The One-Way Road: On the Google Manifesto and Free Speech

I recently read a Medium article by Mary-Ann Ionascu, where she provided a measured response to the Google Manifesto that has been making the rounds this month. Whereas I think her rebuttal to a section of the paper under the aptly-numbered-computer-science heading Point 0: I was biologically designed to be an engineer missed the substance of James Damore’s biological argument, her second segment agreed that Google needs to create a more open environment for discussion. She then provided an invite for coffee to anyone who feels that the conversation around diversity and inclusion is a one-way road.
I am one of those people. I have increasingly felt that the conversation around diversity and inclusion is a one-way road, at least in the progressive circles I run in. Whenever I find myself espousing a liberal but not all-the-way-far-left view on anything related to race, sex, or religion, I seem to be greeted with anger and accusations of bigotry. People who have known me for years, who know that I lean left and have even worked at the White House during a Democratic administration, seem to think that maybe I have alt-right sympathies or have racist conceptions when nothing could be farther from the truth. Social justice seems to blind people to nuance on issues that are inherently complex.
I consider myself a classical liberal, same as James Damore (per his footnotes). Classical liberalism gave birth to the Enlightenment age, delivering western Europe and North America from the barbarism and inanity of the medieval eras through an emphasis on individualism, reason, and free speech. This is the ideological space I try my best to occupy — forming opinions and ideas based on evidence and rational inference. Necessary for this is the ability to exercise freedom of speech.
The ability to discuss openly and honestly is key because speech between opposing parties is the mechanism for locating shared and actual truth. The right side of the political spectrum is plagued with its fair share of bigots and intolerance, but their misconceptions are sure to fade with the inexorable, progressive march of time. It is the left — my own side — which frightens me most now, because their intolerance is not of people but of ideas, and when the door is closed on discussion, truth will be buried beneath stampeding and sanctimonious hordes.
Which brings me back to James Damore, and the Google Manifesto. Damore was trampled by ad hominem attacks, claims of sexism, and — to his exact point — intolerance of ideas. Following the public dissemination of his essay, he was fired from Google and villainized by the media. Television’s talking heads, as well as print journalists, were quick to label him alt-right and defame him as a sexist, and — perhaps most egregiously — republish his paper without his charts, graphs or links to any of the sources which he used to back up his claims. The first two of these intellectual crimes I could maybe attribute to mistaken understanding of his argument or blind emotional attachment to defending the far-left position, but the last is clearly a display of the obscurantism and unwillingness to engage in discussion that has been increasingly prevalent amongst my colleagues on the left. If you want to prove Damore’s position wrong, then discredit the position, not the man.
While I am sympathetic to his arguments, I’m not claiming them right in certain terms. I am more than willing to be swayed provided proper counter-evidence. He makes convincing biological and Darwinian arguments on why men and women taken as groups exceed in different skillsets while acknowledging that any given individual of a gender may outperform the average of the other gender. This is where I think Ionascu’s Point 0 goes astray, as I imagine Damore would absolutely agree with her assessment that she was biologically built to be an engineer. He provides a graph in his Manifesto making this point, even going so far as to change the colors from the gendered blue/pink dichotomy to make clear there are no claims to male superiority here. Following his argument, if the trait was “interest in software engineering,” she would no doubt fall on the upper end of the purple distribution, exceeding the interest of most men, but still paying deference to the fact that men on average are more interested in the field. He then goes on innumerate the traits on which women, on average, excel over men. You can tell he’s trying his best to be balanced in light of the opinions he holds.

To read his essay in full is to understand that at the very least his intentions are honest. He is trying to explain some aspects of the gender gaps through biology and psychology, which even if ultimately wrong, do have substantial academic support behind them. His descriptions of the left/right dichotomy seem largely based on celebrated psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s moral foundations theory, his biological assertions are linked extensively in his paper, and many of his claims square with human intuition and history. In making these arguments, rightly fearing the persecution to come, he repeatedly hammers home the point that he is not anti-diversity or anti-women, and that he is attempting to describe the paradigm of certain gender gaps as having biological causes.
Although I spent a paragraph or two reiterating and defending part of his argument, my interest in doing so was mostly to show that at the very least it has merit worth discussing, even if ultimately wrong. Mary-Ann Ionascu linked to a LinkedIn article that disputes his biological claims. It’s not too hard to find other articles arguing against the studies he cites. This is the right way to engage, but all too rare. While I’m personally more convinced by his arguments, I’m no scientist or sociologist. People find the evidence to support the points they believe, which makes having an unbiased stance on the issue difficult. I don’t have the bandwidth to compare all Damore’s studies with the ones Ionascu linked to; that is a matter for the scientists. The greater issue is that the media, and most dishearteningly my friends, write it off as a foregone conclusion that he is absolutely and unequivocally wrong, and a sexist bigot for it.
This is the intellectual one-way road where I find myself stuck. For him to say these things is for him to be labeled sexist, and for me to even defend his right to speak will probably have me branded as well. For the people willing to speak up, there is actual fear here, and with increasing frequency the stakes are violence. I’ve been told by a family member that I would be thrown off a boat for some of my controversial opinions. A conservative, pro-Trump student at my alma mater was forced to leave the school because he received fifteen death threats for attending the Charlottesville rally. My newsfeed was filled with revelation and “good riddance.” I may not agree with him on much, but celebrating the departure of a dissident is to miss the more dangerous ideological fascism necessitating that departure.

The left is quick to call the right fascist, but missing that they are the ones doing more to shut down diversity of thought than anyone else. A free speech rally in Boston this week was also shuttered by a far greater number of counter-protestors. The leader of the group organizing it, John Medlar, specifically told CBS that they would not tolerate hate speech. He is quoted as saying:
Reasonable people on both sides who are tolerant enough to not resort to violence when they hear something they disagree with, reasonable people who are actually willing to listen to each other, need to come together and start promoting that instead of letting all of these fringe groups on the left and the right determine what we can and cannot say — John Medlar
Somehow I keep seeing news sources label it as a right-wing rally, but every quote I can find reading about it says they just want free “political speech from across the spectrum.” Even if they were all conservatives, this was no white nationalist rally like in Charlottesville. How has the country founded on free speech found itself rallying against it?
This is not at all to dismiss the often-valid points made by the left. I’d bet most of the threats of violence issued by the left would never be acted upon, especially considering the pacifist tendencies of those levying the warnings. I’d anticipate they’d quickly throw back the fact that it was a white nationalist who killed people in Charlottesville, and that it is the far-right who are open-carrying assault rifles and intimidating minorities. They would not be wrong, and this is certainly a problem to be addressed and condemned by everyone in absolute terms. Yes, Trump should inveigh against white nationalists in no uncertain terms and his failure to do so is a moral and political tragedy. This can all be true, and simultaneously be true that the left needs to keep its own house in order. To me, the alt-right bigotry almost needs no comment because of how obviously wrong it is, common sense should render it dismissed. To discuss this with my friends and colleagues would be an exercise in redundancy, where we all just nod heads and agree with each other.
The problem on the left is much harder because it’s moral righteousness can and does obfuscate the truth. It seems that the left is increasingly realizing Godwin’s Law, calling everyone Nazi’s (and also racists, sexists, and bigots) where it is not warranted. These words are starting to lose their meaning for me; I’ve heard perfectly rational if not slightly-conservative people called Nazi’s so much that I have a hard time trusting it’s real when the Neo-Nazis really do show up. Don’t cry wolf. I beg and plead that my peers will be able to see that obscurantism, de-platforming, and yelling over those who disagree with you in the name of justice is really no justice at all.
