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Comment by mdorazio | Hacker News Reader

1) There was no speech. There was a well-reasoned essay worth reading even if you disagree with it.

2) Virtually no one actually read his essay in its entirety, including the media figures and bloggers who commented on it incessantly. His actual message and claims were completely ignored or outright twisted to fit a specific narrative. The fact that you had to go all the way to places like the Joe Rogan podcast to listen to him actually explain his thoughts without being editorialized was insane.

3) He lost his job as a direct result.

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I read his essay, and yes, it did get seriously distorted to demonize him.

However, it was not well written nor was it particularly well reasoned. While there were some potentially good ideas buried it it, they were buried under poorly understood and debunked science and statements that were easily misunderstood.

I think critical debunking of where he went wrong and charitable interpretation of some of the things he may have gotten right would have been far more effective.

Unfortunately it was pulled into the morass that is partisanship in US these days. (I personally harbor a suspicion that this was deliberate and that he fully intended to get himself fired given the way that it and numerous other personal details of googlers got leaked in the lead up to his firing).

>they were buried under poorly understood and debunked science and statements that were easily misunderstood.

I didn't read his essay or follow this case at all, but from Wikipedia it seems he was arguing that biological differences between the sexes are a driving factor for the lack of women programmers at Google. That's a position that's solidly backed by the science.

And he based some of his example on "facts" tht were debunked in the 70s. In fact i think i remember one of his argument was so easily recognisable as debunked that i thought "Well, writting a paper on sociology without having ever read sociology papers, who taught this guy?". It's not even Donning-kruger, because he did not even had the basics.

I mean, come on, if it was a paper in any other field, even economy, people here at HN would have either ignored him or called him out.

Anyway he was dumb and should not have been fired (unless this essay looked like his work at Google).

The point of my downvoted comment is that Damore is not a good example of censored speech. You guys are on here discussing the essay because it is famous. Millions of people read it. Not sure why I was downvoted for pointing that out except that there seems to be a cult of defending the guy.

Millions read it only because of the backlash, but what about all the people who didn't speak up because of the fear of getting abused by angry mobs and fired? You can't pretend a censorship attempt isn't one just because it backfired and failed.

Maybe there's also an effect where people try to be controversial in order to get attention, because it plays in to a narrative that makes a lot people feel better about themselves because they find someone to blame for their problems. Don't you think?

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