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'I See Things Differently': James Damore on his Autism and the Google Memo (theguardian.com)
"James Damore opens up about his regrets -- and how autism may have shaped his experience of the world," writes the west coast bureau chief for the Guardian. An anonymous reader quotes their report:
The experience has prompted some introspection. In the course of several weeks of conversation using Google's instant messaging service, which Damore prefers to face-to-face communication, he opened up about an autism diagnosis that may in part explain the difficulties he experienced with his memo. He believes he has a problem understanding how his words will be interpreted by other people... It wasn't until his mid-20s, after completing research in computational biology at Princeton and MIT, and starting a PhD at Harvard, that Damore was diagnosed with autism, although he was told he had a milder version of the condition known as "high-functioning autism"...
Damore argues that Google's focus on avoiding "micro-aggressions" is "much harder for someone with autism to follow". But he stops short of saying autistic employees should be given more leniency if they unintentionally offend people at work. "I wouldn't necessarily treat someone differently," he explains. "But it definitely helps to understand where they're coming from." I ask Damore if, looking back over the last few months, he feels that his difficult experience with the memo and social media may be related to being on the spectrum. "Yeah, there's definitely been some self-reflection," he says. "Predicting controversies requires predicting what emotional reaction people will have to something. And that's not something that I excel at -- although I'm working on it."
Damore argues that Google's focus on avoiding "micro-aggressions" is "much harder for someone with autism to follow". But he stops short of saying autistic employees should be given more leniency if they unintentionally offend people at work. "I wouldn't necessarily treat someone differently," he explains. "But it definitely helps to understand where they're coming from." I ask Damore if, looking back over the last few months, he feels that his difficult experience with the memo and social media may be related to being on the spectrum. "Yeah, there's definitely been some self-reflection," he says. "Predicting controversies requires predicting what emotional reaction people will have to something. And that's not something that I excel at -- although I'm working on it."
It is good that he started reflecting. But he still has a long way to go. He got a friendly journalist for this article and that is OK, since he also got a lot of the other kind lately.
But even this author cannot help noticing, that he has been cherry-picking and using studies where even their authors say, that his conclusion are not supported by the studies. It is not presenting (disputed) facts that drew the fire to him, but putting them into an invalid context to (badly) veil his misogynistic undertones.
In my impression his (not well written) memo was mainly a whiny complaint about brilliant men like him having to put up with diversity issues. It is rather that attitude that will make him hard to employ because companies (like Google did) will judge him to be a risk for their image. And I do not see him working on this issue yet.
His bad luck was that this memo drew a lot of attention. But he did everything to get this attention and to his own demise he succeeded with it.
I hope he will not end up as a pariah in the tech industry. But two things need to happen for that: He has to fully understand what he did and others need to give him a second chance. The chances for either do not seem good at the moment.
Damore's memo was just misogynist bullshit.
That's a very cheap claim to make without any reasoning.
It's been reasoned many times before. For example here are two rather well written articles about it:
https://www.quora.com/What-do-...
https://www.economist.com/news...
Now, the defenses in respnse to these articles involve giving huge amounts of benefit of the doubt to the point of ignoring almost everything implied or that follows from the arguments in the memo. That's one option I guess except that here's James Damore in his own words:
https://www.salon.com/2017/09/...
https://mobile.twitter.com/Jam...
https://mobile.twitter.com/Jam...
I think it's clear from these comments that my (and others) inferences about where the memo was coming from were actually correct.
Anyway bring on the -1 trollbait mods! If there's one thing James Damore supporters can't stand it's the free speech they claim to support.
And one more thing: if you actually support some varian of improving things for men, then don't support this guy and his bullshit about gender roles. If you've ever pointed out how few men there are in certain jobs here, then don't support Damore's bullshit about gender roles because that is enforcing that separation. If you've ever complained about how men often pursue dangerous, but well paid jobs (contributing to increase workplace deaths for men) then don't spport this gender role bullshit because that's where a lot of the pressure comes from.
IOW this bullshit is bad for men and women. If you're a man and not a feminist you should still not support it because its bad for you. This guy and his army of supportes are trying to coerce you into a mould whether you want to be in it or not via this enforcement of gender roles.
It should be your choice not theirs.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
What is your evidence that they are opportunistic? Almost all so far have been either admitted or supported by strong evidence.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
>Women have always been poor losers
Most of the time a man will let you know he hates you, why, and eventually try to stab you in the face. It's not unusual for a woman to secretly nurse a grudge and plot for a long time about how best to stab you in the back, and any old superficially plausible justification will do. This starts with puberty and never really changes after that.
The people most effective at surviving in competitive environments can choose which method is best employed, regardless of their sex. And, in my opinion, the best kind of people use their understanding of the game to avoid it rather than play it.