Damore is a fucking idiot and Google was right to fire him.
You keep responding to things I didn’t write and positions I didn’t take. Which is why I said that you have a habit of seeing things through a social justice crusader lens. You just did it again.
The Damore letter was what sparked this side-discussion. If you weren’t talking about his letter, what were you talking about? Forgive me for assuming you were talking about the thing that sparked the side-discussion.
I guess it’s not just iiandyiiii whose having trouble following you, because I 100% thought you were taking the exact opposite position on both of those statements. I just scrolled up to re-read some of your earlier comments, to see if I was missing something, and tbh, I’m still having trouble putting them in context with this post.
No, I don’t. I don’t think any of the people who apply to Google are particularly typical, but I do suspect that that type of personality/interests occurs more commonly in males. If Google gets more interested/qualified applicants who are male than female, the only way to achieve parity is to discriminate against the men. And yeah, I’ve seen crap. But I also value being able to speak freely and have an honest discussion.
Me too! I’m glad to be free to state that Damore’s letter is misogynistic bullshit, and that it’s reasonable for a company to fire someone for spreading misogynistic bullshit within the company.
Fair enough… this is exactly what I said and quoted for context of my response.
Also,
It seems to me that it would be foolish to dismiss biological differences might lead to cultural differences in this context. Which in no way justifies or denies misogyny or offers support for Danmore’s letter.
I hope I’ve made that clear.
@Miller, I do recall you talking in another thread about the differences between male and female brains. What are your views on sex differences?
D’you think his views are rare? Most people who share them have the sense to keep it off the record, but they’re still sitting next to you are work, thinking this stuff, and assuming everyone else agrees with them but is also too scared to speak up. Let him express his thoughts so they can be tested and challenged, and so we can all have a better understanding of the truth.
To clarify, do you disagree with NLRB attorneys who decided that Damore’s ““statements regarding biological differences between the sexes were so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive as to be unprotected”? Or do you think that harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive statements shouldn’t be legally protected, but that companies really ought to retain employees who make those statements?
That’s one approach. The other approach is to tell such folks to shut the fuck up about their horrible ideas while at work, so it doesn’t disrupt the workplace.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6412/eaas9899
https://cedar.wwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=sociology_facpubs
Oh, and there’s this:
Abstract
Sexual dimorphism in sociability has been documented in humans. The present study aimed to ascertain whether the sexual dimorphism is a result of biological or socio-cultural differences between the two sexes. 102 human neonates, who by definition have not yet been influenced by social and cultural factors, were tested to see if there was a difference in looking time at a face (social object) and a mobile (physical-mechanical object). Results showed that the male infants showed a stronger interest in the physical-mechanical mobile while the female infants showed a stronger interest in the face. The results of this research clearly demonstrate that sex differences are in part biological in origin. © 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
Only the second study is relevant as to careers – and it’s all about preference, which is very likely driven just as much by culture and society as anything else. Little girls are taught they should be X, and little boys are taught they should be Y. I don’t think this tells us anything relevant to this discussion.
That last study has faced some criticism, especially regarding its applicability to career choices: https://mobile.twitter.com/OlleFolke/status/1064690053786542080
The belief that differences between males and females all boils down to sexism and social pressure cannot be reconciled with the belief that someone’s gender identity is predictive of someone’s behavior, personality or feelings. Just sayin’.
In a now defunct IMHO thread, I saw it passionately argued that having a self-determined “woman gender” means a person acts and feels like women do. If this belief makes someone a misogynist, then posters in this thread who defended the “woman gender” viewpoint earlier and are now calling Damore a misogynist are also calling themselves misogynists. In the spirit of free speech, this needs to be flagged out.
Damore used gender stereotypes to argue that women just can’t hack it in STEM. Like many people, this makes him guilty of sexism. A person who defends the use of gender stereotypes to classify themselves (and other people) as men and women is guilty of the same atrocious thing. Even if I disagree with these views, I think all of this stuff should be considered worthy of debate. Reacting to it with knee-jerk emotionalism rather than tackle it rationally is how we should be fighting it. And since women are the ones taking the brunt of these noxious ideas right now, our voices should be given more credence than they currently are.
Do you think maybe the women who work at Google would rather be doing their actual jobs, instead of having to debate creeps like Damore about whether they’re biologically suited for their careers?
Women are excellent multi-taskers. They can do both.
There’s usually no shortage of people who want to debate. Google was encouraging this:
That would be the appropriate place for it, not in the daily scrum.
This sounds like a legal question that I am eminently unqualified to answer.
Here’s another quote from the Guardian that is fairly close to my opinion:
Cordelia Fine, a professor of psychology at the University of Melbourne, tells me these ideas fall into the common bias of assuming that “whatever we tend to see more often in males is what the job needs”. And while it is true, she says, that women tend to attach more importance to a partner’s resources, there are obvious reasons why. “Given that, not so long ago, women could be legally fired when they got married or became pregnant, it’s hardly surprising that women have historically cared more about a partner’s wealth.” Neither is it clear, Fine says, that any such psychological traits will be “set in stone for the rest of time”.
Despite authoring two acclaimed books on gender, Fine, a leading feminist science writer, feels “torn in many different directions” by Damore. She believes his memo made many dubious assumptions and ignored vast swaths of research that show pervasive discrimination against women. But his summary of the differences between the sexes, she says, was “more accurate and nuanced than what you sometimes find in the popular literature”.
Some of Damore’s ideas, she adds, are “very familiar to me as part of my day-to-day research, and are not seen as especially controversial. So there was something quite extraordinary about someone losing their job for putting forward a view that is part of the scientific debate. And then to be so publicly shamed as well. I felt pretty sorry for him.”
Do you think a woman who reported to Damone would be justified in being concerned that he was giving her work a fair judgement, and wasn’t prejudging it because it had come from someone he views as genetically ill-equipped for her job?
Now that’s a better question. I don’t think he was in any kind of management position, but if he had been… not if what he wrote was the extent of his beliefs, but I’d be worrying that he’d softened it up for public consumption. That’s all modulo knowing him personally.
What it tells us is that Damore didn’t pull these ideas out of his ass, they’re not some horrible out-there idea, they’re a mainstream subject of scientific study. And it’s very relevant if you’re interested in increasing the number of women working as eg software engineers - both as to goals and methods - whether the disparity is due to sexism in hiring, unwelcoming culture in the office, a difference in interests due to nature or upbringing, or some combination of the above. The first two are things that Google can and should fix. The last one is not.
Why is it ‘harmful, discriminatory and disruptive’ to bring this up, why does supporting these mainstream scientific theories make someone an ‘asshole’ and ‘creep’? I’ve heard worse from colleagues and I didn’t want them fired (maybe a couple of weeks in the gulag ). All you achieve with this unreasonable, puritanical attitude is pushing more people away from progressivism and into the arms of the right.