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Google cancels meeting on gender controversy due to employee fears of harassment

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Re: Google cancels meeting on gender controversy due to employee fears of harassment

#11

Post by danso »

miranda_rights wrote: post #7
throwaway12124 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a name for this rhetorical form? If X was a true Y, they would do what I say all Ys should do.

Yeah, the "No True Scotsman" fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

> No true Scotsman is a kind of informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect a universal generalization from counterexamples by changing the definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample.

I thought the "No True Scotsman" fallacy was something more like this:

Alice: "No programmer indents with tabs instead of spaces"

Bob: "But Guido Van Rossum liked using tabs [0]"

Alice: "No real programmer indents with tabs"

[0] http://web.archive.org/web/20160513172920/http://legacy.pyth...

Re: Google cancels meeting on gender controversy due to employee fears of harassment

#13

Post by edco »

idlewords wrote: post #3

If he was sincere in his defense of free expression at Google, James Damore should take this opportunity to speak out in defense of his former colleagues. Doxxing is a pure intimidation tactic.

what are you talking about? who exactly did he dox?

Re: Google cancels meeting on gender controversy due to employee fears of harassment

#14

Post by thrway2k17 »

danso wrote: post #10
pteredactyl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea Stefan was not the greatest choice. But I thought he did well on Bloomberg, even though Emily Chang had it out for him. Cancelling the Town Hall is a cop out.

It's not much of a "town hall" if employees are afraid to participate.

Google employees that asked questions for Town Hall were already leaked & doxxed by somebody within Google and posted on various websites/youtube. Seems like somebody high up at Google is trying to destroy internal trust or the upper management went completely insane with digital maoism a'la 'Hundred Flowers'.

Re: Google cancels meeting on gender controversy due to employee fears of harassment

#15

Post by williamle8300 »

danso wrote: post #10
pteredactyl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea Stefan was not the greatest choice. But I thought he did well on Bloomberg, even though Emily Chang had it out for him. Cancelling the Town Hall is a cop out.

It's not much of a "town hall" if employees are afraid to participate.

Agreed. Sundar's memo was just posturing...

"We want you to feel free to express different opinions..."

Proceeds to fire Damore...

Re: Google cancels meeting on gender controversy due to employee fears of harassment

#16

Post by parrellel »

danso wrote: post #11
miranda_rights wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the "No True Scotsman" fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

> No true Scotsman is a kind of informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect a universal generalization from counterexamples by changing the definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample. I thought the "No True Scotsman" fallacy was something more like this: Alice: "No programmer indents with tabs instead of spaces" Bob: "But Guido Van Rossum liked using tabs [0]" Alice: "No real programmer inden…

That's what he said, your example just implicitly excludes Python Language devs.

Re: Google cancels meeting on gender controversy due to employee fears of harassment

#18

Post by ghgggh5555 »

williamle8300 wrote: post #15
danso wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not much of a "town hall" if employees are afraid to participate.

Agreed. Sundar's memo was just posturing... "We want you to feel free to express different opinions..." Proceeds to fire Damore...

You should emphasize "feel" as well. Then it makes more sense

Re: Google cancels meeting on gender controversy due to employee fears of harassment

#19

Post by danso »

parrellel wrote: post #16
danso wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No true Scotsman is a kind of informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect a universal generalization from counterexamples by changing the definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample. I thought the "No True Scotsman" fallacy was something more like this: Alice: "No programmer indents with tabs instead of spaces" Bob: "But Guido Van Rossum liked using tabs [0]" Alice: "No real programmer inden…

That's what he said, your example just implicitly excludes Python Language devs.

No, not really. What's the universal generalization or group here, of which Damore is a counter-example? "Googlers who have written memos like Damore's and were then fired"? Damore's situation is a specific one, and he made specific claims about the importance of freedom of expression at Google:

A. Damore spoke out about how Googlers shouldn't feel unsafe to express themselves.

B. People at Google are reportedly intimidated about expressing themselves.

C. We would expect Damore to be unhappy that Googlers are feeling unsafe to express themselves.

That's not a logical fallacy. Doesn't mean that idleword's rhetorical argument can't be criticized for being overbearing. Or for being wrong in its premises, e.g. Damore never explicitly said freedom of expression at Google was important, he alleged that Google management's policies stifle ideological viewpoints. That doesn't mean Damore has an opinion about Google employees being intimidated by the public.

Re: Google cancels meeting on gender controversy due to employee fears of harassment

#20

Post by jake-low »

curyous wrote: post #17

This article is very skewed, it's annoying that she wrote things like "which he claimed was backed up by studies." rather than "which are backed up by studies."

I'm not sure it's possible to cover such a polarizing breaking-news issue in a way that's not "skewed". Intelligent people will read the same memo and interpret it in different ways. It's too soon for anyone to be impartial.

Here's [0] a lengthy analysis from an evolutionary biology Ph.D that concludes that Damore built a harmful narrative around weak and cherry-picked scientific studies. Of course it's as "skewed" as anything else in that it contains an opinion, but it also backs up the quote you're objecting to here -- the argument Dr. Sadedin makes is that Damore "claimed" the studies supported his narrative but in fact they didn't.

[0]: https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio...

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