As a European, I find all these things very absurd. Like the guys with the "dongle" joke that both got fired [1], and if I remember correctly, so did the woman reporting them.

Maybe you should all start by treating each other with more respect, whoever it is. And don't go witch-hunting.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/how-dongle-jokes...

Europe has its holy cows as well. Try publicly questioning the Syrian refugee program or come up with scientific evidence that nationals coming from war conflict zones have a higher chance of becoming criminals - you'll get crucified the same way.

Boy, and don't even begin to mention that refugee programmes in Europe are probably the least effective way to evacuate people from a warzone (and that the majority of people coming in are likely not in fact refugees).

So according to this government, that majority of people coming in are not refugees, or at least not refugees that qualify for asylum. The majority of people that get to legally stay is however refugees. Naturally people from both side of the political spectrum disagree with how the government assess applications, and it should be noted that party in power is currently the social democratic party.

Sometimes old cultural artifacts go away in the "mother country" but persist in "the colonies." Seems like the witch-hunting mentality is something that's stuck around in the US, infecting both the political Right and Left.

Or maybe you mean to say that in Europe all men are so sensible that nobody cracks dongle jokes in presence of female coworkers?

Or maybe that majority of the European women would not complain to the HR if someone did crack that joke because they are not stuck up?

Because lemme just make it clear, they didn't get fired for the dongle jokes, they got fired for the shitstorm which arose because of their jokes and how people on twitter were rallying to fire those guys.

Also, the woman who caused the shitstorm was also fired from her company due to the counter shitstorm which ensued.

Maybe you mean to say that in Europe, a company wouldn't fire someone if a shitstorm is created due to an employee's juvenile actions, because I am pretty sure that it is incorrect too.

And yes, we have no trouble saying "fucking" without censoring it. And if there is a "nipple slip" on live TV, we don't make such a big deal out of it. It's a fucking nipple, get over it.

So to answer your question: 1. We see no problem in dongle jokes 2. If someone would see a problem with it and complain, those complains would be ignored (because we see no problem) 3. If those complains would go public, we would treat that person as "Ah, some idiot has a problem with such a simple joke, weird." 4. But if somehow, there would be a public shitstorm where everybody seems to be losing their mind, the company would not fire an employee over a fucking dongle joke, get serious.

So how such a thing can escalate like that, is beyond any of our (European) comprehension.

If you reread my explanation above, you will see I make no difference between different groups of people. That might already give you a clue of what is going wrong.

And if you would treat each other with more equal respect (men, woman, blacks, whites, ...), maybe you wouldn't be so uptight when someone makes a simple joke.

Who is 'we' here? You think most Americans have a problem with dongle jokes? Or you mean to say that most or all Europeans don't have a problem with dongle jokes.

> 2. If someone would see a problem with it and complain, those complains would be ignored (because we see no problem)

This is when you end up with Uber, where these complaints were ignored and they eventually ended up with Susan Fowler incident.

The company fired the woman who complained because their servers were getting DDoSed.

Look I know what you're saying, it isn't that a day passes by when someone on the Internet, Europeans don't remind Americans (And many Americans remind themselves) that Americans are very prude compared to Europe.

But what you're not doing is understanding the problem here. The problem isn't the 'prude American culture', rather, there is a civil life culture, and then there is a work culture. The complaint feminists have made is that work culture needs to be more welcoming to women.

So the question is 'What constitutes as welcoming work culture?'.

Saying "Hurr hurr, we are Europeans, we don't have problems like that" is just sidestepping the issue.

Are European workplaces completely welcoming to women, as European feminists would like it to be? If not, then how are you dealing with it?

Sorry, but Susan Fowler did not complain about 'dongle' jokes, this was a serious case of sexual harassment. Not seeing the distinction between the two is a serious problem.

> Are European workplaces completely welcoming to women, as European feminists would like it to be?

From my personal experience, the women I worked with were a minority in tech, and they actually enjoyed working in a male dominated environment. They told me guys are more up front, and they preferred that over working in woman dominated environments where there is a lot of backstabbing going on. I worked for a lot of female managers, and they were very good at their job. Probably because women are socially softer than men (=men have more ego).

That's what I mean with respect. We will treat women as co-workers, not as people to have potentially sex with, and not with 'oh my god, there's a woman in the workplace, let's act totally different than we normally do not to scare her away'.

EDIT: Also reminder some googlers kept politically motivated blacklists, if those blacklists were on company computers, Google will be hammered for it. Discovery could go wrong for Google in a million ways.

https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/google-manifesto-blacklists.h...

Since they were G+ blocklists, they were obviously on company computers. OTOH, it's not clear (despite the lawsuits characterization, which is pretty directly contradicted by the posts and emails offered to support it) that these were motivated by ideology rather than disruptive manner of expressing that in the workplace. Moreover, it's not clear they they were, in fact, used for any problematic purpose.

> Discovery could go wrong for Google in a million ways

Which is why there won't be a settlement; it's clearly a politically motivated suit aimed to hurt Google as badly as possible; if Damore and the other individually named plaintiff were seeking to maximize the probability and magnitude of personal recompense, this would be a direct action. A settlement with no admission of guilt, no discovery, and just a go-away cash payment that’ll mostly be assigned to the attorneys won't achieve the goals for which they are filing the suit.

Nope. Think about that. You think a guy who got fired after a few years of work experience would rather make a company look bad than gain financial security?

The reason we are hearing about the lawsuit is because he did try for a settlement, with terms much like you deacribe, and Google refused. You only go to court as a last resort, and that's what this is. That's also why we are only hearing about it now instead of when it happened. Months of negotiation did not go anywhere.

That's my theory anyway. I have no knowledge of this case, but I have seen this happen many times.

No, I think Damore is savvy enough to be aware of (and, given his participation in right-wing media after the memo blew up, whether or not this was in his mind in advance, has likely since been counseled by others even more aware of) the fact that his route to maximizing financial returns from this affair lie in maximizing the media impact and his centrality to it, not maximizing the lawsuit payout.

> The reason we are hearing about the lawsuit is because he did try for a settlement, with terms much like you deacribe, and Google refused.

Pure speculation, both as to whether he attempted at settlement and what the terms he requested were if he did.

> You only go to court as a last resort, and that's what this is

That's obviously not a universal truth.

> That's also why we are only hearing about it now instead of when it happened

Damore filed an NLRB complaint almost simultaneously with his firing (it was subsequently withdrawn) and immediately started his intent to file a lawsuit; we know from the details of the law suit and the Damore camps own description that they spent the intervening time gathering stories to support a class action. You are spinning a fantasy out of speculation.

We are both speculating, that's all.

Given how a lot of the other provided examples were claims of supporting Trump being blatant asshattery, I don't think they necessarily do contradict it.

Moreover, it's not clear they they were, in fact, used for any problematic purpose.

Some of the examples have managers acknowledging that being on the lists makes work more difficult and interferes with promotions / transfers. And saying that well, if that bothers you then you shouldn't support [things that Trump supporters are accused of supporting].

[1] https://www.politicalcompass.org/

This is probably a discussion where painting with a broad brush muddies the waters. Specifically because we're talking about distinctions between individuals within the group you're calling "conservatives".

Also, I get the impression that you're conflating conservatives and populists on this issue. Is that intentional? Because populism and conservatism seem pretty orthogonal to me.

or do you mean google settles? maybe. I kind of wish they would just let their lawyers run wild with this though.

Generally I wouldn't have minded if he went to right wing outlets, as long as he had also gone to left wing outlets. I was willing to listen to his reasoning. But it became clear after the memo came out that he didn't engage with left wingers and maybe he was indeed just appealing to the right.

[1] I don't want to use "right wing" in a disparaging way. I think classical liberalism is perhaps right of center today. I think some of the right wing narratives make sense, but with big caveats. The far right is just a slip away, though. And they would hunt people like me down...

Edit: I don't mean right wing in a disparaging way. I enjoy Joe Rogan (his interviews with NDT and Lawrence Krause are a lot of fun), Dave Rubin (his interview with Faisal is fantastic) and Jordan Peterson. But they are clearly classical liberal, which is arguably right of center today.

Maybe I was extreme in saying far right is just a slip away. I think similar things can happen on the left too of course. Let just not go to the "far-*"...

It's like the people on the right saying Edward Snowden is obviously a traitor/spy because he went to Russia. Uhhh... something very obvious is being ignored there.

Also, come on ... Joe Rogan is definitely not right-wing. Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin do not self-identify as right-wing. And your [1] just seems a little extreme. "The far right is just a slip away from the reasonable right, therefore the reasonable right is dangerous?" But you don't apply that same idea to the left? Why not?

The real pattern here is that he went to the shows that would have him as a guest for reasonable discussion.

Adding to this; we should bear in mind that while nobody specific speaks for "the left"'s moral judgments, at least some people literally won't allow him to speak.

Secondly, he was never trying to be a martyr and we shouldn't expect him to be one. He was posting a controversial opinion on a message board marked for controversial opinion. He was clearly putting in a solid attempt to be objective and to employ facts and evidence. He has some academic exposure to the fields he was talking about.

He didn't expect to be targeted the way he was; he likely wasn't trying to set himself up as a hero of free speech; and he doesn't have to do a walk of shame through hostile talk shows to justify his intentions if he doesn't feel like taking the (unjustified) heat.

I don't know what he expected, but that was stupid.

Damore himself said he wanted to go on friendly media to do interviews, not that other media wouldn't have him.

I'm pretty sure this is textbook slippery slope fallacy

Why also nobody is going to hire him.

To my knowledge, Damore has not been accused of any crime.

> was "creating a hostile work environment for women and minorities",

No, only an employer can do that. Damore might have engaged in actions in the workplace that, in context, made it an unacceptable risk that by continuing to employ him Google would risk creating a hostile work environment for women and/or other protected classes.

> He was fired for challenging (an anti-white, anti-male, anti-conservative) political orthodoxy, and that's illegal in California.

Advocating change to corporate, rather than public, policy does not seem to be even remotely “political activity”, which is what California law actually protects, not that the California law would be valid if and to the extent it required corporations to undertake actions prohibited by federal law.

It's a figure of speech; I wasn't referring to a legal crime.

> No, only an employer can do that. Damore might have engaged in actions in the workplace that, in context, made it an unacceptable risk that by continuing to employ him Google would risk creating a hostile work environment for women and/or other protected classes.

I agree. I'm just trying to make sense of the parent's claim that Damore's behavior constitutes a "hostile work environment".

> Advocating change to corporate, rather than public, policy does not seem to be even remotely “political activity”, which is what California law actually protects.

My argument is that Google made inferences about his public policy beliefs based on his "memo", and fired him for those inferences. In other words, they inferred that he was conservative, and fired him because they felt his conservatism was too much a threat. Whether or not his speech is protected under California law is up to the courts.

Never mind that firing someone for innocuous (if misguided) corporate policy improvements is still morally indefensible.

Well, it's your assertion. I don't see an argument supporting it.

EDIT: Removed snarkiness.

I corrected my previous comment.

I also listened to the James Damore episode, and while I thought James did a good job of making his point and Joe did an AWESOME job of interviewing him while not taking sides, it felt like James was pretty disingenuous and lacked a general understanding of how to behave in a workplace as well as how to treat other people.

Pretty much all of the mainstream “right” and “left” in America are takes on classical liberalism, with different ideas about concrete context applies. The far-right and far-left (including the alt-right as part of the far-right, for this purpose) aren't.

These are the things that I came away with after watching it, to the best of my recollection: - Cenks inability to be charitable towards his guest - Cenks inability to let his guest make a point without challenging it repeatedly, and please note the that the word "repeatedly" is key - Cenks way of deflecting analysis of an apple by saying "but what about this orange?!" - Sams amazing patience and calm

Anyway, that's how I remember feeling after having watched it years ago. And I've never watched Cenk before or after that interview, so I have no other points of reference for his character or abilities as an interviewer.

I'm not going to go watch it again, so there's nothing to discuss here - it just amazes me that anyone would want to be interviewed by Cenk, considering how negatively I viewed his interaction with Sam.

So, I guess I should not have engaged you at all, because I have nothing to discuss, and no factual arguments to make.

I would delete my first comment if I could, but I can't.

and actually yes, do some prep work and go on a show that will be hostile. Not crazy, but potentially hostile. Someone who will reject the ideas and force you to defend and/or clarify them.

Classical liberal just seems like yet another rebranding by people who don't want to just call themselves conservatives. I've yet to hear a "classical liberal" who doesn't seem like yet another libertarian/conservative.

Anyway, what's the definition of classical liberal, conservative? It's a mishmash of random "single issues" thrown together.

The definition changes as it's convenient for the optimization game of politics, as parties, groups, power structures try to maintain their relevance, try to get more voters, more support, more donations, more allies, and so on.

No internal consistency, no moral foundations, no logic, no principles.

I said that he was a bit disingenous about some thing and then said that he "lacked understanding about...", yet, sure, cut that off, rip out the context in the interest of being snarky to a complete stranger. Why not?

I mean, if you want to debate, I'm happy to do so, but I'd prefer the debate be rooted in reality and not hyperbole.

On net, do you think Rogan's political commentary favors the status quo or a more equal society?

Imagine you think fire trucks are an eyesore, so you start an advocacy campaign trying to ban them from the road. Someone might accuse you of not caring if people's houses burn down.

You might reply that deep in your heart you are 100% against houses burning down and you're just weighing in on the way fires should be fought.

And maybe you're being honest that in your heart of hearts you don't want houses to burn down. But that's only relevant to you. From everyone else's perspective, your politics are pro-houses-burning-down.

Your entire first post.

1) He doesnt "spend a lot of time railing on SJWs".

2) He absolutely talks, with almost every single guest, about how to potentially change the world for the better.

3) I never indicated that I thought he wasn't right wing because of how he felt about legal pot, yet, you throw that in there anyway, i guess to belittle an argument I never made? Fun...

So yeah, two sentences and every single point is either incorrect or not useful. That's not exactly how one starts a useful debate.

Also wow that is an atrocious analogy.

You make really bad claim that has 3 parts and all 3 parts are either made up, exaggerated or irrelevant.

I explain, part by part, how these things are made up, exaggerated and irrelevant, and at the end of my post, marvel at how poor your followup analogy is.

Your takeaway? "Who gives a shit about that point by point argument he just made to me? I'm going to totally ignore that! The one interaction we've ever had, where he made point by point critiques of my argument, has shown me that he "sure does like to make strong claims without offering even a shred of argumentation.""...?

I'm curious how a human brain is capable of producing that kind of logic? It is just simply a case that you're lashing out because you're embarrassed your initial point was made to look so bad? I'm not getting what's happening here.

You seem to disagree with either the premise or the conclusion, but rather than making an argument to that effect you have made 3 (three!) meta-posts about it, all while waxing on about the virtues effective debate.

Maybe you disagree with my premise, or maybe you disagree with my conclusion, but your posts so far amount to a whole lot of grandstanding and a vanishingly small amount of argumentation. Your insistence on talking about me and your meta-view of my argument rather than the argument itself reveals a lot more about you than it does about me.

I still stand by the argument (both premise and conclusions) I made in my original post. I wish our conversation could have been about that, as I think it would have been much more interesting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm not banning you just this minute because your comment history doesn't show that you've been using HN primarily for this sort of battle, and that's the test we apply. But if you keep breaking the rules, we definitely will.

It's funny how even in a highly logical technical community the conversations on certain topics are the same as you'd find elsewhere.

Please explain where he was "lashing out" and who those "certain groups of his coworkers" were. Try to be specific.

before someone says "He didn't do that, you obviously never read it", I did and I still believe it's a conclusion that he leads the reader to. Not sure it was intentional.

Also the whole "too neurotic for leadership" bit. WTF was he thinking with that.

I have never bought into this is some social political thing but rather just basic human decency. Never understood how the right wing got a hold of this and my only guess it was Damore or someone from the right wing that wanted this rather obvious HR issue as some social political issue. It is not in reality. Any company would have diciplined Damore including firing. A manager is responsible for everyone including the women.

Why on Earth do you think a former Google engineer is sitting at home unemployed? You would never want him on a team that had to get something done.

There is so many reasons to fire him and it is California so Google did not even need a reason.

But the more interesting thing is how did the become a right wing thing? Who was able to pull that off and use this as something to gen up the right wing? Is it not a bit manipulative of the right wingers? Do they not see it?

Because he's busy - see the title of this post.

Have you watched any of his right wing outlet interviews? Literally on every interview he mentions "Nobody from left reached out to me, only the right wing outlets reached out to me". I'd definitely recommend watching his Dave Rubin interview (even though you think he is a right winger).

If you were him, you'd rather go out and present your side, than to be portrayed in whichever smear light the media wants to portray you.

There are people who lost the narrative from both left and right (like Milo) and that is definitely worse than losing the support for only one side.

Also, hypothetically it sounds great that you show up to both sides on a divided issue like this, but that isn't possible anymore in the polarized society we live in (a great example of this is you classifying Dave Rubin as 'right wing', just see how many people are calling you out on it).

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/02/26/jo...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mmlmxamw_k

You should listen to his episode with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, they talk about the mindset of denialism quite a bit.

Of the ones that did, it was heavily edited to present a certain bad narrative of him.

I read the memo. If one is familiar with the research and evolutionary biology, there is nothing in there to react that strongly against, unless one takes a biased, insincere reading of what he actually wrote.

him immediately going to right wing YouTubers like

Those were the only people who would talk to him without trying to make it a hit piece, same as Bret Weinstein.

Stefan Molyneux,

Not sure what Mr. Molyneux is, but given his Libertarian bent, he really doesn't fall in with the mainstream North American right. I'm really skeezed out by his past calls to his audience for "de-fooing" which reads like a cult leader asking his followers to isolate themselves from society and listen only to him.

Jordan Peterson

Terms himself a classical liberal, but also terms himself a conservative, which isn't contradictory. He's been kinda "adopted" by a northern Native American tribe. People who try to paint him as "Alt-Right" aren't actually listening to what he's saying, and are effectively in an evidence-free cloudcuckooland. (He isn't anti-trans. Rather, he's against some nefarious anti-science and compelled speech tactics employed by activists who claim to speak for all trans people. He has received numerous letters from trans people in support of his message.) I have yet to see genuine criticism of him which stands up to scrutiny.

Mike cernovich

Don't like this guy, or his politics. Why do you lump this guy and Molyneux in with people like Jordan Peterson? Doesn't make any sense to me, except as a poison pill.

Joe Rogan

Would have passed perfectly fine as a liberal in the 90's. I think the far left doesn't like him simply because he won't play along with their politics. I find him refreshingly honest and highly intelligent. (Yes, he was a moon hoaxer at one point, but unlike a lot of stupid people, he had the wherewithal to listen to arguments and change his mind.)

Dave Rubin

Terms himself a liberal, also a "classical liberal." He's made a turn towards Libertarianism. He strikes me as sincere in wanting to give everyone a chance to be heard. I think he has intellectual integrity, and as such, he's willing to change his mind. His sincerity and intellectual integrity are the best things he has going for him, though I judge him to be just at a layperson's level intellectually.

Steven Crowder

I don't think Mr. Crowder is as funny or as smart as he thinks. I think he falls down a bit in terms of his intellectual honesty and in his scholarship. (Or course, he uses the "comedian" card to get out of that.) I think his effort to expose Antifa was creditable, but I wish he did a better job of having substance. All of these topical comedians are 10X funnier when they have substance. Colbert used to be funny, and it's because he had that.

etc. is suspicious. [1]

Given that you grouped all these people together, I find your list very suspicious.

I don't believe Peterson is alt-right, but I do think there's a fair case for dismissing him as a source for anything but his specific field of clinical psychology. His sudden rise to the position of "public intellectual” (on the back of his alarmist and widely disputed take on Bill C-16 [1]) is troubling when his unwavering single-minded crusade against what he considers a global cabal of “postmodern neo-Marxists” colours nearly every view he has [2][3].

Examples of this can be seen in his bold proclamations against feminists, Disney films, the concept of white privilege, but also in his occasional habit of linking to junk-science blogs to inform his position rather than peer-reviewed research (such as when he propagated the debunked[4] claim that contrary to what nearly every climatologist, atmospheric physicist, geologist, glaciologist and oceanographer has been telling us, Earth's climate sensitivity is actually trending towards zero [5]).

He’s also demonstrably not one to allow gaps in his knowledge to get in the way of proudly displaying his confirmation biases [6][7].

So as a trained clinical psychologist, I’m sure he knows what he’s talking about when he stays in his own lane, but for an academic and supposed advocate for scientific rigour he seems remarkably lax in applying the same care and scrutiny to his positions on social issues.

1. http://sds.utoronto.ca/blog/bill-c-16-no-its-not-about-crimi...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School#Cultural_Marx...

3. https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/79568716336716185...

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFDnxMp0Hw8

5. https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/92041514135884595...

6. https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/95073630669433651...

7. https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/95077370882567372...

He is if anything fairly moderate with a slight libertarian streak, especially when it comes to drugs.

I don't agree with lots of his positions and he's definitely not some really smart guru, but I like that he's an average guy with an open mind who lets speakers of all viewpoints express themselves in a very welcoming way. I mean hosting Jordan Peterson and Brett Weinstein, both on the 2 ends of the political spectrum and making it a very intellectually stimulating dialogue is a breath of fresh air in today's gotcha media. You know CNN and fox have an agenda when they bring opposing viewpoints on their show, trying to invalidate their ideas. In joe rogan's podcasts that never seems to be the case, instead discussion leads to more moderate viewpoints rather than debates and winners. Only really see that on PBS lately.

That said, I do find many of his guests abhorant and just skip a fair bit of his podcasts.

Which ones did he ask to speak on?

But this has been a big topic of debate on his podcast subreddit as well. I think it mainly comes from the guests he has on, but Joe has written on Twitter about how getting left leaning guests on to talk politics is just a lot harder. Russell Brand is great and all, but no one else really seems interested for whatever reason.

Even what I just said, that he isn't, you should go look up, investigate, and see what YOU think.

Let's say you're a shy/introverted engineer working at Google. You are going to a bunch of diversity events because it's an easy way to progress in your career. You find things you disagree with, or think are potentially illegal, but overall agree with the end goal: more women / PoC at Google, and so put forward an analysis that supports the same goal, even asserting that diversity is a good thing, but indicating that Google's methodology is problematic, and possibly illegal. You shop it around, including to HR, who rejects it, get lots of constructive criticism and feedback from peers, revise it, and continue hoping you eventually do cause a good change in your organization.

Someone then sees it, gets angry, and proceeds to leak it to the press. A few days later, nearly every mainstream news organization has an article calling you a woman-hating sexist, calling your memo a "screed" and treating you like some kind of Nazi. Peers you've never spoken to start sending you threatening and hateful messages, not having even read your work, instead relying on clearly defamatory claims made by "news" organizations, totally misquoting what you've said, and even putting words in your mouth. Then you're fired for "perpetuating gender stereotypes" when you've explicitly drawn a line in your work between societal expectations on gender expression and biological predisposition due to sex, that is, you're fired for something you didn't actually say or do, and it's final, there's no appeal.

You're this young guy here, with such negative publicity, and stuck in a part of the country that's 90% leftist or left-leaning, being called all sorts of horrible things by thousands of people you don't even know. You check Twitter and see your name is associated with some of the most hateful words you could imagine.

Now, in this situation, do you respond to CNN who has just printed their 17th hitpiece on you, and hope they'll be fair to you, because you're not assertive enough to deal with the confrontation required if they start putting words in your mouth or asking leading questions? Or do you seek to tell your side of the story from people who are already presenting the story in a more neutral way?

He's got a footnote in it about how complaints about gay rights are just an attempt by Marxists to undermine capitalism for goodness sake! In an internal corporate communication about how to better deal with diversity. The mind boggles.

>Communism promised to be both morally and economically superior to capitalism, but every attempt became morally corrupt and an economic failure. As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy.”

Hard to do not roll my eyes when reading this. Even though I feel that there is a fringe a the feminist movement for which being a white male is a crime, this is just a fringe and I don't think it has anything to do with socialism other than these are 2 things that Damore hates.

- there are parts like this quote that made me go in one second from 'this is reasonable' to 'ok I see why he got fired'

- some parts are just stupid .. even though neuroticism is the right term and is not negative, it is had deep negative connotations for many people (not to mention that the big 5 is not exactly an uncontroversial model). Just don't use these words when arguing about a sensitive topic.

And yeah, there is a fringe of the feminist movement. Like all fringes, it is the loudest part of the movement. I think it is toxic to feminism (although that's just a feeling, hard to quantify the influence of such a fringe). I just try to ignore it, I don't really know how to argue with extremists tbh.

If he had, internet armchair scientists would be ridiculing him for being so uninformed about the topic that he didn't know the proper terminology.

This is, of course, a standard right-wing talking point about modern gender/race/etc. equality movements.

It's about as accurate as calling neoconservatism a Communist conspiracy because some notable early figures were anti-Stalinist ex-Trotskyites.

This is the danger of progressive supremacy and the only way out of this hell-hole is encouraging true diversity and inclusiveness -- diversity of thought that includes right-wing conservative viewpoints in addition to those of the left.

The left has intolerant people as well. "No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other."

However, somehow they aren't running the party like they are on the right.

This is nonsensical. Tolerance is the region between what you like and what you fight. There are lots of obviously bad things you shouldn't tolerate (like murder), and lots of mildly distasteful things you should.

Someone else being less tolerant of something than we think they should be isn't some special category of evil. As with anything else, you have to decide whether a particular case is bad enough that you must fight it, or ambiguous enough that it isn't worth the conflict.

The intolerant left seems to have Berkeley buttoned up.

Some of these aren't like the others.

And to make sure that people know: He's a liar. Even if you ignore him intentionally misrepresenting his PhD status, he boldly lied about his FIDE chess master status.

Isn't that what he's been doing through his twitter account where he muses whether people join the KKK because they have cool titles? Or his interviews with people like Milo?

Is this just an attempt to extend his relevance a bit longer?

As long as Damore doesn't publicly stomp on any critical bit of right-wing orthodoxy I'm sure he'll land safely in right-wing media, regardless of the outcome of any legal cases he's involved in.

He’s basically trying to get a new protected class created to protect actions that clearly constituted creating a hostile work space based on long established precedent.

Whatever you think of him it seems like a REALLY big hurdle.

And that’s assuming no ‘mandatory binding arbitration’ issues from his work contract.

Even if he wins this could take a very long time (and trips up and down the levels of courts).

No, he's not; none of race or sex discrimination (both under federal and state law), nor political coercion (under California state law) are new protections.

> to protect actions that clearly constituted creating a hostile work space based on long established precedent.

That would be a problem in a direct action suit over his firing, but what he has actually filed is a class action alleging a pattern and policy of discrimination on three different prohibited bases. While there are challenges in doing that, they are different than the challenges in a direct action.

I think his only hope is persecution for his ‘belief’, which isn’t a religion and this would be a new protection (IANAL, unsurprisingly).

I didn’t see the class action bit. I wonder if he can even find enough people to join him to be certified as a class.

He has a giant ‘don’t hire me’ target on him now (weather you think just or not)... will people want to throw their lot in with him and risk the same label?

That was just a joke, stop pretending he is a neo-nazi.

"The unindoctrinated should not be able to tell if we are joking or not. There should also be a conscious awareness of mocking stereotypes of hateful racists. I usually think of this as self-deprecating humor - I am a racist making fun of stereotype of racists, because I don't take myself super-seriously.

"This is obviously a ploy and I actually do want to gas kikes. But that's neither here nor there."

I admit that he's almost certainly not playing by the alt-right's playbook - but he should be smart enough to realize that he's playing into the alt-right's playbook, and if he's not that smart, he doesn't have any business getting a job at Google or Microsoft. There are absolutely ways to express the points he's trying to make without letting yourself be turned into an alt-right poster-boy (and they're also more effective at convincing his ostensible target audience, namely senior decision-makers in large tech companies).

So basically your whole argument is that no one is allowed to joke because that's what nazis are doing?

Let me quote his whole tweet:

>The KKK is horrible and I don't support them in any way, but can we admit that their internal title names are cool, e.g. "Grand Wizard"?

There are no shades of gray. This joke isn't even remotely offensive. The only reason why anyone could think otherwise is their prejudice against Damore.

No, that is not my argument. This is about the second time in one week where I've posted "x was a bad idea in context", and someone else has replied with "So, your argument is no one should be allowed to do x ever?", so clearly I am being very bad at communicating. As with last time, I'll try to explain my position in a little more detail in the hope that it will help.

My position is that, if you are already at risk of being an alt-right poster-boy (thanks to having been forced to do interviews with alt-right YouTubers because nobody else would interview you fairly, or something), and if you are not actually a supporter of the alt-right position, it is probably a good idea to avoid doing and saying things that give the further impression that you are and want to be an alt-right poster boy. (If you do want to be a supporter of the alt-right position, by all means, more power to you, but then arguments about joking are moot - you're an intentional and happy member of the alt-right and we can continue discussions having established that. But for now I'm assuming that's not the case.)

This is a different position from "Don't tell jokes," or "Don't tell jokes about the KKK," or even "Don't tell jokes that make it sound like you support the KKK," or even "Don't make non-joking commentary that supports certain things the KKK is doing."

A brief aside there - I don't understand how that tweet is a joke. I think it's meant earnestly, and I think it stands up as a piece of earnest commentary and I think it does him and his position a disservice to read it as a joke. The internal title names are cool. That's why they picked them. The KKK wanted, and still wants, to attract membership, and cool-sounding titles are something that pushes people from neutral to excited. This isn't a particularly novel observation, but it's certainly a true one. (And the KKK isn't alone; plenty of secret societies of varying levels of racism have done similar things through history.) The job of smart, non-KKK-sympathizing people is to recognize that this is a tactic, and to go find some other less racist outlet for your desire to be called "Grand Wizard," like tabletop gaming, instead of expressing approval for the KKK's marketing tactics.

This is also a different position from "That joke is offensive." I did not claim that the joke was offensive, nor did anyone else, and I think "Actually, that's not offensive and you're wrong because you were offended" is a terribly fallacious rhetorical strategy when nobody has claimed to be offended.

Did they? Can you provide any evidence that the Nazi party used "jokes" to hide their beliefs? I can't quite see that, somehow. To the contrary, they were quite open about their beliefs.

I was once identified as a chartered statistician, presumably sympathetic, by a fringe group (fun people collecting Nazi memorabilia, something that happens to get you in jail where I was at the time). Several members reached out to me to draft or sign op-eds on things like homosexual parenthood, sexuality transmittable disease and ethnicity, etc. They were clearly well financed and they had an opinion to defend (which actually makes the job easier). I refused because they didn’t have any data to support their claim so I wasn’t sure what I could do other than discrediting myself instantly (I was not very politically savvy at the time). I had a clear feeling there was a path from paid drafts to signed papers, to book deals that would have made me rich.

Whether James Damore is willing to go there is a more difficult question.

Or create "Not James Damore Consulting, Inc." and hire himself out through that.

At the very least he should have learned how important soft skills are and that his idea of what makes a good engineer was woefully incomplete.

If he hasn't learned anything, then why would anybody hire the guy?

"Mistakes were made, and I want to move on with my life....", no details -- just pandering. He won't necessarily be dishonest if he limits the context of the apology.

(I don't think one should apologize for opinions and ideas that go un-enacted. Knee-jerk reactions to opinions you don't like tend to blow them up, and that's why James Damore is a name we recognize now. Isn't that opposite to everyone's intention of minimizing his point of view? Ironic.)

Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences.

I do get your point though.

I've never made a fuckup of nearly the same magnitude, but the times I made a mistake in public apologizing always made things worse.

An individual can be reasoned with, placated. You can make reparations, promises that the other person will believe because of a precedent of mutual trust and forgiveness.

However, you can't do that with an angry mob.

Apologizing only convinces the people who are called for his head that they were correct. Usually it will lead to further sanctions.

Edit: I feel some might be reading this wrong. I'm did not say it works 100% of the time. I said that I'm 100% certain it has worked because it's worked for me.

After some more searching, I remembered the blowup over a "big dongles" joke at PyCon in 2013. I found the name of one of the men involved. I don't want to name him here, but it looks like he's still gainfully employed in tech, using Python.

I agree that social media outrage can be overblown and vicious. I don't want to minimize that. But it fades[1]. "Crucified for life" seems inaccurate.

[1] Even justified outrage fades; did #kony2012 even trend through the end of 2012? But the viciousness while every angry person knows your name can be astonishing. That's why I use a nym here and on Ars Technica that has no direct links to my professional or IRL identities, and why I usually skip commenting or reading about the outrage du jour. I must be feeling lucky today to write even this much.

Some of the activists created an online shaming campaign against Eich, with online dating site OkCupid automatically displaying a message to Firefox users with information about Eich's donation, and suggesting that users switch to a different browser

Never heard of this. This is unbelievably unethical.

"Ruined?" Because he might have to take a non-tech job? Please.

He went to a diversity training event which should've given him a clear idea of Google's stance on the issue. Then he published an internal memo arguing against that stance. He knew the game he was playing. He just played it poorly.

Regardless, he'll be fine.

If the company doesn't want views that might contradict current policy, it should not solicit feedback.

There are more tech jobs than those at Google, Facebook, etc.

I predict he'll be able to find a nice tech job eventually, and the biggest barrier he'll have to overcome is this lawsuit. There are plenty of companies who aren't so sensitive to this kind of PR and and flap around his hiring will die out quickly.

Palantir or Peter Thiel will just have him well.

Unless i missed something, the guy never advocated violence or gender discrimination, or making anyone's life miserable. He expressed opinion on scientific explanation. You may find it very stupid, but what in your mind makes you think it's OK to destroy a man's life for his opinion, and then i suppose pretend to be someone with high moral grounds.

I don't know why he did that. People do stupid things all the time.

Centuries of gender discrimination, in a field that is very publicly plagued by it, in a world that is still broken with it, what was Damore thinking?

Everyone has the freedom to act, but no one has freedom from the consequences of the act.

No question that Damore made mistakes; most sane people would never have let an opinion like that touch paper during office hours, and google will hopefully review the terrible idea of having a 'controversial opinions' forum.

However, his mistake is the debate's gain - the response is clearly disproportionate on several levels. This is an opportunity to identify the people calling for his life to be destroyed and convince them that their definition of various -isms is calibrated a little too high. Or failing that, to try and get some moderates into positions of power rather than the hard left.

Did he leak the memo to the press to cause the outrage? No he didn't, so he is not responsible for the PR whirlwind created by it. Those who leaked the internal corporate communication are responsible and they should be fired.

edit: looks like thenayr updated his post a couple of times since my reply. When written only the first two lines were present.

(2) If you agree/disagree with Damore that's great. It's your right as a person to have opinions and no company can criticise you for that. What you can't do however is publicise these issues on any forum. It's simply not a topic that has any merit being discussed in a professional environment.

He wrote the memo in response to an event he attended where they asked for feedback. Are you saying that you can't provide feedback on a topic that a talk is about if you come to the "wrong" conclusion? I've attended diversity events and have seen opinions expressed in the open, to executives even, that were far less progressive than Damore's interpretation. I think this is just a coastal thing, having topics like diversity be verboten seems silly if we are also having meetings about, setting up programs for, and shifting our non-tech->tech career plotting to favor diverse candidates.

Just don't discuss it at work. It's called professionalism.

Even after attending a work event on that very topic, which specifically asked for feedback and further discussion?

Or should discussion be restricted to only one viewpoint?

But then the dude appeared on Mike Cernovich's show and was all over r/the_donald and I was like, "oh this is who this guy is." I hate to judge someone by the company they keep but this guy's company was particularly bad (imo).

What's truly sad about this is that he is the first I've heard of to propose actually fair measures we could take to promote gender diversity in IT, such as using more socially involved methods such as pair programming. Instead we get positive discrimination.

This depiction by tech crunch is an insult to reporting, if you read/listen to the primary source, there is no hate, no sexism, no racism, he just saw unfair stuff and spoke out about it.

The memo was as polite scientificly-backed and clearly written as it was reasonably possible without turning it into an academic publication. The only mistake he made (while at Google; I was really surprised by the on-line crowd that he found itself with after being ejected from his workplace) was not realizing that he's not dealing with a rational audience, in Google or elsewhere.

Mike Cernovich is the same way. He's looking to push a narrative to further his own agenda. An agenda and narrative I find gross and offensive. So he thinks Damore fits into that narrative. That is a not so subtle hint to me that Damore is saying something gross and offensive.

It's not the best way of judging things for sure but I don't think it served me poorly here.

This is literally the way we (as humans) are built to test veracity. Only in a few cases does this litmus test fail.

It's a good test, just like "follow the money". It can be abused (joe jobs, false flags), but works a vast majority of the time.

When the memo came out, the Guardian reported that news outlets contacted him and Damore went with anti-feminist youtubers for a more friendly reception. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/09/james-dam...

> Damore went with anti-feminist youtubers for a more friendly reception

Maybe understandable, but disappointing.

I got the impression that he accepted those interviews because they were the only ones that would be conducted fairly. Especially considering he was subjected to at least one hostile and unfair interview.

We can't have a world where you can destroy somebody by endorsing them. This turns every undesirable into a perfect hitman.

An exact opposite bias doesn't cancel out into fairness.

So even if the consequences of not avoiding that landmine are awful, I'm not sure it's fair to castigate him for that.

(N.B.: I haven't looked carefully into how he handled that affair, so my comment might be misinformed.)

Da'More must have completed at least course work and research required for master's, however, and Harvard gave him master's instead.

After, he changed it to "Harvard University / Master of Science - MS, Systems Biology / 2011-2013".

The fact that his old profile said PhD, in place of the MS degree he actually had, does look to me like falsely indicating that he had a PhD.

http://www.businessinsider.com/james-damore-removes-phd-stud...

I guess most folks don't take Linkedin seriously -- my LinkedIn profile there is also outdated. When I dropped out of college to work a few years in industry, I indicated years I attended, relevant course works, and matriculation status in my resume, but, LinkedIn is just a social networking site for business -- and only recently it's transformed into a job search site. IMO, it's a stretch to say Damore's LinkedIn page was intended to mislead potential employer or the public.

I've seen the LinkedIn with my own eyes, but if you prefer to trust media sources: https://www.wired.com/story/james-damore-google-memo-harvard... http://www.businessinsider.com/james-damore-removes-phd-stud...

Stop with the false dilemma; it's not an either/or choice between acceptable skills and acceptable behavior.

He didn't want to make a statement, he wanted to get to the bottom of what he was wondering about on the internal discussion forum. He also has autism, maybr he was trying to learn or check if his observations are true or not.

Then, the media spun this story as to why he's such a sexist without even specifically saying why or trying to debunk his observations, with, you know, arguments or studies.

He isn't a writer, he doesn't know how to perfectly write something that is divisive without offending anyone. He didn't work on the memo for months to check that his language is perfect and represents everything exactly the way he views it.

His memo could have been a good start to find gender biases in tech and actually improve them instead of ostrachzing people outright who dare to talk about the issue.

Explain how this is James' fault.

> When alt-right Twitter agrees with your world-views, you're doing something WRONG.

Alt-right Twitter agrees that murder is wrong, the national debt is concerning, and that sexual assault is supremely immoral. What does that make you, if you define yourself by disagreement with them? It is not James Damore's job to disavow all the people you disagree with on other matters, no matter how legitimate your disagreement.

Alt-right Twitter seems to believe that murders were only committed by Hillary Clinton's death squads, and that random violence in America's big cities doesn't exist (until two seconds later when apparently people are so terrified of violence in America's big cities that we need all sorts of invasions on civil liberties so people can walk outside ever).

The national debt is a good thing, and if you oppose it for the reasons alt-right Twitter does (it has the name "debt" in it, and debt is bad, right?), that's a sign of a pretty flawed world-view.

Alt-right Twitter thinks sexual assault is so immoral that cultures that are successfully calling it out and reforming are bad cultures, and cultures that are ignoring it and electing people who deny credible claims are good cultures. It just so happens that the first group of cultures are left-leaning and the second are right-leaning - what a coincidence!

If those are your three examples, I am absolutely happy to define myself by disagreement with all of them.

No, I'm dead serious, the alt right is not literally reptilians, they hold the vast majority of common moral opinions. The body of things that you and they could agree on is enormous, you can't dismiss somebody simply because the alt-right doesn't disagree with them.

> These guys elected the sexual-assaulter-in-chief.

So did I, and millions of others. The alt-right is a supreme minority in the United States, they do not have the numbers to elect the President, this is hysterical.

EDIT - Ah, Trump supporter, that explains it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Basically, the assumption that there's a single kind of "smartness" that generalizes equally across technical competence, social competence, and awareness of political trends is not a valid assumption. The number of non-neurotypical people that work in tech fields should make this clear.

It's also unfortunate to see such glee at the idea of someone's life being ruined and happiness at the thought of a large megacorporation's large amount of resources being able to do it.

There’s nothing toxic about that!

As for whether or not he knew what he was doing...he may have written this thing, but he did so in an area that was designated for that sort of thing. He wasn’t the one that started emailing it to the entire company. So it’s fair to say he thought he was just having a discussion in the topic with whatever this skeptic group at Google was, and other people decided to turn it into a national political issue to get him fired for it.

step back and listen to what you just said.

Why are you glad about that? You're aware that he's still a human that can suffer, like us, right?

This guy isn't a dictator. Find some balance here.

I want to see James Damore understand the impact of his words and learn from it. I don't want him thrown out of society for a single really big mistake and a poor handling of the consequences.

It's quite evident from reports in the news media, that there was tremendous emotional impact. The fact that so many people could be so extremely triggered is very telling, but it doesn't actually speak to James Damore being some kind of villain, or his words being somehow horrible. If a whole bunch of adults stop behaving like adults and start exhibiting striking intellectual dishonesty, I think this is very revealing indeed.

I ask this as a member of the Left, who wonders: When did the Left stop being the side of free speech and intellectual honesty? When it finally felt powerful enough in the culture to have become corrupted by that cultural power.

If he didn't know exactly what he was doing he deserves whatever happens to him for being so oblivious to the world around him.

Is there really anything he can say or do that will redeem his public image after he's been slandered on a global stage based on a internal-only memo that someone leaked to the public likely with the intent of ruining his life?

There is a point at which there is really nothing you can say to make a situation better, and you are better off just not saying anything further on the matter.

From the impression I've gleaned, Googlers seem to strongly believe what is said in Google stays in Google and people there believe their coworkers are generally open-minded, extremely intelligent individuals. He may have believed he was in an environment where this was not as much of a mistake as it very obviously, in hindsight, was.

Autism does not cause you to be a bigot.

https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/931599879238967296

As a fellow member of the spectrum, I can fully see where Damore fits on it. In some ways I agree with his actual points (not what the media has claimed they are), but his presentation was poor, and insensitive to how it would be received. And a good chunk of his memo was just... not good. He never intended it to be public, and it certainly wasn't fit to be (I believe he considered it a work in progress, and was looking for constructive feedback), but someone angry at him decided to make him a public figure overnight by leaking it and ruined his career.

He obviously made some very poor choices on who to associate with afterwards, not realizing the political implications that came with them. He failed to see how free publicity provided by certain parties would associate him with them.

If anything Google will settle because the proof of misrepresentation is in James's favor.

Sure there are lots of things you could and Google could have argued. But they chose to respond to what had to be either a different paper or their emotions.

You make mistakes in an industry and you own the impacts to your reputation. He has done serious harm to the work of so many by his actions and absolutely deserves to own the consequences.

And let's be serious here he has zero chance of winning against Google.

Initial filing for a court case is crucial for establishing what we're actually sueing over, and this will be an interesting one, because the chances of his legal team winning this one are definitely non-zero.

I am not a lawyer but that, while trivial, might be enough for a court to rule against Google.

It's why I think this google will settle with Damore for a very high amount, because discovery will not be good for them.

https://www.google.com/about/careers

Don't be so sure of that. Federal law prohibits firing an employee who is trying to improve working conditions. And that's what he is claiming he was doing with his memo.

And there are a number female SJW Google employees who have made really vicious, public, anti-male statements and no one batted an eyelash. So I think his claim of gender-based discrimination is quite supportable.