> What brings a person to make a statement such as yours, without having read the material in question

Can't speak for any other person or any other case. But, here, I relied on a secondary source who has built a reputation with me for veracity even on contentious topics such as these, despite that he and I disagree on just about every prior in the world when it comes to matters of this sort. Unfortunately, he has disappointed me here, and I've thus made a factual error in an earlier comment which I have since acknowledged in a sibling thread to this one.

I'm not sure what effect that's likely to have on the whole larger point about Western society that you're trying to draw here. Seems like a lot of stew from one very small oyster, especially considering you're coming with this at a gay man who spent an entire day's worth of HN participation, a few months back, arguing that gay marriage is a bad idea both for the individuals involved and for the state. Came out net karma positive on it, too, which I found surprising. But I think there's a great deal in my prior commentary here that would surprise you, had you but bothered to look before you went running off on whatever this tangent is about how I'm an example of everything that's wrong with Western society, or I'm privileging my individual opinion of how things must be over the facts of the matter, or whatever.

If you want to talk about irony, how about the irony that inheres in making exactly the same mistake against which you inveigh when you see me make it, having incidentally failed to notice that, by the time you got around to trying to set me up as some kind of example of a failure in society as a whole, I'd already seen the error called out as such, requested substantiation of the counterclaim, received same, and clearly recognized that I'd erred? That seems pretty ironic to me!

It seems you interpreted my comment as a critique aimed at you as an individual and I can understand why you did that. However it was certainly not my goal and Im sorry if you felt attacked. I tried to be clear both that your comment (i.e. not you as an individual) was a good example and I also finished my post by saying that I didnt mean to continue bashing you (as an individual). I wrote that because I actually had read your other comments. That was why I added the last sentence.

I think this is getting a bit OT. Again, sorry if you felt personally attacked. That was not what I was after. If you take a step back from the posts and just read them for what they are... maybe you could see that it is a pretty good example of the drama we see around this. The Google VP of Diversity made (imho) quite a similar comment in her statement as you did. She did, however, not detract it as far as I know.

I mean I interpreted the comment as individual critique because that was how you wrote it. If you didn't intend it as personal criticism, then you have a serious problem with your style.

Would you like to separate the point you're trying to make from the ad hominem with which you first sought to make it, and try again? Perhaps you have something of substantial merit to say on this point, and perhaps you do not. Either way, conflating it with some kind of sideswipe at what you imagine to be the person of your interlocutor does not help you make your case - especially when, as I suspect may be true here, you're trying to argue in defense of intellectual honesty. What do you imagine it helping, to make such an argument in so flawed a fashion as this?

The actual mistake that you yourself realized that you made is, imho, a good example of what is happening in this drama.

James gets accused of something that he really didnt write and people refer to things that are grossly misinterpreted or just plain wrong and clearly not in the actual document (in more general terms the characterizations could be described as lies or misrepresentations of the truth as per my original comment). Just as your attempt to explain why ge got attacked.

A clear difference between your comment and many in this drama is that you retracted your statement and the VP of Google didnt (afaik) and that is good on you! But I never talked about you as an individual in the first place so thats kind of irrelevant to my point. You can call it "unfair" of me to single out your first comment and not your retraction, but again my point wasnt to judge you as an individual. It was to show how that specific comment (partly out of context) was a good example of what is going on.

"Unfair" is your word, not mine. The personal attack doesn't bother me - I've been called a paid FSB agent in the past and that was actually pretty hilarious, I'm not about to get out of sorts over something this picayune. What annoys me is the fact that it spoils your argument - of which you're still doing a disappointingly poor job in support.

If you want to say that a you think a lot of people have taken quotes tendentiously out of context, or just deliberately misrepresented Damore's statements outright, in order to support ideologically driven and tendentious counterclaims, then say so. I'm not about to disagree with you on that - in my judgment, one of the reasons our society is so badly broken these last few decades, and just barely limping along in a state where one good solid crisis could well bring it down, is because lies have gained such ubiquitous and unassailable primacy over truth.

How do you think it helps you make an argument like that, to tie it to a failing comparison between the dissimilar actions of a pair of people approaching the issue from totally disjoint perspectives and with totally dissimilar intents? More to the point, what effect do you think that has on everyone else who tries to make arguments similar to yours, but with the good sense to base them more firmly than you have done here?

I think you may not be aware of, or may not take seriously enough, that this is a situation where, because we're arguing against a strongly held and ideologically driven mainstream opinion, we each have to expect to be taken as pars pro toto by people who aren't interested in reasoned discussion toward joint identification of the most useful course of action to follow - but rather in making us out to be the most absurdly overblown, unserious, and hateful assholes they possibly can, the better to render us mute and unable to participate in public discourse. That's why "alt-right" means "Nazi" now.

When you make sloppy, shitty arguments like this, calling out personalities instead of parsing ideas and basing your statements on ad hom instead of anything that merits being taken seriously, you make life a whole lot easier for people who would like to define "we should treat people as individuals" as "secretly hates women and wishes he could still own slaves".

If you're going to continue to participate publicly in this kind of argument, from this direction, then you need to hold yourself to the highest of standards, because believe me, there are plenty of people out there who will use any deviation therefrom to paint you as every kind of monster in the world. If you can't or don't care to do that, then the best thing you can do to help advance your cause is to stop participating in public at all, because doing it as poorly as you are here hands a weapon to those who have no higher goal than to make us all regret the temerity which led us to question the prevailing orthodoxy. That weapon doesn't just work on you. It works on all of us. When you do this, you make that much higher the bar we all have to clear just to get a fair hearing in public, and for no good reason in the world. You should stop.

Last try.

Someone asked whats up with this James guy.

You answered with something that was completely false and even clearly contrary to what was written.

(You admitted to this.)

I pointed out that your original misrepresentation was similar to what others do in this very drama. E.g. the statement from Google VP of Diversity attacking James. I also said I didnt mean to bash you any more (since you admitted), BUT that your original comment was an interesting example/illustration of something bigger.

You obviously took offense.

I tried to explain that I was talking about the comment in general and not you as an individual. I also said Im sorry if I offended you. But the fact remains that your comment was a misrepresentation of the memo that was similar to e.g. how the VP misrepresented it. Although you actually did it more explicitly than her.

If you cant extract yourself as an individual from this observation you will probably never get it. If you think Im an idiot, thats ok.

Man, seriously? Just stop. You're helping nothing here.