And Lo, There Came A Great Bunching Of The Panties
“Everyone is allowed to share their opinion. I just hope he gets fired for it.”
Regarding the ongoing ‘Google memo’ saga, I thought I’d lift the following from yesterday’s comments:
To recap. A Google software developer with a PhD in biology writes a polite, conciliatory and politically centrist memo suggesting that there’s a leftist groupthink problem in the company that inhibits open discussion; that men and women on average have differing preferences and abilities, albeit with a large overlap, and so “diversity” policies might benefit from bearing that in mind; and that perhaps people should be treated as individuals rather than as mascots of allegedly oppressed identity groups.
This is immediately met with ludicrous and wilful mischaracterisation by “social justice” Twitter and the ‘progressive’ media, including deliberately deleting the memo’s links to supporting data; a general refusal to engage honestly with the author’s points, or in many cases even to read them; baseless accusations of every ‘ism’ going; personal doxxing; boasts of blacklisting; and demands that the author of the memo be fired for his heresy and never employed again.
On grounds that his arguments are “violently offensive” and in need of being “silenced.” He is, you see, “committing violence” with his statistics. All of which rather proves the author’s point about leftist groupthink and its reliance on distortion, intimidation and outright hysteria.
The employee in question has of course now been fired. Readers who wish to be violently offended can read the memo here.
Update:
Jordan Peterson interviews James Damore, author of the supposedly scandalous and “fascist” memo. Skip forward to 5’10:
“The thing that was disturbing to me about watching the response to you is that, so far as I can tell, there isn’t anything that you said… that violates the scientific literature as it currently stands.”
Update 2, via the comments:
Within the field of neuroscience, sex differences between women and men — when it comes to brain structure and function and associated differences in personality and occupational preferences — are understood to be true, because the evidence for them (thousands of studies) is strong. This is not information that’s considered controversial.
Update 3:
Allum Bokhari interviews a (pseudonymous) Google employee:
Several managers have openly admitted to keeping blacklists of the employees in question, and preventing them from seeking work at other companies. There have been numerous cases in which social justice activists coordinated attempts to sabotage other employees’ performance reviews for expressing a different opinion. These have been raised to the Senior VP level, with no action taken whatsoever… For conservative employees, this is obviously demoralising, but it is also dangerous.
Update 4:
The Quillette website, which published some strong support of Mr Damore’s memo, is currently experiencing a DDoS attack. A coincidence, no doubt.
Update 5:
When Black Lives Matter hysteria hit its peak, sometime in 2015, it became taboo to criticise identity politics, and later on, it became very dangerous to criticise any member of a minority group at all (even if the criticism had nothing to do with their identity).
Allum Bokhari talks with more (pseudonymous) Google employees.
Update 6:
A compendium of gender research by Sean Stevens and Jonathan Haidt at Heterodox Academy:
Damore is correct that there are “population level differences in distributions” of traits that are likely to be relevant for understanding gender gaps at Google. Even if we set aside all questions about the origins of these differences, the fact remains that there are gender differences in a variety of traits, and especially in interest/enjoyment (rather than ability) in the adult population from which Google and all other tech firms recruit.… Damore was drawing attention to empirical findings that seem to have been previously unknown or ignored at Google.
Unknown or ignored. By our self-imagined betters.
Update 7:
And for those with a taste for irony, here’s video of a talk by Michael Gurian, titled Leadership and the Sexes, given at Google HQ nine years ago. Curiously, the topic of psychological and neurological gender differences was, not too long ago, deemed suitable for discussion by Google management and employees, and indeed advantageous. During the talk, none of the ladies present seem particularly outraged, or oppressed, or in need of a fainting couch.
Update 8:
A Primer On Statistics to Help Quell Your Outrage at the Google Memo.
And yes, it appears to be real.
I have a very vivid mental image of the sort of people queuing up to become “Hate Crime Ambassadors.” Perhaps the good people of Sussex can keep them busy with reports like,”Received criticism of tie choice (paisley) with striped shirt.”
No, I did, so let me try again:
You’d think the SJWs would notice they are in a hole, and for once stop digging.
Wrong again.
(Two things: Preview can only do so much. And I am so relieved no embarrassing tabs are open on my browser. Oh, and that is the hotel my son is staying in today — Micron brought him in for a job interview.)
And yes, it appears to be real.
Oy gevalt.
Yeah, I could buy threatened or attacked, but the rest, suck it up. Prosecuted for name calling makes getting fired for the perception of name calling seem pretty tame. Do all your counties have these Stasi, or is this something peculiar to Sussex ?
And I am so relieved no embarrassing tabs are open on my browser.
So we’ve all been staring at the bloody thing for ages, in the expectation of spotting something hilariously wrong-headed, and instead going, “Actually, it looks quite nice.”
@Jeff: The double-down reaction was also in evidence at Gizmodo, publishers of the not-edited-we-swear-on-our-mum edited version, who then published an article about how evil pretext of science has always been used to keep up the patriarchy.
so let me try again
Ah, that makes more sense.
Except, of course, that’s not what the memo does. So, another liar. And that’s the very first sentence.
From Jeff’s link:
Google bro would argue that we ought to consider the possibility that white women and racial minorities simply produce lower-quality work, which is why we struggle to be recognized as competent knowledge producers.
So, nothing in Damore’s memo says anything remotely close to that assertion. In point of fact, he states the exact opposite. Yet somehow, our Slate author divines his thoughts and then proceeds to slander him.
That said, if we view “science” as a method of inquiry and not an area of inquiry, then the author is correct. “Science” does not mean “truth.” Nonetheless, point is there are bona fide disagreements within certain areas of inquiry about various questions. The author merely dismisses those studies with which she disagrees and essentially declares that no further questions need be asked nor inquiry allowed.
How is that different from Religion again?
And that’s the very first sentence.
So, to quote the only true Doctor, “he got it wrong on the first line!”:-D.
Wish I could find a video clip of that scene:-(.
Also, the Slate author alludes to the separation–post-Enlightenment–of theological areas of inquiry from inquiries regarding the natural world. The thinking was, the two could not co-exist. Thus arose seminaries as separate institutions of learning. Query, is something similar coming down the pike regard the whole Feminist/Intersectional received wisdom of the Humanities and Liberal Arts and the rest of academe? The reaction to the Google memo including ignoring or omitting references to studies supporting its conclusions indicates that such a separation is quite likely if power/political dynamics don’t interfere.
So, nothing in Damore’s memo says anything remotely close to that assertion. In point of fact, he states the exact opposite.
Quite. And note that, again, Ms Prescod-Weinstein appears not to understand basic statistics. Which bodes well for her career as an activist, philosopher and “decoloniser” of science.
“Knowledge producers”, now there’s an intentionally vague, meaningless, and smokescreenish phrase if ever I’ve seen one. Not workers, innovators (itself watered down as a term), creators, designers… none of the above. “Knowledge Producers”.
Your kyriarchy just can’t handle all the Emotion Knowledge and Color Knowledge we Special People are so good at producing. Just keeping us down with all your Hate Frameworks and the like.
Heh.

We can only hope that this whole affair is a huge ‘red pill’ for a good number of normal, decent humans who might have previously had some sympathy for the left.
They really are utterly vile creatures.
PS. I’ve had Brave for a while now and I’ve found it to be pretty good, and I’m just in the process of migrating my email to Proton Mail which seems cool.
PPS. F**k you Google.
So we’ve all been staring at the bloody thing for ages, in the expectation of spotting something hilariously wrong-headed, and instead going, “Actually, it looks quite nice.”
Yeah…missing lane line. The needs of us lap swimmers are so often subjugated to those of the fatty patty boombalatties and their water aerobics. And don’t get me started on the “ooh, the water’s too cold..it takes a whole 15 seconds for me to adjust”.
Uhh….there’s no reason an American tourist or business man would ever need to be in Sussex, is there?
fatty patty boombalatties
Careful, you’ll set off th…
Oh, for fu
No chance of rewiring that klaxon to something nice like Petula Clark, I take it.
A reminder, should one be needed.

“This is CNN.”
David, now that you’ve hit the big time, how about a contest? Commenter #329, or whatever, wins a free microaggression of xir choice! And some pickled, er, “eggs.”
It would be interesting to know who coined the “biologically unfit/fit” aphorism, because that particular pernicious paraphrase is what spread through the media like wildfire. It’s a signature phrase that would not have been chosen independently for criticism if not for coordinated messaging. Blatant.
They truly think their choice of a memetic phrase to push and repeat isn’t obvious. Similar to the also-obvious push to add “and tax cuts for the wealthy” to any description of ACA repeal, or “Muslim ban”, but more blatant in every way.
The left believes that an older generation dying off will make for gains in progressivism, while failing to note that the ability to push a line with coordinated messaging through legacy media largely dies with them. They really won’t like the sort of low/medium-info rightists that will come about *without* having been poisoned into acceptance of false premises…
More importantly, they’re getting out of touch. Most individuals will encounter the phrase “biologically unfit” and conclude “well, I suppose it was alright to fire him” while secretly adding “…but aren’t women and men different, and maybe he just went too *far*?”. Any propagandizing that leaves contrary unresolved questions to the average recipient is the product of bad judgment. Regard the “elders eating dog food” stories spread by the Soviets. “What is this… dog food?!”
@bgates, well done sir! Not sure if it’s illegal for me to say I found them very amusing.
Your prize is a visit from Sgt. Peter Allan. Best head for the Idaho hills — I know a great place you could stay.
Meanwhile…

that particular pernicious paraphrase is what spread through the media like wildfire.
The uniformity and wilfulness of the distortion was extraordinary. As I said, brazen. And as Perry de Havilland notes over at Samizdata,
Though hopefully quite a few people will have noticed the collective mendacity.
Oops, was misremembering which stupidity Jeff had crossposted, not meaning to duplicate.
I’ll just slink away and have me image-posting behavior under reprimand.
On the question of other email providers, yes ProtonMail does look pretty cool but the problem is really that every email has (at least) a sender and a recipient, and you can only secure your copy of the message, while everyone else is using Apple or Google which don’t encrypt mail at their end (or Yahoo, which is just totally fucked).
Also, anyone considering moving to ProtonMail because they seem to have good privacy ought to be aware that a lot of their sent/received emails will still have been bouncing around the world in unencrypted form, basically because a lot of mailservers still don’t use encryption (STARTTLS or SSL/TLS).
You may as well assume most or all of your emails are not really private in any meaningful sense.
Counting by the expedient of doing an in-page search for “August” and omitting the left bar archive link and the main post, this comment page seems to be up to 75. Well, 76 with my own comment. On splendid track for another page.
If I just copy and paste the same thing several times in a row I could game the comments and make sure I get the coveted 300th comment.
If I just copy and paste the same thing several times in a row I could game the comments and make sure I get the coveted 300th comment.
If I just copy and paste the same thing several times in a row I could game the comments and make sure I get the coveted 300th comment.
If I just copy and paste the same thing several times in a row I could game the comments and make sure I get the coveted 300th comment.
Ow, ow, ow, that hurts! Alright David, quit doing that, I’ll stop, jeez…
I think one ’em kicked out a flood light with her stiletto …
In my day no lesbian deserving of the prefix hench- would be seen dead in heels. Is this a thing now, then? What is the world coming to?
A couple more interviews with James Damore.
Wait… that second one is not actually an interview. My bad.
Hello Ian,
When we first got e-mail at my job they advised us not to e-mail anything you wouldn’t want posted under your name on the bulletin board. Good advice then and good advice now.
Of course if we’d all followed this advice we would not now be closing in on 300 comments.
Hi Pogonip,
Well I’m just sorry someone had to lose their job in order to get us — potentially — to 300 comments. Perhaps the left are correct to think us all heartless bastards.
If I just copy and paste the same thing several times in a row I could game the comments and make sure I get the coveted 300th comment.
Just remember, it is the 301st comment that gets the honor of starting the fourth page…
Still 12 short, I fear.
Henching has gone Hollywood.
Here.
Perhaps most pertinently, 441 Google employees responded. Of them, more than half – 56% to be precise – said they didn’t think it was right for the company to fire Damore.
Perhaps most pertinently, 441 Google soon to be ex-employees responded.
Minor correction.
that particular pernicious paraphrase
I’ve got a particular pernicious paraphrase for them.
“And yet, it moves.”
You do realise it’s quite possible I’ve rigged this thread to blow when its length becomes indecent?
I’m almost certain that phrasing it Eppur si muove is more multiculturally appropriate, or something. One should go with that. Not that the resulting bafflement would highlight the diversity crowd as uncultured and illiterate, oh heavens no.
You do realise it’s quite possible I’ve rigged this thread to blow when its length becomes indecent?
Is there a number of comments that alerts the Sussex Constabulary and tips them off to the whereabouts of the secret lair ?
And note that, again, Ms Prescod-Weinstein appears not to understand basic statistics. Which bodes well for her career as an activist, philosopher and “decoloniser” of science.
I do believe she is being touted as a “particle physicist” and some other STEM-smart sounding blather title. (which, if science != truth, then why do we need to know her fancy scienc-y title, if not to make us go “OOOOH particle physicist! She’s so smart. I must believe everything she says!”)
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t basic statistics fall under “things a particle physicist should have a decent grasp on”?
Or is this a continuation of the watering down of the “hard” sciences so more women can be said to be in them?
Appeals to authority are the most sciency thing that has ever existed, critic.
Also, we are not to describe her or even think of her in insulting terms such as “Partick Thistlist”. That would be wrong.
*attempts to close switch connected to dynamite*
The tension is unbearable.
The suspense is terrible. I hope it lasts.
-W. Wonka
Everybody clench.