James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google • Hacker News Board

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

#631

Post by Udik » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 9:52 PM UTC

philipkglass wrote: post #493

noetic_techy wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, in our society, there is NO option to say you were wrong and walk it all back. Once it's out there on the internet, you are crucified for life with it. Its sad because the "crime" doesn't fit the punishment.

Brendan Eich seems to be doing ok now. The furor that severed his relationship with Mozilla doesn't seem to have impacted Brave, and that was just a few years ago.

From Wikipedia:

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.

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

#632

Post by ryguytilidie » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 9:52 PM UTC

hsod wrote: post #566

ryguytilidie wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you spend a lot of time railing on "SJWs", and comparatively little time advocating for an alternative path to a more egalitarian social order" 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.

What hyperbole are you objecting to? 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 weighi…

"What hyperbole are you objecting to?"

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.

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

#633

Post by Veelox » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 9:53 PM UTC

lukev wrote: post #345

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He very clearly stated that the average male programmer is as good as the average female programmer. Please don't insinuate otherwise by stripping away some of the semantics Mr. Damore used - he used it for a reason to make a more precise claim than you're criticizing.

Again, that's not the argument. Even stating that men are more suited to become programmers* is problematic!

Say I could prove that in a fair society 2 out of every 100 men would want to be programmers and only 1 out of every 100 women want that. Would stating that be problematic?

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

#634

Post by jacksmith21006 » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 9:53 PM UTC

zpallin wrote: post #370

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #210

Whatever you think of the memo, you have to be a little concerned about the precedent this would set if companies were not allowed to discriminate based on 'political' views. Should I be forced to hire a neo-nazi or a terrorist sympathiser so long as they're up to the job?

And this is the crux of the problem with his lawsuit. Political views are not a suspect class in US law afaik. What Damore may be trying to do is establish a legal understanding that the political discrimination (which definitely happened) was connected to racial discrimination (which would need to be proven in court). If Damore can do that successfully, he should be able to win the lawsuit. But I don't think it's po…

Do not think this had anything to do with social politics. It was about getting along with your co-workers.. It was external forces that tried to make it into some social political thing.

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

#635

Post by jacksmith21006 » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 9:57 PM UTC

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...

The alt right did not do him any favors as it probably made it harder for him to understand what he did wrong. Of course he had to be fired as how could you have him on a team trying to work together.

As a manager you have to think about everyone in the team.

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

#636

Post by nilkn » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 9:58 PM UTC

tboyd47 wrote: post #150

Jonovono wrote: post #27

I never really saw too much issue with what he wrote. It seemed a lot of people were mad at him for things he never said. It's been awhile since I read his document, but I remember expecting it to be so bad from all the uproar I was hearing, but after reading it I couldn't find much to be angry about. Can someone enlighten me - i'll admit, this may be a highly ignorant topic of mine.

I read it and it made me pretty annoyed, not so much for what he said, but how he chose to go about saying it. He says he is only trying to start a conversation or discussion, but circulating a secret memo around your company and then going on a self-promotional media crusade really is not a great way to do that. It looks more like a political stunt, which is pretty much the opposite of a conversation.

My understanding is that this is a very inaccurate portrayal of what happened, and that makes me doubt that you gave the memo a fair chance. He published an internal memo, but not necessarily a "secret" one. Someone else published it externally -- not him -- and he only went on a media "crusade" after being very publicly fired.

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

#637

Post by forgottenpass » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 9:58 PM UTC

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…

Um, guilt by association much?

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

#638

Post by bduerst » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 9:59 PM UTC

FabHK wrote: post #583

stcredzero wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read what he wrote. It was (mostly) ugly but contained a lot of truth. Many of the media interpretations of what James Damore wrote were very biased, and effectively amounted to hit pieces. His use of terms like "Trait Neuroticism" were direct uses of psychological terms which just sound bad as everyday English. Evolutionary Biology also tends to have a "dismal" feeling to it, like Economics can. One can't take fie…

+1. Most of the pieces about the memo didn't take time to highlight that "neuroticism" and "agreeableness" refer to Big-5 personality traits, not the everyday understanding of the words. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits Most of the pieces didn't distinguish between descriptive and normative statements. Most of the pieces didn't distinguish between statements about distribution of something wi…

Except the Big Five has been debunked as being too lexical for biological differentiation.

Basically its lexical nature introduces perceptual bias that skews any factor analysis for biological structures - i.e. behavior between genders, for example. The way Damore uses it to support his hypothesis wasn't correct.

>And that is what the Big Five represents: a consistent model of how humans reflect individuality using language, no more. There were no considerations of findings in neuroanatomy, neurochemistry, experimental psychology, observations of behavior of people or animals in real situations – none of this was used at the research stage leading to the development of the Big Five. In this sense we can say that the Big Five does not represent the structure of temperament or the structure of biologically based traits, even though lexical perception reflects some elements of it.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3903487/

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

#639

Post by johnny22 » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 10:04 PM UTC

55555 wrote: post #466

bmelton wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the points are fungible (and they absolutely are) then what is the difference between giving extra points to and giving fewer points to . How are they not functionally identical?

This isn't quite the same thing, but i've always found it annoying how it's generally okay to say, for example, that Chinese people are good at math but it's not okay to say that any other group is bad at math, even though the former claim is a relative claim that is presumably understood to be comparative to other groups of people, who are (on average) worse at math.

lots of folks are against that. Positive discrimination is a thing.

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

#640

Post by ocdtrekkie » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 10:04 PM UTC

omegaworks wrote: post #438

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you should read up a little on Autism Spectrum Disorder. James Damore almost certainly tends to the autistic, and it can lead to both some insensitive statements not intended the way they were taken, and being unable to recognize some of the social situations he was put in.

Autism is not an excuse. Damore has openly sympathized with white supremacist groups. The common practice of diagnosing and pathologizing white men that have been radicalized by white supremacy and seek to shape institutional policies around white supremacy , prevents us from fully engaging with the harm they cause. Autism does not cause you to be a bigot. https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/931599879238967296

I don't agree that Damore has "openly sympathized" with white supremacist groups. Unless you consider admitting "Grand Wizard" is a pretty cool title to be... "sympathizing". (It's a pretty cool title. Reprehensible humans have that title, but it's a cool title.) The fact that he didn't anticipate how badly this post would be received by the public though... a clear symptom of his presence on the spectrum.

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.