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."

The blanket statement that Google leans left is empirically true. You also seem to have misread his comments about violence, as he claims the left tends to be more compassionate. Did you read the memo?

No, I didn't misread 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.

What he does is list "compassion for the weak" as a "left bias". That's not necessarily a statement in support of leftist ideals when combined with this two assertions:

> In addition to the Left’s affinity for those it sees as weak, humans are generally biased towards protecting females.

> The same compassion for those seen as weak creates political correctness[11], which constrains discourse and is complacent to the extremely sensitive PC-authoritarians that use violence and shaming to advance their cause

(Which, BTW, is right before the first thing I quoted.)

Referring to incidents of left wing violence does not imply all leftists are violent.

What's your point? The same could be said of "conservative parties are a platform to neo-Nazis and white supremacists" it doesn't imply all conservatives are neo-Nazis and white supremacists, but... "the implication."

My point is that you wrote:

> the memo makes a whole case... how "leftists" are violent.

Which isn't true.

So you don't think that singling out "leftist violence" in events where there were "alt-right violence" is choosing one side?

Or accusing "PC authoritarians" of stifling diversity of opinion? (violence is not just punching people)

Or accusing "the Left" of denying science regarding biological differences between individuals? (there's a huge difference between "taking with a grain of salt, considering there's a lot of societal factors that might play a bigger role" and "denying")

Damore does a really good job of adding a lot of disclaimers and caveat emptors around a lot of his arguments, but he really didn't put that much effort into hiding his derision for "the Left."