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Critics Debate Autism's Role in James Damore's Google Memo (themarysue.com)
James Damore "wants you to know he isn't using autism as an excuse," reports a Silicon Valley newspaper, commenting on the fired Google engineer's new interview with the Guardian. But they also note that "he says being on the spectrum means he 'sees things differently'," and the weekend editor at the entertainment and "geek culture" site The Mary Sue sees a problem in the way that interview was framed.
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... It frames autism as some sort of basic decency deficiency, rather than a neurological condition shared by millions of people.... This whole article is peppered with weird suggestions like this, suggestions which detract from an otherwise interesting piece.. All these weird suggestions that autism and misogyny/bigotry are somehow tied (as if autistic feminists didn't exist) do unfortunately detract from one of the article's great points.
Having worked at a number of companies large and small, I can at least anecdotally confirm that their diversity training rarely includes a discussion of neurodiversity, and when it does, it's not particularly empathetic or helpful... Many corporate cultures are plainly designed for neurotypical extroverts and no one else -- and that should change. I really do think Lewis meant well in pointing that out. But the other thing that should change? The way the media scapegoats autism as a source of anti-social behavior.
Having worked at a number of companies large and small, I can at least anecdotally confirm that their diversity training rarely includes a discussion of neurodiversity, and when it does, it's not particularly empathetic or helpful... Many corporate cultures are plainly designed for neurotypical extroverts and no one else -- and that should change. I really do think Lewis meant well in pointing that out. But the other thing that should change? The way the media scapegoats autism as a source of anti-social behavior.
that is all.
Rocks city! THank you TRUMP!
It's the latest millennial buzzword for "disorders" which can't be reliably diagnosed and get treated by unlicensed therapists with no actual training. They're especially sought out by the weekend seminar trained, unlicensed "psychotherapists" from the "Center for Self Leadership".
They call for tolerance on all views on life except when it doesn't suit their own agenda. I call BS.
nt
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
The point of the (well written) original article was that Damore had handled things poorly due to his condition, not that his opinions arose due to his condition. E.g. he describes how he was associated with people he had never supported following the media backlash, and his poor social skills prevented him from being able to properly articulate his true position. Also he described how aspects of the wording in his memo could have been improved if he had been able to better predict the reactions of those around him.
It seems to me that this Mary Sue article has an axe to grind, perhaps not surprising given the source.
The critics are not using being an asshole as an excuse for suggesting it.
...it is true that autism, particularly Asperger's, blunts sufferers' ability to predict or understand the reaction to their behavior.
This is not an excuse... but, reading Damore's memo, it's hard to imagine he would have written or posted it absent some degree of cognitive impairment.
...also has autism.
I'm glad I was caught. I was mentally deranged. Now I am cured.
I ask only to be shot while my mind is still clean.
I think some aspects of Aspergers or other Autism spectrum disorders have it RIGHT in that emotion has no place in decision making. Do the right things for quantifiable reasons and don't expect everyone to read between the lines and come to same conclusions because people are too chicken shit to say what they mean.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
Perpetual grievance mill The Mary Sue generously allows that it isn't actually Damore who is using autism as an excuse. He isn't ableist, no, he's simply still a racist, and misogynist, and trying to skirt responsibility. Phew.
Why is this non-sense on Slashdot? They'd rather turn to stone than be charitable to anyone or anything that doesn't stroke with their victimhood complex.
The media "broke coverage" of Autism with Rain Man in 1988, and other than a few brief echos on Oprah and such it didn't say much again until the new millennium.
Would you think that with 17 years of practice, they'd have it down to a graceful sensitive socially correct science by now? I wouldn't. There was 10 years of "AWARENESS" beating the drum as loudly as possible while the "diagnosed" rates climbed from 1:10,000 through 1:150 and settled down around 1:68. Now that everybody is AWARE, there's been scant attempt to teach the nuance between Aspergers' and the various levels of dysfunctionality.
Give it another generation, when people who were AWARE in elementary school start framing the message it might take on a more human tone. For now, we're still getting our stories from the barely clued in.
... because I read Damore's memo and found it to be perfectly reasonable.
James Damore was asked to provide feedback after attending a diversity event at Google; he provided feedback, and then like the crazy nutcases of the Communist Revolution in China, the "feminist" SJWs used that feedback to identify Damore as a prime candidate for destruction in their Cultural Revolution.
Seriously. If you've spent any time reading about the timeline of Damore's internal document, or listening to Damore speak, you'd realize that he was very badly mistreated by an insidious group of harpies who have zero interest in improving our world.
It is one of the first rules that AS people need to learn.
Don't be a dick and that includes treating people how you expect to be treated. If you act like a dick, then expect to be treated like a dick.
Damore's arguments are exactly the same ones Google is going to use to defend itself from sexual discrimination claims levied against it by women working there who don't get paid as much as men.
Google really stepped in it when they claimed Damore was full of shit, and then doubled down on the SJW bullshit that all pay differences between men and women are the result of discrimination.
Well, now Google has to defend itself from the women who work at Google and get paid less than the men there.
Google is screwed either way. If Damore is wrong, Google owes a lot of women a shitload of back pay. And if Google uses anything like Damore's arguments to defend themselves from sexual discrimination claims, they wrongfully fired Damore and owe him both money and likely some serious punitive damages.
Couldn't happen to a better bunch of SJWs.
His mistake was to speak up. Autism doesn't turn people into idiots, often quite the opposite, but it makes it difficult to predict how other people will react. Social customs are highly illogical and usually not codified, but they govern everyday life to a high degree. Autists often speak their mind and offend without intent to offend. It is difficult to understand that it could be wrong to say what you truly believe and can corroborate with facts. It's not a "basic decency" deficiency. Autists are typically honest people, simply because they are bad at deceiving other people. An honest person who doesn't know when to shut up can be quite exhausting however.
You sound like you're making the error recently described by SSC:
Maybe Damore is one of the few unimpaired ones at Google.
When I went into kindergarten in the early 1970's, I looked like the poster child for mongolism and spent eight years in Special Ed classes. My speech impediment came from an undiagnosed hearing loss in one ear. However, I didn't have autism. After I skipped high school and went to college, my life normalized enough for me to start my technical career in software testing, help desk and security remediation. I would never used autism as an excuse for anything.
Posting AC because of my trolls (all one of them now).
If Damore was a dick (and I dispute that he was), then I suppose the dicks to whom he wrote his memo (at their request, mind you) shouldn't have been such dicks in the first place.
Damore's memo is the only thing in this whole debacle that is explicitly based on well established research.
What is wrong with you people? Have you even read his memo, or did you just take some "properly" interpreted version from leftist rags like Salon?
Wel duuuhh
If you disagree with the status quo now it has to be the result of a mental disease? That is absolutely frightening. This is how totalitarian regimes happen.
Who cares about the autistic fraudulent Ph.D. who can't stop with these ridiculous "identity politics" that the right apparently hate so much, except for this one guy of course?
Another place where everyone dissenting with the obvious glorious achievements of the glorious revolution were labeled insane. I mean, you have to be insane to not realize you're living in the best of all possible worlds!
(I wish I was kidding)
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Autists usually believe you when you tell them something and they will respond honestly. So if you tell them that you want an "open and frank discussion", they will give you one. And they will of course not understand when you react in a hostile way because all they did was to give you what you wanted.
In other words, never ask an Autist for something you don't want because you WILL get it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I disagree. We live in a culture that highly encourages freedom of speech and at one time used to respect it. Google, in particular, had a reputation for this sort of behaviour and apparently set up tools to act as safe spaces within the company to exchange ideas freely. Using this to express ideas in an area where you have some formal training but that many people might disagree with and think are wrong perhaps shows a certain naivety in actually believing your employer and society but I think stops well short of cognitive impairment.
Arguably, though, the worst example fo cognitive impairment is in those at Google carefully constructing their own thought echo chamber. If you cannot abide to have your own beliefs challenged in a polite, reasoned manner either you already are mentally impaired or soon will be. The correct response to him would have been an equally reasoned reply pointing out studies which contradict his claims that way he, and others, could have learnt something.
Sorry in advance for my Western imperialist bias towards logic and reason and all that stuff, but shouldn't the debate center on the ideas and arguments, and not Damore himself? Would being autistic make him more right or wrong? Being intellectually honest means accepting persuasive arguments regardless of who is offering them, if they hold up to scrutiny.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
First, let's spin the time-o-meter back a bit and remember that Damore's original premise was impaired based on technical factors ALONE. This was a deficit of analysis, nothing psychological. He tried to mis-apply population and sub-group statistics without quantifying any null hypothesis or larger context.
Technical issues aside, the specific wording and tone used in his note is a separate issue. I'm no linguist or lit-crit person, but he seemed to be very abstract, as if he had no direct, personal involvement with the subject aside from investigating it and writing about it. Yet he was clearly trying to write a persuasion piece, which is what made the language disconnect apparent to me in the first place.
I read this as an effort to put forth and justify an opinion clad in flimsy technical garb, without the spine to clearly label it as a personal opinion. Weasel-words in the nether-world between a solid technical discussion and an opinion piece.
Then we get to when, how and why the piece was distributed. He had shared at least one earlier draft with several others within Google, with apparently no significant push-back. I've seen similar things happen in other organizations, when fringe opinions are shared within a small group with minimal reaction. Most often, it's "Oh, there he goes again.", and nobody takes it seriously, and may not even bother to read it. Or it is taken as a thought experiment, with no concerns about wider distribution. I have heard nothing about what any of the folks though about Damore's screed before it was widely shared.
We can see how Damore could have made bad assumptions about his general audience: First, he may have interpreted the earlier lack of push-back as approval. Second, he may have assumed the earlier readers were representative of the wider audience. Neither of these have anything to do with "the Autism Spectrum". These are common mistakes any of us can make with our generalizations and assumptions.
However, claiming involvement of "the Spectrum" in these errors without first showing that other factors weren't involved smells to me like excuse-making rather than a serious explanation, much less a mea culpa.
Nah, sorry muffin, but there's no "fact" to anything with that nebulous fraud.
Your autistic posterchild got exactly what he deserved for being too stupid to sit on his "manifesto."
Hopefully Damore never works again. Little bitch.
why is anyone paying any attention to this? at all?
i remember back when the whole point of so-called "nerd culture" was to, you know, avoid sensationalistic tabloid culture bullshit.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
I read the memo. The guy doesn't know what he's talking about cherry picking "girls suck" out of some suspect - which comes with the territory - gender studies. The problem with (us) code monkeys is we start thinking we're so good that we are special. Yeah, his reports were good but anyone with focus and skills can RPC their way around Googles vast systems. It's getting along with the guy whose code you broke that's the problem. And since "girls suck" what the fuck happens when it's a female code monkey doing your code review and pointing out that, while obviously genius, your code is going to fail every million times which at Google scale means periodically?
What a jerk. And the one handed typist warriors of slashdot will of course defend them because y'all don't get laid much. "Conservatives" demanding respect for their opinions is like flat earthiers posting facebook memes.
LOL at end of blurb, "But the other thing that should change? The way the media scapegoats autism as a source of anti-social behavior."
Autism is basically the definition of "anti-social behavior" -- many of the people on the high end of the spectrum can't even communicate! How can one be social without communication?
While they frequently campaign about the "injustices" of men-dominated professions such as I.T. they are quite blind to the imbalance in woman-dominated professions such as nursing and teaching.
It seems to be their "thing" to pursue a female readership and they don't see any harm in denigrating men if that helps achieve that goal. (Though you'd think that antagonising half the potential audience wouldn't be the brightest move, commercially.)
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
If not for double standards, the left would have no standards at all.
He "self identifies" as autistic. According to the left's rules, that's good enough for him to qualify as a woman or black. But not autistic?
See that "Preview" button?
Autism?
What a twat.
I hope he doesn't have to either, once google uses his arguments to defend themselves against a lawsuit about not paying women enough, he should have a slam dunk case to sue the shit out of those regressive leftists cuntbags.
no muffins, cakes, or soup for you!
Google is starting to show it's true colors. PC & SJW for all!
No, autism would tend to be asocial or socially neutral. Anti-social is when you actually harm society, and that's less prevalent in autistics than the general population (even moreso when you account for the degree of bullying autistics are recipients of).
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
This is incredibly troubling, because it takes a legitimate if somewhat controversial statement, and wonders what mental disease or syndrome the speaker might have, as a cause, rather than dealing with the arguments directly.
In other words, it's a fancy way of saying, "All right-minded people would never even consider that, so something must be wrong with him."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Amen brother! :) super fucking "intelligent". And I mean tell you what the discoverer of Eludium Q-36 had for breakfast kind of intelligent.
It is super easy to tell an autist that you can throw them to the moon, and when you grapple them and say you are going to, they freak the fuck out thinking you will do it. Seriously.
Otherwise a great bunch
One thing I know is, autism is like being a member of the mutant class in x-men. Super fucking scary. You think you are smart, these people are fucking leagues ahead, if not push overs. And that's the scary part. Cause there are those who would exploit this at the detriment of society...
Guy doesn't say anything; he can't even write a sentence with a verb. Yet upvoted. You fuckwitted mods really just don't care at all, do you?
The idea that we must tolerate the intolerant is a laughable argument. You can have any belief you want, but when you act on them is when you lose that right.
You never have the right to treat someone like shit just because you think you should have the right to do so, since that is your "belief"
I mean, yeah, it's a problem for people who can't tolerate reality. But society blaming autism for speaking the truth seems a little odd...
This is so true. My son and I are both on the spectrum and both have trouble lying. He will try to lie, but is horrible at it and crumbles on even the most basic questioning. Personally, I find lying extremely hard to do. I can do it if it's a small lie like "No, honey, I didn't buy you a birthday present" when I really did and am keeping it as a surprise, they're fine. If it's something bigger like trading in a car for a new one and I think the old car's transmission is shot, the truth will come blurting out before I can stop it. (Yes, this happened and yes I suspect it affected my trade-in value.) Over the years, I've learned how to tell white lies to not hurt people's feelings needlessly, but big lying is always a huge challenge for me.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Nobody wants to hear that he might have autism. Not because it may or may not be true, but it forces people to recognize this is a complex issue with valid points from many sides. It makes it harder for people to vilify someone with black and white logic, and people who have already made up their minds hate that kind of thing.
Discrimination has been traced to the XX chromosome in many species. This can't end well for either side.
Face it: autism is a condition that makes a person incapable of performing as a full human being. It may not be an illness but it is definitely a handicap. Autistic people cannot establish social ties with any real person and therefore condemn themselves to a lifetime of estrangement that often lead to real mental illness and episodes of violence. Autistic people have no place in a modern, healthy society. The problem must be addressed.
I agree that no censorship can be a double-edged sword. I'll post in Reddit a lot. One of the good things is that there are subreddits for all opinions so "deplorables" can go to their own subreddit instead of flooding the ones I frequent. The bad thing is that this results in an echo chamber where everyone you interact with agrees with you (both on my side and on the side of the "deplorables"). It's almost a no-win situation: If you moderate too much, you create an echo chamber and punish people for their opinions, but if you don't moderate enough, members with radical opinions might drive away moderate members who don't want to deal with constantly replying to crazy or infantile opinions. It's a narrow path to follow and it's nearly impossible to get right all the time.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
People have a different opinion but instead of engaging in honest, respectful discourse, you opt to flame, insults and labels.
Funny thing to me is you fail to see your own bigotry. Perhaps try a bit of self reflection and ponder how you can become a better citizen to your fellow people.
The world has grown tired of your constant dishonest attacks (climate denier, racist, white cis bigot blah blah blah).
Just be a better honest person learn how to respect the opinions of others.
Regarding your car trade-in. Don't beat yourself up too bad over that. The dealer is most likely just going to send it to a wholesale auction and make it some BHPH lot's problem. Your minimum trade value was determined before you even walked in the door by a database. Very rarely does the trade value go down from there. It goes up because the customer plays hardball.
This is like saying "he did something wrong but it's because of his autism". He really didn't do anything wrong but espouse what he believes in the face of groupthink. It's a bit like when a few brave people spoke out about the world being a sphere when everyone else insisted it was flat. Autism might be linked to being less vulnerable to mindlessly following the crowd but it could account for just as much as simply being brave might.
... and the totalitarian climate that comes with it.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
A trusted source of unbiased news if ever there was never one. HA HA HA!
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
Allegation: Kevin Spacey performed an inappropriate sex act on me when I was a child.
Spacey: You caught me. I'm gay.
Allegation: James Damore is a misogynist.
Damore: No, it's cool, I'm autistic.
I'm speaking first-person as an autistic person. Autism != Hate. Autism explains a certain level of social awkwardness, yes. But autism is not and cannot be an excuse for hateful behavior. As an autistic person, I reject Damore's lame excuse, and resent that he's tried to conflate his behavior with the challenges of the autistic community.
James Damore's blatant, foul scientific racism.
Either I must have missed something or you must be confusign two things. What blatant, foul scientific racism are you talking about? James Damore was the guy who wrote the memo about Google's discriminatory policies. I'm not aware of him engaging in any racism, foul, scientific or otherwise.
so they're terrified of a work environment that's not conducive to women. Every single HR rep and tech CEO is salivating over the prospect of getting women into tech in mass. I'm not going to debate if they're better or worse than men taking as a statistical whole, but there's plenty of them that are superb at it and staying out because the work environment stinks. Getting them in would cause wages to plummet as the workforce increases by anywhere from 10-50%.
Anything that upsets that growing apple cart is going to be brushed aside. It's not SJWism, it's good 'ole capitalism.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If you haven't seen this essay by Clay Shirky, you might find it interesting.
including the learning step. Remember, once you get past trig it's a sausage fest. And it's all very, very socially awkward guys who have a hard time not making fools of themselves around women either intentionally or by design. It's just a plain uncomfortable situation to be in. If anything it's worse when they're younger since you've got hormone addled teenagers. Given the choice bright woman go into medical, accounting, general management, etc.
It doesn't help that modern education is so competitive that you pretty much have to start planing for your profession in your freshmen year of high school...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Umm... not really.
Before I understood that you threatening me to kick me hard enough to send me to the moon was not meant literally, I would probably have questioned your ability to kick hard enough for me to reach escape velocity, since our bodies would both rather disintegrate from the required force, and even if we ignored that you would have to absorb the energy required to send me on an escape trajectory due to the third Newtonian law, atmospheric friction alone would ensure that I would not even leave the atmosphere and burn up before reaching even the stratosphere.
Usually I didn't get that far, though...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Wow, today's first winner in the reading comprehension test.
I'll do you further honour by not even awarding you a gold star, which you would humbly decline in any case, recognizing that this "amazing" feat of yours was merely degree of difficulty 1.0 (had Slashdot not degenerated into some kind of Special Olympic group hug for the reading impaired).
Pinker vs. Spelke — 2005
This entire debate just seems fated to devolve into Plastafarianism.
Plastafarianism is a religious order that believes that human behaviour is so infinitely malleable, that no observed human behaviour whatsoever can't be adequately (and preferably) explained by environmental cues or conditioning.
Failure to share the perspective that such explanations are universally adequate, complete, satisfactory, and decisively preferable in all discourse dimensions will get your balls cut off.
Plastafarianism believes that whatever evolutionary biology brought to the male/female table has already undergone so many cultural face lifts, it's surpassed the 3.0 emjay* threshold of utterly obscured, obliterated, and eradicated (UOOE).
[*] An exponential scale where 0.5 emjays is defined as precisely fifty M.J. years (The Evolution Of Michael Jackson's Face 1958 FROM 2009).
Earnest discussion of effects above and beyond the 3.0 emjay threshold is either a form of cultural psychosis or culpable gullibility (at which point, the though police arrive in their giant white hats, bearing shrink-wrap David Byrne white suits, and powerful white heat guns).
One of the old tenets of feminism is that once we kick all the old hidebound alpha males out of political office, the world will become a kinder and gentler place—because the women who will slot in to replace these males really are wired differently, biologically. Unfortunately, the XX chromosome test hasn't proved much better at screening out assholes than your mother's tired, old Y chromosome test.
Why Some Teams Are Smarter Than Others — 18 January 2015
Huh, women might perform better than men in some corporate settings due to a possibly innate biological advantage (though Plastifarianism would deny that any such biological factor—even a relatively strong effect*—could withstand the lawfully established 3.0 emjay UOOE social pertinence filter).
[*] Plastifarians are presently hard at work reha
Okay, so he's on the spectrum. Yay.
People on the spectrum say and do all kinds of strange things. I heard of a guy who would pause eating, and suddenly start stabbing himself in the eyeball with his fork.
You know what used to happen to people like that? Bad things. Really BAD things, like involuntary incarceration in a nightmare institution where things like rape were tame in comparison to the other stuff that went on.
But despite all the truly horrible things that happened, something good did come out of it?
They didn't breed.
So while this person isn't likely to be going to a mental hospital any time soon, he has clearly demonstrated the inferiority of his genetic material through his behavior, and subsequent job loss. Which means he isn't likely to have children, and pass on his defective genetic material.
And I don't have a problem with that.
[End Of Line]
It doesn't matter because none of the arguments matter.
Google has created a hostile politically charged corporate culture that will drive talent away. The full scope of the problem may ultimately be fatal in time. So any defense of their behavior doesn't really matter. I mean, who cares if it does that? That sits on top of the real estate problem in SV that is making even the sky high tech job salaries irrelevant because all the money goes to rent.
James' argument doesn't matter because no one that disagrees with him is listening and no one that agrees with him needs to be told. The politicos are going do what they want and consequences are going to happen. This DoL dispute is interesting, he may win a lawsuit. But winning the lawsuit won't change anything unless the fines get very high. Absent getting fined a couple hundred MILLION minimum... google just won't care. Given that that seems unlikely... the market will have an effect, not James... whatever his intentions or the validity of his arguments. It just doesn't matter.
The Mary Sue's position also doesn't matter... the whole Rad Fem perspective is not even widely embraced by most women much less the general population. Its the pink haired fat chick with an eyebrow ring. Sorry if the stereotype seems "insensitive" but statistically that is the demographic that takes this seriously. And those sorts of people generally excel at whining and little else. They don't write books people care about. They don't create companies people care about. They don't invent anything. I can go on... they don't matter. They excel at making a nuisance of themselves.
And me saying this here and now... doesn't matter. Everyone that agrees with me doesn't need to be told. Everyone that disagrees won't be persuaded. And everything that was going to happen before will still happen that way whatever I said here...
This is all just... noise.
And that is what most of this political shit is... it is pointless bullshit.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Well golly gee what a surprise!
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Well yeah, obviously you are old enough to have learnt to raise questions over the realism of the action request. My higher functioning nephew is 10 and I’ve been tormenting him for years. Honesty is a real big problem for him that I can see. And until he learns to lie, the world will abuse him. Hopefuly my interactions will help him gain confidence to lie to get by, or succeed on a grander scale.