"Just asking questions" sounds innocent until you see that the questions being asked have insinuations behind them. He was asking questions that implied that women and non-white people are less intelligent.
Phrasing outright racism/sexism in the form of a question seems to make it OK with other folks who tend to share the same mindset, but it isn't (and shouldn't be) effective in the workplace.
The devil doesn't need an advocate; especially not in a workplace.
> He was asking questions that implied that women and non-white people are less intelligent.
His questions did not carry any such implication and that is a blatant misrepresentation of the argument he was making. I've been over this so many times in the past and I keep being told that the words I read don't mean what they very obviously mean. (I'm accustomed to that being called "gaslighting" when it goes the other way, inaccurate as that is.)
They quote the key points more or less accurately, although it must be noted that Damore's reference to "neuroticism" referenced an established concept in psychology and psychometrics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroticism); this does not correspond to a lay understanding, and it is simply factually incorrect to say that he described women as "more neurotic".
Note that Wikipedia endorses Damore's claim there: "A research [sic] over large samples has shown that levels of neuroticism are higher in women than men.[25]" Similarly, greater variability in male IQ is backed by research. Findings like these adequately support the core of Damore's argument, i.e. that disparate outcomes in race- and gender-blind processes do not evidence any form of unconscious bias and do not demonstrate any moral failing in the hiring process.
The NLRB's findings refer to a supposed "effort to cloak with 'scientific' references and analysis", scare quotes theirs, as if to imply that the findings are not backed by science or that appeals to science are being used fraudulently here. Both are false. Similarly, the NLRB claims that Damore invoked "stereotypes" (their word, not scare quotes) in presenting this analysis, which is also false.
The NLRB further supposes that remarks such as the ones they quoted, were somehow "discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment". I find the claim of discrimination specious. Observing that one population demonstrates a wider range of capability than another in certain standardized testing, is not discriminating against either group, especially when no claim is made about mean ability. As for "sexual harassment", I genuinely cannot understand how any reasonable person could ever have alleged this in good faith. There is no flirtation here, no attempt at intimidation, no intent to offend or degrade, nothing. What Damore said, objectively, was no more "sexist" than observing that men are taller than women on average (Cohen's d of 1.86, by the way: https://copernicanrevolution.org/psychology-of-gender/sex-di...). Putting this in the same category as unwanted sexual advances is beyond ludicrous.
The NLRB finally notes that "Numerous employees complained to the Employer that the memorandum was discriminatory against..." All people who made such complains were objectively incorrect in their assessment. The words cited, nor anything else in the memo, plainly do not support such a conclusion.
Essentially, they haven't actually done any "interpretation" here; they have simply made absurd assertions about the effect of the material, in support of absurd assertions made by Damore's coworkers — which assertions are based on a reading that is at best rendered inaccurate by ideological blinders.
I think a reasonable person can conclude that what Damore did was de-facto engaging in harmful stereotypes, even if he believed he was creating a grounded argument from science.
> As for "sexual harassment", I genuinely cannot understand how any reasonable person could ever have alleged this in good faith
"Since Suzy is a woman, she is more neurotic than Bob" is also sexual harassment, just in terms of legal definitions. Not all sexual harassment is of the "I want intercourse" kind.
> What Damore said, objectively, was no more "sexist" than observing that men are taller than women on average
So it turns out that if you go around saying "Well of course Suzy's short, she's a woman," that is sexual harrassment. And while Damore didn't single out any specific coworker, he made clear that he was approaching working with his colleagues from a framework that made assumptions about them based on gender, and that made working with him dicey (especially at Google, where management roles shift so fluidly).
I think a piece of the puzzle you're missing is this: the law doesn't always trust science. And the law has reason not to. Eugenics was a science. Phrenology was a science. Race essentialism was a science. Science hasn't always pointed the way towards truth in all cases, and the law's method of finding fact differs from the scientific method with good reason. If something's scientifically true and a Title VII violation... it's a Title VII violation.
> All people who made such complains were objectively incorrect in their assessment. The words cited, nor anything else in the memo, plainly do not support such a conclusion.
When nearly everyone in a population group is making the same claim about their own emotional state... Wouldn't the "reasonable person" principle conclude that, from a legal standpoint at least, the claim should be accepted true for a reasonable person in that population?
Just to sum up: I propose that people should be able to make statements they reasonably believe are true, where they proactively bring evidence and apply suitable disclaimers ("It was later updated with a preface affirming the author's opposition to workplace sexism and stereotyping.[19]"), and clearly have no intent to offend; and that it is not fair that they could lose their jobs over it when they say these things as part of explicitly solicited feedback.
I disagree, because I believe racists reasonably believe (as per their own framework) that racism is hard science. There is a nonzero amount of culture-shaping in the Civil Rights Act, and that was by design. It did draw a line in the sand and say "This category of behavior, regardless of its connection to or detachment from reality, is no longer acceptable, and we will use force of law to make it so."
Damore made the mistake of failing to realize that an American place of employment is not the agora. Given a couple opportunities to adjust his flight plan, he decided to stay the course. He was free to do so but he became a walking Title VII violation when he did and too much of a liability for Google to continue to employ.
On the plus side, I hear he landed on his feet so it all worked out in the end.
But in what way do you conclude that he is a racist? If you're just stating facts about the general differences between man and woman, and aren't necessarily making any conclusions about any particular person. In what step of the process do you say it becomes racist?
And I don't believe a reasonable person can conclude that someone believes things like "women score higher on the psychiatric test for neuroticism" and then sets that belief aside when evaluating the behavior or performance of women on their team.
What do you mean? There is a statistic that's been supposedly well studied, and it concludes some differences between woman and man. Now you say as soon as you accept that statistic, you cannot set that aside when you're evaluating individuals?
I mean, yeah of course, in a way statistics give us bias about everything. Just like a woke kind of bias will also affect someones perception. That's just always going on. But that doesn't mean we can't realise that every individual is unique, and can be a unique asset in a company / project / whatever?
I know I said I was done, but I do review my own comment history and what you've said (to a third party) here is so fallacious I feel compelled to interject.
Zeroth, statistical results like this are not at all like the "scientific racism" of the past. They are well accepted across a broad field of study and have shown themselves to be useful in understanding human behaviour. (Admittedly, a psychiatric evaluation is not a precise measurement. But it is not fundamentally based on a flawed assumption, and it is not being conducted by people with an axe to grind.)
First, OCEAN traits are basic material in psychology. By your argument, nobody with a relevant degree should be allowed to be employed anywhere; but they learn (not "believe") these things exactly because it makes them more qualified for their intended career path. It's the same as how doctors nowadays are expected to understand how culture mediates responses to pain, or how men's and women's health care facilities have proven themselves necessary (as has the need to disentangle what's caused by physiology or hormones from what's caused by psychology).
Second, Damore obviously understood the material he presented reasonably deeply. Nobody who looks into the psychiatric tests on that level would misunderstand what they mean. And, I mean, really, this is such an incredibly tangential thing to actual work. If I thought you belonged to a group with more propensity to self-doubt (I'm still not exactly being scientific here, but that's closer to what I've understood from my own reading), are you really saying that this would prevent me from fairly "evaluating your behaviour or performance"? The quality of your code doesn't change because of how you felt about it when you committed it.
Third, this is a claim that Damore fully understands as a statistical claim about the general population. He knows very well, and he makes it very clear that he knows very well, that this does not transfer to "women on one's team"; and furthermore he didn't argue that trait neuroticism makes people unfit for purpose (as above). The entire point of the argument is to explain why women disproportionately don't apply for the job, and thus relieve Google of the moral burden of correcting for that. (But he even offered suggestions for what they could do instead!)
Throughout all of that, Damore makes it abundantly clear what he's trying to debunk — the idea presented in the tl;dr: "Extreme: all disparities in representation are due to oppression". If disparities in representation aren't caused by something purely external to the group (what "oppression" means), then they must be caused by something at least partially internal: i.e., a statistical group difference. And Damore is really making the mildest possible arguments about such differences. If you consider this objectionable, then logically you require everyone to believe that every group is statistically identical to every other group in every aspect except the one that defines the group (or at least: in every aspect relevant to performance in any job, etc.); that this is something that must be true a priori and cannot in principle be falsified even by actually doing the statistical work; and that disagreement is thoughtcrime. This is not a strawman; your argument requires this level of absolutism, because otherwise it is not fairly engaging with what Damore actually said.
> If I thought you belonged to a group with more propensity to self-doubt (I'm still not exactly being scientific here, but that's closer to what I've understood from my own reading), are you really saying that this would prevent me from fairly "evaluating your behaviour or performance"? The quality of your code doesn't change because of how you felt about it when you committed it.
Quality of code is by no means the only, or even dominant, evaluation metric for Google performance reviews. There is significant opportunity for bias in how those evaluations work, and that is by design; an engineer that puts out pristine code but shirks oncall duties, responds poorly in performance reviews, is hostile to their coworkers, or pushes blame while pulling credit, is not ready for higher ladder rungs. It's one of the reasons performance reiviews are done by peers, so that being stuffed in a team with a bad manager is less likely to hamstring one's career. But, that does mean that if you're on a team with someone perceived to be sexist (here, I mean "believes different sexes have different inherent natures of behavior"), it sows a lot of doubt in their ability to objectively evaluate you.
I don't think Damore intended to create an uncomfortable working environment, but he did, sadly.
There's an interesting book, "The Myth of the Rational Voter," that touches upon how higher education (in economics, in the case of that book) influences one's political views. Damore may not have been scientifically wrong, but if he's expected to keep working with people who haven't been read-in on the science and don't agree with it even when they are... He made a career-limiting mistake suggesting that the company's approach should pivot to that avenue of research's conclusions. I think he made the mistake honestly, but it was incompatible with his continued employment and he didn't back down when that was made clear.
To answer your question more directly: "Yes. If I were working with a coworker that I know has publicly and thoroughly quoted science that indicates men are categorically more impulsive than women and he gives me, a man, a bad performance review, I would wonder if he did because he doesn't think men have the self-control to make good leaders." That's the hostile work environment, sadly.
> He knows very well, and he makes it very clear that he knows very well, that this does not transfer to "women on one's team"
Two issues with this in practice:
1) If it doesn't transfer to women on one's team, then why was it relevant?
2) If it applies specifically to the general population, than why was it relevant? Google already isn't hiring from the general population.
If that's actually the argument he put on the table, he committed a category error that undermined the whole exercise, which makes it more suspicious when he doesn't back down.
> If you consider this objectionable, then logically you require everyone to believe that every group is statistically identical to every other group in every aspect except the one that defines the group (or at least: in every aspect relevant to performance in any job, etc.); that this is something that must be true a priori and cannot in principle be falsified even by actually doing the statistical work; and that disagreement is thoughtcrime.
You have the meat of the situation yes. Title VII does make that assumption, and does not tolerate working protected-category differences into how employees are treated. I believe Damore was trying to make an argument merely regarding Google's diversification initiatives, but the argument he made had immediate implications for the current workforce (it's not like individuals from the categories with the personality traits Damore's manifesto suggests magically stop being of that category when they are hired, and I think reasonable people made that inference whether it was intended). There is a non-specious argument to make that the Civil Rights Act is behind the science (although, as I've noted previously, any claim it is should be treated with maximum scrutiny given where "the science" has led society in the past in this problem domain).
... but it is the law of the land, and as consequence, one cannot be "just asking questions" about protected categories in an employment environment without career risk.
> To answer your question more directly: "Yes. If I were working with a coworker that I know has publicly and thoroughly quoted science that indicates men are categorically more impulsive than women and he gives me, a man, a bad performance review, I would wonder if he did because he doesn't think men have the self-control to make good leaders." That's the hostile work environment, sadly.
1. Okay. So the psychologists deserve a lifetime of unemployment for daring to choose that major. Understood.
2. This is, as far as I can tell, the same form of argument as: "Yes. If I were working at a company that I know has publicly discussed and implemented DEI policies that argue for hiring people on the basis of traits other than their ability to do the job, and I saw a coworker do a bad job, I would wonder if that coworker were an unqualified 'diversity hire'." This is, to my understanding, one of the arguments that got Charlie Kirk shot; as it's one of the ones people cite when trying to justify the shooting.
But that argument is more coherent, because it considers the effect of hiring policy on hiring, rather than the effect of statistical traits of the general population on hiring. And because it considers job performance as evidence of job aptitude, rather than misrepresenting a statistical difference as a "categorical" one and then making an interpretation about personality traits as they correspond to job aptitude. (Part of the memo was specifically about how to prevent personality traits from interfering with job aptitude, coming from a belief that they don't inherently.)
> one cannot be "just asking questions" about protected categories
Again: his feedback was explicitly solicited. It is extraordinarily unjust to solicit feedback but punish people for saying things you don't want to hear. This is in fact a hallmark of the sorts of authoritarian regimes Damore complained about.
> it's not like individuals from the categories with the ... traits ... magically stop being of that category when they are hired
No, but if the trait is relevant to job performance, then they do stop having that trait when they are hired, because the hiring process filters for it. That's the point. Damore repeatedly, explicitly stated throughout the memo that such stereotyping is inappropriate. It represents ignoring evidence you already have. "You are in a group that tends to X, therefore you are X" is false logic that Damore calls out as false logic. It is being projected onto him by the complainants. Reasonable people did not make that inference, because the inference is not reasonable — because it is not backed by logic, nor is it compatible with the principle of charity that is expected of reasonable people. Coming to these sorts of conclusions requires many unreasonable acts, such as repeatedly ignoring explicit disclaimers.
> So the psychologists deserve a lifetime of unemployment for daring to choose that major.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." People who have studied psychology and wish to work in an American workplace are welcome to do so. If they suggest modern psychological science indicates that Title VII is based on flawed reasoning and their coworkers have reason to believe they will act on that belief in an official capacity, that creates a hostile work environment. American businesses are not the places to lab-test OCEAN trait averages as policy guidance.
You have stated several times that Damore stated that wasn't his intent. I know he stated that (sidebar: one of the reasons this topic triggers my interest is I was there). I think, unfortunately for him, his protests failed the credibility test, fair or unfair that may be. He hadn't earned a benefit of the doubt from his colleagues (to be fair to him, "colleagues" is a very wide net the way Google organized itself back then; they were still acting like a small company in terms of organization when they employed over 50,000 people, and I think the experience with Damore was a nail in the coffin for their "big company with small-company ideals" model).
> publicly discussed and implemented DEI policies that argue for hiring people on the basis of traits other than their ability to do the job
I've seen this criticism in a couple of dimensions and I won't claim it doesn't happen, but (perhaps surprisingly) I agree with you to an extent. I'm not in favor of hiring people who can't do the job because they have other traits. Broadly speaking though, DEI initiatives are predicated on the core notion that most candidates are actually interchangeable, and if you don't back-stop in your company culture regular human biases, companies will hire more people who look, act, and think like them over equally-qualified people from different backgrounds. That's not the same thing as intentionally hiring unqualified people for a role; for most roles, strict stack-ranking of candidates is actually impossible because the responsibility domain is too broad.
> Again: his feedback was explicitly solicited
You are 100% correct, and I think Google as an org learned a valuable lesson about message channels in this story. There is also the dimension worth noting that the decision to keep it in house was taken out of both Google and Damore's hands because someone leaked the whole topic to the public, which thoroughly tied Google's hands; Damore's conduct in the public eye read worse than it did internally, so Google was faced with significant blow-back if they decided to go to bat for the guy at that point. It is entirely possible one of his coworkers did that on purpose, and that can be interpreted as malicious (... on the other hand, if the story is "Once the public knew about it, Google couldn't do anything but fire him..." Maybe the conduct was firing-worthy? All subsequent formal inquiry seems to concur it was).
> Reasonable people did not make that inference, because the inference is not reasonable
I think you make a reasonable case here, but unfortunately, I don't think the public agrees and we end up on the rocks of "reasonable person principle" again. If most of the public's interpretation doesn't fit the "reasonable person" standard, democracy as an experiment is a bit failed, yeah?
> such as repeatedly ignoring explicit disclaimers.
If you believe the disclaimers, you arrive at different conclusions than if you don't. Sadly for Mr. Damore, I think most people just didn't.
> I think a reasonable person can conclude that what Damore did was de-facto engaging in harmful stereotypes, even if he believed he was creating a grounded argument from science.
No, a reasonable person cannot do so, because this is a matter of fact. This conclusion is incompatible with what the word "stereotype" means. Objectively, an empirically backed statistical trend is not a stereotype. Again, this is like using the word" stereotype to describe the statement "on average, men are taller than women".
It is not a question of Damore believing he was creating a grounded argument from science. It is a question of the objective fact that he was doing so.
> And while Damore didn't single out any specific coworker, he made clear that he was approaching working with his colleagues from a framework that made assumptions about them based on gender
No. His framework does not "make assumptions about them", i.e. about individuals. It highlights things that are known to be true as statistical patterns. He was explicit in noting that he does not use these statistics to prejudge people, for example:
> 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.
He was explicit that his purpose in highlighting the statistics is to refute an argument he saw being made that a disparate outcome evidenced a bias. He offered an alternate explanation for the outcome.
To say that this is wrong is to say, in effect, that he is not allowed to hold the view, never mind express it. And it is to say that no refutation of the argument presented could be tolerated.
That is not how healthy discussion works. And as I recall, Damore's feedback was part of a program explicitly soliciting this sort of feedback.
Also notable, Damore also claimed (again correctly, again backed by statistical evidence) that women show on average higher openness and extraversion (other OCEAN traits) on the same studies where they show higher neuroticism. Nobody objected to that. Because the objection was rooted in emotional affect and a knee-jerk reaction to a word without understanding the underlying concept or caring about the evidence presented.
> Wouldn't the "reasonable person" principle conclude that,
I don't see why:
> In law, a reasonable person or reasonable man is a hypothetical person whose character and care conduct, under any common set of facts, is decided through reasoning of good practice or policy.[1][2]
I don't agree that the people in question were conducting themselves in anything like that manner.
> His questions did not carry any such implication and that is a blatant misrepresentation of the argument he was making.
I also read through this in-depth at the time, and yeah, he definitely did carry such implication. Hiding it through quoting bad science doesn't aid his cause.
He's a racist and a sexist, and he's just good at doing in a quasi-grey area, so that other racists can rally behind him. It's effectively the alt-right playbook, as the alt-right is just a "more commercially friendly KKK".
> and yeah, he definitely did carry such implication.
I have read through it many times. Such inferences require wilful misinterpretation.
If you disagree, please feel free to email me for further discussion. I use this username, on the Proton email service (specifically the one with a two-letter TLD).
> Hiding it through quoting bad science doesn't aid his cause.
The science he cited is not bad; it is well accepted in the relevant fields. For example, the "people vs things orientation" point is general knowledge in the field; it's a highly reproducible result with one of the largest effect sizes in all of behavioural science (see e.g. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-..., section 2).
> He's a racist and a sexist
The memo does not describe, or attempt to describe, any form of racial difference, whether hypothetical or measured. The only mentions of race are in reference to the existing Google policy, which is unavoidable insofar as that policy explicitly takes race into consideration. There is not even a remotely plausible basis for describing anything written here as racist, and you reasonably ought to understand this from your claimed "in-depth" reading.
> he's just good at doing in a quasi-grey area,
There is nothing "quasi-grey" about it except among people who are looking for a reason to misinterpret it. As an objective matter of fact he did not say the harmful things attributed to him.
> so that other racists can rally behind him. It's effectively the alt-right playbook, as the alt-right is just a "more commercially friendly KKK".
This is completely unfounded assassination of character which does nothing except to reveal your own biases.
> There is not even a remotely plausible basis for describing anything written here as racist
The fact that plenty of people disagree with you doesn't support your argument.
It feels like you're being defensive here because you agree with his rhetoric and you don't want to consider yourself sexist or racist, because "that makes you a bad person". You can have racist, sexist thoughts, and maybe in other cases still generally be good in your actions. This doesn't define your core being, even if you still have hateful thoughts. You'll never be able to improve yourself if you're unwilling to have your beliefs challenged.
> This is completely unfounded assassination of character which does nothing except to reveal your own biases.
He's become a hero of the alt-right, specifically because his approach to this aligns with their playbook. It's not character assassination, it's truth. He's trying to phrase things in a palatable way, but his underlying message is that minorities and women don't belong in tech.
Though he said he doesn't support the alt-right, he went on a media tour after being fired, on alt-right platforms. This is also something that generally aligns with alt-right playbooks. Distance yourself in speech, but not in action.
> The fact that plenty of people disagree with you doesn't support your argument.
First off, no, you are the only one in the discussion who brought up any charge of racism.
Second, no, this is blatant argumentum ad populum fallacy.
Third, the fact that you apparently refuse to cite anything from the memo is telling. I know that you cannot cite anything from the memo to support a charge of racism because I have read the memo and it contains nothing that can support a charge of racism even in your ideological framework.
If you disagree, quote the part that you think does so. I will be happy to explain why it does not.
> It feels like you're being defensive here because you agree with his rhetoric and you don't want to consider yourself sexist or racist, because "that makes you a bad person".
I am correctly pointing out that he said nothing wrong, because I agree with what he said. I am not sexist or racist; those qualities are moral failings, and therefore having them does make someone a bad person. There is objectively nothing sexist or racist about what was said, and therefore objectively nothing sexist or racist about agreeing with it. I have carefully explained why, repeatedly, throughout the thread.
I am not "being defensive", as that term implies a feeling of guilt. I feel no guilt, because I have done nothing wrong, and believe nothing wrong. I feel annoyance, because you are trying to tell me objectively incorrect things that you reasonably ought to know are incorrect, and because you are attacking an innocent person (Damore) whom I care about (at least on a philosophical level).
> You can have racist, sexist thoughts, and maybe in other cases still generally be good in your actions. This doesn't define your core being, even if you still have hateful thoughts. You'll never be able to improve yourself if you're unwilling to have your beliefs challenged.
It comes across that you say this with the intent of "giving me an out", but really it just comes across as condescending. The only "hateful thoughts" I have in this regard are towards a) those who promote an altered, unjust definition of "sexism" and "racism" in order to rationalize harmful, sexist, racist, morally incorrect policies like DEI; b) those who make false presumptions about my mental state.
I have "had my beliefs challenged" constantly by people like you for well over a decade. "Having one's beliefs challenged" does not entail changing them. "Improving oneself" does not entail agreeing with your viewpoint, either. It entails refining one's ability to reject it. Because it is incorrect.
> He's become a hero of the alt-right, specifically because his approach to this aligns with their playbook. It's not character assassination, it's truth. He's trying to phrase things in a palatable way, but his underlying message is that minorities and women don't belong in tech.
> Though he said he doesn't support the alt-right, he went on a media tour after being fired, on alt-right platforms. This is also something that generally aligns with alt-right playbooks. Distance yourself in speech, but not in action.
All of this is complete unfounded nonsense, repeatedly and directly contradicted by what Damore actually said. You have not read the memo. You have looked at the memo, pulled out some words, and come to a conclusion driven by your own ideological biases. But your understanding of the meaning is objectively incorrect. What you are doing here is roughly equivalent to reading someone say "on average, men are taller and physically stronger than women" and saying "get a load of this person, who apparently doesn't think women should play sports". And then also extending the point to "minorities", based on absolutely nothing at all.
(If you dispute the claim that men are on average taller and physically stronger than women, please feel free to cite your studies.)
> "Please don't comment on whether someone read an article."
Damore's memo is not an article in this sense and it especially is not what OP submitted.
> "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity."
Why do you present this criticism to someone who offers evidence, but not to the other party, who is making assertions directly contradicted by the evidence for the purpose of character assassination? How is it not "political or ideological battle" to accuse someone, without evidence and in clear contradiction of available evidence, of being a "hero of the alt-right" who is following their "playbook"?
Further: I explicitly offered to continue the conversation by email instead. I received no email, and received a comment reply. It is not fair or reasonable to castigate me for replying.
Further: this subthread started with scuff3d making the sarcastic remark "God forbid they stand up for people and fight for an inclusive work environment. How dare they!", uncharitably representing someone else's position and clearly intending "political or ideological battle". This then allowed for you to introduce Damore as a topic, in proposing that someone else's entirely reasonable positions were somehow harmful and implicitly justifying that they should have gotten Damore fired, an ideological position unrelated to the PSF except insofar as the underlying ideology is treated as a topic.
