Your characterization of things makes it sound like you only read headlines and never the memo. Which is fine I guess, but it seems silly to have such strong opinions about something without looking into it at all.
Dunning/Kruger etc
> Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness. This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading.
Yes, that does say that women are genetically worse leaders and implies that their lower salaries are at least in part because they are naturally worse negotiators.
The whole section it's written on is focused on explaining how sexism is mostly a exaggeration and that sex differences can instead be explained by genetic factors. Any more questions?
No it does not. It says that women are more agreeable and less assertive, on average. And because Google rewards assertiveness, this means women have a harder time negotiating salaries at Google. In a workplace the prioritizes agreeableness over assertiveness, women would be at an advantage. And later in the memo he says Google should better reward agreeableness.
It does not claim "women are genetically worse leaders". This is a fabrication.
Please, PLEASE look up the definition of 'discrimination' in any dictionary you like, and tell me if you really believe that saying 'women are more agreeable and less assertive, on average' does not fit the definition, or that James Damore's many characterizations of women on his memo ("higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance", "women generally have a harder time leading") don't, either. If that's the case, we are simply not going to agree with each other, so we shouldn't waste our time trying.
So for example "I want to hire people who don't have trait X. I give an objective test for this. More men than women pass it. Studies have shown that more men than women pass this globally, so it is as expected. Therefore, due to this test, the people I hire tend to be more men than women." is not discrimination.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sexism
>Definition of sexism
>1. prejudice or discrimination based on sex
Enough. Just believe what you want, I give up. There's no sexism on the tech industry or schools. James Damore is right and is an oppressed victim of his own bravery. Whatever.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/discrimination
>1. prejudiced or prejudicial outlook, action, or treatment
Hm. Let's check out the definition of sexism again.
>1. prejudice or discrimination based on sex
Prejudice or discrimination. And discrimination also means prejudiced or prejudicial...since I'm not a tech person like yourself I wouldn't know what 'or' means, it's too complicated for me, but I think I do know what 'and' means: for example, you are wrong about your definition of sexism, and about your definition of discrimination, and about your use of 'or'.
This is great, I love learning new tech concepts on tech forums from tech experts.
In order to be discriminatory, they would have to be broad, ignorant statements based on personal anecdote and prejudice that he pulled out of his ass right before adding 'on average' at the end of the phrase; since they are not that in any way, but carefully researched, unbiased observations, they do not fit the definition of discriminatory.
Now that you've explained to me what facts are, I finally understand James' logic, so please consider this argument won.
What happened to James, who simply circulated a fact-based memo telling half of his coworkers that they need special rules to make things fair since they're at least partly genetically inferior when it comes to the job, was yet another gratuitous act of SJW, PC, fact-censoring repression against one of society's most silenced and powerless collectives: top-salaried, Ivy League educated young white males working at the top companies of male-dominated high growth industries in the largest economy on the planet, like so many others we sadly see so often here on HN.
It's time we finally took a stand on these issues.
If you think that there is no difference between saying people who belong to a certain group are more or less X on average, and saying that individual members of that group are X then I really cannot help you. This is just patently wrong. There's nothing sexist about saying "men on average commit rape 50 times more than women". That's fact. If you told a man, "you're a rapist" because of mere fact that he is a man, then yes that is prejudice.
He didn't just add the word "on average" at the end. He explicitly pointed out that conflating population wide averages and individual characteristics is wrong:
> Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.
If you think his presentation of this data is ineffective, then the productive thing to do is offer a reasoned refutation. Not exaggerate (to be generous, I'm more inclined to call these fabrications) and write that he claimed "women are genetically worse leaders" and "naturally worse negotiators."