Thinking that Damore's supporters seem more rational because they aren't demanding someone be fired is circular reasoning, because it assumes that firing Damore is the less rational/irrational course of action.
> Because their statements indicate that, here is what Sundar Pichai wrote: “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK.”
There, that's an argument that is substantial and non-circular. The person who has the ultimate executive power on hiring and firing asserted something in his public reasoning for firing Damore, and that assertion was wrong.
But this still doesn't mean that the CEO is irrational or failed to read the memo. People are allowed to make judgments based on the core assertions of a document, and they're allowed to "read between the lines", i.e. use logic and reasoning to see what is inferred beyond what is explicit. To use a historical example, back when people were up in arms about the PATRIOT Act, did everyone who oppose it also read all 132-pages of the legislation [0], or watch the debate on C-SPAN and give fair hearing to the bill's sponsors?
When opponents claimed that the PATRIOT Act was anti-American, like when the EFF claimed the PATRIOT Act would give the FBI a "'blank check' to violate the communications privacy of countless innocent Americans" [1], were opponents being overly hysterical, given that the bill does not even contain the words "blank check", nor is there any assertion that the bill seeks to scale back 4th Amendment protections. And believing the PATRIOT Act would undermine American principles is on its face absurd, given that its official name is: "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001"
"Uniting and Strengthening America"
Of course not, these explicit requirements are just as absurd as believing that "I'm not racist, some of my best friends are white!" is a conclusive rebuttal against accusations of being racist against white people.
People can believe, based on all the arguments that Damore made in his memo, that he is in fact opposes diversity efforts, even if he literally states "I value diversity and inclusion". People can argue that Damore has insinuated that Google has hired inferior employees in their flawed pursuit of diversity, given that Damore literally stated these things:
1. Only facts and reason can shed light on these biases, but when it comes to diversity and inclusion, Google’s left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence. This silence removes any checks against encroaching extremist and authoritarian policies.
2. Google has created several discriminatory practices: Programs...for people with a certain gender or race. A high priority queue and special treatment for 'diversity' candidates. Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for "diversity candidates" by decreasing the false negative rate
3. We have extensive government and Google programs, fields of study, and legal and social norms to protect women, but when a man complains about a gender issue issue affecting men, he’s labelled as a misogynist and a whiner. Nearly every difference between men and women is interpreted as a form of women’s oppression. As with many things in life, gender differences are often a case of “grass being greener on the other side”; unfortunately, taxpayer and Google money is being spent to water only one side of the lawn.
Here's a rational interpretation of those statements:
1. Google's left-wing bias has prioritized diversity to the point that no one is willing to speak up against policies that are extremist and authoritarian.
2. Google's hiring initiatives effectively discriminate on the basis of gender. And the special treatment for women ("diversity" candidates) lowers the bar for their hiring.
3. It's not just hiring but retention too, as Google exclusively bends over backwards to accommodate and coddle women. But if gender-related complaints are raised by men, they are ignored (here again, Damore's assertion would mean that Google has imposed practices and policies that directly violate federal law).
Maybe Google's CEO, and maybe a few of Google's women, see these two arguments:
1. Science does not support the viability of a M/F ratio in engineering because there are naturally fewer women then men for whom engineering is desirable.
2. But Google, with its left-wing bias, is so desperate to find women engineers that its current hiring and retention practices are not only discriminatory (in the illegal sense), but Google has lowered the bar when considering "diversity" candidates.
-- and then they logically conclude that Damore is implying the high probability that some of Google's current women engineers are not as qualified as they should be, as a result for Google's irrational and unrealistic diversity quota, which, because it is unrealistic, required Google to give special treatment and lower the bar for women candidates.
I guess it's possible that Damore actually believes what he asserts but that, miraculously, despite of Google's fucked up quest, all of the women who Google ended up hiring are actually perfectly qualified, and no men were discriminated in the process.
But that seems like the less rational interpretation.
And not to be a pedant, but if you want to dismiss Pichai's interpretation as "irrational" because Damore's memo literally does not "suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited." Then what do you think of Damore -- who asserts that women's preferences/tendencies, such as neuroticism and people-not-object preferences, are not social constructs but biological traits "universal across human cultures" -- and then links to the following study as evidence?
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1111/j.1751-9004....
It's a metastudy Richard A. Lippa of 6 studies; when aggregating the results of these studies, Lippa states that "gender differences in interests appear to be consistent across cultures and over time, a finding that suggests possible biologic influences". But Lippa argues in his conclusion that current research is limited, that "more cross-cultural research is needed", and when researchers improve their predictive models, they might find "messy" results:
> e.g., results that show both biologic and social–environmental factors contributing to gender differences, to varying degrees for different traits, and varying kinds of interactions between biologic and social–environmental factors. Indeed, I will go on the record here. I predict that such ‘messiness’ will reign in future research on gender differences in personality and interests. If my prediction proves true, we should not be dismayed. Rather, we should simply say, ‘Such is life.’
This assessment of the current state of research is reduced by Damore to: "On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren't just socially constructed because: They're universal across human cultures. They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone"
If Damore is allowed that much latitude in interpretation scientific research, I don't think we can say that Pichai's latitude in interpreting Damore's memo as unreasonable.
[0] https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/publ56/PLAW-107publ56.pdf
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20060605152308/https://www.eff.o...