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James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

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Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#271

Post by splintercell »

Shank wrote: post #194

Just for once, I'd like a story like this to turn out positively. Not in that James wins or loses this lawsuit, but that something could be positively gained in his life from this experience. Being fired from Google has been traumatizing. He's gone farther and farther into the "unrecoverable from a PR standpoint" zone, and that's really horrible. 10 years from now, he's going to have a hard time finding employment or…

> 10 years from now, he's going to have a hard time finding employment or basic living possible.

I just feel like this is a wishful thinking on the part of left. There are plenty of fields which do not care about his opinions. There are plenty of technological ventures who explicitly look to hire people who are 'uncucked' (term a recruiter used when reaching out to me) run by people HN and left in general absolutely hates (Occulus guy, Pharma bro, Peter Thiel). Plus the job of technology is such that as long as you're writing code, and pay taxes, you can make a decent living.

Not to mention the numerous developers blockchain industry hires, nearly nobody there cares about it, because majority of them are located outside US.

The technological right has money, and not everyone in technology needs to maintain an image like Google, Netflix, Apple, Microsoft etc.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#272

Post by mbrumlow »

dmourati wrote: post #213
john_moscow wrote: post #87

He doesn't have a choice really. With the PR mess he got himself into, no big company will ever hire him. Imagine the possible headlines "Microsoft hires the James Damore, the male supremacy advocate fired from Google". Nope, regardless the technical skill or his actual personality, his public image is forever ruined. So he realistically has a choice between becoming a paid speaker for fringe ultra-right organization…

I hope the Google lawyers make an example out of him and he gets nothing.

The problem is Google at all levels publicly misrepresented his arguments. Google replied with a knee jerk reaction publicly.

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.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#273

Post by wellboy »

ebbv wrote: post #187
endorphone wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a conservative (far from it), but I think it's a ridiculous misrepresentation. He spoke to the distribution of preferences and abilities. Turning this into an absolutist simplification should offend anyone with a brain. The science seems to state that nature rolls the dice more with males than with females. We know, for instance, that there are far more very low IQ males than females, and this is understood a…

Really? You think I’m gonna fall for this b.s.? You just tried to cloak the claim that there’s more highly intelligent men in a bunch of nonsense. You’re only proving my point.

There are more highly intelligent men than women, because for men, the distribution is higher, look it up.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#274

Post by saint_fiasco »

dopamean wrote: post #179
thenayr wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, you know, he could realize what a monumental fuck up he made and try and make a difference for the better. The dude literally let himself be paraded around by the alt-right and neo-nazi groups as a hero. -----------EDIT below--------------- Zero sympathy for this dirtbag. He's un-hireable because he deserves to be. Future advice for Damore wannabees When alt-right Twitter agrees with your world-views, you're doin…

That was really what did it for me. I read the document and I'll be honest, I didn't really hear the dog whistles and I didn't get particularly worked up about it. I thought it kinda read like pseudo-science and that was about it. 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…

It's a demerit to him that he accepted their support, but it is also a demerit on the entire rest of society that the only ones who offered him support were the alt-right.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#275

Post by logfromblammo »

ebbv wrote: post #108
take4 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actual quote: > the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes From the article: > women may not be equally represented in tech because they are biologically less capable of engineering Do you not see the difference?

Yeah, I do see the difference; the second sentence is spelling out plainly the bigotry he's trying to cloak in faux intellectualism. It's always the same kind of crap from bigots. "Women MIGHT be less capable of engineering." "Black people MIGHT be more prone to crime." "Gay people MIGHT be more likely to be pedophiles." and it's always based in bigotry, not in science or evidence.

Neurology and psychology studies have shown differences in the way men and women think.

For example, when navigating, men tend to use dead reckoning, while women tend to prefer landmarks.

Similar differences may exist with respect to the modes of thinking useful for engineering. With that in mind, consider that our current modal computer architecture and programming paradigms were designed and implemented by men. There may be some intrinsic bias towards man-thought embedded in the entire toolchain.

As a thought experiment, imagine a computing system designed from the ground up by women, with no input whatsoever from existing systems or concepts. A group of females are placed in a time stasis bubble with no outside communication, and emerge from it only after they develop a computing ecosystem of equal capabilities to the existing one.

With this in mind, now give all new students in the pipeline the option to try out both, then choose between the new system and the old for the entire remainder of their career. In this experiment, try to determine whether, after 20 years, the overall balance between sexes is equal, and whether the balance within each system is biased to one sex or the other.

If Babbage and Lovelace had further developed their computational mills, Lady Ada's influence over early programming might have snowballed, such that software development would have been sex-biased towards women from the start. As it is, the ecosystem currently sex-biased towards men was created mostly by men, simply as a matter of feedback. In order to make the existing ecosystem less intrinsically biased in the future, it needs to be shaped by a less-unbalanced group now.

So the natural biological differences are irrelevant. A fair system would have caused those differences to cancel out or complement each other through equal participation. To make the unfair system more fair, you have to force it, against its natural flow toward unfairness.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#276

Post by ihsw2 »

jimrandomh wrote: post #249

This clearly is (or is going to be) a Demon Thread. https://www.lesserwrong.com/posts/BZtAavpsy9WtMYgEL/demon-th... . People seem to be angry about what was said in the past, but don't agree on what was actually said or what those things meant. Attempts to clarify seem to mostly be throwing fuel on the fire instead. None of this is helping.

Social constructivists and progressive supremacists are the only ones angry about what he said -- he exposes their narrative as fraudulently based on moral principles.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#277

Post by coolso »

zouhair wrote: post #148
Veen wrote: post #3

From the article: > women may not be equally represented in tech because they are biologically less capable of engineering Why do news outlets persistently misrepresent what he actually said? I've read his memo and just about every news article says it contains claims that it doesn't. I have no view on whether he's right or not, but I remain shocked at the misrepresentation of his views throughout the tech media.

When the majority of people coming to your defense are right wing extremists[0][1] and neo-nazis you are doing something wrong. You can also read his twitter account, he went full on alt-right. I am happy he got his ass fired. [0]: http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/18/james-damore-like-g... [1]: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/450202/google-employees...

> When the majority of people coming to your defense are right wing extremists[0][1] and neo-nazis you are doing something wrong.

When the majority of people are too afraid to come to someone's defense (publicly) because they're afraid that the internet pitchfork mobs will come and destroy their lives too, a large part of society is doing something wrong.

And that large part of society that attempts to do the silencing/shaming/smearing/destroying of the opposition might think they're scoring a victory for their cause (whether or not that cause is worthy is beside the point), but that's not necessarily true, and we saw proof of that in the last US election.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#278

Post by muninn_ »

Color me not surprised. Institutionally we are casually practicing in discriminatory actions against white men with a rebuttal that 'because you're a white man you have certain privilege' - which conveniently ignores that nobody asks to be born into their body.

It's unfortunate because that is largely not the intention of programs which seek to ensure that women and men of color (I don't include white women because they are largely not 'diverse') have equal opportunity to work and make a living. Instead, these programs have been hijacked by, for lack of a better term, lunatics to push their political agenda instead of genuinely trying to make sure that we find ways to minimize institutional racism and sexism. Have 'white men' abused positions of power to push political agendas? Of course, and we need to call them out on that and drag them out of their offices. But that doesn't excuse other people from performing this same kind of institutional hijacking.

At my organization (Fortune 50) we don't have quotas for women or minorities, but they are definitely metrics that are tracked and optimized for at the highest levels. We attend more women and minority events than others, at least from my vantage point within the organization that performs this work. Largely I don't think we practice discriminatory hiring practices or anything, but the elephant in the room for me is are we hiring under qualified candidates to fill a position that somebody else can do, just because we want to be 'more diverse'? Typically we have to train people once they start the job (which is something I actually advocate for so I don't mind) but if you look at our hiring criteria and who we bring in - they don't line up.

Hopefully we can soon get over this uniquely American mass hysteria about race and just chill the fuck out soon. I'm so sick of it. I couldn't care less about what's between your legs or what color your skin is if you're just a nice person that can do whatever work we're hiring for. Why is that so difficult?

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#279

Post by fzeroracer »

vowelless wrote: post #248
john_moscow wrote: post #87

He doesn't have a choice really. With the PR mess he got himself into, no big company will ever hire him. Imagine the possible headlines "Microsoft hires the James Damore, the male supremacy advocate fired from Google". Nope, regardless the technical skill or his actual personality, his public image is forever ruined. So he realistically has a choice between becoming a paid speaker for fringe ultra-right organization…

This is true. If the memo wasn't enough, him immediately going to right wing YouTubers like Stefan Molyneux, Jordan Peterson, Mike cernovich, Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin, Steven Crowder, etc. is suspicious. [1] 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…

It's really sad that we have people still arguing about the intent of his memo when his actions afterwards make it quite clear what his stance actually was.

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.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#280

Post by thenayr »

microcolonel wrote: post #232
thenayr wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're joking, right? These guys elected the sexual-assaulter-in-chief. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=H2J5E8sSdsI

> You're joking, right? 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…

I don't give a shit what you believe if your entire platform is built upon "White people are discriminated against and jews are bad".

EDIT - Ah, Trump supporter, that explains it.

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