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.

The memo makes a whole case against "the Left" (capitalization from the memo) and how "leftists" are violent. That doesn't sound like "conciliatory manner" to me, especially considering he makes a blanket statement about Google "leaning left."

He said PC_authoritarians are violent. Not leftists.

Straight from the memo:

> While Google hasn’t harbored the violent leftists protests that we’re seeing at universities, the frequent shaming in TGIF and in our culture has created the same silence, psychologically unsafe environment.

Emphasis mine.

You seem to have modified the memo slightly to enforce your point.

>While Google hasn’t harbored the violent leftist protests that we’re seeing at universities

He's saying the leftist protests at Berkeley were violent. Which... is simply a factual statement.

I did clarify the emphasis was mine.

Also, I'm not sure I'd qualify it as "simply a factual statement" when there were a bunch of alt-righters participating in the violence. Ever heard of alt-right hero "Based Stickman"? People pay for his tickets to go incite violence across the US. Such a symbol of peace!

Seems more like a lie by omission to me.

You didn't just add emphasis, you changed the original text from "leftist" to "leftists" and failed to indicate this, which is dishonest.

Huh, I was going to complain about it being a direct cut and paste from the document, but it does look like I managed to stick an 's' in there after I copied the text. Sorry, didn't notice.

The actual quote is:

> While Google hasn’t harbored the violent leftist protests

Still doesn't change the meaning, my point being that the "violent leftist protests" he talks about don't happen in a vacuum. On the other side of the 'violence' there's always been lovely people like the alt-righter "hero" Based Stickman inciting violence.

To me, his choice of side to blame for the violence is pretty telling of what he thinks about "the Left". Whether correctly or incorrectly identifying them as the culprits of the violence, he's making a statement about the "movement" and not the particular instance of violence.