> You are not responsible for those people being offended.
This is objectively false, you can get fired for offending people both at your job or outside it.
This is objectively false, you can get fired for offending people both at your job or outside it.
The fact that people and companies don't understand this is a separate, though obviously important matter.
So you obviously need to be aware of the (imho crazy) environment we are in, but also need to distinguish "might" from "right".
Someone's opinion on how things should be cannot be objectively false.
i remember how back in my youth if i said something offensive against the government i would lose my job and be sent to a forced labour camp. that was during communism.
history keeps repeating itself.
The effect of which would silence both their work rights and free speech rights.
Google, a private corporation, not a government, decided to stop contracting with him, as they have women and minorities on staff whose employment output likely outweighs his personal need to write long, politically charged, essays at work. To me that sounds like no one's essential rights were violated at all.
Q.E.D.
He absolutely did no such thing and this is an incredibly disingenuous representation. You can still argue he should be fired without this.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideo...
Perhaps he should not have been fired, but what a prick!
EDIT: And The Scarlet Letter seems relevant as well.
That is completely false and you should be ashamed if yourself for spreading such blatant lies. I urge anyone reading your comment to check for themselves and read Damore's essay, which was well researched, rational and compassionate, the exact opposite of the kind of libel that has been used to slander him. Damore will be a case study at some point when reason returns and people look back and try to understand how it came to be that fools and liars became the arbitrers of what others were allowed to say and think.
"Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership."
Which could be interpreted, honestly, as saying...
"women and minorities could be incapable of joining the software profession based on their genetics"
Because both are encompassed by the more general "people could be incapable of joining the software profession based on their genetics."
And that's of course not the only interpretation possible, but the one you choose. You say it's because of "capability" but you could look at it in terms of "inclination", "interest", "comparative advantages" or other angles.
Much of the thrust of his essay was a critique of the methods being used to increase diversity, not of the goal or the feasibility of achieving the goal.
It was a technical critique. This method won’t work, kind of critique.
Newsflash!! This was being debated 30 years ago. No evidence ever found, apart from < 50% women in STEM
So whatever the truthity fairly idiotic
> Google, a private corporation
Which by the way told its employees that they were free to publish their opinions and Damore acted on that premise.
It doesn't allow you to state as fact that someone holds an opinion that they do not. You can express an opinion, but there are limits on stating falsehoods, especially wrt other people.
you say "encounter an opinion they happen to disagree with", implying your statement about the memo is just your opinion, but you didn't say it in any way that suggests it was that subjective; and, making any unsubstantiated claim about a person is on shaky ground even if you did make it clear it was just opinion.
Not sure how this differs from a firing unless you are suggesting it was unrelated to the memo.
> his personal need to write long, politically charged, essays at work
You don't know the context. He didn't force the memo on people - he was actively encouraged to provide feedback to a forum on this exact, politically-charged, topic; then that memo was leaked, without his permission, (to unfriendly, politically-charged outside recipients) when someone found issue with it.
The insinuation "write long, politically charged, essays at work" that he abused company resources to do his own thing, versus being encouraged to engage with politics (which google does) and then finding himself on the wrong side of opinion is exactly the kind of abusive framing that hit-pieces used.
> women and minorities on staff
Who saw the memo because someone tried to offend them with it - not Damore. I don't disagree that sensitive topics might not be appropriate for wider audiences, but Damore is not responsible for that. No one was fired for leaking the memo, nor are media outlets being sued for propagating a false, offensive representation of the memo.
To be clear "women and minorities should be incapable of joining the software profession based on their genetics" is not something Damore said, it is something the media said, attributing it to him. It is the media therefore that owns these words and the offence they (and their distribution) caused. Not only did they slander Damore, but they also caused the offense Damore was fired for.
It was in conflict with the goals of management to get more women into tech. I also think such a memo (haven't read it) can put women under more scrutiny, even if it describes general trends that might not be applicable to individuals.
I think he is someone who can easily make the distinction in contrast to his accusers and everyone who studied computer science knows the demographics. Discrimination can be ruled out as a main factor easily. But even if the opinion of his accusers is dead wrong on all levels, management has decided that employment is not beneficial anymore. Science or not.
No, some people celebrated it. A noisy minority.
It was a convenient mistruth (for corps not wanting to threaten their bottom line with unwinnable controversy) that Damore is just a rabble-rouser;
You shouldn't pay too much attention to him, or read his actual memo, (or supporting links for context) - but if you are interested, we vox-plain the important stuff for you right here!..
That being said, I don't know him personally, but I respect that he actually RESEARCHED and tried to have a dialogue, which unfortunately is lacking in today's society on both the left and right. I respect that he has an opinion, he shared it, he suggested changes and he actually seemed to be trying to reach the same goal that diversity programs are trying to reach but offered a critique.
I'm quite upset about how he was treated, and I wish that he took the lawsuit to it's natural conclusion in court rather than settling.
I think we can all agree, the main issue today is in our effort to create safe spaces and make the public forums safe for all, we've completely removed our ability to rationally think and listen to others viewpoints. What is offensive to the sensibilities of one person maybe completely rational and sane to another.
One of the reasons the legal system (supposedly) works is because it attempts to remove emotion from the process to provide a fair trial. I may not like the individual and think that they are guilty, but that doesn't matter. We need overwhelming evidence to determine that they are. We need to learn to put our differences aside and listen to the perspective of the other side and empathize. There is usually at least a grain of truth to what is being said. Without this, it's a pointless shouting match.