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I was looking for his actual site, which is highly ranked on other engines. I don't trust any news sites any more, especially not headlines.

There's also the fact that you basically *can't* find an unedited memo with most simple Google searches. They promote a bunch of news articles offering opinions about it. I have to use non-Google search engines to find it.

You can find the memo here for anyone curious about it.

Damore is talking about a big 5 personality trait with neuroticism, not a mental illness.

The reason for bringing up different preferences and saying they lead to people developing different average skill levels in groups was to find a non-discriminatory way to make Google more woman-friendly, not to write a bunch of sneaky insults. That is, instead of trying to reject more male candidates, they could try to make the job less isolating than sit in a cube for 60+ hours with minimal interaction.

But people were introduced to it as an "anti-diversity screed" which causes an anchoring bias, even though Damore's goal was to present ideas on how to help women be better represented in tech by making the job nicer. Somehow that point continually gets lost and many stories don't even bother to link to Damore's memo.

> When one class of people makes another class of people feel unwelcome, then what do you do? You can't please all the people all the time, but you *can* fire the biggest assholes and keep them from making women feel like they don't belong there.

How about you fire the people who made threats against Damore or the people who engaged in illegal retaliation and keep the guy who suggested using a non-discriminatory approach to make Google more woman-friendly? Oh, right, you probably don't even know about that part of the memo, and it's not like you can find a full copy on Google, I had to use other search engines to find Damore's site with the paper.

Speaking of which, here's a copy of the memo and a link to Damore's site, both of which are quite hard to find on Google for some reason, even though other search engines find the site just fine.

It's amazing how many people call it an "anti-diversity screed" who either haven't read it or who badly misconstrue the part where he tries to say that Google could be more welcoming of women by making it so it's not expected to work 60-hour weeks with no human interaction and fail to realize that the overall thrust of the paper is to find non-discriminatory ways to make Google friendlier to women.

No he didn't. He said the group averages were different for men and women but there was still a significant overlap. He makes it clear he's not saying 'all men are X and all women are not X'.

https://firedfortruth.com/

Note, I'm not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are "just." I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. 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.

It's a bit like group differences in IQ. Just because group A has a higher IQ than group B it does not mean that all members of group B are dumber than all members of group A and that you should only hire members of group A and/or not hire members of group B even though progressives will always say anyone who mentions group differences in IQ is saying so because that would make them racist/sexist. What it does mean is that if you find you end up with more members of group A compared to group B that is not necessarily evidence of discrimination. It seems like he's anticipated progressives calling him a sexist and that's why he included the section I quoted above. Not that it helped him. Progressives refused to link to his memo because it was sexist, and thus didn't need to admit he'd said it. This is obviously extremely intellectually dishonest.

Incidentally he points out that men and women don't have different IQs, though the variance of IQs is different - men are more spread out and women cluster more around the mean IQ. As he puts it, that means 'more male CEOs and geniuses, but also more homeless males and school dropouts'. I.e. if you're doing something to select for extreme low or extreme high IQs you tend to get more men.

And if you search for "conservative" you find four occurrences, all in this paragraph

Stop alienating conservatives.

Viewpoint diversity is arguably the most important type of diversity and political orientation is one of the most fundamental and significant ways in which people view things differently.

In highly progressive environments, conservatives are a minority that feel like they need to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility. We should empower those with different ideologies to be able to express themselves.

Alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is required for much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company.

He says Google should foster viewpoint diversity and that conservatives should feel like they can speak out without fear of negative career consequences. Ironically by firing him, Google proved this is not the case currently. He also suggests conservatives are good at 'drudgery and maintenance', which seems a bike Uriah Heep-ish.

Nowhere does he suggest 'affirmative action'. And right at the top in the tl;dr he says

Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.

I.e. he's definitely not suggesting Google should use affirmative action for conservatives or anyone else.

Well look at the title

"Nope, James Damore's Autism Is Not the Cause of His Misogyny"

He didn't say that, as they admit

"Now, let me start off this article by emphasizing something: it's the author of this Guardian article, not James Damore himself, who makes the harmful suggestion that Damore's infamous Google memo and subsequent doubling-down are somehow caused by his autism. This is yet another example of the harmful ways that our culture writes about autistic people - and how damaging that narrative can be."

So why pick that headline?

Secondly there's nothing misogynistic in his memo. He's not suggesting Google should not hire women coders for example. If you read the tl;dr you see this

https://firedfortruth.com/

TL;DR

* Google's political bias has equated the freedom from offense with psychological safety, but shaming into silence is the antithesis of psychological safety.

* This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed.

* The lack of discussion fosters the most extreme and authoritarian elements of this ideology.
Extreme: all disparities in representation are due to oppression
Authoritarian: we should discriminate to correct for this oppression

* Differences in distributions of traits between men and women (and not "socially constructed oppression") may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership.

* Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.

and he ends like this

Suggestions

I hope it's clear that I'm not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that we shouldn't try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority. My larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas and evidence that don't fit a certain ideology. I'm also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I'm advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).

My concrete suggestions are to:

De-moralize diversity.

As soon as we start to moralize an issue, we stop thinking about it in terms of costs and benefits, dismiss anyone that disagrees as immoral, and harshly punish those we see as villains to protect the "victims."

Stop alienating conservatives.

Viewpoint diversity is arguably the most important type of diversity and political orientation is one of the most fundamental and significant ways in which people view things differently.
In highly progressive environments, conservatives are a minority that feel like they need to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility. We should empower those with different ideologies to be able to express themselves.
Alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is required for much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company.

Confront Google's biases.

I've mostly concentrated on how our biases cloud our thinking about diversity and inclusion, but our moral biases are farther reaching than that.
I would start by breaking down Googlegeist scores by political orientation to give a fuller picture into how our biases are affecting our culture.

Stop restricting programs and classes to certain genders or races.

These discriminatory practices are both unfair and divisive. Instead focus on some of the non-discriminatory practices I outlined.

Have an open and honest discussion about the costs and benefits of our diversity programs.

Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women's representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, p