It's absurd but, by and large, people don't actually care about science, let alone understand it. They may occasionally appreciate the rewards of science, but only when it makes them happy. When it sends a negative signal, people are quick to ignore science, or only pay attention to tidbits of science that reinforces their world view. It's not even a question of intelligence. Smart people all the time, including on this very site, fall prey to both anti-science and "scientism" at about the same rate. The only difference between a smart human and a dumb human in this space is the smart human has a bigger vocabulary and knows how to cherry-pick data.

Damore might have been granted some more understanding if he had presented his memo to some scientists. Even then, there would have been a high probability that he would have been told to hush-hush or be asked to leave.

> Damore might have been granted some more understanding if he had presented his memo to some scientists. Even then, there would have been a high probability that he would have been told to hush-hush or be asked to leave.

FYI, here are responses to Damore's memo from a few different scientists with relevant expertise: https://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists...

That's a dismissive viewpoint. To be consistent with your view, nobody should be commenting in this thread.

Moreover, a person's field of expertise doesn't have any bearing on whether their ideas are correct. It may go to explain why their views are the way they are, but it doesn't necessarily follow that a person is wrong about something scientific because they aren't a scientist, for instance.

>Moreover, a person's field of expertise doesn't have any bearing on whether their ideas are correct

Nor does their expertise preclude them from succumbing to personal or institutional biases.

Nor does it resign them to said biases.

You should really read a little more history. There's a long, long tradition of "patently obvious" "science" that just happens to justify the continued dominance of whatever group is top at the moment. As I mentioned elsewhere, Kendi's "Stamped from the Beginning" is an excellent examination of the racial aspect of that.

I have my own opinions, which happen to be different from yours!

Except people are by default being told their opinions are incorrect because they disagree with the so called experts.

Experts in a soft, non experimental, survey based scientific discipline. Soft sciences are institutional dogma because by and large there is no way to experimentally verify anything. This is a particular debate in which the establishment is clearly in the wrong to anyone who isn't determined to believe in a nonexistent equality.

> Damore doesn’t strike me as an expert in the field. Just a typical engineer who thinks he knows everything.

FWIW, Damore has a masters in systems biology. This fact was fairly widely reported. So, you can fall back on the facts instead of your own biases (what "strikes" you).

I'm not sure how that makes him any more qualified on the topic of diversity issues at Google