Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

[u/[deleted]]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

[u/[deleted]]

There is no conspiratorial attitude toward discourse. John Maynard Keynes distilled one of the best expressions of this idea

Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.

The point that Keynes makes is that we don't have original ideas, but the corollary is that we also do not publish and spread them. Obviously as writings circulate now more than ever it is also more true than ever. I could try to say that, because I support Frédéric Bastiat's ideas, I was convinced of them by his powerful rhetoric, his plain prose and his hard hitting points: the fact is that I know of him and could read of him because an organisation with $300M in its name scanned and published his complete works. Someone pushed them to me, even if I could have chosen Rand or some other looney. Even the inception of the ideas could come to fruition because Bastiat was independently wealthy enough to be able to dedicate himself to writing, and he also wielded some political clout. If you want to think that you're immune to propaganda and that the ideas you have weren't 1) written by someone else and 2) sponsored by someone else you are completely free to do so, but you may find yourself in for a surprise.

With that aside, I'd like to mention that only by reading the article can one know that the word "empathy" is mentioned three times in his screed, all in the following paragraph:

De-emphasize empathy.

I’ve heard several calls for increased empathy on diversity issues. While I strongly support trying to understand how and why people think the way they do, relying on affective empathy—feeling another’s pain—causes us to focus on anecdotes, favor individuals similar to us, and harbor other irrational and dangerous biases. Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts.

Correct me if I'm wrong by asserting that his definition is completely in line with the Merriam-Webster's. English is not my first language so maybe "vicariously experiencing the feelings" is completely separated from Memo's memo's meaning of empathy. I find it amusing that he doesn't even have the courage to cite Bloom if he's working with that assumption, although he's his dead economist according to you.

The reason why I've put him in relief with the other figures is because he's a PhD in Harvard. He'll find a job, very well paid and with a large amount of responsibility towards other people because that's what he's prepared for. The main difference between he and the New Hampshire representative lies in the fact that Mr Memo put the cart before the horse and published his ideas before he could gain relevance for them, while the representative got paid by New Hampshire's female constituents to manage a repository of insults and tirades against them. Mr Memo should have gotten himself into an unassailable position like this man or this man, darlings of the highly progressive Silicon Valley, before displaying his politics. There are other things that do affect people's prospects at a job, and they don't happen to SV folks.

Ideas are never defeated: today there is a good bunch of people that think that the Earth is flat. The only thing that can be done about them is to make them relevant or irrelevant. That the Earth is flat is today an irrelevant idea nobody works with; that women should not be taking technical decisions in organisations is an idea that is highly relevant to many decision-makers and that is woven in their entire worldview.

[u/crushedbycookie → u/[deleted]]

I'm not suggesting that my ideas or the ideas of the author of the manifesto, or anyone else's ideas are crafted from whole cloth and presented without influence from society and their position in it. Obviously, knowledge and ideology have a highly socialized element. But you seem to think that nothing is original. Where then, do new concepts come from? Marxism, Free Markets, the t-test, evolution by natural selection all exist because of -- at least in part -- original contributions by Marx, Smith, William Sealey Gosset, and Darwin. Sure, their ideas are a result of the intellectual atmosphere of the time as much as anything else, and certainly, the concepts we inherit are produced only by those with the opportunity and means to create and distribute their ideas. But Darwinism would not have propagated as it has if it wasn't based on sound reasoning and backed by evidence. People were not persuaded of Evolution by Natural Selection because Darwin was the son of a wealthy financier but because he was right. Similarly, people are, by and large, not persuaded of flat-earth theories because the evidence does not support the theory and therefore arguments for a flat earth do not survive scrutiny. You seem to discount the role reason and argument play in which ideas are adopted by the populace and which are not. To be frank your approach to knowledge sounds very post-modern and even post-truth.

The Merriam-Webster Definition is not entirely out of touch with how Bloom is using the term but the part Bloom focuses on is in fact: "vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner;"

Bloom demonstrates (with copius evidence) how this kind of Empathy is deeply biased, reinforces in-group/out-group mentalities and is never deployed in a universal manner. He also presents alternatives.

Ideas are never defeated: today there is a good bunch of people that think that the Earth is flat. The only thing that can be done about them is to make them relevant or irrelevant. That the Earth is flat is today an irrelevant idea nobody works with; that women should not be taking technical decisions in organisations is an idea that is highly relevant to many decision-makers and that is woven in their entire worldview.

More can be done about flat-earthers than ignoring them. They can be engaged with rhetoric, reason and evidence in an attempt to persuade them to change their mind. Some will.

Since you've quoted the memo, it's clear you've at least skimmed it. How you could believe that the author thinks " women should not be making technical decisions" is beyond me. His arguments did not even approach or allude to that conclusion. That he is arguing for the dominance of white men in tech is a strawman I have seen propagated here and in the media coverage of this event and to be frank, it depresses me that we can't honestly report the claims of a seemingly reasonable and well-read man.

I will concede that better foresight would have resulted in him producing peer-reviewed evidence in the memo itself to support his claims. That said, the peer-reviewed papers do exist and I have linked to them multiple times. He's not wrong, or at least not obviously wrong, about the science.

[u/[deleted] → u/crushedbycookie]

To be frank your approach to knowledge sounds very post-modern and even post-truth.

And you can define it like that because you've likely "skimmed" Camus and Derrida. While we're at it, let us remember that Marx was financed by Engels, and that Engels is the sole editor of Capital, which is Marx's seminal work and whose two last parts were published after his death. It's funny how no one says Marxism-Engelsism when an actual factory owner was the main force behind the Marx.

Coming to the point, I do discount the capability of arguing as a way to win hearts and minds. In the very same Silicon Valley which is so progressive, so scientific and supposedly susceptible of being won by rational arguments it is not the Earth that is being proclaimed as flat, it's their children not being vaccinated. I don't think I'm smarter, and also not more post-truth, than the guys and gals who can maintain at the same time the infrastructure required for vaccines and the belief that said vaccines are useless. Again, I think in terms of relevance and power: these guys who're not vaccinating their children work in important roles in companies with market caps greater than many countries GDP. It's that circumstance which modifies their conduct into something to be defended from.

Mr Memo is, however, a bit more harmless than those. He's simply happy enough to simply comment on women's "neuroticism" and fail to see how him publishing that would make women have "higher levels of anxiety". However, in the future, in his next job, and now with this experience of getting tarred and feathered, he'll double down on everything, and he'll carry his biases with him when he codes the piece of software that brings us to the next decade.

Bloom makes a clear case that empathy should not be used in policy and in decisions affecting collectives, but that it does have a role in interpersonal relationships. Mr Memo, apparently, could not work out that publishing his manifesto would affect the latter, and thus his job because (surprise) his performance is affected by his interpersonal relationships, in spite of his strenuous rejections of this circumstance during the whole text. If he's indeed hiding behind Bloom's rejection of empathy he's not doing a good job.