A couple of people have recommended that I read this piece (Zunger) in order to put the Google memo into perspective. Rather than finding in it reasons to change my mind, though, I find it typical of the sophistry, mendacity, and hysteria that is swirling around this controversy, so I’ve written a critique of it below, objecting to twelve points Zunger makes, beginning with his first sentence and ending with his last:
(1) “the manifesto a Googler (not someone senior) published internally about, essentially, how women and men are intrinsically different and we should stop trying to make it possible for women to be engineers, it’s just not worth it.”
It is already possible for women to be engineers, so the memo is not about this at all. Nor is the memo against women being engineers. Quite the contrary: it begins and ends with emphatic statements about the importance of having women engineers and of diversity more generally. What it is against are certain affirmative action programs within Google. It’s mendacious and sophistical to equate opposition to certain affirmative action programs, on the one hand, with opposition to the possibility of women being engineers, on the other hand. (More on this under (5) below.)
(2) “Despite speaking very authoritatively, the author does not appear to understand gender.”
The Quillette article that appeared on Monday, written by four gender scientists, confirmed that, in fact, the author (Damore) does understand gender very well. The scientists vouched for the accuracy of his gender science, although at least one disagreed with the policy prescriptions (the normative consequences) he drew from it.
(3) “if anyone wishes to provide details as to how nearly every statement about gender in that entire document is actively incorrect,¹ and flies directly in the face of all research done in the field for decades, they should go for it.”
More on the gender science. The author of the Medium piece (Zunger) is not only saying, falsely, that Damore doesn’t understand gender science; he’s adding that “nearly every statement about gender in the entire document is actively incorrect,” when in fact the gender scientists in my OP say the contrary, that nearly every statement about gender in the entire document is (actively?) correct.
(4) “even more surprisingly, it has an entire section titled “de-emphasize empathy,” as one of the proposed solutions.”
This section is the best, in my view, because it gives some insight into the mysterious world of software engineers (mysterious to outsiders like me anyway). It argues that people-skills become more important as you rise in the hierarchy at Google. It’s a persuasive argument (again, to an outsider like me). Maybe the comments in Damore’s memo about team programming and so on were consequently naive. But I don’t think that was Damore’s point about empathy.
His point was that when ideas such as he holds to be true (gender science) are expressed in that environment, and people get upset (as obviously they do, given the reaction not only within Google but in the national press), the judgment falls on the person who expressed the upsetting ideas, rather than on the environment that sees feelings of upset as more important than the attempt to speak truly about reality. The animus against Damore — not just within Google, but in the national press — confirms what he was arguing, showing how his argument applies not only to one tech company but to the national conversation (at least in the press) about this issue.
Here’s an analogy. A family’s house is burning; a messenger tells the family that their house is burning; the family gets upset; so the fire-brigade punishes the messenger rather than seeing if he’s telling the truth and, if so, putting out the fire.
(5) “What you just did was incredibly stupid and harmful. You just put out a manifesto inside the company arguing that some large fraction of your colleagues are at root not good enough to do their jobs, and that they’re only being kept in their jobs because of some political ideas.”
Damore never argued that. If Zunger wants to claim that Damore was arguing that, although Damore never said anything remotely like that, Zunger is arguing that anyone who opposes affirmative action is saying of any minority who gets a job that they are not good enough at it and that they’re only keeping it because of some political ideas. As with (1) above, this is mendacious.
It’s also an illustration of the groupthink that Damore is criticizing. If any social policy is such that anyone who presents an informed and reasonable critique of the policy must be anathematized as someone who has insulted people, then the policy has achieved the status of sacred dogma.
Maybe affirmative action is just, maybe it’s not. Maybe it achieves its goal, maybe it doesn’t, or it could perhaps frustrate them. It’s complicated, and reasonable people disagree. Accordingly, there should be reasonable and critical discussion about these questions. If the left-wing groupthink has become so hardened that such discussion is forbidden, however, then the group truly has become an ideological echo chamber. This is why I say Damore is vindicated not only by the content of his memo, but also by the reaction to it — which has been exactly what you should expect if that content is right.
(6) “I need to be very clear here: not only was nearly everything you said in that document wrong,”
See (2) above.
(7) “the fact that you did that has caused significant harm to people across this company, and to the company’s entire ability to function.”
People in the company, in tech generally, and in the national conversation about this are indeed very upset. But see (4) for why the problem is the upset over the memo rather than the memo or its author. Moreover, if we really want to pinpoint the source of disruption, even if we disagree about the soundness of the memo, I should think we should begin with those who are lying about its contents, beginning with Zunger and the popular press (especially Gizmodo, but see the Atlantic piece I’ll post below for how broadly the popular press has failed on this story).
(8) “Do you understand that at this point, I could not in good conscience assign anyone to work with you? I certainly couldn’t assign any women to deal with this, a good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face, and even if there were a group of like-minded individuals I could put you with, nobody would be able to collaborate with them. You have just created a textbook hostile workplace environment.”
See (5) and (7) (and thus also (4)). The hostile workplace environment is being caused by people who are either (a) anti-science, (b) lying about the memo, or © acting as though affirmative action were something sacred. The people most upset are likely all three.
(9) “you need to learn the difference between “I think we should adopt Go as our primary language” and “I think one-third of my colleagues are either biologically unsuited to do their jobs, or if not are exceptions and should be suspected of such until they can prove otherwise to each and every person’s satisfaction.””
He never said anything like this. Not remotely. His argument was that there are scientifically proven population differences between men and women when it comes to skills relevant to succeeding in tech. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of statistics, and thus his argument, to think that those population differences have anything to do with individuals. That’s mendacious, again.
It’s the same mendacity, occuring multiple times, even involving rookie mistakes about statistics and textbook fallacies in reasoning. It’s systematic, not just someone slipping up. As a result, it confirms, again, Damore’s conclusion. Only in an environment that takes something as sacred would such errors be not only tolerated but cheered.
(10) “I can’t think of any organization not specifically dedicated to those views that they would be welcome in.”
The four scientists in the Quillette piece are part of an organization (academic science) that is not specifically dedicated to those views, but instead to a procedure (empirical science) that has arrived at those views, not because it is dedicated to them, but because it follows the evidence where it leads. Would that others would follow.
(11) “it would have ended with you being escorted from the building by security and told that your personal items will be mailed to you.”
This goes off the rails altogether. It’s not enough to give Damore two weeks notice, or to ask him to pack his things that day, Zunger would have him escorted by security immediately — as if he were a physical threat — for his thoughtcrime. This kind of tyrannical thinking is being shared as an example of the right response to this controversy?
Could Damore have found better proof of his conclusion?
(12) “the fact that you think this was “all in the name of open discussion,” and don’t realize any of these deeper consequences, makes this worse, not better.”
Finally, it’s not enough to treat him as a physical threat, Zunger has to add one more line, emphasizing that Damore was a worse threat because he pretended to do what he did in the spirit of open discussion and rational inquiry.
So yes, Damore could have found a better proof of his conclusion.
