistently claim?

I am aware of his provocations and yes he can be extreme but calling him alt-right while he is at the same time one of the most hated on the alt-right.

Breitbart was a more of an alt-media rather than alt-right. He didn't care about peoples political views he was after the existing media.

Both Politico and the Washington Post describe Molyneux as alt-right.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/trump-alt-ri...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2017/...

Do they make distinctions between the 4 major sub-groups? Molyneux is, as far as I know, a kooky Libertarian. Mainstream media is getting pretty skewed and desperate for eyeballs. If you're not shocked and dismayed, you're not looking very hard. Basically, in these death-throe days of old media news, you have to do your own fact checking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0ykkHNRAro

I have no idea and honestly, at this point, I don't really care. For some reason, politics has become a game of zingers and one liners. Actual respectful discourse has gone out of style.

Hell, I hopped over to Twitter to defend ThomPete against a very tasteless tweet. I dreamed that maybe, just maybe I could be involved in a conversation that revolved around mutual respect and well worded arguments. Instead, there was ThomPete questioning his critic's literacy???

This shit has to stop. When I was younger, we used to be able to have conversations like:

Me - I believe ________.

You - I disagree because ________, __________, and __________.

Me - Good points, but what about _______?

Today, conversations like that just don't exist. I'm sick and tired of this shit and frankly, I want to disengage.

But seriously, we need genuine discourse. We have to leave the hurtful barbs at the schoolyard and actually speak to each other like respectful adults. Fuck all of this division. It's leading us all down a horrible path.

I'm right there with you. I'm in my 40s, and to me, your dialog is the normal and expected way for adults to discuss. I truly don't understand this brave new world of 'you're either with us, presenting a unified, jargon-tastic front, or you're a nazi/marxist'. So I mostly just don't speak to anyone anymore.

They're coming for you next. Soon behaving ethically will be insufficient, you'll be required to make public statements in support of the party or be presumed to be with the enemy.

I have no idea and honestly, at this point, I don't really care. For some reason, politics has become a game of zingers and one liners. Actual respectful discourse has gone out of style.

It's precisely this sort of apathy which far-left ideologues are using. Given that you are an advocate of good old fashioned rational dialogue, it might not be too long before they come after you next and try to lump you into the "Alt-Right." They're already doing that to people who are basically just Republicans, like Ben Shapiro.

Then, they can come after me, but again, I don't really care. I know the truth about myself.

What else should I have responded? Claiming I have love for the alt-right based on that post is absurd.

I agree with you, although I had never heard of Stefan Molyneux until that interview came out, and I wouldn't be surprised if Damore hadn't either. He was probably really glad to be able to speak his mind, and may not have realized what he was doing. I'm definitely giving him the benefit of the doubt here, a position which I admit is somewhat undermined by him (apparently) tweeting out Breitbart articles.

I listened to most of his interviews tho, and he didn't sound alt-right to me at all. He sounded pretty Libertarian/Classical Liberal (he describes himself as a Classical Liberal)

Not judging these people at all, but being Gay or Jewish is no way incompatible with being racist.

I think it's plausible that had the memo not been leaked externally he'd still have his job. In that respect he truly didn't have agency.

That memo was never intended to remain private correspondance. And I'd hope that Google would have terminated his employment in any case.

I read the memo. There is no way that any normal company would have tolerated something like that being posted on work servers. It was far away from views that normal society tolerates.

He has just as much agency and culpability for his actions as the people who were all too happy to dehumanize him publicly for a cheap political win.

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