Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

Many of the more reasonable criticisms of the memo say that it wasn't written well enough; it could've been more considerate, it should have used better language, or better presentation. In this particular link, Scott Alexander is used as an example of better writing, and he certainly is one of the best and most persuasive modern writers I've found. However, I can not imagine ever matching his talent and output, even if I practiced for years to try and catch up.

I do not think that anyone's ability to write should disbar them from discussion. We can not expect perfection from others. Instead we should try to understand them as human beings, and interpret them with generosity and kindness.

I'd actually say just the opposite - the memo seemed to be written as well and in as conciliatory manner as it could be written and the memo made good (or at least plausible) point and bad points. But the bad points were so bad that it was appropriate and necessary to fire Damore.

Essentially, as analogy, there's no way for a person to say "Black people are inferior and shouldn't be hired", as a message broadcast through their entire workplace, and not have that person be creating a hostile work environment for African Americans. If that person says "I don't mean in general, I mean inferior just for this occupation, I don't mean inferior, just 'differently talented, they've got great rhythm'", it doesn't matter, if that person says "here's a study which says this, we should consider this in an open minded fashion" it doesn't matter. The message is unacceptable. That person is done, that person should be done.

It's entirely possible for an argument to be correct, but too narrowly focused.

If you're saying "group X is inferior and and I can prove it mathematically", that's still wrong because those people don't have a choice about being a member of that group and still exist in society. Discriminating against them drags society down. It's a prisoners dilemma. If everybody hires fairly then the relative drag is spread across the entire economy and everyone comes out better in the end. If they try to cheat then they'll have a local advantage but in the end it only encourages everyone else to cheat and you end up in the worst case scenario with the massive drag on society as a whole.

So the only rational solution for these corporations is to pretend to be as inclusive as possible while secretly trying to cheat as much as possible, which is exactly what we see. When some dumbass publishes a paper to the entire world saying "Hey, we should openly cheat.", of course he's going to get fired.