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Labor Board Says Google Could Fire James Damore For Anti-Diversity Memo (theverge.com)
According to a recently disclosed letter from the U.S. National Labor Relations Board, Google didn't violate labor laws by firing engineer James Damore for a memo criticizing the company's diversity program. "The lightly redacted statement is written by Jayme Sophir, associate general counsel of the NLRB's division of advice; it dates to January, but was released yesterday, according to Law.com," reports The Verge. "Sophir concludes that while some parts of Damore's memo was legally protected by workplace regulations, 'the statements regarding biological differences between the sexes were so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive as to be unprotected.'" From the report: Damore filed an NLRB complaint in August of 2017, after being fired for internally circulating a memo opposing Google's diversity efforts. Sophir recommends dismissing the case; Bloomberg reports that Damore withdrew it in January, and that his lawyer says he's focusing on a separate lawsuit alleging discrimination against conservative white men at Google. NLRB records state that its case was closed on January 19th. In her analysis, Sophir writes that employers should be given "particular deference" in trying to enforce anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies, since these are tied to legal requirements. And employers have "a strong interest in promoting diversity" and cooperation across different groups of people. Because of this, "employers must be permitted to 'nip in the bud' the kinds of employee conduct that could lead to a 'hostile workplace,'" she writes. "Where an employee's conduct significantly disrupts work processes, creates a hostile work environment, or constitutes racial or sexual discrimination or harassment, the Board has found it unprotected even if it involves concerted activities regarding working conditions."
"Shut up and put up, plebs."
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
between men and women is illegal in this country.
When facts are deemed discriminatory, you know that ideological rot has set in.
Not illegal, just not speech that's granted special legal protection from a company disagreeing with you so vehemently that they feel that you damaged them so badly that they need to fire you.
Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences.
There you have it, diversity is only wanted in appearance, not thought.
The checks must have cashed.
Yes, they are illegal to talk about:
'the statements regarding biological differences between the sexes were so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive as to be unprotected."
The fact that you seem entitled to spew such sexist garbage is quite telling, and that is the truth.
There is so much disinformation surrounding Damore.
His memo was not against diversity. He specifically included very well-researched and reasoned suggestions on how to encourage more women to get involved and make tech more attractive to them as a career choice.
Read the damn thing yourself, people.
and this case proves that. Ipso facto adnaseum.
#StatementsThatGetYouFired
Here's the relevant part of the decision: (https://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d45826e6391 page 5)
The Charging Partyâ(TM)s use of stereotypes based on purported biological differences between women and men should not be treated differently than the types of conduct the Board found unprotected in these cases. statements about immutable traits linked to sexâ"such as womenâ(TM)s heightened neuroticism and menâ(TM)s prevalence at the top of the IQ distributionâ"were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment, not withstanding effort to cloak comments with âoescientificâ references and analysis, and notwithstanding âoenot all womenâ disclaimers. Moreover, those statements were likely to cause serious dissension and disruption in the workplace. Indeed, the memorandum did cause extreme discord, which the Charging Party exacerbated by deliberately expanding its audience. Numerous employees complained to the Employer that the memorandum was discriminatory against women, deeply offensive, and made them feel unsafe at work. Moreover, the Charging Party reasonably should have known that the memorandum would likely be disseminated further, even beyond the workplace. Once the memorandum was shared publicly, at least two female engineering candidates withdrew from consideration and explicitly named the memo as their reason for doing so. Thus, while much of the Charging Partyâ(TM)s memorandum was likely protected, the statements regarding biological differences between the sexes were so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive as to be unprotected.
So basically:
1. They don't buy the bogus scientific argument, which has been debunked by the authors of the studies he cited.
2. The use of softening language / disclaimers like "not all women" and "on average" don't help him.
3. He distributed the memo himself initially, expanding its audience, and should have known that such an inflammatory document would be more widely distributed once circulated.
4. People complained and actually withdraw from job opportunities as a result. Snowflakes or otherwise, there was measurable damage done to Google's workplace.
5. While a lot of what he said was protected, the statements on biological differences between the sexes (which were deemed bogus and pseudo-scientific, conclusions that the authors of the cited studies agreed with) do not enjoy any legal protection and Google was okay to fire him on over them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The memo specifically outlined critiques of why Google's stated goals and methods in its current diversity program were unlikely to be productive, and proposed new ways to improve the hiring, retention and job satisfaction of women.
But it also said that there men and women might make different choices, and so it is heresy and now we have to read this guy get slandered over and over.
In her analysis, Sophir writes
ah.... there you have it.
How's them no labor protection apples tasting now you cunts?
He voted for the pussy grabber. Save your breath. Not the sharpest tool in the shed.
The useless "empowered women" at Google should feel ashamed of themselves.
If what was said in that memo "made them feel unsafe at work", maybe they should stay huddled up in their rooms at home to stay "safe".
As for the rest of your drivel, you really should educate yourself better.
Can Jayme Sophir be fired for making such a stupid statement?
... a call to clean house of the Deep Staters at the NRLB.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
"1. They don't buy the bogus scientific argument, which has been debunked by the authors of the studies he cited."
There is no way to make a contrary argument any more. All further discussion is prohibited to anyone who wants a job.
It's like the Catholic church saying the sun rotates around the earth and anyone who tries to say otherwise is subject to excommunication (or worse).
Damore may be wrong, but this is not progress.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Good thing that this is from the NLRB and not an actual court with actual judges.
Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences.
This particular topic aside: stop saying that. Freedom of any kind absolutely is freedom from at least specific kinds of consequences. You're "free" (inasmuch as nothing is physically stopping you) to not give a mugger your wallet, if you're willing to accept the consequences of being shot; that doesn't mean you really gave it to him freely in the relevant sociopolitical sense. You're "free" to break the law, so long as you're willing to accept the consequences of the punishment. But absence of such consequences are exactly what we mean by "free" in a sociopolitical sense. If you can be punished for doing something, then you are not free to do it.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
"Freedom of speech" in America has a very specific meaning (both legal and sociopolitical). He is correct. This isn't a "freedom of speech" issue.
The way to make a contrary argument is to do or at least cite a rigorous study that justifies a contrary conclusion.
I'm sorry, but if the science doesn't support your opinion then just interpreting it in a way that the author of the study themselves says is unjustified doesn't work.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
https://www.judicialwatch.org/...
In response to an April 29, 2011, Wall Street Journal article, calling on President Obama to explain the NLRB lawsuit against Boeing, NLRB attorney Jayme Sophir issues a one word email response on May 2, 2011, to NLRB attorney Debra Willen, Division of Advice: âoeUgh.â
She was appointed by Obama
https://www.reuters.com/articl...
An Obama administration holdover at the National Labor Relations Board recommended last year that a case accusing President Donald Trumpâ(TM)s businesses and presidential campaign of requiring workers to sign unlawful confidentiality agreements be dismissed, according to a memo released this week.
Associate General Counsel Jayme Sophir in an advice memo dated Oct. 31, 2017 said there was no evidence that the agreements were ever enforced, and the law firm that brought the case, Weinberg Roger & Rosenfeld, did not file it on behalf of any employees of the Trump Organization Inc or the campaign.
I think it's safe to assume Sophir is a left winger.
Article here
https://www.wsj.com/articles/S...
It's paywalled, but you can read it here
http://archive.is/1pp1R
South Carolina is a right-to-work state, and we're proud that within our borders workers cannot be required to join a labor union as a condition of employment. We don't need unions playing middlemen between our companies and our employees. We don't want them forcefully inserted into our promising business climate. And we will not stand for them intimidating South Carolinians.
That is apparently too much for President Obama and his union-beholden appointees at the National Labor Relations Board, who have asked the courts to intervene and force Boeing to stop production in South Carolina. The NLRB wants Boeing to produce the planes only in Washington state, where its workers must belong to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
Let's be clear: Boeing is a great corporate citizen in Washington and in South Carolina. The company chose to come to our state because the cost of doing business is low, our job training and work force are strong, and our ports are tremendous. The fact that we are a right-to-work state is an added bonus.
The actions by the NLRB are nothing less than a direct assault on the 22 right-to-work states across America. They are also an unprecedented attack on an iconic American company that is being told by the federal governmentâ"which seems to regard its authority as endlessâ"where and how to build airplanes.
The president has been silent since his hand-selected NLRB General Counsel Lafe Solomon, who has not yet been confirmed by the United States Senate as required by law, chose to engage in economic warfare on behalf of the unions last week.
While silence in this case can be assumed to mean consent, President Obama's silence is not acceptableâ"not to me, and certainly not to the millions of South Carolinians who are rightly aghast at the thought of the greatest economic development success our state has seen in decades being ripped away by federal bureaucrats who appear to be little more than union puppets.
Basically Nikki Haley criticised the Obama admin for taking Boeing to court over setting up shop in a 'right to work' state where workers don't have to join a union..
Presumably her reaction to Damore's memo was a similarly visceral 'Ugh'.
So it's not surprising she's decided that the labor rules she's so keen on defending don't appl
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;
Yes - the point in this case is that it's a very specific type of freedom that's granted by the 1st amendment. Specifically, the government can not ban you from saying things.
This wasn't the government banning him from saying anything, it was google saying "yes, you can say that, but we disagree, and feel that you damaged our image so badly that you're fired". That's an entirely different thing.
No one from a government agency put him in prison, or legally punished him in any way for saying what he said, therefore his 1st amendment rights weren't violated.
Women might be too smart to take them.
He created a hostile workplace
The company had NO LEGAL option but to fire him with extreme prejudice
But then again I said that at the first Damore posting here
Americans. You have guaranteed freedom of speech. But not after the speech.
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/southpark/images/3/3e/Pc-principal.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20171221010050
xDDD
I saw this happen in Venezuela: first the ideologues pump their ideology for years, get people to fall in love with their romantic left-wing utopia where human nature dosn't really exist and is a product of society and can and changed at will with enough enthusiasm and—if that doesn't work—good old-fashioned repression. As long as government is not on board the "harmelss" ideas spread and do not cause that much damage. Eventually authorities are elected that are ideologically compromised and we end up with an authoritarian left-wing dictatorship.
To deny human nature and the findings of science is to deny ourselves understanding that can lead to improvement of our collective quality of life. But if we prefer to be sedated into ideology and expect science to always reinforce our already-established value systems we will just deepen our miseries and do a disservice to ourselves and future generations.
I read Damore's memo. There is nothing there that disagrees with modern psychology. The findings he refers to have been discovered by psychologists and sociologists from prestigious institutions using sound methodologies. We better accept the information that science gives us and decide how we'll organise incorporating rather than denying the uncomfortable bits. Science doesn't tell us how to be moral, it just tells us what is. It is up to us to find meaning and fairness within the context of what is, and not fall into the trap of thinking that what ought to be is what is. The Universe doesn't need to follow our moral convictions du-jour.
the comments in here will all be well thought arguments about the pros and cons of the subject and not just a bunch of autistics screaming 'eeew but girls have cooties'
oh wait, shit i'm still on Slashdot ... my bad ...
I should also add that the Labour Board was at pains to point out that they don't accept imagined or spurious slights, the harm, discrimination and disruption has to be real. They cite other cases where people have been disciplined after making bogus claims of harm, and that in this case they judged that his memo wasn't just triggering snowflakes or whatever.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
USA is becoming People's Republic. Political Correctness replaced common sense and science.
Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences.
Unfortunately, no matter how many times you say it, there are a trove of idiots that just don't get it. Freedom of speech allows you to express yourself without criminal prosecution, but that's about it.
You know nothing about it. Freedom of speech has a very specific legal meaning in America.
Just another conservative persecution complex
This dude was not a conservative.
Khazar Talmudic Jews believe this of all they call goyim/gentiles (any non-jew): Jews = biggest racists of all for which they "jew guilt" you for no less! They're hypocrites known as thieves all thru history or were Argentines in 1940 under Peron, France (1306), Egypt (despoiled/robbed by jews), Arabs (pre & post 1948), England (1330 Edward longshanks), Romans under titus, Russia pogroms, Spanish inquistion & Spain 1492 (Christopher Columbus the jew https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22C... sailed to the US for them to create it) and Germany who got rid of them from their nations nazi german's too? No. Driven into DESERTS ages ago! Don't wonder why after all those exilings above. Should anyone doubt any of this see Jacob Javits' crony Rosenthal spill the beans on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4zMVZ8HnFI/ where he called all Christianity fools for helping Israel and the biggest scam of all time per their beliefs below from their Talmud. This is the province of the synagogue of Satan (Pharisees whom Jesus Christ himself kicked to the curb out of the temple & they killed him for it. Jeremiah did the same to them also + the Essenes could not stand them either breaking away from the pharisee corruption):
Maria Abramovic satanist spirit cooker pal of Hillary Clinton the Voodoo queen is a jew https://www.google.com/search?...
Like Hillary Clinton's mentor Saul Alinsky author of rules for radicals book dedicated to Lucifer
John Podesta Hillary's pal again, is another JUDE with a pedophile brother (both = satanists too imo).
"Most Jews do not like to admit it, but our god is Lucifer â" so I wasnâ(TM)t lying â" and we are his chosen people. Lucifer is very much aliveâ Harold Rosenthal http://www.thetruthseeker.co.u...
Jewish rabbi openly admits to satan worship use white children's blood they kill for passover bread, infiltrating and subverting the catholic church, creating the Jesuit order https://www.youtube.com/watch?... and https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Barbara Spectre, a jew, tells everyone it's jews orchestrating the muslim migrant problem in Europe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFE0qAiofMQ/ . No migrant raping of women in Poland. Tons in Sweden. Do the math. Use common-sense. This is to get muslims and other goyim/gentiles to wipe one another out as incompatible cultures that will clash and always have.
Rabbi A. Finkelstein ADMITS their greatest enemies are ARABS and WHITES (blacks too) whom they wish to kill one another in a 'theater of war' which they find AMUSING https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Finkelstein also admits JEWS DID 9/11 (perpetrated by the Mossad & Bebe Netanyahu of ISRAEL) https://www.youtube.com/watch?... profiting by it (and that 3,000 jews employed there did not show up for work that day knowing about it beforehand).
Finkelstein also admits JEWS are going to destroy the U.S. Dollar and dumping it for other world currencies and gold to destroy the United States.
George Soros who funds groups to create division in the USA?? A jew. One who sold his own jew people into death for the nazis.
Zucker now FIRED @ CNN is another frying publicly for lying about "russians" and John Bonifield a producer @ CNN said it is bs. Van Jones did also.
Bernie Madoff (who
Unless, of course, the author just said that to avoid being driven out of academia for heresy.
1. They don't buy the bogus scientific argument, which has been debunked by the authors of the studies he cited.
2. The use of softening language / disclaimers like "not all women" and "on average" don't help him.
It absolutely amazes me people are still trying to make everyone believe men and women are the same physically and mentally. That they think and care about the same things and all differences can be explained away by environmental pressures. This is plainly false to everyone and everyone knows it. No study or research required. It is a plainly obvious fact. Girls like girl shit and boys like boy shit. It's just the way shit is.
Damore was fucking trying to get more girls interested in boy shit by making boy shit more like girl shit and you people throw a conniption fit... HE WAS TRYING TO HELP...
Where is all the outrage over segregated men only and women only events at the Olympics? WTF is with that if everyone is equal? Yea obvious men and women are not equal nobody really believes that. They are different.
What underwrites all of this are cults of crazy leftists yearning for a post human world disconnected from any and all evolutionary pressure... a world in which there is no S.E.X. and everyone is made to be the same. That's really what you lunatics want admit it... you will stop at nothing to bend perceptions of reality to fit into your pre-warped ideology that only makes EVERYONE miserable.
This particular topic aside: stop saying that.
No.
Not just no, but fuck no.
Seriously with friends like you, free speech does not need enemies.
If speech is inconsequential then it's barely worth defending. It's only as important as it is because it has not just consequences but massive, important consequences. With a gun you can kill a few people. With speech, you can topple an empire. You know, liberty or death and all that shit.
Freedom of any kind absolutely is freedom from at least specific kinds of consequences.
Yes, and that consequence is literally only not going to prison.
That consequence is not people saying "you're a dick, piss off I don't want to talk to you any more", whether or not you agree with their assessment.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If you can be punished for doing something, then you are not free to do it.
You are perfectly free to do it, and then you will receive your expected consequence. In the US legal frame, that consequence will not be criminal prosecution. Didn't you learn that in grade school?
Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences.
This is not purely a freedom of speech issue. It is illegal in California to fire employees for their political views.
https://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/nogoogle-should-not-have-fired-the-anti-diversity-.html
Exactly. No one wants to hear the truth. I don't know why neckbeards hate women so much.
Federal labor law doesn't make political speech a protected class in employment.
California law, however, does.
His lawsuit is going to be a lot more complicated than the news media (and most people who read it) can comprehend.
There is no way to make a contrary argument any more.
You don't get some sort of right of first dibs simply by speaking first. If your argument is not sound, people don't have to come up with a rigorus rebuttal to the central premise of your thesis, they merely have to point out where your argument is unsound.
Otherwise, the burden is always massively on the second person. You're basically absolving the first person of the need to make a coherent argument.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
How is it possible to perform a rigorous study with the hypothesis that there are inherent gender differences?
Is there no science because the hypothesis is incorrect, or because the science cannot be objectively performed and peer-reviewed?
It seems we'll never know.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Do we need a scientific argument to explain neuroticism in females? It is a self evident truth that is backed by research. So where is the "debunked"?
Except that is what our best research says.
"Facts are inflammatory"
Why? If women are the same as men, women withdrawing and being replaced by men shouldn't be a problem should it?
Except this is bullshit. Would you like me to explain the birds and bees to you before we get started on sexual dimorphism and evolution? Damore was arguing for more female engagement in the workplace and you are a shill!
My son's taking pre engineering courses.
In his science and math courses, there might be one or two females.
So far, after about 4 weeks of class time, ALL of the females have dropped the courses.
We wonder why there aren't a lot of women in STEM courses.
Well, this could be one of the reasons.
Similarly, I tried to talk my niece in to taking engineering courses. She quit after the first semester. Her reason: "Math is too difficult" (I am not kidding).
"Pre-engineering" classes? Of course he's run into that. It sounds like he's going to a community college or a vo-tech school.
Khazar Talmudic Jews believe this of all they call goyim/gentiles (any non-jew): Jews = biggest racists of all for which they "jew guilt" you for no less! They're hypocrites known as thieves all thru history or were Argentines in 1940 under Peron, France (1306), Egypt (despoiled/robbed by jews), Arabs (pre & post 1948), England (1330 Edward longshanks), Romans under titus, Russia pogroms, Spanish inquistion & Spain 1492 (Christopher Columbus the jew https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22C... sailed to the US for them to create it) and Germany who got rid of them from their nations nazi german's too? No. Driven into DESERTS ages ago! Don't wonder why after all those exilings above. Should anyone doubt any of this see Jacob Javits' crony Rosenthal spill the beans on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4zMVZ8HnFI/ where he called all Christianity fools for helping Israel and the biggest scam of all time per their beliefs below from their Talmud. This is the province of the synagogue of Satan (Pharisees whom Jesus Christ himself kicked to the curb out of the temple & they killed him for it. Jeremiah did the same to them also + the Essenes could not stand them either breaking away from the pharisee corruption):
Maria Abramovic satanist spirit cooker pal of Hillary Clinton the Voodoo queen is a jew https://www.google.com/search?...
Like Hillary Clinton's mentor Saul Alinsky author of rules for radicals book dedicated to Lucifer
John Podesta Hillary's pal again, is another JUDE with a pedophile brother (both = satanists too imo).
"Most Jews do not like to admit it, but our god is Lucifer â" so I wasnâ(TM)t lying â" and we are his chosen people. Lucifer is very much aliveâ Harold Rosenthal http://www.thetruthseeker.co.u...
Jewish rabbi openly admits to satan worship use white children's blood they kill for passover bread, infiltrating and subverting the catholic church, creating the Jesuit order https://www.youtube.com/watch?... and https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Barbara Spectre, a jew, tells everyone it's jews orchestrating the muslim migrant problem in Europe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFE0qAiofMQ/ . No migrant raping of women in Poland. Tons in Sweden. Do the math. Use common-sense. This is to get muslims and other goyim/gentiles to wipe one another out as incompatible cultures that will clash and always have.
Rabbi A. Finkelstein ADMITS their greatest enemies are ARABS and WHITES (blacks too) whom they wish to kill one another in a 'theater of war' which they find AMUSING https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Finkelstein also admits JEWS DID 9/11 (perpetrated by the Mossad & Bebe Netanyahu of ISRAEL) https://www.youtube.com/watch?... profiting by it (and that 3,000 jews employed there did not show up for work that day knowing about it beforehand).
Finkelstein also admits JEWS are going to destroy the U.S. Dollar and dumping it for other world currencies and gold to destroy the United States.
George Soros who funds groups to create division in the USA?? A jew. One who sold his own jew people into death for the nazis.
Zucker now FIRED @ CNN is another frying publicly for lying about "russians" and John Bonifield a producer @ CNN said it is bs. Van Jones did also.
Bernie Madoff (who
If you can be punished for doing something, then you are not free to do it.
You are perfectly free to do it, and then you will receive your expected consequence. In the US legal frame, that consequence will not be criminal prosecution. Didn't you learn that in grade school?
Incurring a penalty is the polar opposite of being free to do something.
"1. They don't buy the bogus scientific argument, which has been debunked by the authors of the studies he cited."
There is no way to make a contrary argument any more.
Correct. For example making contrarian arguments like "women should belong in the kitchen", or "blacks are not smart" or "men should be able to fucking little kids", yeah, people cannot make those claims anymore.
Yeah, I went for the hyperbole, but it is to make a point. Not all contrary arguments are worth protecting, specially when those arguments have a history of being used to the detriment of entire classes of people.
Unless, of course, the author just said that to avoid being driven out of academia for heresy.
This is threading closely into the "begging the question" territory.
So, they ask his opinion, THEN they leak it without his permissions en mass, THEN they make his fault that leak took place, which is outside of his power and leak was made by opposing political movement within google. I see how it works...
People who are weak withdrawn from Google, possibly making this company a better place. And yet again damage done not by him,. but by person who leaked memo.
Man and woman are different only fool would argue that. I worked on building sites and manufacturing., I did physically difficult jobs that required me to wake up at 5 AM every morning when I was 14, Good luck making females do that job. They wouldn't be capable of it.
I'm actually a little disappointed. I was hoping that Damore's lawsuit might see decades of social study and feminist theory rigorously tested in court, or at least used to make some good arguments debunking his arguments which are fairly typical of the stuff we see on the internet quite often.
It won't come to that though. The memo's attempt to justify itself with science was so catastrophically botched that it basically debunks itself. It will get shredded in court, if this even gets that far. The best we can hope for is for the authors of those reports to give evidence against Damore, because it will be both interesting and hilarious when he is forced to either be lectured on his mistake or effectively argue against himself.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The us government doesn't assess a penalty. Thus you have freedom of consequences from government for your speech.
Your rights here, however, do not tread over everyone else's freedoms to act or react.
Unless, of course, the author just said that to avoid being driven out of academia for heresy.
Your argument is edging awfully close to:
If they agree with me, they're right.
If they disagree with me it's only because they're too afraid to agree.
Literally nothing anyone could say would change your opinion. That is not a rational position to take.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If you stand up at a city council meeting and just start making fart noises and won't stop, they are going to throw you out, and good riddance. What they can't do is throw you in jail for it.
Play Command HQ online
No, I am not absolving the first person.
Given that the second person has a massive burden, it behooves us to give him/her an opportunity to state a case.
But you are not only enacting a "massive burden", you are also erecting further barriers by shutting down discussion.
Sounds like you are scared your beliefs may be found wanting? If you are confident, then welcome opposition in the knowledge that you will be strengthened.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
The snowflakes are the idiots who think telling the differences between the sexes is illegal. Fucking idiots. It's not - back it up with evidence. Don't shout "it's scientific" and shoot your bullshit hate expecting it to be protected. Slashdot is a cesspool.
"so harmful" "discriminatory" "disruptive" Just nosense opinions and not even a rebuttal. Damore was not trying to be provocative or offensive, nor did he harass anyone. He was basically the epitome of the open-minded explorer (even asked for feedback from colleagues and welcomed different points of view). Just absolute hogwash and it's deeply frustrating to see individual rights trampled this way.
He specifically covered almost all angles so that no one in their right mind could be offended. Only ideologues who see themselves entirely as their group identity and are incapable of seeing nuance consider it problematic. He didn't say women were dumber, less qualified or that all women were the same. He just stated that as a group, they may be less attracted to tech than other professions and so are willingly choosing to go in different directions (with discrimination not being the primary role for this difference). In fact, even among men, the percentage of the population choosing to go into tech isn't that great (it's now increasing more as a function of increased economic opportunity rather than a genuine attraction to tech like the hackers in the 80s). There are far fewer women candidates of equal qualifications (possibly due to decreased traditional interest in the field) so trying to force a 50 50 distribution is asinine. Imagine if, for nursing, we decided to give big advantages to men in order to close the gap. Would that make sense? Would that be fair? More discrimination isn't how you fix discrimination. Moreover, Damore emphasized that it was inherently short-sighted and discriminatory to suggest that the way you get diversity of opinions is merely by having more varied skin colors or sexes. The way you truly get that is by fostering open discussion and by welcoming people from more varied life experiences.
The only thing offensive to me is that as a culture we've decided that not only religion but even biology is now not subject to reason and rational unbiased discourse. If an idea flies in the face of dogma, that person, an honest truth-seeker, is ostracized, marginalized and made to suffer by the group. Critical thinking and discourse are increasingly becoming compartmentalized in society. I don't even care if he is right or not. The way he's being treated is extremely unfair and damaging. It's hard to have a backbone anymore because doing so comes at such risk so of course no one - not even the people whose job it is to protect him - are willing to defend him. It feels like a society which has voluntarily chosen to devolve into a sort of self-imposed tyranny against free thinking.
statements about immutable traits linked to sex — such as women’s heightened neuroticism and men’s prevalence at the top of the IQ distribution.
First off, these traits are FAR from immutable. People can most certainly train themselves to overcome their nature. Otherwise we'd still be living in caves and killing each other with clubs.
Damore NEVER says the traits are immutable. She just made that up.
Damore wave very explicit about what he was and wasn't saying:
"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."
"Reducing people to their group identity and assuming the average is representative ignores this overlap (This is bad and I don't endorse this)"
"Women, on average, have more..."
And he never says men are prevalent at the top of the IQ distribution..... wait a tick.... She quotes:
Men demonstrate greater variance in IQ than women, such that there are more men at both the top and bottom of the distribution. Thus, posited, the Employer’s preference to hire from the “top of the curve” may result in a candidate pool with fewer females than those of “less-selective” tech companies.
...what? That's not in the memo. ooooooooh heeeeeeeey. It also mentions that he posted it to a couple different internal forums before getting into bigger ones and he incorporated feedback. Apparently the memo I've been reading is one of the later ones where that must have been removed. Well damn, that explain some of the bullshit that's been argued back and forth. Yeah, I can see why he cut it. Have the earlier versions been leaked?
Reading the letter it's pretty obvious they censored out his sex and any pronoun. pft, it's not hiding anything if it's bloody obvious you twit. oh, but they leave this:"and at least two female engineering candidates for employment withdrew from consideration" Why is it important that they're female, eh?
The HR manager and the director of the Charging Party’s team prepared written talking points in advance, which the director read to inform the Charging Party of discharge. The talking points stated, in pertinent part:
Your post advanced and relied on offensive gender stereotypes to suggest that women cannot be successful in the same kinds of jobs
Maaaan, that was a stupid thing to write down. I mean, they clearly don't understand what a stereotype is. Damore very explicitly explained the pitfalls of stereotyping and how not to do it. But I dunno, maybe none of that was in the earlier drafts.
employers must be permitted to “nip in the bud” the kinds of employee conduct that could lead to a “hostile workplace,” rather than waiting until an actionable hostile workplace has been created before taking action.
That's a teeny bit scary. You can get fired for not even making a problem, but if they think you might make a problem.
The part where she claims it's the same as "an unfounded assertion that her foreman was a Klansman", and "debasing and sexually abusive remarks to a female employee who had crossed a picket line months earlier".... sweet jesus!
The Charging Party’s use of stereotypes based on purported biological differences between women and men should not be treated differently
Except scientific journals haven't come out claiming that Jeff was a Klansman. This is the difference between "founded" and "unfounded".
notwithstanding his effort to cloak his comments with
They don't buy the bogus scientific argument, which has been debunked by the authors of the studies he cited.
Apparently sexual dimorphism denier is now a thing.
This may not be a freedom of speech issue but it is still a dick move by Google. One that I hope comes back and bites them in the ass.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Without any kind of government persecution, but you're right. There are even exceptions for that, though, when it comes to endangering people or even just being a public nuisance. Heck, copyright is a restriction of free speech.
Play Command HQ online
Was trying to find ways to fix the issue. Modern feminism does not want the issues fixed. They want to remain victims because that gets them a free lunch. Hence this was stomped on as harshly as possible.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The science on biological differences between men and women has been settled for almost half a century now.
That was a whopper there, Luckyo! Whatever, you arrogant assholes on Slashdot think you know better than everyone else.
That statement is only true if you define "common sense" as "people think like I do".
Reality is a bit more nuanced that the knee jerk reaction from either "side".
"Cloak" pft. What rubbish.
But hey, if this paper in "Social and Personality Psychology Compass" with it's 32 citations isn't real science or it's been discredited, I really would like to see the refutation. Come on, put a little effort into it. Dig in. You claim it's "widely discredited". If that's not just completely made up hog-wash, then go find some material saying so. Please, something from a journal, and not a blog. I hope you understand, we don't want pseudo-scientific nonsense here.
None of these people provide links to the "science" they cite. There is no such science, only a moronic ideologue would claim there was. The relevant research tells us that men and women are different, exactly as you can observe without science. The left are as retarded as the creationists and their opinions no longer matter.
Damore will win in court or settle for more than he could have earned in a lifetime.
1. The citations are there to support his point of view. Even if you disagree with the facts presented in those articles or the conclusions drawn from them by Damore, he was clearly doing due diligence and tried not to make unsubstantiated claims about the nature of the problem. He was certainly more scientific than the opposing claim that a lack of equal representation is evidence of discrimination.
2. He does not use "softening language", but explains that an individual's abilities and desires do not contradict a statistic difference. There are stronger women than me, but statistically, women are weaker than men, and this is not controversial at all. The individual's strength does not contradict the statistic.
3. He was officially asked for his opinion, repeatedly.
4. The toxic environment was created by Google. You have read the quotes and screenshots and know how people treat opposing views at Google, all through the ranks. The memo is benign, on its own, but certainly in comparison to the vitriol from other people. It is however not a good cultural fit, I'll grant you that. Too reasonable.
5. He was asked for his opinion, not for a scientific paper. He even supported his opinion. It may be that Google just asks for opinions to filter out people who disagree with the ideological position that Google requires of its employees, but you will find that this is not an acceptable way of conducting a business. You can't fire people for doing what you asked of them.
I'm actually a little disappointed. I was hoping that Damore's lawsuit might see decades of social study and feminist theory rigorously tested in court, or at least used to make some good arguments debunking his arguments which are fairly typical of the stuff we see on the internet quite often.
Courts of law are not venues for determining facts.
Sure, but when society so carelessly throws people's lives away (often over maliciously twisted soundbites and without truly understanding a person's point of view) just for the act of questioning dogma and attempting an unbiased search of the truth, we've still lost freedom of speech in a practical sense. Financially censuring someone over a very mild and well-reasoned argument is essentially picking at the fabric of a free society. I'm a very open minded person and have even voted for Democrats my entire life but this is NOT OK. This wasn't some msyoginist spouting hate. It was basically an academic argument with very careful stipulations to avoid misinterpretation (doesn't seem like it mattered though).
Wrong, Trumptard. The right is the reason behind Russia fucking with our country, school shootings, white supremacist shootings, violence against women... You fuckers are all out of time. We don't care what you think, and you pretending to be serious with your fake ass lab coat arguments doesn't fly. We have no patience for your fuckery. We are going to ROLL OVER YOU and your dumb ass backwards opinions. Go extinct!
And how are we supposed to come to truth and really decide it's "bogus" when we're not allowed to reason about it or debate it without losing our jobs for it? It's very obvious nothing he said or did had malicious intent. Are we going to legislate "truth" like Poland soon too? That's not how critical thinking works and not how science should work. Nothing about this was remotely harassment if someone is being reasonable. He had no agenda except to improve Google and have a more fair world in a real sense. That type of thinking is basically antithetical to being a good person honestly trying to understand the world outside of just political lenses (there are huge financial incentives to promote PC btw, including the existence of a lot of human resources jobs - essentially a parasitic appendage that wants to constantly justify itself). He came to the "wrong" opinion from his research and the price was his job. That's the truth of it. I think even the study authors are so afraid they will be next that they feel forced to distance themselves rather than face those so intolerant of other views that they'd use any means to silence inquiry.
Given that the second person has a massive burden,
No the second person doesn't. The first person has at least as much burden otherwise can "win" simply by speaking first the most.
But you are not only enacting a "massive burden", you are also erecting further barriers by shutting down discussion.
Since you appear to believe that insisting that people actually argue a valid point is shutting down discussion, I do not believe we can have any sort of productive discussion since our worldviews are so vastly at odds.
If you are confident, then welcome opposition in the knowledge that you will be strengthened.
I shall now engage in reductio ad absurdum. If your argument leads to absurd conclusions then your argument is flawed.
I'm also confident (to pick a topic very close to my heart) that Jews are not evil and do not deserve to be gassed. That does not mean I welcome opposition to that point.
Your agrument leads to the conclusion that I should welcome opposition since I am confident. Your argument has absurd conclusions. Therefore it is flawed.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Courts of law are not venues for determining facts.
Yes they are. You might argue that they are not good venues for such but one of their purposes is to establish facts.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
> Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences.
You mean freedom of speech doesn't mean you can't be imprisoned for what you say? After all, that's a consequence.
Freedom of speech only applies to state actors. Google is not a state actor. If the police hears me call you a N** whore, they are not allowed to arrest me for that (of course they msy make up things). However, certain laws proscribes certain actions, ie. sexual harassment in the work place. Walking down the street, I can call you a N** whore and it be legal. If I am your boss and say the same to you sufficiently to make for a hostile workplace it would be illegal. If the police say it to me and I can establish that was part of why he stopped and frisked me, then it would be illegal.
Fight Spammers!
"women should belong in the kitchen" is not an argument, it is a opinion on what should be allowable for women. It should be dismissed on the basis of the right to autonomy. And it is not amenable to scientific study.
The statement "In general, women are happier in a kitchen than in a laboratory" is also an opinion. It may or may not be correct, but it does not take away autonomy. And is is amenable to study, which should be reproducible.
But the studies of gender equivalence are not allowed to be reproduced.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
In that case, there should be no problem pointing out the exact cases of harm, discrimination and disruption that would protect them from a defamation suite. Why have they not already detailed this?
What Damore said is backed by science.
The truth is harmful only to liars.
I see a lot of commentary in these Damore threads suggesting that everyone who leans left politically must believe that the irrational, authoritarian form of progressivism is the way forward. Similarly, others are accusing defenders of Damore's memo as being regressive neckbeards.
It's not that simple nor is the argument along the line of political leanings. It's about speed and collateral damage.
Nearly a decade ago, the Tea Party Movement began its own irrational and loud stranglehold on conservative politics. There were loyalty oaths and identity politics. The Republican party is still trying to re-discover itself and its integrity having sold itself to the more ignorant side of populism.
Today, following almost the same exact playbook, there is a very vocal minority of the liberal-leaning part of America who is choosing activism over advocacy, punishment over education, and change now without consideration for collateral damage. Again, the face of irrational populism peaks over the the horizon.
These are the same beasts with different goals. Both are repulsed by the long-game of social change. They refuse to accept that society changes at the speed of generations. They don't want to accept that engineers are grown from a young age, not simply given jobs. They don't care that reducing deficit first comes with a better-educated populace and thus a better workforce. They want what they want NOW. They want to show short term gains because all will be damned if they didn't make their mark on this world before they shuffle this mortal coil.
But then there are the mature conservatives and the mature liberals who know that it simply takes time to coexist and progress together. It takes time to convince people to compromise and it takes time for those who refuse to compromise to die off. And when you force try to force people to change under threat of loss of loss of livelihood or try to shoe-horn in a solution that benefits the very few without consideration for the many, you will get widespread resentment, rebellion, and reaction. And the cycle will continue.
Or we can simply teach our young parents that they should foster the spark of nerd they see in their daughters as they would an ember in tinder instead of immediately reaching for the Barbies and pom-poms. They should step in to prevent the mockery of nerds, gamers, and computer users so that there is less social resentment harbored by those who choose to be so engrossed in the loving blue glow of a monitor. And then allow those better-adjusted, better-educated, and more equitably educated children grow up and show their actual demand in their chosen fields of work.
Or we can just keep trying to force it and fighting about it.
There's no difference between males and females at all. None at all...
People are amazingly stupid.
I didn't express a personal opinion. I just observed that when expressing an opinion (any opinion) that goes against orthodoxy becomes a firing offense it becomes hard to know what anyone actually believes.
1. They don't buy the bogus scientific argument, which has been debunked by the authors of the studies he cited.
Personally, I think that the Myers-Briggs studies he brought up were awful, but I don't think that was his fault. Have you actually read them? If he made mistakes, or if his information was outdated, you correct him. That's how we resolve differences. Some people can't be corrected, that's true enough, but honestly, I don't think that was the case for him
2. The use of softening language / disclaimers like "not all women" and "on average" don't help him.
No, those were quantifiers, not disclaimers.
And unlike President Trump for instance, Damos used quantifiers pretty well actually. Many feminists could learn a thing or two from him instead of using absolute quantifiers, or instead of using no quantifier at all.
3. He distributed the memo himself initially, expanding its audience, and should have known that such an inflammatory document would be more widely distributed once circulated.
He distributed the memo inside an official working group of ~8 people. He didn't expand the memo behind that. Others did it for him.
4. People complained and actually withdraw from job opportunities as a result. Snowflakes or otherwise, there was measurable damage done to Google's workplace.
Not to mention men.
I guarantee you that far many more men stopped applying to Google than women after their reaction to Damos.
As he should have. Galileo, ultimately, was wrong. He fell for the energian planes.
captcha: culpable
I didn't express a personal opinion.
Sure you did. The choice of wording you use is very slanted and therefore laden with opinion. You just don't se that because you consider your opinion to be natural and correct.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
You still don't even know what my opinion *IS*
What we're really saying, then, is that nobody has the "freedom" to work for Google.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
From a devil's advocate perspective - For you to be free to say anything under the sun without fear of a private employer severing a business relationship that is necessarily impeding their freedom of association.
The way to make a contrary argument is to do or at least cite a rigorous study that justifies a contrary conclusion.
You never do that yourself and almost always demand it of others, then ignore anything presented and carry on as if the conversation never happened in the next thread.
Having you on slashdot makes fact-based conversations a Sisyphean effort.
This is a clear case of "damned if you do, damned if you don't", though.
Whatever you think of the memo, whatever you think of Damore, there is no getting around the fact that after it became a public shitstorm, the consequences of letting him stay were always going to be objectively worse than the consequences of firing him.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
1. That should not matter, the science was published, and the conclusions he took from it are a valid conclusion, so to the best of his ability he was stating fact, normally THAT WOULD BE ENOUGH. The fact that some of the publishers (not all not, some actually said his interpretation was correct) since backpedaled on their own research is hardly Damores fault. You are not required to be CORRECT in all interpretations, just to have not presented things you know to be false - this is LONG established - otherwise everyone would be required to be THE leading expert in everything they said - which is obviously impossible.
2 - Why not? Because you want to change what he was saying? He made it clear he was speaking of averages and trends, not absolutes - and then is getting punished as though he stated absolutes.
3 - He (amongst others) was asked by his employer to write their thoughts on the subject and publish them to a specific internal location - he did exactly as requested by his employer. He is no was distributed it further than that - where is the punishment for those who did? Why is he being punished for following instructions of his employer?
4 - Why is that his responsibility? Google asked people for their thoughts, he did exactly as asked. The fact that they did not like the response was not his fault - perhaps they should have had a process in place to vet submissions if they didnt want such opinions.
5 - Why not? They are very well known science, and the fact that they may be unpopular amongst some at present does not change than, neither does a backpedal on published research by some of the people involved (but, importantly, not all, and not the leaders in the field) does not change that. He published information that was at that time publicly published in respectable scientific journals - why should he be punished for repeating such content?
The situation we are creating here is one where someone can get punished for repeating publicly accepted (by peer reviewed journal publishing) information in a way their employer asked them to, because the employer felt embarrassed about it after the fact. Think about the ramifications of that for a while.
Also note that NO action was taken against him at the time he followed the instructions of Google - in fact it was only taken after a 3rd party made this information public. THAT, above all else, should indicate that Googles actions are blindingly wrong.
In light of Cruz, editors should page the FBI for this loony. The chump is clearly unhinged and in need of psychiatric help.
You still don't even know what my opinion *IS*
Yes I do. Its clear from the subtle assumptions you made in your post.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Well we know you're a fucking idiot, at least...
The NLRB isn't a scientific body. They're not remotely qualified to rule on the science.
We live in a world where people argue "that's racist" instead of "that's incorrect" and think they're making a point.
You are anti-science and you don't even know it. We cannot have science without the freedom to inquire.
We're going to become the next South Africa at this rate.
Are you saying that you are better informed than the investigator who said the following:
"Indeed, the memorandum did cause extreme discord, which the Charging Party exacerbated by deliberately expanding its audience."
I don't think they'll miss any of them.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
OK then, I'm calling. What do you think my opinion is?
This is how freedom dies, by redefining what it is.
Freedom of speech is not just a government law, it's also a cultural value. When people or organizations don't support or tolerated dissenting opinions, then they are unambiguously against free speech. If the culture doesn't support a particular freedom, the legislation won't be far behind.
Arguing otherwise reminds me of the old Polish joke: In Poland we have freedom of speech. In America you have freedom after speech.
There is no way to make a contrary argument any more. All further discussion is prohibited to anyone who wants a job.
The last time I heard that, it was about climate science. The time before that, it was about evolution. It wasn't true either of those times, either.
Here in the real world, if someone can actually disprove the prevailing wisdom in some academic field, it would make their academic career. History is full of examples, especially in fields where non-academics are convinced there's a grand conspiracy to prevent it from happening.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
OK then, I'm calling. What do you think my opinion is?
Sure, I'll show you mine if you show you me yours.
Here's the hash of mine:
84b0769ecea58f7740bfcc93aa7fa96df6f3d9893263c9eabc64bdc14d1cc483
mine is now set in stone. You post the text of yours and I'll post the text of mine matching that sha256 hash. This way we can both state what we think without chainging it from the other person going first.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Hey greenwow. Compared to Emmy Noether you are a total moron and you will never be anything more. You're not even phlegm on the wall of history. You're nothing. Now, you were saying? https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/05/the-female-mathematician-who-changed-the-course-of-physics-but-couldnt-get-a-job/
That should go down in history as one of the famous quotes.
Is that a roll of dimes in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
Nearly a decade ago, the Tea Party Movement began its own irrational and loud stranglehold on conservative politics. There were loyalty oaths and identity politics. The Republican party is still trying to re-discover itself and its integrity having sold itself to the more ignorant side of populism.
I know what you're saying, but I think you're missing some of the history before that. The rise of populism is a reaction to the kind of Straussian fundamentalism that took over conservative politics a few decades earlier. It's hard to say when this really "began", but the place I'd identify is the Powell Memorandum of 1971. It really picked up momentum in the aftermath of Watergate.
In the late 70s, fundamentalists started hostile takeovers of conservative institutions such as the NRA and the Southern Baptist Convention, and eventually the Republican Party.
The populists have a point. It may be ignorant and irrational, but it is a reaction to the kind of heavy-handed paternalism that had already ruined conservative politics.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
It isn't in society's interest to ensure that Damore has a job like it is for convicted felons. We often don't allow employers to ask convicts whether they've been convicted, because if the convicts can't find a job they may turn to stealing or murder for hire in order to support themselves. If Damore has to steal or murder to feed himself, then we can throw him in prison, and society is no worse off.
And it's not like embezzlers or murderers make for a threatening work environment. All co-workers and employers are as pleased as can be that they're supporting society's best interests. The most important thing is just for us to remain consistent.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences.
This particular topic aside: stop saying that.
[...]
If you can be punished for doing something, then you are not free to do it.
Yes!!!!
Only as long as google continues to play the socjus game. If they did nothing and let the paper sit there and collect support/criticism like any other, it would've eventually blown over. Too many corporates are bending knee to this shit. They need to stop. It's costing them money and damaging society as a whole.
1. Ever heard of false consensus?
2. He had to put those in, else idiots like you would assume he meant 'all women.'
3. Agreed. The dark age of progressivism has reached the witchhunt stage. I'm fairly certain he knew this would happen.
4. People complained because they've been trained to think in 'social justice' terms, ie, they're misinformed. If they had not been, the paper would've sat there like the rest on that google forum, collected its share of support/criticism and that would've been the end of it. If google wasn't so drenched in political correctness, it might've made some beneficial changes.
5. You've lost all credibility here. There are substantial differences. We learn about them in high school biology. Stuff like this makes the Left as idiotic as the bible thumpers they criticize.
Republicans calling "the left" retarded, such pathetic projection.
He was invited to give input and he did so.
Google pretended to want a conversation, then fired him when it got one.
Bunch of cowardly bullies.
Except that he was essentially fired for heresy. This applies to google and its policies more than it does to damore.
Just to play Devil's Advocate, if a boss tells an employee to warm the bosses car up and the employee lights the car on fire ....
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
The 1st Amendment exists inside the realm of free speech, not the other way around.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Nonsense, the republic has been refining definitions of things like "freedom," "speech," or "unreasonable" since its inception. Back then, "freedom" included the right to own brown people. When the radicals thought that they were defending "freedom" by actually setting people free, it pissed off a whole bunch of other people.
The courts have held on several occasions that the freedom of speech does not include speech that is so disruptive that it keeps people from pursuing their normal lives. You are allowed to peaceably assemble, but it is illegal to block somebody's driveway. You are allowed freedom of expression, but you can't violate sound ordinances. You can practice your religion, but if that religion involves keeping your kids locked in the basement, you can guaran-damn-tee that you'll face jailtime.
In this case, the court ruled that the memo was so disruptive that it could not be considered protected. Seems like a reasonable finding, and I seriously doubt that it is a death knell for free speech. We have a president actively threatening to loosen up libel laws, so let's not pretend like a court giving a whiny snowflake a tongue lashing is the biggest threat the first amendment faces right now.
If you really think that freedom dies just by being redefined, you should be really upset by that homophobic baker hiding behind "religious freedom." By your argument, they're diminishing the legitimacy of actual religious freedom. Embrace, extend, extinguish, just like Microsoft.
I've said in every one post about this overarching topic that I disagree pretty much entirely with Damore's central thesis, BUT at the same time, I think Google was in the wrong to fire him. In particular, the NLRB is doing a kind of double standard. If you replaced all the talk of gender with talk about unions, either pro or con, there's no doubt the NLRB would have sided with Damore no matter how disruptive to the workplace it was. There are also plenty of past cases where the NLRB has sided with the complainant because PART of the reason the company took the action they did was animus related to the action the person(s) took. It wasn't the ONLY reason, or even the PRIMARY reason, just A reason.
I would really like to think that it's not a result of the current administration being extremely friendly towards management, and having a rather public disdain for the working people of the country, but I don't know that there's any way to get from here to there.
Another point in his favour is that he was saying that there are better ways to make the gender balance more equal than 'illegal discrimination'
https://web.archive.org/web/20...
The harm of Google's biases
I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more. However, to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several discriminatory practices:
* Programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender or race
* A high priority queue and special treatment for "diversity" candidates
* Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for "diversity" candidates by decreasing the false negative rate
* Reconsidering any set of people if it's not "diverse" enough, but not showing that same scrutiny in the reverse direction (clear confirmation bias)
* Setting org level OKRs for increased representation which can incentivize illegal discrimination
These practices are based on false assumptions generated by our biases and can actually increase race and gender tensions. We're told by senior leadership that what we're doing is both the morally and economically correct thing to do, but without evidence this is just veiled left ideology that can irreparably harm Google. ...
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 and personality 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.
If you say that you agree with what your employer is trying to do but they way they are doing it 'incentivising illegal discrimination' and suggest legal alternatives that makes you a whistleblower. CA has a whistleblower protection law -
https://www.workplacefairness....
Could Damore claim under it? I'm not sure. If I were him I'd try though.
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;
Copyright is censorship and must be abolished.
These comments are gold. I've haven't seen much butt-hurt fragile masculinity on display since the idiots defending gamergate freaked out over finding out that death threats are prosecutable..
Truth is harmful to lies. Truth tellers are harmful to liars. Liars say that the people they've told lies to are suffering on account of the speech that truth tellers have spoken.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Okay, well if you keep saying it then THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES.
Get how your threat isn't actually protected speech? Freedom of speech absolutely does protect you from people harassing you and attempting to get you fired. The only intended consequence of freedom of speech is: more speech. If you create a hostile environment where, people do not feel able to express what they feel or think, freedom of speech doesn't really exist then.
You know how most people would agree to not bottle up ones feelings? Society is the same, it's best to let ideas be open and out there, like it's healthy to find a good way to express oneself. You can't be that opposed to the marketplace of ideas, because it is the same marketplace that allows us all to have an opinion on anything, and when people come along trying to suggest that the best way is through a restriction of that market, government or not, we all lose.
Yes they are. You might argue that they are not good venues for such but one of their purposes is to establish facts.
No they are not. Their purpose stated or otherwise is irrelevant to what actually occurs in the real world.
Yes they peddle in objective evidence however it is an adversarial system mostly unconcerned with objective reality and people doing the deciding have zero domain knowledge which means court fact finding expeditions often devolve into opinion shopping and which side is best able to manage perceptions and often language itself to get their way. Courts are never about an honest attempt by all concerned to find truth and they most certainly do not adhere to any kind of scientific methodology.
Well shit it looks like people at the NLRB didn't read the actual memo either. Damore had written specifically against forming stereotypes based on differences in population distributions because of their overlaps.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
No. If they sat there and did nothing, they would face liability under the civil rights act for allowing a hostile work environment to exist for a protected class. And even though they are still statistically underrepresented, there are many thousands of women working at Google. There's only one James Damore. The math is fairly straightforward.
Imagine all the people...
And for that reason, you are not free to make fart noises nonstop at city council meetings.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
> Yes I do. Its clear from the subtle assumptions you made in your post.
So you're a mind reader trying to defend science, got it.
The phrase "freedom of speech, not freedom of consequences," deliberately and pointedly oversimplifies a problem that is much more difficult than a few words. If you can expect your life to be ruined extrajudicially for exercising your freedom of speech, then by default, it does not exist in a practical sense for the vast majority. Only those who are independently wealthy will be able to exercise the right, and for everyone else it will be a cruel mockery of a right. The rest will be able to speak when they express the "correct" ideas.
This is worse than not having freedom of speech at all, because it provides the illusion of it while at the same time destroying it for the common people. And that is what we effectively have in this case, and in a lot of other cases.
Punishment does not need to be issued from a judge's bench or a firing squad to ruin a life, and your practical contempt for free speech and desire to make it effectively an imaginary construct lends little credence to your judgment of who is or is not the enemy of free speech.
Free Speech Is Dangerous
If you can be punished for doing something, then you are not free to do it.
You are perfectly free to do it, and then you will receive your expected consequence. In the US legal frame, that consequence will not be criminal prosecution. Didn't you learn that in grade school?
Incurring a penalty is the polar opposite of being free to do something.
You are free to go sunbathing, you might get a sunburn.
Yes, but what about if those children grow up to choose the _wrong_ field of work!!
This may not be a freedom of speech issue but it is still a dick move by Google.
Setting aside your perhaps subconscious choice to introduce sexist language into the thought, I would suggest this is far from the first evil move by Google.
>"Sophir concludes that ..., 'the statements regarding biological differences between the sexes were so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive as to be unprotected.'"
This right here is a decision based on Sophir's own shitty value judgements. It is not just an acknowledgement that the company can fire you if you say something they disagree with as you claim.
As other comments have pointed out, you aren't understanding U.S. free speech. Employers by default have the liberty to fire you for any silly, petty, reason they choose. That is the default. There are exceptions based in various laws about protected classes and scenarios. This judgement was about how this case didn't qualify. In general if your boss doesn't like how long you let your hair grow out, they are well within their rights to fire you for nothing more than that.
- occasionally long haired hippie freak
This particular topic aside: stop saying that.
Nope. Not ever gonna. If speech is free of all consequences, you have essentially just robbed other people of their freedom of speech -- the freedom to say "I think you're a dick for saying that." Speech has always had and always will have consequences. Get used to it.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
This is how freedom dies, by redefining what it is.
I think it's you who are redefining what it means.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Seems pretty clear to me.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Re. point 2, it's sad that you and they are blissfully unaware that a statement can be untrue when over-generalised to all cases, but still be true in most cases. There are many things that are usually true but have exceptions. In this case his observations, even if incorrect in substance, were CORRECTLY QUALIFIED. But observers like you choose to dismiss the qualification as something else and then pretend that he means the unqualified statement, which is dishonest bullshit.
Re. point 3, he is not responsible for what other people do, and it is only "inflamatory" becuase people chose to be inflamed by it instead of having a reasonable discussion and reaction. Congratulations, people like you have demonized and hence extremized Damore, and given alt-right crazies a martyr. The sad thing is, he had no intention of it being that way, it was all people like you making it so out of misplaced zeal and incompetence.
Obvious bias is obvious, in both the ruling and your commentary.
If you create a hostile environment where, people do not feel able to express what they feel or think, freedom of speech doesn't really exist then.
Can you point to me where in the constitution this particular right is enshrined? I'm having a hard time finding it in my pocket copy.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Incurring a penalty is the polar opposite of being free to do something.
Honest, this is a stupid argument. I doubt you're actually this stupid, so you should probably be ashamed for attempting such a pathetic line of reasoning. The First Amendment gets you off the legal hook for most forms of speech. That's all it does.
You know better.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences of that speech. Not if you are a mediocre shithead bigot, with specious and easily disproven biased "arguments".
There's a reason guys like Damore know nothing about women. They are unlikable, elf important and delusional assholes, and women can and DO do much better.
If y'all hate women so much, go form your perfect man's homophilic Mars colony. The stars await, man-babies.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I think that if you lay traits out on spectra, you'll find two bell curves with a great deal of overlap, one representing women, another representing men. Much of that may be a matter of socialization, but that doesn't make it not exist.
None of that is a value judgement and none of it grants an overall superiority to either gender.
Damore made too much of that and made a few poor word choices, but then many people read a LOT more into it than he actually wrote.
But perhaps more to the point here, what he wrote wasn't hostile, nor was it anti-diversity. Right or wrong, he seemed to genuinely want to foster more diversity. He did not release it outside of Google and shows no sign of intent that it ever be read outside of Google. Interestingly, as far as we know, the jackass that published his essay for the world seems not to have been penalized at all.
Point to the statements that were so harmful? And are they supported by evidence?
Who is John Galt?
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
and if your shitshow forces the CEO of a multi billion dollar company to cut short their european vacation and return home to deal with it... well you should have your resume ready. There will be consequences.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
UK TV channel 4 news inadvertently produced a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54 viral video around this topic.
So if pseudoscience is not protected, what is Google basing its decision on? If you're going to say that he's scientifically been disproven, please provide the biological axiom that keeps women out of tech?
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Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences.
Let the mob rule begin!!!
Problem is, groups of people are really dumb, and do terrible things, for terrible reasons. And furthermore, they cannot tell that they're being dumb. From their point of view, they thing they're doing the right thing. This is the dynamic behind many historic tragedies. And it is precisely what you're advocating for. Because, you know, your team is right!!!
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
My son's grade 12 teacher lined the kids up based on how well they did in their last year of high school math class. The top 5 were all girls and 3 more were in the top ten. This is based on a fairly standardized curriculum. Next he lined them up based on their results from the university of Waterloo math contest. 22 kids in the class and the top 8 were all boys. The girls new how to write the tests and give the answers expected but it was obvious that the boys actually understood the math better. (the teacher is no longer teaching)
Here are the math contest results http://www.cemc.uwaterloo.ca/c... you will see a Cynthia on the 6th page of the results. That's the first woman's name I recognized
The guy wrote a memo boiling down to a statement about half of Google's workforce being unjustly hired. Even if you decide to ignore the sexist undertones in his memo, how could Google possible expect him to properly function in an office environment again?
The world is filled with good coders. Good workers are more of a rarity.
>"Labor Board Says Google Could Fire James Damore For Anti-Diversity Memo"
And thus, misinformation continues to flow. His memo was not "anti-diversity." A correct title could be:
"Labor Board Says Google Could Fire James Damore For Memo About Anti-Diversity Program"
"Labor Board Says Google Could Fire James Damore For His Memo Criticizing Google's Diversity Program"
Actually, Google failed at both public relations and employer-employee relations. The firing of Damore over a controversial memo going public says much about Google's considerations and priorities regarding their employees - if you get caught publicly holding an unpopular opinion, would you want to be working for somoene who can be easily pressured to dismiss you, or would you prefer to be working for someone who actually values you?
If they merely wanted to not be seen as agreeing with Damore, all they really needed to do was issue a statement officially that distances themselves from Damore's opinions and conclusions and explains their official policy. Then, when the public calls for Damore's firing came along, they should have stood by Damore openly, say that he preforms the work satisfactorily, that he get along well with his coworkers, explain that personal opinions and political positions are generally considered inappropriate grounds for dismissal, and explain also that public sentiment against an employee does not affect their evaluation of that employee.
He didn't make original claims, he cited peer reviewed journal articles! If citing scientific journals (even ones later found to be wrong) is disruptive then we need to be disrupted. I'm not worried about damore, he is set for life on the speaking circuit, but all those people stuck in these companies who are afraid to speak their mind make me sad. My workplace is the opposite. If it was found you voted Democratic you would be ostracized. It is a megacorp, but in a sector with conservative selection bias. I have friends who are liberal and they feel they can't mention opinions at work and I hate that for them.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Men and women arenâ(TM)t different? Thatâ(TM)s a statement to stupid, it would take an intellectual to believe it.
Why do you hate freedom?
Translation: The Truth hurts.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It's not a hypothesis, does your wife have a penis?
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
I've read multiple places that the studies he cited have been discredited, sometimes by the study authors themselves. Still not sure I agree with the firing, but judging by the ruling's contents it wasn't just a knee jerk reaction. AmiMoJo already covered the details further up this thread, but it's not fair to say this is just folks ignoring facts.
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protecting political speech. I was really expecting this to fall under those laws. I don't know a lot about them though. They might still get invoked in a lawsuit though.
I don't agree with this guy, but it make me nervous to think he was fired for political views. Still, the labor board's ruling is public and revealed a lot about Google's thought process and reasoning behind the firing. It doesn't seem to have been a knee jerk reaction but was done in response to the furor and uproar the memo caused combined with him sending the memo around intentionally. The ruling implies he was stirring up trouble and knew it. But that's hard to say. I suspect their be a lawsuit. If Google settles we'll never really know, but if it goes to court I suppose we'll find out.
I will say this, I've heard tales of companies trying to do shady firing practices in the past. The stories go that as the employees in question were being walked out HR got wind of it and literally ran out and begged them to take their jobs back. And this is not in a State known for strong labor laws like CA. HR reps take unlawful firings very, very seriously. I think Google dotted those i's and crossed the t's here. Meaning if the lawsuit does happen it's going to be very interesting.
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It happens all the time.
Literally all the time.
Use Google. Look at the news. There's constantly news coming out about this. It's coming from neutral sources, it's coming from right wing sources, it's coming from left wing sources; it's coming from paternalistic fucknuts and it's coming from radical feminists. The scientific orthodoxy is that men and women are inherently different in some ways, with strong overlap that means that the inherent differences do not necessarily hold between individuals in each set.
I literally don't know where people get this. How can you possibly think that either a person believes James Damore was 100% in the right, OR that person believes that men and women are just arbitrary distinctions of completely random collections of humans with no correlated traits. That's ridiculous. That's exactly as ridiculous as thinking that either James Damore's memo had literally no redeeming value, or you're some kind of gender-caste fascist.
What is not scientific orthodoxy is that men and women are inherently suited to the current gender roles they occupy in US society in 2018 (or 2001 or 1967 or whenever you think it was "balanced"), particularly since these roles have shifted over time and are not constant between different localities. That's a hypothesis you have to prove. James Damore made an argument that men and women were inherently different, inserted a bunch of unsupported pop-sci claims, and concluded that diversity initiatives were undermining Google. But the bad part here was that he made the argument in such a way that it pissed off employees and damaged Google's brand. Whether or not you think that's rational, it's a clearly predictable outcome, and it's not rational to pretend that you're not responsible for the clearly predictable outcomes of your actions.
It's not like James Damore could not have taken his concern up in other ways.
which is one of the scariest things to come out of this century. There's been a general eroding of scientific thinking that started with Climate Change deniers and anti-vaxers and seems to be spreading. Somewhere along the line people started acting like all ideas are equally valid. Science itself is partly to blame, because it never likes to use words that make things sound certain even when it is. Richard Dawkins has lengthy writings and videos on the subject.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
In the UK girls overtook boys in maths at school over a decade ago.
Exactly when they stopped testing accrued competence in 2000. When they returned to an objective competency test in 2017:
A-level results 2017: Boys overtake girls in top grades for first time in years
Some 43 per cent of male maths candidates scored an A or higher, compared with 41.1 per cent of girls.
it's a very specific type of freedom that's granted by the 1st amendment. Specifically, the government can not ban you from saying things.
NOPE. The first amendment specifically prohibits against the government " abridging the freedom of speech "
That means the freedom of speech may not be abridged IN ANY WAY AT ALL. ---- that includes abridging by cancelling or changing laws on the book that protect free speech to weaken its protections --- that includes causing mechanisms to come into existence other than outright banning you from saying things, for example incentives or penalties for saying certain things.
In this case there are protections that go beyond the 1st amendment itself: The Section 7 Rights of the NLRA.
There's no element in these rights that allows one to say "speech deemed harmful or discriminatory" by someone is excluded from these protections.
These rights prevent an employer from firing or retaliating against certain speech, And because this level of protection has been established ---- it would be unconstitutional 1st amendment violation for the NLRB or the Courts, or Congress, or any other body to attempt to re-interpret or Curtail these protections so as to abridge free speech rights previously enjoyed (Based on current Politically-Correct /Politics obsession of Google).
The firing of Damore over a controversial memo going public says much about Google's considerations and priorities regarding their employees - if you get caught publicly holding an unpopular opinion, would you want to be working for somoene who can be easily pressured to dismiss you, or would you prefer to be working for someone who actually values you?
It depends on the opinion, whether it's merely unpopular or something bigger, and the means in which the world found out.
Not all unpopular opinions are equal. If a climate science denier or young-earth creationist worked for Google, and they decided to tell the whole company about it in a memo, citing misunderstood academic research in "support", we wouldn't be having this conversation. The particular brand of pseudoscience that Damore was using to support his argument may be less popular, but it's still just as damaging to Google's pro-science, pro-evidence, pro-reason reputation.
Both Pichai and the LRB essentially made the same point, in different words: A lot of what Damore said in the memo was fair comment, good debate material, and legally protected. It's only the pseudoscientific stereotyping that crossed the line.
He could have written a much better memo which came to the same conclusion about Google's corporate culture, but didn't.
To be fair, it's possible that he didn't because he couldn't. Hiring someone who hasn't completed their postgraduate degree (and hence hasn't completed their research apprenticeship) for a research position is always risky. If you then accidentally tell the world that you don't know how to understand a scientific paper, that's a bit of an own goal. If Damore can find someone who values that in an employee, good luck to him.
And if people who are willing to make pseudoscientific claims in public or even semi-public feel nervous about whether they are valued at Google, that might be for the best.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
The burden is always on the person who wants to change the status quo. Cause, in a tie, the status quo always wins.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
they say he disseminated it out to a wider audience knowing it would stir up trouble. Also knowing that it would likely be leaked outside the company. Basically, he was shitposting on a sensitive topic.
Now, you can argue he didn't intend to do that (in fact that's exactly what you're doing) but that wouldn't be the conclusion of the labor board. The labor board disagrees with you.
For my money I don't have enough information. I'd want to know what happened with the document after he wrote it. Who did he share it with. Who actually leaked it (if that's known). Did management talk to him about it and ask him to stop disseminating it because it was having a negative impact on the work environment? Did they follow their own internal procedures in that regard? Did they have procedures for shutting down these kinds of discussions when they cease to benefit the work environment? Just because Google started a conversation doesn't mean they can't stop and say "Hey everyone, sorry, we shouldn't have started this conversation, OK? So let's just stop and go back to work".
I want political views protected. But I also agree that the workplace isn't where politics should be debated. Yes, it was kind of bone headed for Google to start that conversation (especially in a male dominated workplace where it's likely to be a sensitive topic). But mistakes can be made and then corrected in a way beneficial to everyone.
I don't have nearly enough context to say if the board's decision was right or not. I'm guessing this will go to court as a wrongful termination lawsuit. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
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The point is that it is plausible. He is trying to help you see past your blind, quasi religious scientism.
> This wasn't the government banning him from saying anything,
Not interfering with a company to do the things the government can't (or wont), but would never allow internally, is different how? It's legal theater. In other matters, the government appoints a czar and pulls areas into purvey for "regulation" or more menacing, "enforcement" (Homeland Security). The retreat into a constructionist view has done nothing but encourage and promote injustice, while adhering to the letter of the imperfect law while allowing groups and committees, formed under the auspices of the public interest, to fill perceived power vacuums in the interest of private parties (although sometimes the public is served well) or outright protected private parties when behaving against the public interest. When intellectual honesty is punished and intellectual dishonesty is rewarded, in say...politics, isn't it in the realm of the same wrong? I believe that the 1st amendment was worded sufficiently, when a broad interpretation was used or, worse an ignorant one. That time has passed.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Diversity in everything, except thought.
Lick that police state boot!
The correct way to disagree with someone misrepresenting or misinterpreting scientific data is to state that fact, state why you believe it's wrong, and state went you believe is right instead.
Not witch-hunting that person.
Damore, like most culturally-identified "conservatives" in the USA these days doesn't even know what it means to be conservative. He's not a conservative, he's just an asshole. Please stop using "conservative" when you mean "asshole".
beelsebob opined:
This wasn't the government banning him from saying anything, it was google saying "yes, you can say that, but we disagree, and feel that you damaged our image so badly that you're fired"
I think you have misinterpreted Google's reason for firing Damore. It wasn't about him "damaging our image," but, rather, about his memo creating disruption in the Google work environment.
The things he said were guaranteed to start flame wars on internal Google email systems, to polarize co-workers - not just Damore's immediate co-workers, but people in entirely different departments, or even different divisions of Alphabet, to whom his screed was forwarded - and to incite hostility and resentment between employees of a company that famously strives to provide a supportive and inclusive work environment. That, in turn, hampers productivity, impairs team function, and creates a toxic environment for people who are, after all, being paid to work for Google's benefit, rather than to engage in water cooler fistfights and flip the bird at one another over their cubicle partitions.
That's why he was fired. Not because Google's management disapproved of his opinion, but because his memorandum, in fact, disrupted the Google workspace and got in the way of Google's other employees doing their goddamned jobs ...
Check out my novel.
Lick those corporate boots!
This inane racist screed brought to you by the Anti-Defamation League. Give us money or you're a bad person!
Better analogy:
Boss tells employee to warm up his car. Employee goes out to the car and turns it on to warm it up.
A gang of co-workers see this and become inexplicably enraged. The coworkers start rioting and burning down buildings. While loudly shouting that God, the law, and almighty SCIENCE are on their side.
You’re obviously neurotic, should we be drawing conclusions from this?
Nerds all X
Slashdot posters all Y
There’s a HIGH neuroticism bias on this site, and I know a bunch of women didn’t just sneak in based on all the posts with messages like yours.
1. They don't buy the bogus scientific argument, which has been debunked by the authors of the studies he cited.
Actually, no, they did not.
We are in a position now where a group of lawyers and administrators are deciding what published scientific research can be cited and what cannot.
The "authorities" found that Damore was legitimately fired with barely any investigation into the cited papers, and you agree with the authorities, yet when the authorities found that gamergate "victims" were faking threats against themselves (the FBI report after they investigated Wu) you held firm that the FBI were ill-equipped to investigate a threat.
You think a bunch of lawyers can rule on what is science and what is not, yet a bunch of trained criminal investigators are not fit to investigate crimes.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Freedom of speech allows you to express yourself without criminal prosecution, but that's about it.
No, you're thinking of the first amendment, which puts a chain on the government censoring people. Individuals and corporations are under no obligation to help you speak through... their servers, on their land, during their time, etc.
Freedom of Speech is older than the first amendment and the government. It's an idea that came out of the age of enlightenment and posits that one should be free to articulate their ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or sanction. This isn't just something for someone else to worry about. It's a philosophical stance that should be upheld by all. It stands alongside the right of the individual, natural equality of all, consent of the governed, religious tolerance, and the scientific method, all of which came about during the enlightenment and are generally considered pretty swell ideas.
You are I are not legally bound to uphold anyone's freedom of speech, we are morally bound to uphold EVERYONE's freedom of speech.
A lot of people don't get that. But then again, anti-intellectualism is on the rise and classic liberalism is fading fast.
Looking at the labor board's decision I'd say it's pretty clear that the people who ruled against Damore made up their minds based on the faulty reporting that claimed the memo said something along the lines of "women can't do maths" and other fabrications. This is pretty clear from how when they had to base their decision on what's actually in the memo they chose the mention of women being more prone to neuroticism, which he backs up references to scientific studies, and the mention of male IQ being more unevenly distributed, which he also backs up with references to scientific studies.
Particularly the latter scientifically-backed point is so benign that claiming it's somehow sexist makes it clear that the labor board just went looking for stuff to be offended over and when they couldn't find anything genuinely offensive they went for the closest thing. A board that makes it's decisions based on bad information and then rather than changing it's mind when having to examine the actual facts has some serious serious issues.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
4. People complained and actually withdraw from job opportunities as a result. Snowflakes or otherwise, there was measurable damage done to Google's workplace.
Try actually reading things.
If he'd prefixed the memo with "Allah (PBUH) says ..." you'd be supporting him 100%.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Ask your HR for data that contains two values, height and salary of each employee. Run analysis to that data and you will see that the taller you are the more money you will get (there are actual studies that show this very clearly, so if your company has enough employees, you will see this). Send an email to the whole company where you reveal the results of your study.
This will be the same, except not men vs. women, but short vs. tall. It would be interesting to see would the results be the same.
This may not be a freedom of speech issue but it is still a dick move by Google. One that I hope comes back and bites them in the ass.
Why?
See point 3:
https://medium.com/@yonatanzun...
Google did not start this, but they needed to end it, rather than spending months and months bleeding into the water. You might think I'm over-hyping that, but we're out here talking about it almost a year later! A company can't afford to let that kind of thing burn out of control internally.
When in pursuit of an agenda: forms an opinion. Do not seek knowledge, seek conformity. Why read a document? Simply form an opinion and spread the word. Mao would be proud.
I hate this country.
Well shit it looks like people at the NLRB didn't read the actual memo either. Damore had written specifically against forming stereotypes based on differences in population distributions because of their overlaps.
The NLRB called such quantifiers defining the scope and context of what he wrote "softening language" (although how one could possibly construct a meaningful argument regarding real-world problems without quantifiers puzzles me). The NLRB knows what Damore *really* meant [nudge-nudge, wink-wink] even if he wrote the exact opposite and cited multiple peer-reviewed scientific studies from multiple sources to back it up.
What an evil genius Damore must be to have written a cited memo that to most of us means what the words and citations say, but actually means the total opposite. Thank goodness we have people like the NLRB to tell us all that the memo actually means the exact opposite of what it says repeatedly and emphatically throughout.
Keep a wary eye on facts folks...many are apparently misogynistic, bigoted, and 'hateful' on their face.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
If Google had done nothing they would have opened themselves up to hostile workplace and discrimination lawsuits. The Labour Board memo makes that clear.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The research that Damore cited doesn't say what you and he think it says. The authors of those studies have publicly stated as much.
The mistake both you and Damore made is that while there are differences between men and women that are backed up by that research, the CONCLUSION you are drawing from those differences is not warranted. The differences are so small as to be irrelevant in this context and certainly not able to explain the gender gap at Google.
There's no point arguing with me about this, you need to take it up with the authors of the studies that Damore cited. Because unless they recant and beg forgiveness every court is going to cite them as evidence that Damore was just flat out wrong. In fact it's worse than that, because the only possible explanations are that Damore deliberately mis-represented the science or is too dumb to understand it.
Why are you, by the way?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Some people can't be corrected, that's true enough, but honestly, I don't think that was the case for him
Check out his Twitter feed. Even after the authors of the studies he cited debunked him, and people tweeted those debunkings at him multiple times, he just doubled down on his mistake.
He distributed the memo inside an official working group of ~8 people. He didn't expand the memo behind that. Others did it for him.
Strange that so many people on a tech news site don't seem to understand how computers work. If you send someone a file, you can't stop them sending it to someone else. Well, you can try, you can add DRM or something, but Damore didn't. As the Labour Board points out, any reasonable person would have realized that circulating the memo, even to just 8 people, meant it was out of Damore's control and, given its inflammatory nature, likely to be shared further.
He was working at Google at the time, a company that builds products around sharing stuff. The whole culture at Google is to share, via internal mailing lists and forums. He was sharing his memo... But somehow it's other people's fault that it was shared.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I love how you compared Google firing a guy for being a tool with a autocrat weeding out and enslaving his political opponents.
The right will scream that this guy is being persecuted for expressing his point of view, but where are the business friendly conservatives who will champion a company's right to fire people that they don't like? I thought conservatives liked to have less government regulation and interference, and now the seem to be howling for it...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I said:
I believe you think Damore is right and there's a witch hunt against him. You
think that people are disagreeing with him because they are scared to do
otherwise.
Now,
But perhaps more to the point here, what he wrote wasn't hostile, nor was it anti-diversity. Right or wrong, he seemed to genuinely want to foster more diversity.
Possibly, but being misguided to the point of damaging is ultimately about as bad as if intent is there.
He did not release it outside of Google and shows no sign of intent that it ever be read outside of Google.
Sure but in his own words at least accodring to one interview he watched, he kept showing it round to more and ore and more people until he stopped getting reactions he didn't want (those being either people ignoring it or telling him it was bad without going into specifics).
If you take an incredibly contraversial topic, weigh in and keep doing so until you get a reaction then even if you're incredibly naive it's going to blow up in your face and if's pretty much your fault.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
And there's no IPCC paper that conclusively finds anthropogenic causation for climate change. Are you saying the evidence there doesn't support the hypothesis? These mental gymnastics are laughable.
By that measure, neither is the social constructionist view that men and women are entirely equal. Damore was advocating for more females to be employed at Google he read more than one paper and presented them to support his arguments.
And freedom of action is not free from consequence. I.e. Google's action may attract a negative consequence. The courts will decide.
Go back to Reddit you fucking turd. Better yet, go to North Korea - you'll love it there.
It is, and it has always been, the only way.
The USA is the enemy of men all around the world in this time.
From this issue to barring men from marrying virgin you girls, the US opposes the interests of men world wide.
There has always only been one solution, but in the warm arms of the beast it is ignored.
"The court" didn't rule on anything. A single person, Jayme Sophir, associate general counsel of the NLRB’s division of advice, decided in an analysis that “the statements regarding biological differences between the sexes were so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive as to be unprotected.”
Basically, without actually providing any counter-evidence to dispute any claims made by Davore, she dismisses his claims as discriminatory and of a sexually harassing nature.
The letter proper is the following link.
http://apps.nlrb.gov/link/docu...
Men will regain their position when they start successfully slaughtering and torturing their enemies to death; as they used to do in the past.
The man was the ruler because he ruled.
Now he is ruled because he loves life and fears losing it.
You might say "I am not oppressed!"
Can you have a child bride, as promised to you by the God of the Jews?
No. You are oppressed.
You are ruled over by women and their children for the good of women and their children (society).
You are a (wage)slave for the woman's system, and you gain absolutely nothing for yourself.
We are in a position now where a group of lawyers and administrators are deciding what published scientific research can be cited and what cannot.
We've been there for ages - it started with climate change. The data is noisy and there are multiple interpretations but the left decided anyone citing anything but the most apocalyptic predictions - which conveniently provided a justification for the sort of policies they wanted anyway - was A Denier Of The Science.
Admittedly even with that it didn't get quite to the point of having lawyers and administrators decide what could and could not be cited, and that's a new low.
Oddly enough Noam Chomsky made the same point when he defended Faurisson, a Holocaust denier
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A professor of French literature was suspended from teaching on grounds that he could not be protected from violence, after privately printing pamphlets questioning the existence of gas chambers. He was then brought to trial for "falsification of History," and later condemned for this crime, the first time that a modern Western state openly affirmed the Stalinist-Nazi doctrine that the state will determine historical truth and punish deviation from it. Later he was beaten practically to death by Jewish terrorists. As of now, the European and other intellectuals have not expressed any opposition to these scandals; rather, they have sought to disguise their profound commitment to Stalinist-Nazi doctrine by following the same models, trying to divert attention with a flood of outrageous lies.
Now I'm no fan of Chomsky - his record on Cambodia is awful - but he's got a point here. Actually he's pretty critical of identity politics too, albeit because it is based on race and gender and not on class. I.e. he's a old school Marxist.
Mind you class based organisation allows right wing populists to trounce left wing elitists, so maybe it's not all bad. Also I think Chomsky's of a generation on the left which is about to be no platformed en masse for their heresy.
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;
Implicit in your argument is that other people should have their freedom of speech curtailed because criticism might discourage you from expressing your opinion.
In other words you only want freedom of speech to apply to people who agree with you and never hurt your feelings.
If you want freedom from consequences your only option is to speak anonymously. Weirdly you seem to know this, Mr AC.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Fuck off nazi
The problem is that the labour board read the studies and listened to their authors. This is totally unfair to rationals like Damore, who intend for the reader to blindly accept their interpretation without question.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yes, and that consequence is literally only not going to prison.
That's the first amendment, which is not the same as the philosophical concept of free speech.
It's a fact. How can a fact be harassment?
In the interest of balance, I'll point out that men are overrepresented at the lower end too.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You tell 'em, Vlad!
Nothing will protect men from the media/political correctness war on men and the legal arguments by women in diversity groups that discrimination against men is always valid until there is an Equal Rights Amendment.
The reason women's groups dropped the ERA was that it would require fairness to men too. Remember, they used to call it Equal Rights for Women. An amendment would require women to register for selective service, make it illegal to charge men more for life and auto insurance (but women pay the same for health insurance while they use it more), allow all male schools (e.g. formerly VMI but now none although there are several female only schools), and even the playing field.
Your argument appears to be that Google was required by law to muzzle Mr Damore's political speech. Yet somehow this outsourced political repression is ethically superior to direct political repression. 'Cuz private property, I guess?
Classical Liberals are LITERALLY HITLER!!!!2!!1!!!
Dontcha know?
#toxicfeminism
It's not a political issue. Damore lost because he drew his own conclusions that are not supported by the studies he cited. The Labour Board aren't going to believe him over the authors of the studies.
Exactly the same thing will happen in court. Just watch.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
#fakehippie
This may not be a freedom of speech issue but it is still a dick move by Google.
It is literally the only thing they could reasonably have done. Damore painted them into a corner with his unsupported statements, as the Labor Board review makes clear. The only person in this story worth being upset with is Damore, because if you actually agree with him, you should be upset with the incompetent and irresponsible way he expressed the views with which you agree; he set those ideas back considerably with his hands of ham.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes they are. You might argue that they are not good venues for such but one of their purposes is to establish facts.
No they are not. Their purpose stated or otherwise is irrelevant to what actually occurs in the real world.
Nobody said their purpose was to CREATE facts, but to FIND them. Your response only fits the other thing.
Courts are never about an honest attempt by all concerned to find truth and they most certainly do not adhere to any kind of scientific methodology.
Truth and facts are different things.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You still don't even know what my opinion *IS*
Why bring up a possibility unless you believe that it's possible? Nobody does that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Your own link says the opposite of what your are claiming.
For a start, girls have lead since 2000, way before the change came in. And the new test is 100% exam based, rather than looking at consistent ability over the entire course.
And even then, the gap is lower than it was 10 years ago.
You thought no one would check, didn't you?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
That should not matter, the science was published, and the conclusions he took from it are a valid conclusion, so to the best of his ability he was stating fact, normally THAT WOULD BE ENOUGH. The fact that some of the publishers (not all not, some actually said his interpretation was correct) since backpedaled on their own research is hardly Damores fault.
No such thing happened. They explained that he misunderstood their research, and they are in the position to know because it's their research. Since the entire basis of your reasoning is bullshit, your entire comment is suspect, but let's glance over it anyway.
He made it clear he was speaking of averages and trends, not absolutes - and then is getting punished as though he stated absolutes.
He did both, and he got in trouble for the absolutes. The report from the labor board makes this clear. I'm not surprised you don't understand it, though, because it's clear you refuse to do so.
He (amongst others) was asked by his employer to write their thoughts on the subject and publish them to a specific internal location - he did exactly as requested by his employer. He is no was distributed it further than that - where is the punishment for those who did? Why is he being punished for following instructions of his employer?
Because he did it wrong, and that was harmful to his employer. He should have done a better job. If your employer asks you to do something and you do it wrong, you may also get fired.
Why is that his responsibility? Google asked people for their thoughts, he did exactly as asked. The fact that they did not like the response was not his fault
Not taking into account the probable results of your actions is insane. Google doesn't want insane people working for them. QED.
They are very well known science, and the fact that they may be unpopular amongst some at present does not change than, neither does a backpedal on published research
Still not a backpedal, you're still a disingenuous douchebag.
The situation we are creating here is one where someone can get punished for repeating publicly accepted (by peer reviewed journal publishing)
Oh wow. That's totally not how science works. Peer review is only the first step. A study also has to be replicated before we can call it accepted science.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The utter tragedy of the situation is that I may be fired for publicly answering your question either way
We are in a position now where a group of lawyers and administrators are deciding what published scientific research can be cited and what cannot.
You know who they asked which scientific research could be cited in this case? The scientists who did the research. They said no, the court accepted their clearly expert opinion. And this is where your argument completely breaks down. You and your ilk claim that Damore's paper was scientifically sound, because it cited science. But the people who did that science say that he didn't understand what they were doing, and that he therefore was not citing their work correctly, but to try to make it prove something it doesn't prove. So in fact, he didn't support his argument by citing a scientific paper! He tried to, and failed. He made a citation, but he made it in error. And he came on like a hard-on with his conclusions, telling people what they ought to do while he is not qualified to do so. He operated above his pay grade, and in doing so, he failed badly and caused a problem for his employer. There is no reasonable scenario in which this does not result in dismissal.
TL;DR: If Damore had been smart enough to tell Google how it ought to treat women, he would have been smart enough not to do so. QED, he could only be fired.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Rarely do I agree with AmiMojo but in this case, I just can't help it.
With this liability in mind, is this really, ultimately, NOT a 1st Amendment issue? A genuine question here.
I think that a good fraction of people advocating for free speech are doing nothing of the sort: they're merely advocating for license to be a jerk.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Punishment does not need to be issued from a judge's bench or a firing squad to ruin a life,
You've both managed to hit the nail on the head and miss wildly at the same time which is impressive if you think about it.
If you get dumped by your girlfriend, abandond by your mates and disinherited by your parents for being an utter raging asshat, that's all thing you appear to heap under the same banner as "punishment".
What you are therefore saying is that no one else has the right to free speech (or its moral equivalent, freedom of association) because they might say something you don't like.
Like I said, you're not advocating free speech, you're advocting against it. But you then double down and do it even harder.
The phrase "freedom of speech, not freedom of consequences," deliberately and pointedly oversimplifies a problem that is much more difficult than a few words.
Here's an example of freedom from consequences:
Patrick Henry: "... give me liberty or give me death!"
Assembled audience: "Cool story bro, that has no consequences so I'm just going to keep doing what I was doing before with no change"
THAT is also freedom from consequences. What you really want is the freedom to speak but with control over people so they're not allowed to think the wrong things about what you said.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The burden is always on the person who wants to change the status quo. Cause, in a tie, the status quo always wins.
Er yes I think that's probably true, but I don't think it applies to what I was saying. It's much easier to say something short and inaccurate than it is to thoroughly rebut it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
But the people who did that science say that he didn't understand what they were doing, and that he therefore was not citing their work correctly, but to try to make it prove something it doesn't prove.
I cannot find a reference to that anywhere. Please, feel free to link a reference to the cited scientists who refuted Damore's essay.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
I cannot find a reference to that anywhere. Please, feel free to link a reference to the cited scientists who refuted Damore's essay.
No, because there have been many many links like that shared in the many many discussions about this on Slashdot already, and if you don't know about them it's because you don't want to. It's also one of the things explicitly stated in the report by the Labor Board. Your ignorance is willful and giving you this information would be a fat waste of my time. Your request for information is disingenuous, but if you actually have decided you want to know, learn to Google like everyone else.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Once the memorandum was shared publicly, at least two female engineering candidates withdrew from consideration and explicitly named the memo as their reason for doing so."
And don't they feel dumb now.... his position just opened and Google seems likely to be even less likely to let guys like him in now.
They are free to fire him, but there are consequences to doing it because they make you sound stupid.
Or do consequences not apply to large corporations???
You are full of shit (just like your arguments and your brain are). You will do well in this shit world. You better hope it doesn't get fixed.
I've mentioned this elsewhere, but I think this bears repeating. Reading the NLRB's decision, and also reading between the lines of Pichai's memo, the consensus seems to be that Damore's comments about politics and Google's corporate culture were absolutely 100% protected free speech. It's really only the pseudoscientific stereotyping that got him into trouble.
By way of analogy, say that someone "supported" their argument about Google's corporate culture by claiming that women are less suited to engineering for reasons of phrenology. Perhaps this hypothetical individual pulled out a bunch of papers about measurable skull differences between men and women to make their point, even though the papers did not support phrenology and their authors (like all good modern scientists) thought phrenology was bunk.
I honestly don't know the limits of first amendment jurisprudence. Hell, I'm not American. It seems to me that political beliefs must be protected in a democracy, and beliefs about corporate culture and procedures must be protected under labour laws, but especially in a company that crucially depends on its research competence, espousing the kind of pseudoscience that causes a hostile work environment feels like it's on the other side of a line to me, at least as far as employment goes.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Literally only going to prison? So your interpretation is that the government should go ahead with killing and torturing those they disagree with because it's not prison? I'm sure they'll be happy to hear that.
They should be able to fire and be trusted for their reasoning. Your feelings and beliefs shouldnt be weighed in. Your pay and position should totally be abput gender and race. /s
Actually, Tokolish is right. You reductio is flawed by taking a general syllogism of rational thought and adding an accidental appeal to emotion. He said, âoerationally, you should welcome oppositionâ, but you inserted an appeal to emotion and said, âoeemotionally, I do not welcome opposition.â He is correct, and your appeals to emotion do not have any place in formal logic.
I'm not American either, just wondering. For the record, I'm actually against the existence of so-called "protected classes" and believe that a company should have the right to fire for whatever speech it dislikes, but when a company is coerced into this directly or indirectly by the government, it stops being a private issue.
Freedom of speech has not nor will it ever be freedom from consequences. The U.S. constitution gives very narrow freedom of speech protections.It prevents the government from punishing you. It does not, nor was it ever intended to impinge upon the rights of others to punish you for your speech. Nor would it be a good idea. I sure want the right not to do business with people who espouse ideas with which I venomously disagree.
This is not a free speech issue. This is a California labor law issue. Did Google break the law by firing Damore? The NLRB says no, but they are not competent to speak on California law only U.S. Federal Law. This will be decided by a California court, or perhaps a U.S. court, not the NLRB, whose primary purpose is to support businesses.
loses again
With an NLRB packed with Obama appointees, we are reaping the fruit of political correctness. The legal machinery has now decided that protecting women's feelings is more important than freedom of expression. America is disappearing quickly, and will vanish entirely if we don't push back.
Considering that it has been documented that Google supervisors are actually keeping blacklists of employees that they penalize because of their political positions and are engaging in other acts illegal under California labor law I expect Damore to take Google to the cleaners. In the long run it will depend if he is in for the money or the vindication. If for the latter Google will cover it up as quietly as they can by throwing money at him. If the former it's going to be a bad day for Google as all of the SJW crap at Google gets splashed across the media for months, at least every media but the mainstream media, since they will ignore it all because it doesn't match their narrative. Luckily we are no longer hamstrung by having a bunch of progressives as the gatekeepers of all that is newsworthy.
I cannot find a reference to that anywhere. Please, feel free to link a reference to the cited scientists who refuted Damore's essay.
No, because there have been many many links like that shared in the many many discussions about this on Slashdot already, and if you don't know about them it's because you don't want to.
You don't post a link because it doesn't exist, and you know damn well that it doesn't exist.
It's also one of the things explicitly stated in the report by the Labor Board.
That's funny - I don't see it in there; maybe I'm reading the wrong one - can you give me a link to the report that you are reading?
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
I think you have misinterpreted Google's reason for firing Damore. It wasn't about him "damaging our image," but, rather, about his memo creating disruption in the Google work environment.
If true, then that says a lot about companies like Google. Shouldn't the employees be working on products instead of getting all bent out of shape reading internal message boards.
Possibly, but being misguided to the point of damaging is ultimately about as bad as if intent is there.
Damaging? How so? Did he force HR to change their policies? Did he fire someone? Did he get someone fired? Did he cause anyone to not be hired? Did he cause a small child to cry inconsolably because someone on the internet was wrong?
Sure but in his own words at least accodring to one interview he watched, he kept showing it round to more and ore and more people until he stopped getting reactions he didn't want (those being either people ignoring it or telling him it was bad without going into specifics).
So he sought feedback, perhaps critique or dialog? How is that wrong? Can you point me to the interview?
Inflammatory language aside, it's true and has been confirmed, to an extent: a major poll found that the women who are most satisfied with their careers are... full-time housewives.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3634473/The-job-makes-happiest-Housewife-Survey-finds-stay-home-mothers-satisfied-profession.html
And why wouldn't it be? It's an important, emotionally rewarding, relatively low-stress job. It is only feminists who demonize it.
I chose to post this part as a seperate message so the discussion isn't muddled. I believe it is apparent that my opinion was not what you thought it was. You were quite ready to shut down dialog by a process that was dangerously close to a strawman simply because you were (apparently) unprepared for someone not in lock-step with Damore to believe that the subsequent events were an amazing over-reaction.
Given your own opinion that it was right to fire Damore, can you really not see why someone who agrees even somewhat with him might feel that they had best keep quiet or even jump on the fire Damore bandwagon?
So the take away from this is probably not going to work in SJW's favor. As a business owner, I would not hire someone whom I feel is a legal risk. Next time some SJW type comes in for an interview, that would be a GIANT RED FLAG.
Have a look at my actual opinion vs what serviscope_minor thought it was. My simple belief that the author might be concerned about a vast over-reaction to the simple statement that there are gender differences does not mean I am in lock-step with anyone or that I agree with someone else's conclusions.
You apparently didn't anticipate that possibility either, which tends to reinforce my point here.
So yeah you've posted this same claim several times now, all without links to back it up. Last time someone actually linked to rebuttals, I tore them to shreds for strawmanning, nitpicking irrelevant details not related to the controversial parts, and responding to things not in Damores paper... why do I get the feeling this is going to be like that. Odds are they didn't want their papers associated with this nonsense, so did like everyone else: misstated something Damore said then knocked down their straw man.
You're nuts. First thing I did was make sure my kid _didn't_ go into engineering. Then again I'm in the States, and virtually all our manufacturing base is gone. The H1-B visa program doesn't help matters either. Without that base there's damn few jobs. If you're really, really good you can get something, but if you just competent you're boned. At my company we've got several engineers... in the accounting department. They know enough math and besides they've got college degrees so we hired them.
My kid went into medical and I made sure she did. I did that because Doctors have a Union (the AMA) that looks out for their members.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Not at all - it's you that's trying to redefine freedom (at least in America). In America, Freedom means "you're free to say it" and "google is free to react to it any way they please". That's how American freedom works.
If you want to be protected from evil corporate overlords being mean to you (and I wouldn't blame you if you did), you need Europe's version of freedom, not America's.
But somehow it's other people's fault that it was shared.
Let's translate that:
But somehow the people who shared it are at fault for it being shared.
Somehow.
You guys, the same idiots who said bakers have the right to refuse service to gays, are the ones now saying Google should be forced to let declared mysognists stay on there staff? Unless you are a racist, you cant be against affirmative action while saying companies dont have the right to hire or fire who at will.
Except most of what he wrote wasn't in any way true.
You can make an argument. But you need real data to back it up. He did not have any data. His claims were baseless.
... still have their jobs? https://web.stanford.edu/~diamondr/UberPayGap.pdf
They claim that men and women aren't the same, too. Why aren't the SJWs threatening to burn Stanford to the ground? Are they afraid of the Barbara Streisand effect?
More focus on HR, not just the answer to every workplace problem but also the cause. The special snowflake that thought up the idea of a mandatory opinion survey should be deep fried and mailed to Alaska. Wait, on second thought, fry the lot of them.
They can have my command prompt when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
You're a petty jackass who posts link that don't say what you claim and then throws a tantrum when people point that out.
As opposed to all of your arguments which are universally: If they agree with me they're right, if they disagree with me they're woman hating alt-right nazis.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Except for, yknow, the many experts who've explicitly said his science was spot on. The ones multiple people have linked you to multiple times (myself included) which you continue to throw down the memory hole and pretend don't exist.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
James Damore needs to activate his white male privilege.
That will show 'em.
I guarantee you that far many more men stopped applying to Google than women after their reaction to Damos.
Like most people who work there, I interview candidates for Google. "I don't want to work for a big company," is the top skepticism candidates have. They usually ask about the memo in a fairly sophisticated way, like, "What I see from the outside doesn't look good. Are the people you directly work with really like this?" I would be astonished if it weren't affecting the rate at which our offers are accepted, or how much we have to bid to entice people.
I am not sure this is on topic, though. "Google had a reason to do what they did," is not an argument. Google has a reason to prevent successful union-organizing, too, but they can't retaliate for protected concerted activity to improve working conditions.
Hey sjames, don't waste your time with serviscope_minor. He's a professional douchebag who is incredibly arrogant and enjoys taking people's posts out of context and starting arguments. If you don't believe me, just read his past posts...HUGE douchebag.
If you create a hostile environment where, people do not feel able to express what they feel or think, freedom of speech doesn't really exist then.
Can you point to me where in the constitution this particular right is enshrined? I'm having a hard time finding it in my pocket copy.
The one you want is freedom of thought. Freedom of thought is considered to be implicitly present, because most of the rights explicitly present cannot exist without it.
He voted for Bill Clinton?
Some people might think he's talking about Trump. Trump never said he actually did that, he said he could do that and it's true. Just ask Harvey Weinstein. A guy that actually does that and way more. Even has the Democrats protect him by donating large sums of money to them.
If you have c++ experience we are hiring. Look in fort worth tx.
It's not a political issue. Damore lost because he drew his own conclusions that are not supported by the studies he cited. ...
It would be useful if you had expanded on what your point is. What conclusions are not supported by the studies? Did you actually read them? If you did I'm disappointed that you didn't outline them here.
Could it be his conclusions were right on? Maybe you didn't understand the studies? Probably.
... ...
Or we can simply teach our young parents that they should foster the spark of nerd they see in their daughters as they would an ember in tinder instead of immediately reaching for the Barbies and pom-poms. They should step in to prevent the mockery of nerds, gamers, and computer users so that there is less social resentment harbored by those who choose to be so engrossed in the loving blue glow of a monitor. And then allow those better-adjusted, better-educated, and more equitably educated children grow up and show their actual demand in their chosen fields of work.
First off, what's the difference? Conservatives believe in change from within. What can I change within myself to make things better? Liberals think that they only way to change things is with a whip or barrel of a gun. You must do this or pay a big fine, go to jail or they'll shoot you. All of these shooters are leftists/socialists.
The part I quoted - you can't do that. I have a daughter and I know a lot of engineers all the way up to Rocket Scientists that had daughters. It's a free country. They often decide that they don't want to do the hard work. Science is tough after all. Lots of learning, lots of math and if you screw up people die. That's the harsh reality. Engineering a bridge, building, rocket or software that controls an explosive plant or concrete mixer. Screw up and someone is dead, or a whole bunch of people are dead. Men go into these fields because we have to. I certainly wouldn't have my high paying job if I weren't pushed into it at a very early age, spending all of my time studying and doing whatever it took to become educated and very marketable. Maintaining the high paying job isn't easy either. Every year they re-evaluate my performance to determine if they'll keep me. High blood pressure, Kidney Stones... and so on and so forth are the result. Most women don't have things like that.
It's so ironic that you massive faggots can't help yourselves when stereotyping the people you hate while simultaneously demanding tolerance and equality and sameness. You're just so fucking astoundingly stupid that you can't even notice you're doing it.
Yup. If you can't fit in a corporate culture, then set up your own business or join a small business. I know of multiple small businesses where Demore's statements wouldn't have been an issue. Hell, at one small company I know of someone was making jokes about pedophilia in in company wide broadcast channel and no one cared.
But at a big multi-billion dollar corporation you lick the boots, keep your trap shut, don't send sexual, racist, or pedophilia emails company wide, etc. And right or wrong, if you piss off the CEO, your days are numbered.
Especially in an "at will' state which all the anti-union forces thinks are so great until someone they like gets arbitrarily fired.
And it's fucking amazing how all the anti government libertarians suddenly line up demanding the government protect employees from business when someone they like gets axed.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The NLRB female lawyer who majored in history dismissed the science, it wasn't actually unsupported. Did you only read the version of the memo Gizmodo used when it first published the story, with all the scientific citations stripped out, in a not-at-all-shocking display of journalistic integrity from a Gawker-owned blog. The science in his paper was sound, as everyone actually examining the claims in the paper instead of what people are pretending is there had to admit (AmiMoJo keeps posting that the authors of the papers Damore cites are saying that he's wrong, but that's based on a couple quotes in a Wired article that don't support his contention, see my post here for details).
The person to blame for the shitstorm is the one who took the internal discussion and made it public as part of a smear campaign; yet no action was taken against that person.
This will ultimately advance his ideas, as it's made a big show of how far progressives will go to silence scientific debate and unfairly smear anyone who questions their methods even when the outcome desired is the same (Damore was not opposed to diversity, the memo was about better ways to achieve it). It's exposing the deep schism between progressives- who will lie, deny science, and trash others on the left- and liberals for whom logic, science, and reason still matter.
It's Damore, not Damos.
..and why is one person posting a paper on a politically charged subject now considered a 'creating a hostile work environment'?
..and why is one person posting a paper on a politically charged subject now considered a 'creating a hostile work environment' in the first place?
That's true. I guess I was trying to explain why the concept of "the first person to say something gets the advantage" is normally true... because "the first person to say something" is normally stating the status quo. I was trying to replace a bad rule with a more accurate rule and explain the overlap/confusion between the two.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
> 5. While a lot of what he said was protected, the statements on biological differences between the sexes (...) do not enjoy any legal protection and Google was - as a matter of law - okay to fire him on over them.
FTFY. Of course, firing him was a speech act by Google, and as we already know, speech that is legal still can have social consequences.
>Damore may be wrong, but this is not progress
Damore is correct, and this is not progress.
It's both.
"Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences."
That's an interesting way to put it. The way the Clash said it was, "You have the right to free speech as long as you're not dumb enough to actually try it".
Damore was dumb enough to actually try it. He thought that when people said they wanted open dialog and healthy debate, that those people wanted open dialog and healthy debate. Total aspie thinking.
Shut up, keep your head down, and let management tell you what you are supposed to think: solutions for modern living.
You say that as if Damore just published that one opinion memo and that was the extent of it. That's not the case. He was actively trying to change the corporate culture within Google, and lots of people, including the people in charge, were not on board with the changes he wanted to make to the hiring and promotion practices.
It's not good to keep someone like that around, not for the company and not for them. That person should find a corporate culture they fit into better, and work there.
So If Google wants to shoot you for speaking, that's okay? Or is there some limit short of "however they please" on how they may react? If so, where exactly is that limit?
That is the question at hand here.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
That says that Congress (and then via the later incorporation clause, state legislatures) cannot infring on free speech. It says nothing one way or another about whether or not anyone else may infringe on it. Free speech is broader than just the first amendment, which accepta it as a preexisting right and prohibits congress from infringing it.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Nobody ever said anything against other people speaking back against anyone else. They are concerned with reactions besides just more speech, like say termination of your employment.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Don't worry. When you grow up and get a real job, you'll be required to take the non-discrimination and anti-harassment training that will enlighten you.
Yes, it was hostile, since it implied both that the women working at google matched his bell curve, and that somehow management was making individualized decisions in error due to ignoring his bell curve. If I use a bell curve to show felony conviction status by age no big deal. Once I start saying all the old people I work with are problems because they're likely to be felons, and calling my management idiots for hiring so many felons, it crosses a line
Where did he say anyone currently working at Google shouldn't have been hired. Be specific, give me a quote with context.
If you can't find one, please do be big enough to indicate that case.
I would also point out:
6. Sundar Pichai was on vacation when Damore decided to throw his little controversy party. And Pichai had to end said vacation prematurely and return to Google to deal with the fallout. California being an at-will state, "pissed off the CEO by ruining his vacation" is a 100% legit reason to fire someone.
Imagine all the people...
You might think I'm over-hyping that, but we're out here talking about it almost a year later!
The fact that we are still talking about it almost a year later should be a indication of how poorly it was handled by Google. If Google would have just internally disciplined him and not fired him, we probably would never heard about it at all.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
the labour board
You're in the wrong country. We have a labor board. And they are extremely political. The Left-supporting Unions embraced the NLRB in regulatory capture and made them a political tool for Union and Leftist agendas long ago.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
girls have lead since 2000, way before the change came in
Um, that is exactly when the change came in. From the article:
Boys have consistently outperformed girls for top grades when the test measured accrued competency, despite herculean efforts to improve girls performance to the disadvantage of boys.
And the new test is 100% exam based
O.o
What if the mockery of nerds made them who they are, and now that geeks are all the rage, you lose the original nerd in the process?
OK Captcha: lameness
No, that's not okay, because that's not speech and it's not legal. Firing you though *is* legal, and a perfectly valid action to take in return for your speech.
Firing you though *is* legal
That's the question that was at hand in this labor board review: was it legal, in this specific circumstance? Because it's not always legal to fire someone for their speech. So it's not a ridiculous position to take that this should be one of those circumstances where it's not. The labor board disagrees with that position, evidently, but we're all here talking about whether or not their decision was correct, so it's not prima facie true that it was.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
"which has been debunked by the authors of the studies he cited."
Would you mind unpacking that, please? I have seen this claim made before, but don't know its source. Which authors? Where did they dubunk it?
Fuck all this talk about diversity and gender quota. It's bullshit. Whatever happened to freedom? I guess you're fine with fascism as long as you're on the winning team.
I am certainly a man that previously would have liked to work at Google. But my take on the company now is that they aren't interested in protecting my opinion at all.
Nor is my government, with a dick move like this one by the NLRB. There were certainly options well short of firing that could have been taken if this was deemed offensive.
The rationale that you have to be an expert in the politics of diversity to participate in discussion on an internal forum like this is ludicrious. I'm sure if all other parties participating in the conversation had their credentials checked, you would find that most wouldn't be familiar with any of the research that is being used to punish Damore.
If diversity is truly the mission, education should be the first step, not punishment. For my part, this could have been a learning opportunity, as I thought Damore's questions pretty reasonable. I haven't really seen a response that spoke to the points he made without devolving into politically motivated assertions. As it stands, I have only learned to fear the powers that be even more than I already did, and to STFU about diversity, which seems contrary to the stated goals.
Not to mention men.
I guarantee you that far many more men stopped applying to Google than women after their reaction to Damos.
I'm a man who turned down a very lucrative offer from Google last year after this shit went down. I made it clear to the recruiter I was dealing with that I was appalled at the way Mr Damore had been treated and hung out to dry by insipid leadership and that I would not feel comfortable working amongst children.
They actually upped the offer after that!
Arguing otherwise reminds me of the old Polish joke: In Poland we have freedom of speech. In America you have freedom after speech.
In Poland, your prime minister denies the holocaust. As a result we don't really give a fuck what you have. In fact we'd prefer you kept it to yourselves. In fact, how about walling yourself off from the rest of Europe?
Would you like me to explain the birds and bees to you before we get started on sexual dimorphism and evolution?
No. I'd prefer to hear about them from someone who is likely to have sex.
The memo had some good and bad points, but people really over reacted to it. I don't like how either side approached the aftermath; employer, employee, or this "board".
The phrase "freedom of speech, not freedom of consequences," deliberately and pointedly oversimplifies a problem that is much more difficult than a few words. If you can expect your life to be ruined extrajudicially for exercising your freedom of speech, then by default, it does not exist in a practical sense for the vast majority. Only those who are independently wealthy will be able to exercise the right, and for everyone else it will be a cruel mockery of a right. The rest will be able to speak when they express the "correct" ideas.
This is worse than not having freedom of speech at all, because it provides the illusion of it while at the same time destroying it for the common people. And that is what we effectively have in this case, and in a lot of other cases.
Punishment does not need to be issued from a judge's bench or a firing squad to ruin a life, and your practical contempt for free speech and desire to make it effectively an imaginary construct lends little credence to your judgment of who is or is not the enemy of free speech.
Are you arguing that, because some individuals/organisations have come to depend so fully on others, that freedom of speech should be extended to undermine freedom of association? What about the rights of the people at Google who would no longer associate with James Damore?
Unless, of course, the author just said that to avoid being driven out of academia for heresy.
Your argument is edging awfully close to:
If they agree with me, they're right.
If they disagree with me it's only because they're too afraid to agree.
Literally nothing anyone could say would change your opinion. That is not a rational position to take.
If you have rational justification for the fear mentioned then it most certainly can be a rational position. This would be true regardless of whether or not no argument would change your opinion, but in this case an argument challenging the justification of fear could change one's opinion.
Leftists don't have wives, they have life partners, and there are 72 different varieties of penis, each with its own grammatical quirks.
for some of us... it is more than a law, but a guiding principle. and i don't know that you can enforce the guiding principle without breaking it at the same time.
i want to live in a world where people can say whatever the fuck they actually think, without risking their livelihood. without exception. but having the government enforce it would be granting the government more power than i'm comfortable granting it.
it really just means, that i'm waiting for everybody to grow up a little, and let people make the mistakes that are necessary for growth.
yes, the first amendment is about government intervention. but that's literally as much as it could cover without trodding on our rights. be careful of growing that lion you're riding too big.
I guarantee you that far many more men stopped applying to Google than women after their reaction to Damos.
For a period of years I made multiple attempts to get hired by Google. I came very close to succeeding at least once.
I'm a white male. In the reporting about the Damore fiasco, I found out that Google has internal policies to lower the bar for non-white and/or non-male candidates. They specifically said that they do not lower the bar, but that they "attempt to reduce false negatives", i.e. make it less likely that a good candidate will be passed over. Given that the same resume would be accepted for a "diversity hire" and rejected for a white male, I don't see how you can seriously argue that the bar isn't lower for the "diversity hire", but that's what they claim.
Given how close I came, I'm pretty much certain that I would have been hired if I had been female and/or some kind of minority. But I no longer care.
Since the Damore fiasco, I'm staying the Hell away from Google. I always figured it was probably a really liberal place, but it turns out to be a total SJW hellhole where you can be fired if you say the "wrong" thing... not only fired but your name dragged through the mud. Damore was fired for what people thought he was saying, not for what he actually said. (I read his paper. He did not say that women cannot succeed in technical jobs.)
I'm not even a conservative or Republican, but I'm sure I have the Wrong Thoughts. Personally I consider myself a libertarian (small "l"; I'm not a member of the Libertarian Party) and I now believe that if I were to work at Google I would have to be closeted about my political views.
(Note that here on Slashdot people consider it just fine to publicly insult me and people like me. "Libertarians are just sociopaths who want the System to give them permission to abuse the vulnerable people in society." "The real 'libtards' are the libertarians." Etc. I may not agree with your politics but I try to remember that most people really believe their policies are the best ones. Even if I think your policies are stupid I will not accuse you of being a bad person for holding them.)
I feel very lucky to have my current job. My co workers are more liberal than I am but there aren't any SJW witch hunts.
So yea, I'm an example of a man who stopped applying at Google after the Damore fiasco.
They should really rename this site to "Mandot". There's not a woman to be found here. Wonder why?
I remember the old days, when Taco started this in Uni. Women were rare enough then, but the journal feature was introduced and we used to have a dynamic, if still heavily gender-weighted community.
Over time, Slashdot pivoted technically towards site changes that were contrary to development of this community, and mod policies that generated resentment, without improving the quality of conversation.
Now, we are left with something with little else to offer than a particularly resentful little MAGA subreddit. "Open sores" indeed.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."