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

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

Invite everyone to freely share ideas. Make lists, then kick out those with the "wrong" ideas.

The are often comparisons between large corporations' command economy and the now failed countries with centralized command economy.

But perhaps there are interesting parallels about how large corporations discover and weed out those with undesirable ideas and how totalitarian regimes do it. It goes into hyperbole territory there, I know, but perhaps there are some common underlying mechanisms...

If you believe that scientific studies should be accorded authority upon citation, then why not share their respect for nuance and accuracy? For example, in the section in which Damore describes "Personality differences" as being biological traits, including neuroticism and "Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things", he links to this meta study:

Gender Differences in Personality and Interests: When, Where, and Why? http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010....

You've probably read that study so I'll sum it up for the convenience of others. From the abstract:

> Gender differences in personality tend to be larger in gender-egalitarian societies than in gender-inegalitarian societies, a finding that contradicts social role theory but is consistent with evolutionary, attributional, and social comparison theories. In contrast, gender differences in interests appear to be consistent across cultures and over time, a finding that suggests possible biologic influences.

The meta analysis finds that 3 studies -- 2 of which are authored by this metastudy's author -- have reported a "very large" difference between men and women in "People-Things orientation". And that 4 studies (1 of which is authored by the meta-author) find a "small" to "moderate" gap in neuroticism.

Skipping down to the concluding section, titled "Where Do We Go from Here?", the main headings are:

- Some methodological suggestions

- More cross-cultural research is needed

- More research should investigate changes in gender differences over time

- The need to move beyond the ‘Big Five’

- The need to test explicit models that include predictions about men’s and women’s mean trait levels and men’s and women’s trait variability

The tl;dr is: it's complicated, and we need more research. Which is exactly what you'd expect a responsible scientist to assert given that there were 3 meta-studies relevant to "people-things orientation) that he could find and only 1 of those wasn't his own. Nowhere does the study's author make the claim that this trait is caused by biology. The strongest claim from the author is him citing his previous study and another study which have both considered the possibility, absent an obvious cultural influence:

> To answer ‘why’ questions, it helps also to consider ‘when’ and ‘where’ questions – e.g., how consistent are gender differences over time and across cultures? Gender differences that vary over historical time and across cultures point to the importance of social–environmental and cultural factors as causes of gender differences (Eagly & Wood, 1999). In contrast, gender differences that are stable over time and across cultures suggest the influence of biologic factors (Lippa, 2005; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974).

So a conclusion that argues that:

- More research is needed

- More explicit behavior models are needed.

- Testing such models "may very well yield ‘messy’ results – e.g., results that show both biologic and social–environmental factors contributing to gender differences, to varying degrees for different traits, and varying kinds of interactions between biologic and social–environmental factors."

-- obligates us to describe Damore's claim -- "Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things" and neuroticism are biologically based -- as being "backed up by studies", and leave it at that?

Bullshit.

edit: accidentally wrote "Damon" instead of "Damore" in one reference

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/google-fires-engineer-over-an...

https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html

Damore asserted that his ideas should be heeded by Google (from the very first paragraph: "This needs to change"). And he makes assertions about how Google has been poorly conducting himself:

https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-james-damore-memo-uncenso...

- Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts.

- I’ve heard several calls for increased empathy on diversity issues. While I strongly support trying to understand how and why people think the way they do, relying on affective empathy—feeling another’s pain—causes us to focus on anecdotes, favor individuals similar to us, and harbor other irrational and dangerous biases. Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts.

- Nearly every difference between men and women is interpreted as a form of women’s oppression. As with many things in life, gender differences are often a case of “grass being greener on the other side”; unfortunately, taxpayer and Google money is being spent to water only one side of the lawn.

Why should Google tolerate these claims at face value? And Google truly disagrees with these assertions and their underlying principles, why should it respond with something less than severing ties with an employee who literally demanded, "This needs to change"?

And if Google did respond with something less than termination (nevermind what kind of sanction would be possible), how are other employees not supposed to interpret that other than a concession to some degree, i.e. that Google has doubts, and agrees with Damore that women-in-tech initiatives are a form of discrimination, and is "misguided"? Or that when it comes to complaints about diversity issues, that colleagues or management having "empathy" necessarily opens up the risk of "harbor[ing] irrational and dangerous biases"?

No need for Google to use subterfuge to fire people with conflicting ideas. They say it loud and clear that they expect employees to agree ("follow both its spirit and letter") with the Code of Conduct. And Googlers are all smart enough to see that the Code of Conduct uses language that leaves the interpretation of things more open than narrow: "Google prohibits discrimination, harassment and bullying in any form – verbal, physical, or visual, as discussed more fully in our Policy Against Discrimination, Harassment and Retaliation."