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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.
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 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.
I work at a large tech company, not one most folks immediately think of, but most in the industry are reasonably aware of. Thought we were, not isolated from this angry back and forth, but at least collectively smart enough not to step into the muck. And generally good people who can just not be dicks to each other.
Well, internal email discussions suggest at least some of my co-workers really want to be more like Google. It's like, not being a dick isn't enough, we need to be "aggressively tolerant" of diversity. Not sure what that even means, but aggressive anything seems counter productive. I fear we're going to find another Damore at my employer, sooner than later. Simply because someone feels the need to hunt for him.
You constantly call all the egalitarians "anti-diversity", "racist", "misogynist", etc.
I do not. I am an egalitarian.
1. We must treat everyone equally
2. We must fix the injustices of the past (affirmative action)
You, and people like you, are trying to convince the rest of the world that those two separate concepts are the same. That is not true. For example, most people will get behind the concept of "Lets treat everyone equally", but not support affirmative action.
Simply treating everyone equally has been tried, in fact it has been law for decades in many places, but it hasn't addressed the inequalities. That's because the issues are often entrenched in systems and in the starting positions of all the players. It's like saying that a game of chess treats both players equally because the rules are the same for everyone, even though white doesn't start with a queen.
Having said that, I fully appreciate that affirmative action is highly controversial. To be absolutely clear I don't think everyone who opposes it is a bigot, that's silly. And sometimes affirmative action can be wrong, it can have unintended negative consequences, or even be malicious. But blanket rejection of it is also wrong, because it ignores reality and evidence in pursuit of some pure philosophical ideal.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Straw man argument there. What I (a flaming liberal compared to the entire US government) heard in my circles was:
- He released a company wide memo which predictably upset a lot of his coworkers
- The right wing media was taking a break from lecturing about personal responsibility to champion him as a poster boy for political speech run amok
- He might be claiming to have a PhD when he didn't actually finish it
- He performed a lewd skit in front of his grad program and got in trouble for it
- He might be going on conservative media playing up the "I'm a victim of liberals!" angle.
I'll admit all of that is behavior I've come to expect from republicans, but I heard ZERO indictments of him about his political leanings. Maybe that was just because there was too much material to get to boring stuff like that in his 15 minutes of fame.
>Even if there was any glimmer of right in the original ham fisted paper, it doesn't matter. At this point, the response is ballistic. It is not going to change course. Anything done to try to defend the original sin is going to be met with more of the same.
That's only true for most situations, not this situation. It's already escalated far past the lay low and let it blow over stage, and turned into part of the culture war. His choices now are bow to the orthodoxy or fight for the truth.
I could write an incredibly thought-provoking essay on race relations, which happened to include "White men, on average, are more: Racist..." and 97.3% of all of you would tune out.
No. We'd either agree, invite you to demonstrate some evidence, or provide evidence to the contrary.
Meanwhile if you were also making recommendations based on your flawed arguments that were intended to make the workplace a more productive and constructive environment for everybody, white, male or otherwise, then we'd explore those recommendations as interesting options.
Let it go man, he fucked up.
Yes. He expected people to respond rationally and with an assumption of positive intent, and instead encountered the emotive cunts that ruin any fucking workplace. Google should've sacked the sad shits that went, "He's making this place so hostile" for being too fucking retarded to engage in modern business.