Not only that; in response controversy arising from the 2009 essay he explicitly stated that "It would be absurd to suggest that women’s votes will be taken away or that this would solve the political problems that vex us."

See addendum to the essay at bottom: https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...

Lazy editing by the NYT.

> Lazy editing by the NYT.

This isn't an article by the NYT. It's an opinion piece by someone unrelated to the newspaper:

Jonathan Taplin is the director emeritus of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and the author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.”

... which is why the comment said, "lazy editing".

The NYT chose to publish this in full. They bear responsibility for what they choose to put on their pages.

> The NYT chose to publish this in full. They bear responsibility for what they choose to put on their pages.

No. Newspapers don't "bear responsibility" for opinion sections or letters to the editor.

They publish them because they find the opinions relevant, not because they condone or support the content. The NYT frequently published highly opposing opinions together.

It feels pretty ironic that this article takes a jab at FB with the fake news comment and then NYT, which arguably should be held to a higher bar for pieces like this, gets a pass on fact checking.

It's not an article, though. It's an editorial, which simply isn't the same format. It's a self-promotion for an author critical of Silicon Valley. It's not reporting news, but an author representing his views on a broad subject with a particular (attempt at) focus on a recent issue.

Really? It is the OPINION section. It isn't journalism, there's no editing by the NYT, no fact checking.

It has been like that for decades, if not centuries, in pretty much every single newspaper in the world.

It's one thing to publish a broad range of opinions; quite another to publish libel like "[Peter Thiel thinks] women should not even have the vote."

That's still an opinion. I'm sure a lot of people disagree with Putin, but I don't see an issue with the NYT publishing an opinion piece by Putin.

Thiel either does or doesn't think that; it's a fact.

It's a difficult fact to discern but still a statement of fact that shouldn't be made without evidence, in this world where people are fired because the media claims they think that.

> Thiel either does or doesn't think that; it's a fact.

Yes, a fact which can't be directly observed, and it is the author's opinion that Thiel thinks that.

And remember, "Thiel saying he doesn't think that" doesn't prove that he doesn't think, only that he says he doesn't think.

I'm not a lawyer but as I understand the law: to prove libel, it's not necessary to prove that the claim is false, only that the defendant is unable to prove it's true.

> I'm not a lawyer but as I understand the law: to prove libel, it's not necessary to prove that the claim is false, only that the defendant is unable to prove it's true.

You are wrong in US law; the burden of proof for falsity is on the plaintiff.

Of course, the standard of proof in most civil cases is only preponderance of the evidence, so you only need more convincing evidence than the defense has, but the burden is still on the plaintiff.

And for a public figure on a matter of concern, you have to also prove that the defendant knew the statement to be false or made it with reckless disregard for the truth.

Apparently it's more complicated than either of us think.

> The common law traditionally presumed that a statement was false once a plaintiff proved that the statement was defamatory. Under modern law, a plaintiff who is a public official or public figure must prove falsity as a prerequisite for recovery. Some states have likewise now provided that falsity is an element of defamation that any plaintiff must prove in order to recover. Where this is not a requirement, truth serves as an affirmative defense to an action for libel or slander.

http://injury.findlaw.com/torts-and-personal-injuries/defens...

But if these jury instructions are correct and up to date, California remains one of the states where truth is an affirmative defense.

> [Name of defendant] is not responsible for [name of plaintiff]’s harm, if any, if [he/she] proves that [his/her] statement(s) about [name of plaintiff] [was/were] true. [Name of defendant] does not have to prove that the statement(s) [was/were] true in every detail, so long as the statement(s) [was/were] substantially true.

https://www.justia.com/trials-litigation/docs/caci/1700/1720...

Of course, this is for private plaintiffs on matters of private concern. If Peter Thiel was ruled a public figure, libel would be essentially impossible to prove.

The media these days is like the Eye of Sauron. Lot of darkness, sensationalism, and very little true journalism.

That quote is what political journalists call a "non-denial denial". Superficially it looks like it refutes the claim "I don't think women should have the right to vote" while actually doing nothing of the sort on close examination.

Any reading of that quote with even a minimal amount of charity says he doesn't believe the vote should.be taken from women.

"it would be absurd to suggest X" doesn't amount to a denial of support for X? Why not?

> It would be absurd to suggest that women’s votes will be taken away

This suggest not that HE DOESN'T want them to be taken away, but he sees he has no chance of trying to take them away.

Not that this suggest he DOES WANT that, but it certainly doesn't suggest that he DEFINITELY DOES not want them taken away.

but he does admit it would not solve our political problems.

Then why point to that as a "problem" in the first place.

I agree that including more constituent groups in a democracy makes its administration more complex. But that doesn't make it impossible, and it definitely doesn't make the whole worse-off.

I guess I disagree with Thiel that it makes our system, "capitalist democracy", impossible. We're living it. It's complicated -- but when has government ever been simple in history?

I find his claims of libertarianism as being free from the typical struggles of politics to be extremely out of touch.

Being wealthy can free you from politics, until you start to get interested in it, and then you're in the thick of it just like everyone else.

Also, his "humble" suggestion that others call his projects "utopian", is simply exactly what political candidates say. "I can build your future, just give me your support". I dread the day the public swallows this lie from the likes of Thiel or Musk. It'll be worse than 2017.

Thiel said "capitalist democracy [is now] an oxymoron", a rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined. In other words, that democracy and capitalism are becoming opposed.

That does seem to be increasingly true.

It's the premise that is the most controversial, not the conclusion.

People can debate all day over whether America's current system is sustainable. When they start to suggest the inclusion of the female vote is part of the reason for that, they're understandably going to face some backlash, regardless of whatever corrections they make in the future. What he wrote is clear enough, and his correction can be understood by conservatives to be insincere, since it was forced on him by the mainstream view.

It's hard to deny that women vote against capitalists more often.

Why is it wrong to speak the truth?

> It's hard to deny that women vote against capitalists more often.

> Why is it wrong to speak the truth?

One could argue that some degree of voting against extreme capitalists has allowed capitalism to endure.

Women got the vote 100 years ago, and America still has the dominant marketplace in the world.

Capitalism has expanded across the world since that time. Even China has largely embraced capitalism.

Nothing is wrong with speaking either a truth or a theory.

However, what you put forward isn't based on any research and sounds more like a stereotype, or your personal experience, than an objective truth backed by science.

In those cases, there can be more than meets the eye.

Also:

> Last week, Google fired a software engineer for writing a memo that questioned the company’s gender diversity policies and made statements about women’s biological suitability for technical jobs.

This is a huge misrepresentation of the ideas of the memo.

This level of journalism, both from the writer and from the editors, is disappointing.

> Last week, Google fired a software engineer for writing a memo that questioned the company’s gender diversity policies and made statements about women’s biological suitability for technical jobs.

> This is a huge misrepresentation of the ideas of the memo.

People encouraging a 'charitable' reading of the memo have argued that the memo says that Google shouldn't aim for 50/50 diversity as a goal (or that increasing gender representation as an end in itself is likely to lead to sub-optimal outcomes), and that women and men are biologically different in their suitability for different roles. I'm really trying quite hard to think where the misrepresentation comes in, or indeed, if it's not about that, what the memo is actually about.

> ...and that women and men are biologically different in their suitability for different roles.

_Here_ is where they misrepresent what he said. He didn't suggest that men and women differ in their suitability for different roles, but rather that men and women _generally_ differ in their suitability for different roles. There will always be deviations from the norm, and given the fact that there are known physical and psychological differences between the sexes[1], I don't see why those differences wouldn't lead to differences in career choice overall. However, there are plenty of women suited to be engineers and plenty of men not.

Edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain why? If I am misinterpreting something, I would love to know the flaw in it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology

My reading of the memo was that Damore's hypothesis was mostly centered around differences in population averages of interest, and not necessarily innate ability. Once you've had several decades of heightened interest in a subject, it's understandable that differences in effective ability would result just from that.

That's my reading as well. He tries to distinguish between "women can't be technologists" and "women can be technologists if they want to, but they don't generally want to".

I'm honestly not sure how one could in good faith make that case given the current climate. A couple weeks ago, I would have bet on his memo being generally derided but not anathematized.

Eh? He mentions abilities in the memo here:

> "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."

He also mentions this in one of his interviews [1].

[1] https://youtu.be/TN1vEfqHGro?t=30m13s

> There will always be deviations from the norm, and given the fact that there are known physical and psychological differences between the sexes[1], I don't see why those differences wouldn't lead to differences in career choice overall.

This sentence is nonsense, which you can tell from how you had to formulate the conclusion. Not "A therefore B" but "A therefore you can't rule out B."

Yes there are gender differences in psychology. But the link between the specific gender differences the Manifesto author pointed to and the conclusion is non existent. The piece is just a bunch of handwaving. It's the Chewbaca defense of sexist ranting.

How is that misrepresenting what he said? Yes, it is true that there will always be individuals that are deviations from the norm. That is already implied in either scenario.

Here is a direct quote from the memo:

"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."

This sounds exactly like what the above poster summarized: "women and men are biologically different in their suitability for different roles".

> To those downvoting me, can you please explain why?

My guess is because you've condensed the central underlying premise into a compact, impossible to misunderstand, obfuscate, or mischaracterize idea, upon which a real discussion can be undertaken. This is counter to the goals of one side of this discussion, in my opinion.

You're being downvoted because this is a fundamentally dishonest argument. Even if you believe the bit about averages it's clear that the recommendations made by the memo didn't pertain to the average. They pertained to the staff of Google, where the average employee - man or woman - has abilities that vastly exceede those of the population in general.

Using this "on average" bullshit when making adverse reccomendations aimed specifically and directly people who are anything but is an especially nasty sleight-of-hand, and sound reason to disregard the writer's claims of good-faith and benovelence.

Of course, it's possible that Damore is just an brainless idiot who is too intellectually mediocre to check his own work for basic logical consistancy, but he lost the benefit of that particular doubt When putting Harvard and MIT on his CV.

At this level, the rules are different. If, like Damore, you're presenting yourself as one of the best and brightest, you better live up to a very high standard when taking public shots at the standards of others. Otherwise, you could get dumped very unceremoniously.

That's the thing: there is no misrepresentation. A bunch of people here are trying to use smoke and mirrors to cry "repression" of their ideas, but when you boil it down to the basics the memo just says that: "we shouldn't do anything to increase diversity, because women are biologically different and hence they won't be interested."

The moment you point out that the same kind of argument was made about black people not long ago, most of the trolls just disappear.

> "we shouldn't do anything to increase diversity..."

He didn't say that either. In fact, he advocates for more diversity and suggests changes that, at least according to him, should increase diversity without the negatives he's concerned about.

Renowned sociologist James Damore - citing a study that has been debunked about how "women focus more on people than things" - builds a case for how to improve inclusiveness. I'm a bit skeptical about that.

OK. So you think he wrote the memo in bad faith and/or ignorance. Just say that. Why argue that it says things it doesn't?

The NYT piece could have just said something like, "...fired for harboring anti-diversity attitudes that are obvious from reading a deceptively worded diatribe," or something like that. At least be honest about what he literally said and what additional context and inferences add to the picture.

> So you think he wrote the memo in bad faith and/or ignorance. Just say that. Why argue that it says things it doesn't?

This is the "only the literal words should be taken" argument - but words can have contextual meanings above and beyond their literal meanings.

"Urban crime", for example, literally just means "crime in an urban environment" but is often used as a dogwhistle for "crimes committed by POC".

Same with Damore's memo - he may not literally have said the things people are seeing but - if you assume it was written in bad faith (which the pseudoscience and "I'm just asking the questions" would indicate) - the dogwhistles are clear.

> So you think he wrote the memo in bad faith and/or ignorance

By now I'm convinced he wrote the memo in bad faith. The moment he beelined to every alt-right media outlet wearing a "Goolag" t-shirt it was clear this wasn't just an honest mistake. Even an idiot would understand that writing a memo setting up a "left vs. right" argument and then attacking Googlers as "repressors misguided by leftist ideals", while laying out a flawed biological argument for why "women are not well suited for engineering" is not going to go down smoothly.

It's no coincidence that he admittedly kept pushing this around when it got ignored until it eventually "made it to the public." Had he really wanted to have an honest discussion with HR about practices, he could've emailed them directly. Then he sued immediately after getting fired. Very tight timeline for a well-intentioned snafu.

> Why argue that it says things it doesn't?

Where did I do that?

> At least be honest about what he literally said and what additional context and inferences add to the picture.

At least be honest about the actual content of the memo. The additional context and inferences are just fluff to mask the base premise: "women are biologically different, that means they probably don't want to work here, please stop trying reaching out to them, you are discriminating against everyone else."

> Where did I do that?

Here: "while laying out a flawed biological argument for why "women are not well suited for engineering" is not going to go down smoothly"

Do you actually not realize that's what he said? Since we're on HN, I bet you wouldn't make such a sloppy mistake of imprecision if the topic was something other than gender/race/sexuality.

OK, let's assume I'm wrong: what did he say? If he didn't try to highlight the biological difference why bring it up at all? Why claim Google is "a leftist ecochamber" for trying to increase diversity when the population is clearly not 80% men?

So far I've gotten a lot of people saying "he didn't day that!" but without explaining what he said. Please clarify.

> So far I've gotten a lot of people saying "he didn't day that!" but without explaining what he said.

There have been at least two large threads on HN on this topic. You would have me believe everyone is saying "he didn't say that!" but with no explanation of what he he said?

What he said was that in the aggregate, women and men statistically have different interests, behaviors, and performance in different fields. I can't imagine how sheltered of a life you'd have to live to not be exposed to this in real life, or more appropriately, how intellectually dishonest you'd have to be to pretend you've never noticed.

To me, this rise of anti-intellectualism in the west is rather scary.

> What he said was that in the aggregate, women and men statistically have different interests, behaviors, and performance in different fields.

...which therefore explains the lack of women in tech and leadership. People are taking exception to the latter claim: that the biological differences between men and women justifies the lack of women in the tech industry. The former claim, that men and women are biologically different, is uncontroversial.

> I can't imagine how sheltered of a life you'd have to live to not be exposed to this in real life, or more appropriately, how intellectually dishonest you'd have to be to pretend you've never noticed.

You are conducting a straw man argument against a claim that the other side is has not actually made.

> that the biological differences between men and women justifies the lack of women in the tech industry.

Did you use justifies instead of explains accidentally, or is that actually your understanding?

> The former claim, that men and women are biologically different, is uncontroversial.

Have you been reading the same discussions as I have?

> You are conducting a straw man argument against a claim that the other side is has not actually made.

The irony.

Yes. It is one thing to acknowledge that biological differences between men and women exist. It's an entirely different thing to claim that these biological differences are the reason why there are so few women in the tech and leadership, and then to call for the elimination of programs designed to encourage more women in tech.

> It's an entirely different thing to claim that these biological differences are the reason why there are so few women in the tech and leadership

As it is to claim that the reason for so few women in the tech and leadership is due to sexism, no? Oops, I guess not, there I go with my old fashioned misogynistic presumption of innocence. Silly me thinking the onus should be on the person demanding special treatment to prove the need, when of course the onus should be on the person providing that special treatment to prove why it isn't needed. Guilty until proven innocent, it's a brave and confident new world.

I never made that claim, nor do I think such a claim is accurate. But since you seem to be more interested in being snarky rather than engaging the conversation in good faith I think it's time for me to move on here.

> I never made that claim, nor do I think such a claim is accurate.

Wait, then what was "and then to call for the elimination of programs designed to encourage more women in tech" all about? I'm now in the position of having absolutely no idea what you are fighting for....it's not for programs to increase female representation, I presume it's not against such programs.....so what is it then? I guess we'll never know, which is fairly common in these conversations, because simply asking seems to be too much to ask.

Edit: (Sticking around to dole out some downvotes though I see, that'll teach me!)

> women and men statistically have different interests, behaviors, and performance in different fields

Fair enough. That's a valid theory to entertain, and I'm sure there's a growing body of science supporting both sides of the debate. Now, the question is this: if that was the case, how do we determine the extent to which the biological factors affect career selection, when we live in a society that encourages gender stereotypes? If we don't know the extent, how can we jump to conclusions about outreach generating "a discriminatory framework"?

That, at the end of the day, is my main complaint about Damore's memo. It's just a weak attempt at generating outrage.

> To me, this rise of anti-intellectualism in the west is rather scary.

Anti-intellectualism has many faces. The fact that we are discussing this in an open forum, and that we could probably sit on a coffee shop and have a civilized discussion about it is proof that the whole narrative about "liberal values = cultural Marxism" is at least partially bogus. Meanwhile, the same people who complained about stifling free speech at Google are threatening to leak the names of liberal Googlers to alt-right websites. Where's the outrage about that?

> That's a valid theory to entertain

There is extensive study on this topic going back several decades, if you're interested in the topic, there's not shortage of material. There's also plentiful anecdotal material where college educated forward thinking mothers very quickly learned the reality of nature vs nature after bearing children of different genders.

> Meanwhile, the same people who complained about stifling free speech at Google are threatening to leak the names of liberal Googlers to alt-right websites. Where's the outrage about that?

I'd have absolutely no problem condemning that whatsoever. Imagining your philosophical "opponents" as some sort of one dimensional monsters isn't doing yourself or your movement any favors.

> Imagining your philosophical "opponents" as some sort of one dimensional monsters isn't doing yourself or your movement any favors.

That would have been a valid claim until the unfortunate incidents in Charlottesville (and Bloomington before that, and Seattle before that...) People threatening to expose liberal Googlers to the same kind of ecochamber that celebrates someone driving a car into a crowd is beyond the pale. Anyone who takes so lightly potentially having blood in their hands is a monster.

This is my last comment regarding this topic.

> Anyone who takes so lightly potentially having blood in their hands is a monster.

That person being me presumably. Guilty until proven innocent, a recurring theme lately.

> This is my last comment regarding this topic.

What a loss.

EDIT: Seems I'm not being allowed to reply anymore (gee, where do conspiracy theories about censorship of conservative speech come from eh?), so I guess I'll have to reply here...

> No, I was talking about the Googlers who were threatening to leak names to alt-right websites.

You wanted the people that are threatening to leak names to be outraged at themselves? I think I'm losing track of all the parties involved in this vast criminal conspiracy.

Anyways, besides this entire topic being utterly pointless, if the right to speak freely is granted to only one side, I guess I should take the hint and adapt to our new world by keeping my mouth shut.

> That person being me presumably

No, I was talking about the Googlers who were threatening to leak names to alt-right websites.

I don't think that study's been debunked. But I would really like to see if it was, would you mind explaining? Were there methodological issues or did it fail to replicate in a larger better designed study?

The article I linked lists some of the issues. Essentially the study could be measuring for a number of things instead of gender aptitude for "liking things instead of people." But that's besides the point, even if the study was correct jumping from "newborn males are slightly more likely to stare at a mobile longer" to "that means adult women are less interested in computer sciences" is preposterous. Even further, jumping from that to "hence trying to be more inclusive in hiring is discrimination against males" is just the kind of shit I'd expect from alt-right writers, not engineers. But then again, Damore was very quick to jump on that train, so maybe he had a ticket already.

I searched this whole thread and can't find any comment you made that links to an article. Would you mind posting it?

I'd love to have my mind changed. Most of my friends are liberal and think this science is bunk, but from what I've read there is a lot of evidence that women are more interested in things than people, and a moderate amount of evidence that at least some of this preference is biological.

Here's the article I linked containing some criticism of the methodology: http://www.thetutorking.com/2014/08/criticisms-of-connellan-.... This paper came up barely a decade ago. Studies showing the influence of gender stereotypes on behavior go back decades.

To clarify, I'm not saying that there's 0 possibility that there are differences between sexes, just that trying to rationalize the current gender imbalance in engineering as "girls being girls and boys being boys" is a bit disingenuous, considering different countries perform differently. This article has some interesting data to mull over: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/th...

There's no "right answer" right now, and yet there's a lot of people around here defending Damore's memo as if all the premises were completely accurate.

Yeah I haven't looked into the empathizing vs systemazing but it seems like bullshit on some pretty shakey ground.

The idea that that women are more into people than men, who are more into things is much more well established. With large cross-cultural studies and meta-analysis showing one the largest effect sizes in social science.

Gender Differences in Personality and Interests: When, Where, and Why? http://sci-hub.cc/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x

Gendered Occupational Interests: Prenatal Androgen Effects on Psychological Orientation to Things Versus People https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/

The Atlantic mentions a couple of studies that show that % of women in CS is very variable between countries.

But the % of women in CS doesn't seem to correlate very highly with my intuition about sexism. For instance I would never think that Mexico or Poland was a far less sexist place than Norway. Nor does it seem to correlate well with female student's math anxiety. Mexico and the U.S. seem to be very similar in terms of the math anxiety gap, but very far apart in term of number of female CS majors.

You could look at the charts and see support for the hypothesis that "there is variability in the % of women in CS therefore the difference is cultural" but you could also look at it and say "look across every cultural in the world women choose CS less often than men".

We also don't know why, it could be gender stereotypes about what field women go into, or it could be emphasis on passion vs income. With countries that place greater emphasis on community and income having larger numbers of women in CS, with countries that place greater emphasis on passion and interests having a lower number of women in CS.

> The moment you point out that the same kind of argument was made about black people not long ago, most of the trolls just disappear.

Or they completely stop taking you seriously.

The increasing absurdity of this discussion is astonishing.

> Or they completely stop taking you seriously.

You take yourself really seriously, for someone defending the modern equivalent of phrenology.

What is this referring to?

You try to dismiss my obvious analogy with "the biological argument" made by racists, but fail to see the glaring equivalence Damone is making between purported biological characteristics and outcomes in STEM fields. Phrenology tried to use physical traits to determine behavior, this is not very different.

Except I didn't do that? I was merely pointing out how silly you are being.

> "we shouldn't do anything to increase diversity, because women are biologically different and hence they won't be interested."

This is not the argument. You should be ashamed of yourself for behaving like this.

> This is not the argument. You should be ashamed of yourself for behaving like this

So what is the argument?

At least: in the aggregate, there are easily observable differences between men and women, and that computer science and engineering schools produce way more male graduates than female.

If 80% of candidates were left handed, no one would think twice about 80% of hires being left handed. Ditto for female candidates. Ditto again for male candidates for relatively undesireable jobs. But once the topic of discussion is male candidates for highly paid jobs, the logic completely changes.

Pretend this isn't happening as much as you like, it's no skin off my nose.

> At least: in the aggregate, there are easily observable differences between men and women, and that computer science and engineering schools produce way more male graduates than female.

And yet, that has changed over time, implying that there's definitely a big non-biological component to the ratio.

> If 80% of candidates were left handed

Right, because a biological characteristic that literally doesn't have any effect in professional careers is exactly comparable to a biological characteristic you say does make a difference. Talk about comparing apples with "things I say are an orange, but let's pretend I'm saying are an apple for me to draw this completely irrelevant analogy."

> it's no skin off my nose.

Of course it is not, and that's why you can be so blasé about the whole thing.

> And yet, that has changed over time, implying that there's definitely a big non-biological component to the ratio.

Which OP and I are not denying. Such a simple logical error I would almost expect among the civilian population, it's odd when software professionals on HN seem to completely loose their logical faculties when certain topics are discussed.

> Right, because....

See above comment.

The misinterpretation comes from conflating difference in population averages with differences in population. He said that on average men and women are different, but not that all women and men are different. The statement "men and women are different" implies the latter.

It conflates suitability with preference.

"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."

I don't think there's any conflating going on when he literally says biological differences in preferences and abilities explains why there aren't more women in tech.

That's something the memo does quite a lot as well. When it talks about "innate dispositional differences" between women and men, and uses quite deterministic language such as "as society becomes more prosperous and more egalitarian innate differences have more space to develop and the gap that exists between men and women in their personality becomes wider” it becomes increasingly unclear whether he is talking about suitability or preference or if women have the power to overcome these "innate differences."

It doesn't help that in the English language the word "disposition" can be used to mean both innate tendency and preference. When I say "I have a nervous disposition" I mean "I have an innate nervous tendency" rather than "I prefer to act nervously", but "disposition" can also mean "the power to do with something as one pleases." The fact that he does pair it with "innate" suggests that this preference is something we are born with however, and something that would indeed impinge on our biological suitability for a role.

He even goes as far as to suggest that "there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles" can be and "we shouldn’t deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this)." It seems clear to me that he is using quite causal language there, and this isn't just a "preference" for people-oriented roles he's talking about.

Also, to be charitable to NYT, the fact that we are having to be this forensic with language over something that was written last week (as opposed to Plato's Republic, written 5000 years ago and which has been through many translations), and still can't agree what the memo is about, probably suggests that any misinterpretation is understandable and probably not borne of malice.

I agree with the last paragraph here. Each faction is eager to provoke misinterpretations in their own favor to the point where it's difficult to carry out a discourse with someone from the other side of the aisle; words in common use by any faction are injected with taboo by the faction's enemy, making it so people end up arguing past one another without ever realizing it.

We need to work on promoting common understanding and a common corpus of non-inflammatory definitions (i.e., the "charitable" interpretation of the other side) so that we can get back to the work of friendly political engagement and discussion. We must not be so quick to ostracize, mock, or dismiss those with whom we don't agree. It's usually not too hard to be sympathetic to their position if you strip away the political manipulation promoted by those who stand to benefit from divisiveness.

disposition -- prevailing tendency, mood, or inclination b : temperamental makeup

Not sure where you get "suitability" out of that. And not sure where you get "suitability" out of either "tendency" or "preference". Unless maybe the most adversarial reading possible, and even then...not really.

> "there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles" can be

Yes, and? In order for those who prefer more people-oriented roles to want/prefer/enjoy those roles. Incidentally: both men and women (larger overlaps, remember?)

> this isn't just a "preference" for people-oriented roles he's talking about.

That is exactly what he is talking about here.

> having to be this forensic with language

Not really. What is in the memo is fairly simple and obvious. It's the misrepresentations that twist themselves into interpretative pretzels.

> disposition -- prevailing tendency, mood, or inclination b : temperamental makeup

If someone has a prevailing tendency, and it's a prevailing tendency that they are born with (i.e. an innate prevailing tendency), and that tendency impacts their ability to carry out certain roles, then they are innately less suitable for those roles. The second half is you selecting one definition of disposition (the "preference" one), and basing your argument on that.

You are arguing that. He doesn't.

What I see argued there is the tendency for women to prefer something like early childhood education or psychology over software engineering.

It has nothing to do with suitability at all.

See also: Why Brilliant Girls Prefer non STEM Subjects[1]

The studies it cites show that women who are good at math (SATs, I think) also have good verbal skills, so they simply have more options. And apparently people of either gender who have both options open to them prefer non-STEM.

That is even an ability difference (whether biological or not is irrelevant, though SAT scores appear to have a strong genetic component) that has nothing to do with women being "less suitable" for STEM and yet fewer women in STEM.

So your logic that any type of argument, even if it's just preferences, has to automatically mean that there is a claim (if hidden) women are less suited is quite simply wrong.

Apart from the mistake pointed out elsewhere of taking a statistical argument about populations that tries to explain population differences (and not individual differences) and turning it into exactly the essentialist argument you find objectionable.

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/wh...

No, you're making the same mistake racists and antisemites make - you're trying to turn a generalization into a rule about individuals. You can't go from the group to the individual. If men are stronger on average than women (this is an incontrovertible sex difference) that wouldn't mean that women are unsuitable to be in a profession that involves strength, because differences within groups are larger than differences between groups. A particularly strong woman would be stronger than the average man.

Similarly, a disposition that applies generally to a gender doesn't mean that gender is suitable or unsuitable - suitability is a term for policies that get applied to individuals.

> No, you're making the same mistake racists and antisemites make - you're trying to turn a generalization into a rule about individuals.

You make an excellent point here. This is very common among James Damore's critics. Thank you for pointing this out.

So next time my partner wants me to help with household chores, I can cite my well-documented disinclination towards the task to excuse myself as being fundamentally unsuitable for it?

Dictionaries define "suitable" in terms such as "such as to suit; appropriate; fitting; becoming", which all either carry a moral connotation (appropriate, becoming) or one of capability independent of volition (such as to suit, fitting). Let's not forget that one of the primary underlying moral motivators of the fight against sexism/discrimination against women is freedom (it's not an accident that "emancipation" means "release from captivity"). To turn, in this context, a statement that says that women do not want tech jobs into a statement that women can't do tech jobs (with a connotation of "even if they wanted") is not just a minor cosmetic change - along the axis that matters, it flips the meaning of the memo upside down.

I can't find anywhere we're he says that.

He does say "Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership."

And "Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business."

He basically says the gap isn't 100% caused by sexism, and he thinks gender blind strategies for closing the gender gap should be used instead of non-gender blind strategies.

I disagree, I'm all for programs that encourage more women in tech, even if the program has to be restricted only to women.(I think this also applies to minorities) I just don't think his argument to restrict these programs to only gender blind ones is a thought crime.

P.S. I'm so tired of defending this asshole, but people are aggressively filling his mouth things he did not say.

If there is any difference in preferences, and thus career choice and thus depth and strength of candidate pool, between men and women - and there is strong evidence that there is along one relevant axis [1] - then a policy that tries to create a 50:50 balance by fiat will create sub-optimal outcomes if we're trying to optimize for hiring strong candidates. It may be optimal for equalizing gender ratios, but that may not be as important to company performance as hiring strong candidates.

Of course variance within groups is larger than variance between groups, so making discriminatory policy decisions based on group averages is deeply unfair and offensive. That doesn't mean that setting 50:50 gender representation targets in job roles wouldn't be sub-optimal for what appear to be biological reasons.

A lot of stuff in that memo I thought was very offensive - reasoning about specifics based on group attributes is a logical error in the same class as racism and antisemitism - but it's also not reasonable to say that everyone is equal, and thus the distribution of outcomes should reflect the distribution of the population. Everyone is not equal.

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...

> Last week, Google fired a software engineer for writing a memo that questioned the company’s gender diversity policies and made statements about women’s biological suitability for technical jobs.

The paragraph from NYT does not make any kind of normative "ought" claims at all about what is reasonable, it merely states that he was fired and this is what the memo said.

If the author said "...fired a software engineer for writing a memo that questioned the company's gender diversity policies" full stop, I wouldn't have criticized the NYT here.

But what was written was not what the memo said. And Damore has been insistent that it wasn't his intention to say anything of the sort. It's what people have inferred about the memo, and the NYT author could have easily written "and made statements that can be fairly inferred to question female suitability for technical jobs". Or something pithier along those lines (I'm not a contributor to the Times).

What is your understanding of those ideas?

>questioned the company’s gender diversity policies

It did that.

> made statements about women’s biological suitability for technical jobs.

It did this too. But I'd argue the NYT opinion piece is too vague here. "made statements about" does really mean anything. I suppose the "suitability for" is a bit wrong. More like "biological inclination towards" technical jobs?

That changes things slightly but I can't see it as a huge misrepresentation.

The underlying idea of the memo is that biology can partly explain women's career choices (true) and that Google should recognize this and factor it into their diversity targets more than they do. That second part is highly debatable. Without controlling for gender bias and many cultural/historical effects, I'm doubtful we can even really begin to detect how much biology influences the choices of any given individual in the real world. How can we blame biology for a woman's choice if the mere fact that she's a woman causes her to be reviewed more harshly by others for the same work? Taken less seriously? Etc etc. These are real effects, and until they are gone, it will be impossible to determine what role biology plays on average participation levels in tech.

(edited to clarify NYT opinion piece, as opposed to NYT article)

I think the NYT author implies that Damore thinks women have less "biological suitability" than men. There's a big difference between "biological suitability" and "biological inclination", at least when it comes to tone. One implies women can't do something and the other implies women generally don't care to do it. The latter is not controversial in the right context. Men aren't as inclined to watch period romance movies. That doesn't mean they can't watch them.

People, maybe fairly, have been criticizing Damore for his writing prowess. The same people should have a higher standard for a professional writer published in the NYT.

While I think Damore was quite wrong, I do also cringe when I hear most of the soundbites. There are very good reasons to criticize what he said, but an unfair summary kind ruins the whole idea of discourse about the memo.

Damore's writing prowess is maybe not the issue exactly, other than it is a symptom of the lack of clarity of his ideas. Unclear ideas, unclear writing. It's certainly reasonable to conclude from Damore's memo that what he believes is that "women choose (and succeed at) tech jobs at a lower rate than men because on average they have biological characteristics that mean they tend to be more suitable for other kinds of work" ... preference, biology, culture, expectations, it's all one big interconnected system. He's not at all clear about what, given the biology, he thinks the "natural" rate is... unless he thinks it's already about right? So it's not clear what he means, or even if he knows what he means. Taplin could certainly have been more precise in the NYT, but Damore did nothing to control interpretation of his words (nothing, at least, that succeeded).

To me this is like trying to optimize software in the wrong place. Biology is surely a factor somewhere in the chain, but many other things are causing more problems, and in ways that are easier to fix, so we probably shouldn't spend time on the biology thing just yet, because it won't cause much impact overall.

It sounds like you agree that the piece should be edited (they still can, at least the digital version).

It's worth pointing out that Damore allegedly posted his thoughts in an internal forum with the intent of editing and developing his ideas. He didn't get a world class editor (present performance notwithstanding) or the opportunity to print retractions with a presumption of good faith and professionalism.

I supposed I very slightly lean towards an edit for increased clarity on Taplin's part, but it I don't think the current phrasing is meaningfully wrong, in the way that you do. Damore left the door wide open to that interpretation, and I'm not at all sure it isn't what he thinks.

> He didn't get a world class editor (present performance notwithstanding) or the opportunity to print retractions

I'm sure he is surprised at his memo's international newsmaking, but he is not modifying his stance based on the feedback he has received. In his recent WSJ article [0], Damore wrote "I committed heresy against the Google creed by stating that not all disparities between men and women that we see in the world are the result of discriminatory treatment" ... which indicates he still thinks the memo was basically fine and that that's all he was doing. He's focusing on the echo chamber and the most gentle and obvious idea in his memo (that not 100% of gender variance is socially constructed). He assumes the only people who were not in agreement with him and complained were those who believe "that all differences in outcome are due to differential treatment and all people are inherently the same."

He takes no responsibility for not ever quantifying the biological effect, yet still recommending changes to the processes based only on that the biological component exists at all. This makes no sense to me. Unless maybe he cannot even see the logical gap there because it is filled with his own beliefs and stereotypes about gender.

I assume that article gave him the opportunity to consult a world class editor, and he may print retractions if he chooses.

[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-i-was-fired-by-google-15024...

> ...he is not modifying his stance based on the feedback he has received.

He is clarifying what he meant, to no apparent effect. It's not hard to find a clip of an interviewer asking whether he thinks women are inferior. He, predictably, says he believes nothing of the sort. And then this gets printed in the Times.

> He assumes the only people who were not in agreement with him and complained were those who believe...

I think all your other points are fair points for a discussion of the merits of his ideas. That discussion, at least on his part, isn't really possible now that he has been fired from Google and his views misrepresented so thoroughly everywhere else.

>He is clarifying what he meant, to no apparent effect. It's not hard to find a clip of an interviewer asking whether he thinks women are inferior. He, predictably, says he believes nothing of the sort. And then this gets printed in the Times.

We'll probably just go in circles about this. The content of the memo, as a whole, does not reflect the harmless statement that "not everything is purely cultural" ... To suggest that biology might be even a significant factor in the lopsided representation is a mistake. Not just politically, but I believe factually too. And it is a bad one because it happens to overlap with the general stream of biases and impressions people already have about women in tech. And now they must also deal with people maybe believing their own interpretation of this memo. I think he should have been far more careful and specific in his terms.

Also, he could believe his views are not demeaning to women, and be wrong. It is hard to see our own biases. I feel I have shown much of my own in writing about this but life is short!

> He didn't get a world class editor (present performance notwithstanding) or the opportunity to print retractions with a presumption of good faith and professionalism

He was asked, in the Bloomberg interview [1] (30 sec in), whether he had changed his position at all. He describes the process of creating the document, and explains that the current version is what he believes is the scientific consensus on the matter.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2017-08-10/fired-engin...

> There's a big difference between "biological suitability" and "biological inclination", at least when it comes to tone

He mentions aptitude in the essay:

"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."

He also fumbles over his description of this in one of his interviews [1].

> People, maybe fairly, have been criticizing Damore for his writing prowess.

Yeah, words matter, particularly when you're claiming your essay is representative of current science, and that you were a PhD student.

[1] https://youtu.be/TN1vEfqHGro?t=30m13s

> I think the NYT author implies

> The same people should have a higher standard for a professional writer published in the NYT.

This isn't an article by the NYT. It's an opinion piece by someone unrelated to the newspaper:

Jonathan Taplin is the director emeritus of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and the author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.”

Except that he literally wrote:

"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."

> But I'd argue the NYT is too vague here.

This isn't an article by the NYT. It's an opinion piece by someone unrelated to the newspaper:

Jonathan Taplin is the director emeritus of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and the author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.”

I've made the correction in my comment. I knew it was the opinion section, wasn't aware I was giving the wrong impression. Still not sure, but it's a harmless change.

I did feel the person who responded to me was still correct to have high expectations of linguistic precision for a professional author being published by a national organization.

How would you summarize the memo in one line?

I wouldn't care to. The author already summarized himself in his "tl;dr". And he thought he need more than a couple bullet points for that. None of those points said a woman is less suited for technology work than a man. In fact, he went to great lengths to dispute that fallacy.

Some of his suggestions implied that Google work practices could be more welcoming to people who enjoy more teamwork in their day-to-day (the bit about pair programming). And he mentioned that more flexible work arrangements would benefit people who wanted a different balance of work and family life. Both points imply that women want those things more (plausibly true, but I think that's an empirical question). So he thinks women generally want to work differently, but that's not saying he thinks they do worse work. If he thought that, he'd recommend putting women in less important roles or giving them easier work.

How about:

Google's current programs are ineffective and discriminatory, so alternative programs and work culture should be considered to achieve higher diversity.

That may summarize the goal of the memo, but it does not adequately summarize the content, which has a large focus on biological differences between the sexes being this Big Factor that is not yet "priced in" to diversity programs. In reality he was probably way, way off on the impact of biology, but he confirmation biased his way forward regardless, then peppered the memo with hedges to offset the backlash.

Memo size is: 178 lines, 3339 words, 22264 bytes.

How big part of the memo is focused on differences between the sexes? The section called Personality differences that everyone talks about is:

11 lines, 245 words, 1662 bytes.

Even if we include the only other place in the memo which reference this section (Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap), we are only adding a total of 7 lines, 222 words and an additional 1402 bytes.

The large focus of the memo was political diversity. About 97 lines, 1671 words and 11071 byes was written on that topic.

When I can, I'll respond in detail. Maybe I'm crazy.

I agree with abtinf about the best interpretation of ideas within the memo.

It is a result that the author of that memo should have reached after counseling and seeing evidence supportting of /equality/ programs actually being about equal treatment (or at least fair, as in having multiple possible measurements and a consistent policy of utilizing the best scores to reach a determination.).

I feel like a lot of animosity was allowed to fester among all parties due to a lack of intelligent, open, and respectful discourse about problems and perceived problems.

I'm not sure what you mean by "equality" programs. "Diversity" programs are by nature unfair- they provide explicit preferential treatments to specific groups in order to counteract presumed other factors that make those groups less likely to be present in the first place.

He clearly has beef with the unfair nature of those programs but they are still the best way I know of concretely responding to realities of a complicated world filled with prejudice and bias beyond any one organization's control. There's always room for improvement based on new data though.

> "Diversity" programs are by nature unfair- they provide explicit preferential treatments to specific groups in order to counteract presumed other factors that make those groups less likely to be present in the first place.

Often, but not necessarily. Since this is a forum for people who like to be technically correct, I'll throw my two cents in here.

To give an example, let's assume that there's a split between group A and group B between high cost and low cost universities. Group A are 90% of the high cost students and group B are 90% of the low cost students. Google send representatives to mostly the high cost universities at the moment, because they're assumed to have the best students. This is resulting in a remarkably large proportion of As at Google. To counteract this, you could go and explicitly target Bs, which would fit with your description. Or, you could lower your threshold and start sending reps to lower cost unis as well. This increases diversity yet at no point is specifically preferring Bs.

I picked this example of high cost/low cost unis purely because it's easy, not to make any statement about whether this kind of thing happens or is important for future performance. this is also not a hugely important point, but it was floating about in my head.

I think that's fair. I guess I could have specified "the kind of diversity programs with which James Damore has a problem". But I take your point. In principle, this is actually close to what actually ends up happening, except with limited resources it becomes a really tricky dynamic.

Let's say Google has 10 reps, and in the old days 8 went to A, 2 to B. If they now send 5 to A and 5 to B... The A group will feel that they lost something, and the B group will feel like they never even HAD 8 reps, so not necessarily feel that things have become fair... It might be fairest to have a period of 2 going to A and 8 going to B for the same length of time that 8 went to A, and THEN balance it to 5 and 5... But if A suddenly goes from 8 to 2... well, those people are going to be writing memos like nobody's business about it. Even at 5 and 5, there will be memos. Even at 7 and 3, possibly. The slightest change to the status quo could provoke a memo.

(and for the record I do appreciate this comment, in case that didn't come across.. I'm responding in a similar spirit... not important but worth thinking through all the same)

I believe his thesis was: gender diversity policies are not rooted in realities of gender differences.

(but he makes factual errors, so his argument is false)

How about:

Women are perfectly capable of choosing jobs they like.

That leaves a lot out, but it's the high order bit.

I would summarize the memo in one (long) line as:

"Non-discriminatory [against men] ways to increase women's representation in tech include making engineering people-oriented (rather than systems-oriented), disincentivizing competition, endorsing part-time work, and making it socially acceptable for men to leave tech and leadership for traditionally feminine roles, but a meaningful application of these strategies would prevent driven employees (mostly men) from working extra hours or taking extra stress, which would have disastrous consequences for Google's success."

This isn't an article by the NYT. It's an opinion piece by someone unrelated to the newspaper:

Jonathan Taplin is the director emeritus of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and the author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.”

> ...unrelated to the newspaper

This piece was paid for and printed by the Times. It might have been edited by the Times as well. It's not a letter to the editor.

Either way, Taplin considers himself an expert on Silicon Valley culture and seems to have problems objectively describing at least this part of it.

It is part of the NYT's opinion section, and not the editorial board's opinion.

Newspapers include opinion sections from very diverse authors. The NYT has, for example, published a section by Putin:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-cau...

Opinion pieces are typically paid. I suspect world leaders and billionaires are not paid, though.

The Times does decide what to print, even if they print an unpaid Putin. They would presumably decline to print a letter from Kim Jong Un about how he shot 38 under par, including five holes-in-one.

> The Times does decide what to print, even if they print an unpaid Putin.

Yes:

https://www.nytimes.com/content/help/site/editorial/op-ed/op...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/opinion/op-ed-and-you.html...

It's not journalism, though, in the sense of an article meant to factually cover what's happened. It's not representing facts. It's representing an interpretation of a situation and that by an author interested in and highly critical of Silicon Valley in general.

Lemme guess, it's all about ethics in (game) journalism, amirite?

To paraphrase: 'NYT does not want what's best for us.'

> To paraphrase: 'NYT does not want what's best for us.'

This isn't an article by the NYT. It's an opinion piece by someone unrelated to the newspaper:

Jonathan Taplin is the director emeritus of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and the author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.”

You've posted this about 6 times now. If people are still disagreeing with you, maybe there's a reason.

If an article appears under the New York Times' logo and URL, then it can reasonably be assumed to reflect an opinion that the New York Times wishes to be associated with.

Since opinion pieces in the NYT have many times taken completely opposite sides (often in rapid succession), and the OpEd page is not considered journalism (i.e. it is opinion), I think your statement is patently false ("the NYT doesn't want...") unless you believe that the NYT wishes to be associated with all opinions. In fact that is how OpEd pages are supposed to work if one believes their readers might be able to think for themselves.

See their editorial submission page for yourself:

https://www.nytimes.com/content/help/site/editorial/op-ed/op...

"We're interested in everything, if it's opinionated and we believe our readers will find it worth reading."

Great. So I can paste an article from Stormfront into my blog, and no one will think less of me for it as long as I state that I found it "interesting," and believe that my readers will find it "worth reading."

Right?

Reason doesn't seem to be hurt badly by it. The editors of the Holocaust Denial issue (not some OpEd!) are still running political campaigns, and the foundation funding Reason Magazine. Does that seem like a double standard?

https://pando.com/2014/07/24/as-reasons-editor-defends-its-r...

If you are the NYT, you probably can, as newspapers are known for having opinion sections.

But you most probably are not.

Yeah, no. I don't think they'd be up for that at the NYT.

Spend some time thinking about why that might be.

I'd be happy to hear your opinion about that. Having never visited the website you mention, I can't really opine.

Stormfront would be an extreme strawman example (neo-Nazi / white supremacist in this case.) Anyone, be it the NYT or Joe Random Blogger, will find themselves associated with controversial opinions if they publish editorials from Stormfront. It's not enough to say, "Just saying, is all."

IMO it's fine for them to publish an editorial by Vladimir Putin, as long as he's not laying out a case for subverting elections in Ukraine (or here) or murdering unfriendly journalists. They caught some heat for letting him publish anything at all, if I remember correctly. But I think their decision was defensible, in part because he was writing on a matter of broad public interest, and because no reasonable person would assume the NYT supports Putin's more criminal-leaning behavior.

Fair points, I agree with them.

> If an article appears under the New York Times' logo and URL, then it can reasonably be assumed to reflect an opinion that the New York Times wishes to be associated with.

No. That is not a reasonable assumption. Newspapers frequently carry highly opposing pieces in their opinion sections. That's how newspapers have worked for a very long time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op-ed

The NYT has, for example, hosted Putin in the opinion section:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-cau...

No, all that shows is that they're not concerned with who provides the opinion piece. (And they shouldn't be.)

It doesn't make any sense to publish something under your name and then complain when people think you're endorsing it. If I paste a pro-Nazi editorial into my blog, should I resent being held to account for it?

> It doesn't make any sense to publish something under your name and then complain when people think you're endorsing it.

That's why it's called the "Opinion section":

https://www.nytimes.com/content/help/site/editorial/op-ed/op...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/opinion/op-ed-and-you.html

This is literally what the memo said.

Quote it.

> Reading the quote with a reasonable level of charity suggests Thiel would prefer to convince these voters of the appeal of limited-government policy, not revoke their right to vote.

Where are you getting this from? He says nothing of the sort; simply that women and poor people have destroyed capitalist democracy, by attaining the right to vote.

There are a great many on HN who rush to Theil's defense, who seem unfamiliar with his very public, very outspoken politics. He's also said that "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible."

His solution to the fact that democracies may disagree with him is to weaken and destroy democracy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment

He clarified that he didn't want to revoke rights to vote explicitly as an addendum to the essay (see bottom):

https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...

Seems like an open and shut case of bad journalism.

> Seems like an open and shut case of bad journalism.

Hmm.. Seems like an open and shut case of a conservative saying words that mean one thing, then saying more words that are directly contradictory. We've seen enough of this "subtlety" in 2017 to recognize it.

He could, in the future, also claim that he only made that correction in order to be PC, and that he felt censored and shamed.

To put the quote in context it was in an essay that addressed people leaving countries through seasteading. So I think it's pretty much in evidence his view is not to deny people the right to vote, but to allow departure from societies one radically disagrees with for new ones.

And would women have the right to vote in this hypothetical new society he forms? Secession doesn't solve Thiel's problem, or the problems people have with him.

There is a big difference between saying a negative comment consequence of X is Y and therefore consider Z. And saying X was wrong therefore revoke X. X had a negative consequence does not even mean that he thinks X was net negative never mind that he thinks X should be revoked.

> His solution to the fact that democracies may disagree with him is to weaken and destroy democracy.

does he say this? or is this an inference.

I would think he'd be okay with not having ideal libertarianism and keeping democracy.

Inference.

From the Wikipedia page:

> One milestone was the April 2009 discussion hosted at Cato Unbound among libertarian thinkers (including Patri Friedman and Peter Thiel) in which disillusionment with the direction and possibilities of democratic politics was expressed with unusual forthrightness. Thiel summarized the trend bluntly: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

I think it's certainly fair to say that he is not a supporter of democracy. Whether he has specific plans, only he knows.

The Gawker suit certainly established that he's willing to use his wealth to involve himself where others (with less money) go against his personal views, and attempt to set legal precedent in his favor. Ideally without the knowledge of the general public, of course. I don't think it's outrageous to characterize him as an activist.

Peoples' reaction to the Thiel quote drives me bonkers. If I complain that evangelical christians as a demographic make it tougher to achieve comprehensive abortion rights, does that mean I think we should disenfranchise them? Of course not.

Women and minorities are tough for libertarians; it shouldn't be controversial to point that out. It's also not surprising why that's the case. It's hard to sell a world view predicated on the concern for protecting people from the government to demographics who have since the 1950s relied heavily on government for protection from other people.

That's not at all a perfect analogy:

* You're not saying evangelical Christians make your preferred form of government impossible.

* You'd be arguing in pursuit of a narrow policy goal, unlike Thiel.

* People choose to be evangelical Christians; they're in part defined by their opposition to abortion. Women don't choose to be born women.

* When you say "evangelicals make reproductive rights more challenging", you're not directly alluding to a franchise those people won within living memory.

Yeah, a better analogy would be if someone were to remark that, "legalized interracial marriage makes it more challenging to keep the Scandinavian bloodline pure."

> When you say "evangelicals make reproductive rights more challenging", you're not directly alluding to a franchise those people won within living memory.

Pretty sure us Americans feel pretty strongly about freedom from England :-). Pilgrims and Puritans formed the roots of increased religious freedom in America, which led to other freedoms, etc.

> If I complain that evangelical christians as a demographic make it tougher to achieve comprehensive abortion rights, does that mean I think we should disenfranchise them?

No. But that's not a full parallel.

Consider the Treaty of Paris, signed in 1783, when American Christians were first recognized by their former rulers to have their own state.

If, in 1798 during the Franco-American war, a prominent British person had written: "since 1783, negotiating alongside American Protestants - a group notoriously difficult for England - has severely limited our ability to colonize and trade across the globe"

Then he too might find some critics at his doorstep. Probably some supporters as well, but England didn't have the strength for another war with America. However innocent, that comment wouldn't have been mainstream. Understandably so, in my opinion.

People either don't read, or can't read. They just hear sounds that rhyme with thoughts that make them angry, and then get angry.

In a civilized discussion, this happens:

--------------

Alice: I think A, B, and C.

Bob: Did you say you think A, B, C, and D?

Alice: No, I said A, B, and C, but now that I think of it, I misspoke about the C part. I think A, B, and C(2). I don't know where you got D. I don't think that.

Bob: OK. C(2) makes more sense, and let's forget about D. Here's why you're wrong about B.

---------------

Here's what seems to happen a lot these days.

Alice: I think A, B, and C.

Bob: I hate your thoughts. We're done here. If I were your boss, you'd be fired.

---------------

People would be a lot less angry and a lot smarter if they actually dialogued more.

Most people don't want to dialogue more with people who don't share their values, they'd much rather find people who do share their values. We are tribal animals, the current dissent in this country is a symptom of our tribalism not scaling up to 300 million people. There are tribes in this nation who are not going to get along, ever; the country is too big. Diversity doesn't scale.

> Diversity doesn't scale.

Well, federalism as it was originally designed was an attempt at that. I don't know if that experiment failed as much as it was abandoned.

It may be time to revisit our interest in it.

We can likewise consider ways to provide free association (vote-with-your-feet options) and compartmentalization (keep bad ideas out of here by giving them room to be at peace over there) in the other organizations we have influence over.

> It may be time to revisit our interest in it.

It is.

Sorry for the off-topic, but I'd like to ask you a question and this is the only way of contacting you I have. It took me a lot of time to see your response to my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=14921237 and continuing the discussion there wouldn't work, so I decided to hunt you down in recent comments :)

What I'd like to ask is: do you know of any mathematician who (publicly) shares your views on mathematical notation? The thing is, I agree 100% with what you wrote, but I also know how hostile and defensive the mathematicians (and "mathy type" programmers) can get about this. I figured they'd be more likely to listen to "one of their own"... Basically, I'd like to have a link to some blog post or something which explains why the notational wild-west is not a good thing from the perspective of a mathematician. Are you aware of such a thing? I couldn't find any, unfortunately :(

> do you know of any mathematician who (publicly) shares your views on mathematical notation?

Gerry Sussman from MIT. I've seen him lecture in particular about how math notation relies far too much on implicit assumed knowledge (like operator precedence) rather than on explicit syntax. He said it's vastly easier to teach people math when you make everything explicit and thus he likes teaching in Scheme, force them write out the full algorithm with no implicit hidden assumptions.

I upvoted you, because this rings true. But you are unfailry stereotyping "people".

Is such a thing even possible?

Yes, this is a very important thing to understand and internalize. People, in the abstract sense, will not read and do not care about what you wrote. "Refer to line ABC-123..." is thus a futile defense (in most contexts).

An analogy would be someone writing a statement as follows:

"Abolishment of slavery led to economic ruin in the Confederate states." -Author Bob

And a not-so-well-meaning reader TLDR'ing it as:

"Author Bob claims that abolishing slavery was a bad thing." / "Author Bob is a supporter of slavery."

Not quite. It's more like:

"since 1865, the huge decrease in black slaves—something notoriously tough for capitalists—has rendered the notion of a "productive economy" into an oxymoron".

Followed by the non-denial:

"It would be absurd to suggest black people will be re-enslaved".

More importantly: I would argue that holding up Peter Thiel as some kind of moral representative of the entire technology industry is pretty ridiculous.

Has he been a prominent figure and thinker? Sure. I think that most would agree, however, that his political views and eccentricities are extreme, have been long satirized, and are not generally representative of people in technology.

There's something callous in the tone of the quote that rubs people the wrong way. Thiel seems to mourn the extension of the franchise, and makes it sound like USA would be better off if this error of the past could somehow be fixed.

> There's something callous in the tone of the quote that rubs people the wrong way

We have to leave room for "insensitive" tones if we are going to be truly inclusive. Having a uniform book of dog whistles and manners doesn't mesh with actual diversity.

That being said, if someone approaches Thiel about the offense and implications and he doubles down, he's on his own.

This is what he said in response to the controversy: "It would be absurd to suggest that women’s votes will be taken away or that this would solve the political problems that vex us."

A rather non-committal answer to the question of whether women's right to vote was a positive development. To my ears, he is basically saying "Well, too late to do anything about it now, isn't it?"

Full text:

""" It would be absurd to suggest that women’s votes will be taken away or that this would solve the political problems that vex us. While I don’t think any class of people should be disenfranchised, I have little hope that voting will make things better.

Voting is not under siege in America, but many other rights are. In America, people are imprisoned for using even very mild drugs, tortured by our own government, and forced to bail out reckless financial companies.

I believe that politics is way too intense. That’s why I’m a libertarian. Politics gets people angry, destroys relationships, and polarizes peoples’ vision: the world is us versus them; good people versus the other. Politics is about interfering with other people’s lives without their consent. That’s probably why, in the past, libertarians have made little progress in the political sphere. Thus, I advocate focusing energy elsewhere, onto peaceful projects that some consider utopian. """

...in context it doesn't seem so bad to me. Though YMMV, I guess.

Saying that it wouldn't solve the problem doesn't sound at all to me like a sentiment of "too late now".

The quote given clearly requires one of three things be true:

(1) Thiel opposes capitalism,

(2) Thiel opposes democracy,

(3) Thiel opposes women holding the franchise.

The piece in question seems to choose #3, which is the most natural reading, but I think #2 is plausible as well. Thiel clearly supports capitalism, so it's not #1.

How did you get to normative judgements from a positive assertion?

That is, how did you get from a description of what is, to inferring what the author thinks ought to be?

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem

> How did you get to normative judgements from a positive assertion?

The description of things a logically incompatible (“oxymoron”) means that support for one logically excludes support for the others. Thiel's description of capitalist democracy as oxymoronic in the presence of women voting excludes support for the combination.

(Though his other statements outside of the one in question suggests democracy, not women's suffrage within it, is the piece he has come to oppose in light of perceiving the incompatibility.)

You're mixing up "support" as a logic connective with "support" as an opinion. Those are two different words.

A leg may support a table. That doesn't mean it has an opinion on the matter.

> You're mixing up "support" as a logic connective with "support" as an opinion.

No, I'm not. I'm using it strictly in the latter sense. (I am, of course, assuming that Thiel has a minimum degree of rationality, and thus does not hold positions he himself describes as logically incompatible.)

Or (4) Two things that are good and just can conflict sometimes and cause challenges.

Or Thiel likes all three and sees that they can work against each other.

As a self-described libertarian that would be impossible to square with Thiel's rather famous quote: I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.

It may be true that Thiel doesn't believe one of the three things dragonwriter listed, however:

1. The quote being discussed doesn't require this.

2. If Peter Thiel doesn't like democracy (and therefore would like no one to vote) it would be misleading (although technically accurate) to describe that as Peter Thiel not wanting women/minorities to vote.

If you want to interpret what Thiel says then you have to take into consideration everything that he says. So yeah, the quote being discussed does require this. That would be the case if you consider Thiel as some sort of libertarian intellectual. If he's just a whatIsaywheneverIsayitmeaningwhateverIwantittomeanwheneveritsuitsme-arian then I see your point.

Way to ignore half of my post.

It is completely reasonable to take context into account when doing this sort of interpretation, but it is important to be explicit about what context is included in the analysis. The article we are discussing is being criticized for being dishonest in this regard, which is why the distinction between "implied by this quote" and "implied by something else he said" is important.

I apologize for ignoring the second half of your post. In addition to it being some form of rebuttal, it contained 5 negative clauses. Basically, I couldn't figure it out and thought best to leave it alone.

I guess the idea is that the "tyranny" of the majority would curtail your freedoms.

You are constructing normative statements out of Thiel's descriptive one.

I'm pointing out that Thiel's own description makes certain combinations of normative statements untenable as they are contradictory.

Thiel is somewhat of an Austro-anarchist, if not fully one like I am. As a matter of fact, he was to speak at PFS 2016 [http://propertyandfreedom.org/2016/01/pfs-2016-annual-meetin...] but cancelled - likely due to PC pressure - but it would have been great to hear him speak.

Anyway, this school of thought espouses that capitalism and democracy are inherently incompatible. Democracy is seen as a slightly longer but sure road towards communism (as Karl Marx himself said [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_Marxism]).

The logic here being that, if the criteria by which elected officials get into government is by promising the demos more and more government handouts, then the logical conclusion is that at some point, we'll have transitioned from democracy to communism.

The Austro-anarchists' solution is therefore to nip it in the bud and ensure that society doesn't employ democracy from the onset.

>Democracy is seen as a slightly longer but sure road towards communism

Not really. I can't remember Marx, but Marxists after him have made the distinction between what they call 'bourgeois democracy' and proletarian democracy. Marx was careful not to say that democracy inevitably leads to Socialism, and in fact correctly notes that proletarian movements have been supressed in democracies, such that revolution would be the only possible way.

>The logic here being that, if the criteria by which elected officials get into government is by promising the demos more and more government handouts, then the logical conclusion is that at some point, we'll have transitioned from democracy to communism.

This line of thought is ridiculous. Communism isn't about "handouts", it's got nothing to do with "handouts". More "handouts" doesn't mean Communism. Which people are proposing that Communism is about handouts? I can't imagine that there are intellectuals so misinformed about the aims of Communism such that they think it merely comes about by giving a lot of money away.

>The Austro-anarchists' solution is therefore to nip it in the bud and ensure that society doesn't employ democracy from the onset.

Then the Autro-anarchist position is flawed for the reasons I have stated.

> they think it merely comes about by giving a lot of money away.

Then it would behoove you to tell me what redistribution is all about (or for that matter what communists today like to call re-redistribution).

Ai yai yai...You're actually a self-professed communist as per your bio. Never thought I'd see the day. I don't think our debate would ever come to an end.

"the extension of the franchise to women ... [has] rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron"

Thiel either opposes capitalist democracy, or regrets the franchisement of women. (Edit: Or both.) Reading those words otherwise is, IMO, not charitable but delusional.

---

Having said that, the impression I get is that Thiel opposes democracy, rather than specifically democracy for women. He probably regrets extending the franchise to women not because they are women but simply because he regrets extending the franchise at all.

It's possible to think that capitalist democracy is a good thing, but that expanding the vote had positives that outweighed the negative. People who spend a lot of time thinking, as Thiel clearly does, tend to have more nuanced views than the one you're ascribing to him. I guess believing that would make it harder for people to sort everyone onto teams, though.

> Can the New York Times point...

This isn't an article by the NYT. It's an opinion piece by someone unrelated to the newspaper:

Jonathan Taplin is the director emeritus of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and the author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.”