I honestly don't know why this is even relevant. He told a masturbation joke as a part of a hastily written retreat skit that people called sexist and caused a shitstorm.
> Three sources allege that Damore told what they characterized as a masturbation-related joke during the course of the performance, which fell flat and offended some in the audience. However, two sources attributed the backlash to the performance not to any malice on the part of Damore, but instead to his awkward delivery.
At this point people are going to try and pick apart his past in order to attack his character. We should be better than that here.
Whatever you think of this guy it doesn't surprise me that this other stuff is coming out. It seems like you would have seen his views in his behavior in the past... which these new things seem to show.
We've banned this account for violating the HN guidelines.
In general, also, we ban accounts that use HN primarily for political or ideological battle, since that's destructive of the mandate of the site. Would you please not create accounts to do this with?
Why did you link that, can you provide more context?
It doesn't seem like a massive deal according to what they state: he made a joke and it wasn't well received. They never say what the joke is or what about it was sexist.
Wingnut welfare is an important, underrated feature of the modern U.S. political scene. I don’t know who came up with the term, but anyone who follows right-wing careers knows whereof I speak: the lavishly-funded ecosystem of billionaire-financed think tanks, media outlets, and so on provides a comfortable cushion for politicians and pundits who tell such people what they want to hear. Lose an election, make economic forecasts that turn out laughably wrong, whatever — no matter, there’s always a fallback job available.
> Damore said: "I went to a diversity programme at Google, it was ... not recorded, totally secretive. I heard things that I definitely disagreed with in some of our programmes. I had some discussions there, there was lots of just shaming, and 'No you can’t say that, that's sexist' and 'You can't do this.'
That is, he took a bland corporate diversity training class and tried starting fights. The tell here is "you can't say that" with no antecedent for "that". Yeah: if you tell your diversity class that women aren't cut out for work at Google, you're going to cause a fight.
It was the thesis of his viral letter[1]. I'm simply supposing that he tried out the same argument in an informal context first, and that's what he's complaining about here.
[1] Yes, it was. Don't pretend that it wasn't. If he genuinely felt that women and minorities were just as valuable candidates why did he write 10 pages about why efforts to ensure their inclusion were hurting google? The fact that he framed the argument creatively doesn't change the fact that fundamentally he feels Google is hiring too many women, thus the diatribe.
But he wasn't insinuating that diversity was hurting google.. he was suggesting reasons for why he thought there wasn't enough diversity and how it could be beneficial.
> I'm simply supposing that he tried out the same argument in an informal context first, and that's what he's complaining about here.
Right, so you made that up. You're objecting strongly to something you THINK he MAY have done. Maybe.
> [1] Yes, it was. Don't pretend that it wasn't.
His thesis speaks for itself. Your objection to it is really your objection to what you THINK he means, instead of what he said. I think you may have just proved a few of his points.
What an absurd interpretation. If anything the guy appears to be very quiet and shy. Having said nothing sexist at all up till now, in the memo or otherwise, insinuating that this guy picked a fight and had some sort of outburst in front of the thought police, all based on the use of the word "that"?! Hah!
It is indeed absurd. If you watch his interview on YouTube, how this guy acts and talks, it is very hard to imagine him picking fights. I can't see anybody who is sincere doing this.
Not bland if it offended him enough to prompt his memo.
> The tell here is "you can't say that" with no antecedent for "that". Yeah: if you tell your diversity class that women aren't cut out for work at Google, you're going to cause a fight.
There is no evidence at all that he said anything like that during a diversity class. The only evidence we have is his memo. Which doesn't say women aren't cut out for work at Google. Thanks for playing.
This whole thing has been a wonderful example of trolling, in the old-school sense where you say something superficially calm and reasoned but which will inflame passions and start a big argument.
We are so prone to evaluating messages based on their form. If someone is ranting and cursing and shouting, we fundamentally assume that they're irrational. If someone speaks calmly and clearly and uses objective wording we assume that they're rational.
We read this statement, see "there was lots of just shaming," and our immediate natural reaction is to think, "Well that sucks, Google shouldn't shame people, this guy is being persecuted."
But that's not the information actually presented here. All this statement tells us is that this guy felt shamed. Was that because the people were actually shaming him? Or was it because they stated facts that this guy feels shamed by? Or something else? We have no idea.
Exactly. Really, this is the strongest, best-constructed and best-applied "anti-SJW screed" we've seen yet. Gamergate sucked young-white-male-techies in, but made no sense to anyone else. This is the spin they should have taken from the beginning. "Guy got fired by Google for making perfectly reasonable points about why women aren't good at tech" is something every conservative can get behind.
Clearly Google messed up here and walked into a trap.
Semantics. He said that the women Google was hiring were not as good as the men that Google is hiring. The point of his thesis was that Google was hiring too many women (and minorities, since the programs he was attacking target both, though he avoided getting into specifics on this one).
That's, yeah, rather controversial. How would you feel if your coworker and all his friends (c.f. all you guys posting here) felt that you were sub-par? Would you tell your female coworkers this to their face? "I don't think your gender is not good at tech per se, but you personally were hired from a too-large pool of candidates and that makes you not as good at your job as I am. You probably shouldn't have been hired".
It's a "wonderful example of trolling", not because of the presentation, but because the content is controversial?
To me it seems the man is trying to change the accepted political view rather than to spark controversy for the sake of it. Both approaches spark controversy, only the latter is trolling.
I disagree. I think he's trying to spark controversy.
For example, here's a part that really stood out for me:
"Note, the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths."
Superficially, this is a perfectly reasonable thing to say. The quoted statistic is true, and the proposed causal relationship between a drive for status and more male presence in these jobs is at least a believable reason for why there are so many more men in these jobs.
But taking a step back, it's a complete troll. The manifesto is supposedly about gender and diversity at Google, where there are very few coal mining, garbage collection, or firefighting jobs, and very few work-related deaths. So why is this even in here? It's not related to the topic at hand, it doesn't give us any useful information, and it's not going to help persuade anyone of anything.
The only answer I can come up with is: it's there to provoke. It's practically begging for ladies to thank men for doing important, dangerous jobs that women won't do, and using an emotional argument in the form of dead people to push it. It's a faux-dispassionate way to say "we're dying for your sins, ladies."
This is a big part of the art of the troll: you stick in little irrelevant asides that are built to provoke. When done well, these asides are factual and appear relevant.
I think the reason Damore mentioned those jobs is because they, like software engineering (can be), are high pay/high stress BUT are considered undesirable, UNLIKE software engineering, because you die a lot less on the job as a software engineer.
In Google's ideal world where ideal means all jobs are distributed evenly matching the population of men and women, there would be an equal push for women taking those undesirable jobs. However, there isn't, and everyone is fine with that (I personally haven't heard any rallying cries to get more women into garbage collection, at least). What this translates to (in my interpretation of what I believe Damore's point was, as a disclaimer) is "men take dangerous, stressful jobs because women don't want them, even when they are high paying, due to differing pressures on the sexes."
The problem is when you remove the "dangerous" part (and software engineering one could argue is also not as stressful as these other jobs, if only for its lack of danger. The worst thing that can happen to you on the job is to be fired), women supposedly want the jobs, and so there's an artificial push for them to be employed by employers like Google. So now the market is smaller for qualified men to take these jobs, and theoretically they are more incentivized to take lower paying/more stressful/more dangerous (worse) jobs that may also be male dominated, but where there are no pushes for artificially increased diversity.
The result is a net loss for men overall, and not necessarily a net gain for women, when you consider his other point that most women may not actually want software engineering jobs (this is a more controversial statement in my opinion, but not the one you chose, and I still believe it deserves to be responded to respectfully instead of with ridicule and outrage). Additionally, this could also lead to a reduced average level of talent if less qualified women were being hired over qualified men, but I won't argue that and Google is an elite enough company that everyone they hire is likely supremely qualified.
So to me it seems like a reasonable (or at least not inflammatory for the sake of being inflammatory) assertion to make. I don't think that specific passage was there to provoke (although his original intent with the entire memo was to spark dialogue, which I suppose you could call 'sparking controversy' but I wouldn't). I believe you missed the point.
He's looking for a big debate. I don't know if it's fair to call it trolling. That implies his primary goal is to make other people upset. I think he actually wants to change
people's minds.
I think he cited dangerous jobs like coal mining because he is trying to build a case that certain personalities lead genders, on average, to different professions.
He does not support this opinion with any research, and that's where his argument falls apart. He ignores societal factors and assumes biological factors explain gender employment gaps.
> this guy felt shamed. Was that because the people were actually shaming him? Or was it because they stated facts that this guy feels shamed by?
I don't think it matters. As far as I am aware, no part of the business, or any part of this industry, is trying to help people understand why they should change their behavior and thinking towards women. The only thing I see is a sort of 'behavioral training' that tells you how to think and act, without helping you gain the empathy and compassion, or even rational arguments, needed for this to be a willing act. Do what we tell you to do or you're fired, we don't care if you believe it.
This sets back the whole cause because it makes silent angry people who stew until they get shamed at a retreat and then churn out ignorant manifestos they are subsequently fired for writing. If the company gave a shit, they would do more to help change minds, not just silence them.
Maybe their retreat was supposed to do that. But it sounds more like people there were hostile rather than compassionate, and didn't do their job to help these people understand. And now the alt-right has a new poster boy to push their propaganda.
Your preferred solution to the problem of gender inequality is a magic ray gun that imparts empathy and compassion?
I mean, OK. I agree, that would work. But you honestly don't think that's what we're trying to do here? It's hard. People are jerks. All we simpering SJW's are saying is while people are still jerks, would it really hurt so much if they were forced not to act like it in ways that actively hurt things?
You're saying that people's opinions are the problem and that doing this thought police stuff isn't changing them, so it's not a solution.
Isn't the actual problem, though, that women (c.f. this very thread) don't feel comfortable or welcome in tech careers? How is the inner mental landscape of a bunch of dudes going to fix that? Isn't the "real" solution to, y'know, actually make things better for women in this industry?
> 'No you can’t say that, that's sexist' and 'You can't do this.'
Well, that's certainly an accurate description of a corporate diversity seminar.
I just completed a corporate training about bribery, just lots of "No you can't accept that gift", "No, you can't give the contract to someone who's family works for the government in return". If I'd been accepting bribes I'd probably feel shamed.
I have a feeling the details are scant because they are banal. He probably got some bland, generic HR talk and felt extremely uncomfortable discussing gender and race, so much so that he wrote this diatribe. He would still have a job if he just wrote it as a first person perspective of what made him uncomfortable at the diversity training, instead of making it this indictment of Google and their efforts at diversity as a whole.
I studied mathematical logic quite extensively, and I'm pretty sure this person doesn't know what he's talking about. Godel's incompleteness theorem is about facts which are unprovable in a certain logical framework. Any sufficiently complex consistent system A has a statement G which cannot be either proven or disproven in that system. That by itself is not a paradox, there are plenty of unsolved mathematical problems that might not be solvable using the axioms we have. For example "A is/is not consistent" is such a statement.
On the contrary, any statement that can be derived within the framework A cannot contradict A because that would prove that A is inconsistent! Of course with a real sufficiently complex logical system we cannot know whether it is consistent or not, but that doesn't mean it is possible to prove a paradox in it.
Naive and privileged person starts flamewar based on their calmly reasoned explanation of why their privileged group are inherently better suited to do their job than other less privileged group; after attempts to show them that they are indeed privileged and that others may also be as competent.
Due to intense backlash said naive and privileged person joins angry privileged people on a road to genuine hatred. All the while claiming that they are the underprivileged group.
I feel like a lot of people are getting indignant for basically nothing. It doesn't matter what the memo says.
I am reading Corporate Confidential by Cynthia Shapiro. It's highly relevant to this situation. Also, for those who have read it, this particular situation becomes an extremely interesting case study on exactly what not to do when you are working at any company.
At first I just thought he was oblivious to some degree—regardless of his document's veracity, it was clearly a case of "wrong time, wrong place." Furthermore, it's one thing to "stand on principle, even if you stand alone", but there's also something to be said for "choosing which hill to die on"...
Frankly, as additional details and background have come out—and the more he speaks—it seems increasingly evident his motivations were less than virtuous.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 114 ms ] thread> Fired Google Memo Writer Took Part in Controversial, 'Sexist' Skit While at Harvard for Which Administration Issued Formal Apology
> Three sources allege that Damore told what they characterized as a masturbation-related joke during the course of the performance, which fell flat and offended some in the audience. However, two sources attributed the backlash to the performance not to any malice on the part of Damore, but instead to his awkward delivery.
At this point people are going to try and pick apart his past in order to attack his character. We should be better than that here.
Whatever you think of this guy it doesn't surprise me that this other stuff is coming out. It seems like you would have seen his views in his behavior in the past... which these new things seem to show.
> while they described the skits as typically a “roast,” they emphasized that “the goal is not to offend.”
Really just seems like some more character assassination by Gizmodo.
You can't kill something that's dead.
Here's an interview with James:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=TN1vEfqHGro
In general, also, we ban accounts that use HN primarily for political or ideological battle, since that's destructive of the mandate of the site. Would you please not create accounts to do this with?
It doesn't seem like a massive deal according to what they state: he made a joke and it wasn't well received. They never say what the joke is or what about it was sexist.
Wingnut welfare is an important, underrated feature of the modern U.S. political scene. I don’t know who came up with the term, but anyone who follows right-wing careers knows whereof I speak: the lavishly-funded ecosystem of billionaire-financed think tanks, media outlets, and so on provides a comfortable cushion for politicians and pundits who tell such people what they want to hear. Lose an election, make economic forecasts that turn out laughably wrong, whatever — no matter, there’s always a fallback job available.
https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/25/wingnut-welfare...
> Damore made the comments in his first major interview since being fired, to alt-right YouTube personality Stefan Molyneux.
> Damore said: "I went to a diversity programme at Google, it was ... not recorded, totally secretive. I heard things that I definitely disagreed with in some of our programmes. I had some discussions there, there was lots of just shaming, and 'No you can’t say that, that's sexist' and 'You can't do this.'
That is, he took a bland corporate diversity training class and tried starting fights. The tell here is "you can't say that" with no antecedent for "that". Yeah: if you tell your diversity class that women aren't cut out for work at Google, you're going to cause a fight.
When did he ever say that?
[1] Yes, it was. Don't pretend that it wasn't. If he genuinely felt that women and minorities were just as valuable candidates why did he write 10 pages about why efforts to ensure their inclusion were hurting google? The fact that he framed the argument creatively doesn't change the fact that fundamentally he feels Google is hiring too many women, thus the diatribe.
Right, so you made that up. You're objecting strongly to something you THINK he MAY have done. Maybe.
> [1] Yes, it was. Don't pretend that it wasn't.
His thesis speaks for itself. Your objection to it is really your objection to what you THINK he means, instead of what he said. I think you may have just proved a few of his points.
Not bland if it offended him enough to prompt his memo.
> The tell here is "you can't say that" with no antecedent for "that". Yeah: if you tell your diversity class that women aren't cut out for work at Google, you're going to cause a fight.
There is no evidence at all that he said anything like that during a diversity class. The only evidence we have is his memo. Which doesn't say women aren't cut out for work at Google. Thanks for playing.
We are so prone to evaluating messages based on their form. If someone is ranting and cursing and shouting, we fundamentally assume that they're irrational. If someone speaks calmly and clearly and uses objective wording we assume that they're rational.
We read this statement, see "there was lots of just shaming," and our immediate natural reaction is to think, "Well that sucks, Google shouldn't shame people, this guy is being persecuted."
But that's not the information actually presented here. All this statement tells us is that this guy felt shamed. Was that because the people were actually shaming him? Or was it because they stated facts that this guy feels shamed by? Or something else? We have no idea.
Clearly Google messed up here and walked into a trap.
He said on average, as a group, they are less interested in tech, but that we should treat everyone as individuals.
That's not very controversial, now is it?
That's, yeah, rather controversial. How would you feel if your coworker and all his friends (c.f. all you guys posting here) felt that you were sub-par? Would you tell your female coworkers this to their face? "I don't think your gender is not good at tech per se, but you personally were hired from a too-large pool of candidates and that makes you not as good at your job as I am. You probably shouldn't have been hired".
To me it seems the man is trying to change the accepted political view rather than to spark controversy for the sake of it. Both approaches spark controversy, only the latter is trolling.
For example, here's a part that really stood out for me:
"Note, the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths."
Superficially, this is a perfectly reasonable thing to say. The quoted statistic is true, and the proposed causal relationship between a drive for status and more male presence in these jobs is at least a believable reason for why there are so many more men in these jobs.
But taking a step back, it's a complete troll. The manifesto is supposedly about gender and diversity at Google, where there are very few coal mining, garbage collection, or firefighting jobs, and very few work-related deaths. So why is this even in here? It's not related to the topic at hand, it doesn't give us any useful information, and it's not going to help persuade anyone of anything.
The only answer I can come up with is: it's there to provoke. It's practically begging for ladies to thank men for doing important, dangerous jobs that women won't do, and using an emotional argument in the form of dead people to push it. It's a faux-dispassionate way to say "we're dying for your sins, ladies."
This is a big part of the art of the troll: you stick in little irrelevant asides that are built to provoke. When done well, these asides are factual and appear relevant.
In Google's ideal world where ideal means all jobs are distributed evenly matching the population of men and women, there would be an equal push for women taking those undesirable jobs. However, there isn't, and everyone is fine with that (I personally haven't heard any rallying cries to get more women into garbage collection, at least). What this translates to (in my interpretation of what I believe Damore's point was, as a disclaimer) is "men take dangerous, stressful jobs because women don't want them, even when they are high paying, due to differing pressures on the sexes."
The problem is when you remove the "dangerous" part (and software engineering one could argue is also not as stressful as these other jobs, if only for its lack of danger. The worst thing that can happen to you on the job is to be fired), women supposedly want the jobs, and so there's an artificial push for them to be employed by employers like Google. So now the market is smaller for qualified men to take these jobs, and theoretically they are more incentivized to take lower paying/more stressful/more dangerous (worse) jobs that may also be male dominated, but where there are no pushes for artificially increased diversity.
The result is a net loss for men overall, and not necessarily a net gain for women, when you consider his other point that most women may not actually want software engineering jobs (this is a more controversial statement in my opinion, but not the one you chose, and I still believe it deserves to be responded to respectfully instead of with ridicule and outrage). Additionally, this could also lead to a reduced average level of talent if less qualified women were being hired over qualified men, but I won't argue that and Google is an elite enough company that everyone they hire is likely supremely qualified.
So to me it seems like a reasonable (or at least not inflammatory for the sake of being inflammatory) assertion to make. I don't think that specific passage was there to provoke (although his original intent with the entire memo was to spark dialogue, which I suppose you could call 'sparking controversy' but I wouldn't). I believe you missed the point.
I think he cited dangerous jobs like coal mining because he is trying to build a case that certain personalities lead genders, on average, to different professions.
He does not support this opinion with any research, and that's where his argument falls apart. He ignores societal factors and assumes biological factors explain gender employment gaps.
I don't think it matters. As far as I am aware, no part of the business, or any part of this industry, is trying to help people understand why they should change their behavior and thinking towards women. The only thing I see is a sort of 'behavioral training' that tells you how to think and act, without helping you gain the empathy and compassion, or even rational arguments, needed for this to be a willing act. Do what we tell you to do or you're fired, we don't care if you believe it.
This sets back the whole cause because it makes silent angry people who stew until they get shamed at a retreat and then churn out ignorant manifestos they are subsequently fired for writing. If the company gave a shit, they would do more to help change minds, not just silence them.
Maybe their retreat was supposed to do that. But it sounds more like people there were hostile rather than compassionate, and didn't do their job to help these people understand. And now the alt-right has a new poster boy to push their propaganda.
I mean, OK. I agree, that would work. But you honestly don't think that's what we're trying to do here? It's hard. People are jerks. All we simpering SJW's are saying is while people are still jerks, would it really hurt so much if they were forced not to act like it in ways that actively hurt things?
You're saying that people's opinions are the problem and that doing this thought police stuff isn't changing them, so it's not a solution.
Isn't the actual problem, though, that women (c.f. this very thread) don't feel comfortable or welcome in tech careers? How is the inner mental landscape of a bunch of dudes going to fix that? Isn't the "real" solution to, y'know, actually make things better for women in this industry?
Well, that's certainly an accurate description of a corporate diversity seminar.
I just completed a corporate training about bribery, just lots of "No you can't accept that gift", "No, you can't give the contract to someone who's family works for the government in return". If I'd been accepting bribes I'd probably feel shamed.
https://twitter.com/PhilSandifer/status/894940236672794624
On the contrary, any statement that can be derived within the framework A cannot contradict A because that would prove that A is inconsistent! Of course with a real sufficiently complex logical system we cannot know whether it is consistent or not, but that doesn't mean it is possible to prove a paradox in it.
Due to intense backlash said naive and privileged person joins angry privileged people on a road to genuine hatred. All the while claiming that they are the underprivileged group.
sigh
I am reading Corporate Confidential by Cynthia Shapiro. It's highly relevant to this situation. Also, for those who have read it, this particular situation becomes an extremely interesting case study on exactly what not to do when you are working at any company.
Frankly, as additional details and background have come out—and the more he speaks—it seems increasingly evident his motivations were less than virtuous.
You mean he wanted to change an extreme leftist policy he disagreed with?
Oh noes. What a monster!