Did James Damore really deserve to be fired for what he wrote? (P. Singer) | Hacker News Reader

Did James Damore really deserve to be fired for what he wrote? (P. Singer)

nydailynews.com

48 pointsjohnsea15 comments

This is pretty hilarious - I don't know what very liberal people might think when Peter Singer - one of the most liberal moralists out there - writes in defense of James Damore.

As a very liberal person myself, seeing this gives me a bit of hope that perhaps other more extreme liberals also give this another look and take down the outrage a little bit. Very interesting.

In my opinion, James was fired because it made business sense for Google just like how Facebook copied Snapchat stories, the memo he made would have endlessly disrupted daily Google operations and angered female engineers or managers he worked with and not much innovative in terms of technology would come out in the end. If he was more interested he should have sent a petition to the higher ups and discussed his concerns. In the end, my opinion just like Google's 20% free time for employees, it all makes business sense at a certain level.

Edit: If anyone disagrees, pls downvote with a comment, if theres just a downvote it hurts my poor internet feelings, also I will take it as meaning that there is nothing wrong with my argument, I appreciate a good argument and dialogue and not customary trolling.

If you listen to his conversation with Jordan Peterson he states he originally sent it only to a diversity committee. After a month of not hearing anything back he posted it in a skeptics group at Google asking them to comment.

But I agree it makes business sense. Censorship of possibly truthful ideas makes business sense at the company that generally gatekeeps the internet.

ok true, I've only seen his other interview with Stefan and stopped halfway because it was pretty long

I don't see anything hilarious about this guy getting fired for a well sourced memo due to pressure from virtue signaling zealots who didn't even read it.

To those tempted to respond: do please make sure _you_ have read the original memo, not the deliberate click bait bastardization that Gizmodo has published.

The status quo is that the sources are tenuous.

Most of what was lifted is from evolutionary psychology.

Claims from that field, and used in his write up, have not held up over time.

I know, right? I'm mostly on the other side politically, much more ambivalent about this situation too. Found it curious how many, whom I'd usually associate with liberal politics, have taken it up.

The media's uncharitable twisting of the memo's message is that 'women are biologically unfit to be engineers'. That's not what the memo was saying but if you want to take that loaded interpretation then it's also the case that 'men are not biologically fit to be engineers'. The fact of the matter is, is that people, men or women, also don't have the set of inmate psychological and personality that predispose them to choose an engineering career. And when we narrow that to Google engineers, then this is really about a group of people who are at the margin, not the mean. It's also the case that 1% of the population are psychopaths, yet they represent about 20% of the CEOs (and 25% of prisoners). Does this mean that if you're not a psychopath that you're biologically unfit to be a leader? Of course not.

Agreed but I think the confusion comes from the world "ability". Any threat to the opportunity to have equal ability in a particular discipline beyond our control (say because you were born a man and therefore will start with lesser ability in [xyz]), will be a theory met with opposition.

If on the other hand we're talking about differences in preference only, leaving ability out of it, the argument is harder to criticise.

Either way, it's crazy he was fired for the memo, it sets a dangerous precedent for staying silent unless your words are pre-approved.

If Peter Singer thinks it was wrong, you've got a tough road ahead of you justifying what you've done.

(Full disclosure: Singer is one of my personal heroes.)

For someone whose never heard of him, what did Peter Singer do to earn your admiration?

He's one of the world's most pre-eminent bioethicists.

His writings on animal welfare (e.g., The Way We Eat) and fighting poverty (e.g., The Expanding Circle, The Life You Can Save) are fantastic and should be required reading.

Hi, would you please add your email in profile? Would like to followup with a question. Thanks!

Among other things, he wrote this:

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/05/magazine/the-singer-soluti...

(To help clarify the above comment, Singer says the Google CEO did wrong).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com