You both make really good points, and I think you're both right.
Let P = "women are less inclined to be engineers" and Q = "women are not suited to be engineers".
For the sake of argument, let's assume the best in Damore. Assume he believes P but not Q, and that he was earnestly criticizing some company practices with the aim of improving them, not seeking attention or controversy. (I realize that many doubt this, but no one can definitively prove his intentions one way or another, so I don't think there's much point in debating it.)
Given those assumptions, can we all agree on the following?
- P is true, though it may be a socialized thing rather than an innate thing.
- Q is false, based on lots of anecdotal evidence.
- P does not imply Q.
- But Q, if it were true, would imply P. That is, hypothetically, not being skilled at engineering would give women a reason to avoid the profession.
- Consequently, to someone who hasn't entirely ruled out Q yet (either due to bias or lack of experience), P(Q|P) > P(Q).
(If the logic isn't clear, consider the analogy of P = "it's cloudy" and Q = "it's raining". It's currently cloudy but not raining. If someone hasn't been outdoors and I mention that it's cloudy, the probability of rain given their limited information increases.)
- So reinforcing P risks reinforcing Q, even if it isn't intentional. Since beliefs in Q can be very harmful to women, we should tread carefully when discussing P.
- Damore believes P.
- Damore's stance on Q is less clear. His essay had a blurb ("the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ") which seems to imply Q, or some variation thereof.
- If we give Damore the benefit of the doubt, we could interpret his stance on Q as follows. Men and women have various biological differences, and surely some of them have some effect on engineering ability. It's just unreasonable to assume that the aggregate difference in zero. It might be totally negligible though. It might also be in favor of women rather than men. Perhaps women are better at juggling multiple tasks, or their social skills make them more effective engineers within an organization.
- Although no one can say with certainty what Damore's intentions were, here's my take. He didn't realistically expect his essay to change Google's practices, but figured it would start an interesting debate. He knew it was a sensitive subject, but didn't expect a reaction of such magnitude, since his essay was mainly establishing P, and the facts are on his side there. He generally avoided the subject of Q, but he could have done a better job. Since his argument only depends on PνQ, he should have explicitly declared Q false (or at least irrelevant) and focused entirely on P.
- Morally speaking, it seems wrong fire employees based on uncertain interpretations of their intent. So he shouldn't have been fired for his stance on Q, because it wasn't clear what that stance was exactly. And he shouldn't have been fired for intentionally stirring controversy, because it's not clear if that was his intent.
- Even if Damore had the best of intentions, it's still possible to justify his firing based on negligence about the effect of his essay. I don't think he was grossly negligent though, since he sent his essay to a mailing list where controversial discussions are common.