[Discussion] James Damore and the Google Manifesto

The Manifesto Mr. Damore wrote, it's implications, facts, or opinions, the hostile work environment it creates, the action of Google firing him, and the consequences of all of the above.

I'd rather him sincerely apologize 10 years from now than make a fake apology tomorrow.

My rebuttal is that a great many people want to hurt Debbie Wasserman Schultz. And Hillary Clinton.

"Tu quoque" is the worst possible response. We're supposed to know better. Instead, loads of people are cheering for him being fired, and circling the wagons and denouncing him as a terrible human being, when all he did was express an opinion you happen to strongly disagree with.

The whole point of this country is the free circulation of ideas. You're supposed to be able to come up with an idea, like "Women should be treated as well as men', and then express that idea, trying to find more support for it. You're supposed to be able to publish that idea freely, without fear of reprisal, be able to organize people to help promote that idea, and eventually convince enough of the broader society to cause change to happen.

This means that people with terrible ideas need to have that right, too. People with awful ideas should be able to keep working. They should be able to have any f*cking opinion they want, and express it freely. It is extraordinarily uncool when the freaking entire country lands on someone's head for daring to express an idea that they don't like. Threats are no good, nor are alarm calls in crowded theaters, but intellectual discussion in a paper should be one of the things we protect most highly.

This should never have made national news. Someone was being an idiot. He's wrong, but the furore is ridiculously inappropriate. All it does is feed into the right-wing complaints about being suppressed by the left.

In cases like this, they are right. This making national news, with all the attendant doxxing and shaming, is a symptom of that suppression. Yes, they do it too, but the liberal side is supposed to be better than that. Tu quoque doesn't work as a defense.

This guy didn't hurt anyone. He's not a supervisor. He's not in control of anyone's career. Nobody has claimed actual harm from anything he's done. At most, there are some slightly bruised feelings, and that is the core idea of the Left that's most noxious, the idea that it's okay to silence people because it makes others sad or uncomfortable.

You are not free, in this country, from being offended. In fact, when it's working properly, you're pretty much guaranteed to be offended. People who don't agree with you are part of society too, and if you refuse to make room for them, they may stop making room for you.

This guy didn't hurt anyone. He's not a supervisor. He's not in control of anyone's career. Nobody has claimed actual harm from anything he's done. At most, there are some slightly bruised feelings, and that is the core idea of the Left that's most noxious, the idea that it's okay to silence people because it makes others sad or uncomfortable.

Holy cow dude how many times do the women in this thread have to tell you that you are wrong? PLUS Google and their lawyers also do not agree with you.

I should also add that the bullsh*t is going both ways:

Google CEO Sundar Pichai canceled an all-hands meeting about gender controversy due to employee worries of online harassment

Wired reported earlier that conservative pundit Milo Yiannopoulos “posted on his Facebook page the Twitter biographies of eight Google employees who criticized Damore’s post.”

Way, way uncool. Nobody's jobs or safety should be threatened over having opinions that others don't like. This is bullsh*t no matter who does it.

It's really, really obvious how bad it is when the Right does it. But what worries me terribly is that the Left seems incapable of seeing themselves mirroring the exact same behaviors.

Jobs should be off-limits. Trying to interfere with anyone's relationships with anyone else, including their employer(s), based on their opinions, is bullsh*t.

Mod:

Malor, perhaps you missed it, but you've been asked to excuse yourself from this thread.

Certis wrote:

Malor, you're repeating yourself. This is no longer a request, please excuse yourself from the thread.

What should worry you is the inability to see that these aren't the exact same behaviours.

Nobody forced Google's hand, nobody petitioned and threatened and harassed Google into firing him. Google didn't terminate him because of external social pressures.

Jobs aren't off-limits if the entity that you upset is your employer, and if it is your actions (not your opinions) that upset them. As approximately a billionty folks have said, he's welcome to his opinion; his actions have consequences. (ie, he could have held those opinions internally as long as he wanted, but sharing them the way he did was inappropriate and earned discipline.)

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Malor wrote:

People who don't agree with you are part of society too, and if you refuse to make room for them, they may stop making room for you.

When did they ever make room, Malor?

Huge swaths of Damore's manifesto were dedicated to his feeling that his conservative, libertarian political beliefs weren't being respected enough at Google.

When did conservative white dudes who were privileged enough to go to Harvard ever make room for women? Or blacks? Or immigrants? Or poor people? Or whoever wasn't just like them?

The screed he wrote is plenty to justify his firing. But this, this is plenty of reason to never hire him again:

https://twitter.com/Fired4Truth

This guy is on the bigot fast track towards his own podcast and Patreon where he gets thousands per month from the collective white supremacists, racists, homophobes, transphobes, and misogynists who prop these kinds of people up (See: Milo Yiannopoulos, Jordan B. Peterson).

Having stupid opinions in your 20's based on nonsense is nothing new, and if that made someone unemployable, nobody would ever have a job. But he's establishing himself with this online presence and taking advantage of the publicity with the worst kind of audience. If he doesn't parlay this attention into a revenue stream via some kind of content creation, I'll eat a pair of socks.

And even if the screed didn't disqualify him from corporate employment pretty much anywhere, making a name for himself out of this kind of publicity certainly will. And it will be well deserved.

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I'm mostly seeing a whole lot of paradox of tolerance stuff here. If you actually force bigots to face any kind of consequence for their bigoted beliefs, they'll get mad and oppress you! You have to play nice and defend their right to emotionally abuse you so they deign to "make room" for you.

That's not how this has ever worked. Social progress has never been won by continually appeasing oppressors until they throw you a scrap. Social progress involves making people uncomfortable and, yes, sometimes bigots will experience appropriate consequences for their bigotry. Such as losing your job if you cost your employer massive amounts of time, money and goodwill.

It's a good example of what I just posted above about fearing the push to radicalization. The radicals on the right have now embraced him. Expect the behavior to now get worse.

I'm a lot more concerned about this kind of behavior flying under the radar at tech companies than I am about yet another alt right ass spouting off on social media.

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I'm not arguing that it's not financially expedient. I'm arguing that it's an abhorrent way of making money.

I could fleece a decent amount of people out of their money by simply founding a church or claiming to be psychic, doing Tarot card readings, or creating my own exclusive line of homeopathic medicine. But I know I couldn't live with myself if I did. This guy has no contrition, won't listen, and is now going to milk the situation. He'd better be ready for this train to carry his ass for a long time, because no one else will.

And I don't know that this situation was avoidable. That memo was the right kind of hot garbage for the news, especially while Google is in court cases dealing with diversity issues. If he had been fired before all of this went public, I'd bet the memo would have leaked anyway, and he would be in a very similar situation.

Demyx wrote:

I'm mostly seeing a whole lot of paradox of tolerance stuff here. If you actually force bigots to face any kind of consequence for their bigoted beliefs, they'll get mad and oppress you! You have to play nice and defend their right to emotionally abuse you so they deign to "make room" for you.

I know I haven't been posting on GWJ regularly for a good while, but I'd like to think that my history here indicates pretty clearly that I'm not saying anything of this sort. F*ck tolerating this sh*tbag and his ideas - he deserves to face all of the consequences that come with this kind of thinking. I'm just angry that facing the consequences of losing his job also means he's going to get to use this to make money.

NSMike wrote:

I know I haven't been posting on GWJ regularly for a good while, but I'd like to think that my history here indicates pretty clearly that I'm not saying anything of this sort.

It was not a response to anything you said

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Demyx wrote:
NSMike wrote:

I know I haven't been posting on GWJ regularly for a good while, but I'd like to think that my history here indicates pretty clearly that I'm not saying anything of this sort.

It was not a response to anything you said :)

Cool I was worried that you might have interpreted me pointing out his newfound social media attention as an argument for appeasement.

bandit0013 wrote:

The shock jock industry would like a word with you. :)

Ha, I don't think they would deny that it's abhorrent. I think they just don't care.

bandit0013 wrote:

Not to nitpick, but Harvard does a damn good job with diversity.

https://college.harvard.edu/admissio...

You know what's missing from those stats? Family net worth and income bands by ethnicity along with legacy admissions rates.

You can have diversity numbers that, from the outside, look fine, but that don't come close to really representing a diverse student body. It's the difference between admitting Jaden Smith and admitting a black student from the Monument Street Area in Baltimore.

NSMike wrote:
bandit0013 wrote:

The shock jock industry would like a word with you. :)

Ha, I don't think they would deny that it's abhorrent. I think they just don't care.

See Jones, Alexander Emerick. If he didn't think it abhorrent, he wouldn't have used the "performance art" defense.

But anyway...

Google cancels staff meeting after Gamergate-style attack on employees
Gamergate metastasized and Google is at the center of it.

I think all of this goes back much, much further than when the memo was posted. Highlighting the backlash against its author from this week is erroneously focusing on what is, at best, the concurrent cause, and losing sight of the deeper causes. As NSMike and Demyx said.

Spoiler:

I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that Damore participated in Gamergate, or one of the adjacent bits.

I also now think that if it wasn't this, he would have done something else equally appalling.

And we're still discussing him and not his victims, so go figure.

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I'm going to stop you right there and say that securely sharing redacted information with a reputable reporter is infinitely superior to sending unredacted information to noted pond scum Vox Day.

We can discuss if those original leaks were right or not, but this is way, way over the line.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai canceled an all-hands meeting about gender controversy due to employee worries of online harassment

Doxxing of search company staffers had already started.

Google town hall meeting canceled after days of online harassment

On Tuesday, a 4chan-related Twitter account posted screenshots of fourteen Twitter profiles of Google employees, ranging from rank-and-file engineers to Sundar Pichai himself. Every Googler targeted was either a woman, trans man, or a man of color. This tweet may not have been the origin point of this list of Googlers, but it was spread widely.

The gang's all here:

That same collection of eight screenshots made its way onto former Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos’ Facebook on Wednesday.
On Sunday, alt-right blogger Vox Day published screenshots from the internal Google+, showing employees criticizing the Damore memo. On Monday, Breitbart published an even larger set of internal screenshots. Names and profile pictures were not redacted. "What really gets me is that when Googlers leaked these screenshots, they knew this was the element of the internet they were leaking it to," a former Google employee tells The Verge. "They knew they were subjecting their colleagues to this type of abuse."
bandit0013 wrote:

People are afraid to speak in an environment where it's possible their words will be captured, publicly transmitted, and then picked apart by an angry internet mob?

The hell you say.

For someone who was exceptionally concerned that Damore was doxxed (which he wasn't), you seem to be pretty OK that several Google employees were actually doxxed.

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bandit0013 wrote:

But it was more important to publicly flog an idiot than it was to just go through normal corporate procedures.

I see people keep characterizing the only motivation for leaking the manifesto as wanting to publicly shame, etc. It's possible, sure, but I don't see it that way.

The truth is that usually normal corporate procedures do not work. If you go to your boss or HR with this kind of thing you're pretty likely to just be told to deal with it, while the asshat continues to sail on making your life hell. In most cases I think people don't even bother because they know it will not help. And even if he does get removed from the company, that only helps *you* -- he's just going to land on his feet at another company and make some other poor woman's life hell.

That is why, in this and other fields, you get a culture of women looking out for other women. Warning each other about particular people. It's quite possible that an employee saw this as an opportunity to warn everyone about a particularly pernicious asshat and felt like she really needed to take it for this reason.

Yeah, it would be a lot better if women had faith in normal corporate procedures, but that requires actually being taken seriously on the whole...

Or maybe the motivation wasn't anything so noble and they just wanted the whole internet to point and laugh, I don't know.

But I've seen a couple people put forth that the pain caused by airing out this manifesto is worse than if it were kept quiet and I'm not at all sure that I agree. See, a huge amount of people think that there is really no issue with sexism and tech, or it's not that bad, or women are just being oversensitive. Airing it out into the sunshine gives a great opportunity to start a dialogue that look, here's the kind of attitudes we put up with on the regular. And it isn't just a he-said she-said story, it's something that was provably said at one of the most famous tech companies.

bandit0013 wrote:

People are afraid to speak in an environment where it's possible their words will be captured, publicly transmitted, and then picked apart by an angry internet mob?.

What?? People need to think about what they say in a public context because there might be social ramifications? What fresh new hell is this?

Like it or lump it, there are some conversations that can't be held in public. Period. People don't talk about pedophilia at family dinners; there are no sermons about the joys of murder; no politician will ever make an announcement that Jesus shaped butt plugs are better than smooth. The reason those conversations don't happen is not because no one thinks of those things. It's because the social contract dictates that somethings are off-limits. That's the way societies function.

bandit0013 wrote:

Nope, its wrong in all cases and now it has effectively stifled communication. Bad outcomes for all.
...
No one will come out clean from this now.

Oh, and this is blatant false equivalence. On the one hand, someone was "outed" because of something they did; on the other, people are being targeted for who they are.

People who get labeled and treated unfairly for what they are.
vs.
People who are afraid of being labeled and treated (unfairly?) for what they believe (or believed).
when
The latter demonstrate a belief that the former should be treated unfairly.

The former fight against a system which already treats them unfairly. Part of that fight is holding the latter accountable - not forever as individuals (which is a bullsh*t notion - do we really think our social memory is that long for this relatively minor stuff?), but for long enough to push back against that system and be listened to for a while.

The latter have the benefit of a system which, overall, already speaks for them.

Is it honest to think that Damore is going to be unemployable forever?
Is it genuine to say that the point of this exercise is aimed at something so small?

Personally I'd love it if his future employers would question this episode in his life and what he'd learned from it. He could turn that into a positive opportunity if he wanted, and maybe he eventually will after he finds enough reasons to question himself. Do I think employers would do this after this news cycle ends? No. I don't think businesses are nearly that socially conscious.

bandit0013 wrote:

Edit: I would like to point out that this escalation lines up pretty much perfectly with what I was concerned about earlier. But it was more important to publicly flog an idiot than it was to just go through normal corporate procedures.

No one will come out clean from this now.

Bullsh*t.

The actions of people who are not Damore had zero influence on what he's doing now. The GG-aligned-right does not need an actual excuse to start threatening people--if they don't have one, they'll make one up.

The dude wrote a sexist, racist memo. He actively contributed to creating a hostile work environment, and his actions afterwards make it pretty clear that he intended to do that. He likely doesn't understand why people reacted the way they did when he asked them to change everything to make him feel mildly better, but he didn't let that stop him.The amount of publicity it received has zero bearing on his actions afterwards.

Maybe the earlier internal discussions shouldn't have been released. I've not made my mind up about that (and I don't think we have sufficient information to say). But at this point, I don't care. Water under the bridge, if you want to talk about hypotheticals this probably isn't the right thread for that.

There's been a huge confusion about causes (in the philosophical sense) over the past few pages. While we could construct wild speculations about what was happening behind the scenes, that doesn't have much to do with the ultimate causes.

If you want to argue that the response he got online was responsible for his current behavior: bullsh*t. He's an adult, he can make adult decisions. He already wrote 10 pages in response to people politely asking him to think about how other people feel, and he hasn't had to endure a tenth of the kind of harassment that the people he targeted go through.

If you want to say that people talking about someone, mostly politely, is somehow justification for terrorist attacks, then spell out what you mean. I happen to disagree. If anyone called for Damore to be raped or killed, I condemn them unequivocally.

But using the criticism he got to excuse his behavior and the behavior he's now going out of his way to encourage? And claiming that he was just being emotionally defensive? No.

Given the alacrity with which James Damore has sought to monetize his firing (including registering the absurdly-chosen `@Fired4Truth` Twitter account for his continued grandstanding), I would not be the least bit surprised if the original release of his manifesto was done by Damore himself.

Otherwise, consider me +1-ing most of what Demyx and Gremlin have posted upthread.

A little late to this party and I'll admit I only skimmed the 1st pages.

So... memo content and what I've learnt from twitter in the last 24hrs:

What I have discovered talking to great minds of twitter is that "its about preferences not traits" seems to have become #googlememo's version of 'its about ethics in games journalism".

Which you know complete ignores the actual text of where Damore name checks evo psych as his foundational POV in the first page (or so), his own 'tldr' of the memo specifically mentions traits (not prefs) as the reason for a non 50:50 gender split and within another page he specifically states (cognitive) traits lead to prefs.

Also wrt complaining about stifled opinions, no dialogue, censorship etc... Google is a private corporation. Free speech provision only covers public spaces and public institutes. For good and bad we've decided corporations are private entities so its their house and their rules. Google have pre-decided that a (nominal) commitment to a specific kind of hiring practice and diversity and no questions asked is how they'd like to do business. You don't like it you are 100% free to go and found your own Google.