thatsdamore

[thatsdamore]

Commentary on an Interview with James Damore

By: Alex Craig

JAMES DAMORE’S FULL MEMO

I encourage you to read it, citations included (Note: 20% of his citations are Wikipedia articles)

00:00 - 5:30

Background on James Damore, his memo, and his recent firing by Google.

5:30 - 8:50

When Jordan Peterson asks Damore what prompted him to write the memo, Damore says that it began after he was in a “super secret” meeting where Google told their employees about the company’s “possibly illegal” tactics to promote diversity. When asked for specifics of what was said, he provides nothing. His only response is that if others had “seen the things [he’d] seen” they’d be on his side. When pressed further, he concedes that nothing was explicitly stated, just that he “felt pressured.”

The anonymous Google employee (Anon for short) cuts in to say that this isn’t what he’s seen at his time with the company. While Anon undoubtedly sees the benefits of the “synergy” created by having diverse viewpoints combined, he laments the act of creating an environment wherein this occurs means some people will “fall on the wrong side of that distribution.”

Jordan responds that he doesn’t see how race and gender maps with diversity, ”No evidence, whatsoever.” I honestly don’t know what to say to that.

Jordan brings up evolutionary psychology, a relatively new field of study that has only been taken seriously within the last twenty years, which is the crux of Damore’s argument. The hypotheses of evolutionary psychology are often difficult if not impossible to test, and the claims made are “an all-encompassing narrative that claims to explain it all”-- all of which dramatically undercuts its legitimacy in the eyes of many in the scientific field.

To be clear on what evolutionary psychology is, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, the pioneers of  evolutionary psychology describe the field as “a way of thinking about psychology,” and not “an area of study, like vision, reasoning, or social behavior." 

From “Evolutionary Psychology and the Challenge of Adaptive Explanation” (Gray, Heaney & Fairhall):

“The view we defend [...] is that there is nothing wrong in principle with taking an evolutionary approach to human behavior or cognition. In practice, however, the impoverished view of evolution and psychology adopted by many Evolutionary Psychologists, and the weakness of their empirical science, is frankly rather embarrassing.”

From "The Origin of Sex Differences in Human Behavior” (Eagly & Wood) 

“In practice, most evolutionary psychologists emphasize what they believe is the relative uniformity of human sex differences across individual and cultural variables, despite their frequent acknowledgment that it is the interplay between evolved dispositions and current environmental influences that produces behavior.”

9:00 - 11:45

After the “super secret” meeting, Damore says his questions (via the memo) about Google’s diversity practices went unanswered. When the memo began to circulate and his superiors learned about his statements, Damore says that he was told “his opinion wasn’t allowed at the company.”

These are serious allegations, but the claims are only as strong as the proof offered to support it. To take the word of a recently and publicly fired employee as gospel truth when he makes claims against his former employer is an act of blind faith. Damore offers no names of superiors who told him his opinions weren’t “allowed.”

Jordan says,

“As far as I can tell there isn’t anything you said in that paper that is biased in a manner that should open you up to the charges against you; or anything that violates the scientific literature as it currently stands.”

I’ll refer to Damore’s memo since Jordan is saying there’s nothing in the ten page document that warrants criticism on a scientific level.

“The Left tends to deny science concerning biological differences between people e.g., IQ...”

It’s true. As a self-identified Lefty, I do deny the biological differences in intelligence:

Telegraph: Women Score Higher Than Men

Gender Differences in Scholastic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis (Voyer & Voyer)

Debunking Myths about Gender and Mathematics Performance (Kane & Mertz)

Also, it should be noted that these arguments are nearly identical to the ones made to justify racial disparity:

The Bell Curve (Herrnstein & Murray)

In case you need a counterpoint to this obvious BS: Inequality by Design (Hout, Fischer, Jankowski, Lucas, Swidler, Sánchez & Voss)

Damore memo claims, 

“Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things.” 

“Women, on average, have more [openness] directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas.”

To support these ideas he cites multi-national studies with data that’s wrongfully claimed by many evolutionary psychologists to show the “universal” sex differences across human culture, as documented by Stake and Eisele in the Handbook of Gender Research in Psychology [Download full article]:

“Despite the relatively minor role typically attributed in personality theory and research to social and contextual factors, any full comprehension of personality necessitates recognition of these variables. By disregarding them, one is in danger of committing the fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977) by overattributing behavior to inherent personality traits rather than to variables within the social context.”

The methods of research for these large-scale studies and similar studies have been called into question (again, Eagly & Wood):

As Buss noted, his 37 cultures were biased toward urbanized cash-economy cultures, with 60% from Europe and North America. Furthermore, respondents selected from each society tended to be young, comparatively well-educated, and of relatively high socio-economic status. To the extent that these societies share features linked to the definitions of men's and women's roles and to the extent that the respondents were similarly placed in these societies' social structures, commonality in the sex differences that follow from social structure should characterize these societies.”

But to get to the heart of what Damore is saying: Women (generally) don’t have the biological inclination towards “systemizing,” “intense focus,” or seeking of social status (amongst other traits) needed to succeed in tech.

This is disproven by the history of women computer science, where women were entering the field at a faster rate than men in the 1970′s and early-80′s. But this began to decline in the mid-80′s. Why? The biology of women or their ability to “focus” didn’t change, after all. But the environment and culture of computer sciences did change once computers entered the mainstream consciousness around this time.

Planet Money: When Women Stopped Coding

Unlocking the Clubhouse (Fisher & Margolis)

Nurture Affects Gender Differences in Spatial Abilities (Gneezy, Hoffman & List)

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Human Psychological Differences (Bouchard, Jr. & McGue)  

Damore offers no context for what he believes are the reasons for this spatial-empathy gap; Is it because of biological or social factors? Damore doesn’t say, but in the context of the entire memo, it appears that he believes it to be biological. But maybe I’m wrong, because he does address social pressures in his memo:

“The traditionalist system of gender does not deal well with the idea of men needing support. Men are expected to be strong, to not complain, and to deal with problems on their own. Mens’ problems are more often seen as personal failings rather than victimhood, due to our gendered idea of agency.”

This stands out to me because it’s the only time Damore really addresses the fact that social/environmental pressures do exist, but he only seems to acknowledge those factors when they negatively affect men or conservatives. I don’t mean to belittle his argument, because there is something to it-- that’s not to say I totally agree with him --but it’s really got to be pointed out that this dude only makes a note of sexism when it affects dudes. 

(TOTALLY IRRELEVANT OPINION, PLEASE DISREGARD: Jordan and Damore bring up a popular Right-wing narrative that women, minorities and the Left are claiming to be victims of sexism and racism for political advantage; meanwhile the Right is constantly outraged by Confederate monuments being taken down, white men becoming “second-class citizens,” [Citation Needed], and the War on Christmas)

I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities throughout this interview to get back to the specific inconsistencies in Damore’s memo, but I gotta move on because we’re not even twelve minutes into this thing. But here’s the overall problem:

Damore’s memo is making definitive statements on gender, psychology and biology based on readings of data that show sex differences in reported psychological traits/preferences. Why these differences occur is largely unaddressed by Damore, but his implicit cause given is “biological.”

Meanwhile there’s consensus amongst most neurological researchers: There’s a lot we don’t know.

“Our results demonstrate that regardless of the cause of observed sex/gender differences in brain and behavior (nature or nurture), human brains cannot be categorized into two distinct classes: male brain/female brain.”

While there are many physical differences in the brains of men and women-- men tend to have larger brains, women have more neural connectivity in regions linked to memory, etc. --identifying the differences hasn’t lead scientists closer to understanding what results come from these differences or why they occur.

But Damore’s claims are absolutist, saying things like:

“For heterosexual romantic relationships, men are more strongly judged by status and women by beauty. Again, this has biological origins and is culturally universal.”

The first source is a 1992 study that examines the mate preferences for two groups of men and women, the findings showing that women ranked Good Financial Prospect higher and Physical Attractiveness lower than men did for women. I couldn’t find a full copy of the report or review it’s data, but I was able to find another Evolutionary Psychology paper [Download] that tested the same theories and the data was consistent with the 1992 study.

I was underwhelmed by the differences:

Tardinic and Hromatko conclude that “the results of this study confirmed some of the main predictions about sex differences in mate selection strategies and mate preferences,” but suggest:

“What should be done in future studies is to take into account behavioral measures and see how much the preferences existing in self-reports actually influence the mate choice.”

So these minor differences reported by the subjects may not be acted upon, and the social conditions that shape these preferences are unaccounted for.

The second citation is a study on the possible prosocial and antisocial behaviors caused by testosterone, which only examined male responses to varying levels of testosterone injections. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with how the study was conducted, but to make conclusions about gender differences based on this study where only one gender was examined is flawed logic on Damore’s part.

Another thing of note is where Damore specified these mate preferences applied to heterosexual couples. How do homosexuals fit in with his theories? The American Counseling Association explain that Damore’s theories may be based more on cultural beliefs than he is admitting/aware:

“The cultural gender belief system suggests that masculine and feminine gender roles are distinct, stable, and tied to biological sex.” 

- The Intersection Between Sexism and Sexual Prejudice (Rees, Doyle, & Miesch)

11:45 - 14:00

Jordan asks about the details of Damore’s firing. Jordan asks how Damore is “holding up” because this is a hard-hitting interview.

(For a guy who hates the idea of an ideological “echo chamber,” Damore seems to prefer likeminded interviewers)

In response to Damore saying he’s received a surprising amount of support, Jordan suspects something: “-in fact I’m virtually certain that you have a majority viewpoint. It’s just the people who hold the alternative perspective, which are the radical* social-constructionist types who insist that everything is a consequence of socialization-- they’re little bit more organized politically but they’re clearly wrong scientifically. Wrong factually. They’re wrong ethically for that matter!”

Throughout the interview, Jordan continues to dismiss his critics as ‘radicals,’ but as Elisabeth Lloyd un-radically argued:

Again, it is essential to reject the false dichotomy that is frequently set up rhetorically in these discussions: the choice is not between accepting the particular evolutionary psychological proposal under consideration, or rejecting an evolutionary approach to psychological or social traits altogether.

Since Jordan’s view is that there is hardly any discussion of biological factors in psychological traits, I’ll say again that nowhere in this interview/Damore’s memo is sexism’s cost to women and their opportunities talked about. Some would say that Jordan, Damore (and maybe Anon) are the type of people to support “radical [evolutionary psychology] who insist everything is a consequence of [biology].”

Jordan argues that the Left is better organized politically. I am seriously laughing my ass off right now. I have said since the age of 14 (as a Lefty) that Democrats and the Left suck at politics. Back when I was 14, Republicans were selling the Democrats as “terrorist sympathizers” and people bought it. Republicans and the Right have always played the game better since before I was born. I’d point out that the Right currently has:

The Presidency

The Supreme Court

52 Senate seats

240 seats in the U.S. House

34 Governors

32 State Legislatures (26 of those also have Republican governors, meaning over half the country is under total Republican legislative control)

Even Damore’s memo cites an excerpt from ‘The Righteous Mind’ by Jonathan Haidt, a book which states that the Right has “a broader palette of moral triggers to work with in their campaigns and political arguments.”

14:00 - 15:30

Damore says that getting fired “sucks” but it proves him right in his point that Google is silencing all dissent.

Google’s decision to fire Damore is exactly what I mean when I say the Left is the worst at politics. Now the Right has a new martyr and they can change the conversation from the wrongness of Damore’s claims to the wrongness of Google firing him.

There is part of me that had a knee-jerk reaction to thinking Google’s handling of the situation wasn’t the best. But then I gave Damore’s memo a minor tweak:

“Note, I’m not saying that all [white people] differ from all [black people] in the following ways or that these differences are ‘just.’ I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of [white people] and [black people] differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of [black people] in tech and leadership.”

If the memo was arguing that there were inherent biological differences due to racial ancestry that were dramatic enough to explain modern instances of unequal status, I don’t think anyone would be upset that Damore was fired. 

If you think that’s an unfair parallel, I’d argue that there’s not much difference in the two arguments when the bottom-line for both are that the traits for success are genetically ingrained and minimally affected by environment/society or experience (to a point of not discussing, anyway). As Jordan will point out later in the interview, hyper-successful people tend to be men and the reasons for this are likely biological.

I’d say Google firing Damore was less about political ideas and more about the reality that Google is currently under federal investigation for “systemic compensation disparities” against women, and this memo put some very negative attention on them. And with a memo like this out there, Damore was litigious nightmare and ”a hostile-workplace complaint waiting to happen.”

But none of that matters because the Right has already gotten #Fired4Truth trending on Twitter. Like I said, they’re great at politics. Meanwhile the Left is either playing defense or writing tedious arguments that get posted long after the story has lost traction.

15:30 - 18:30

Jordan praises engineers because they are “not a very political group.” What is it with these guys and unfounded stereotypes?

Jordan has more generalizations to get to:

“It’s been very difficult for the Swedes, for example, to flatten out the gender distribution for engineers in Sweden and the Scandinavian countries in general despite their ‘advance social engineering,’ let’s call it, and they also can’t get male nurses where 4 out of 5 nurses[…], if I remember correctly, are female and [the] reverse number of engineers are male. And that seems associated with this quite well-founded, um, scientific observation that women tilt towards interest in people and that men tilt [their] interest towards things and that’s associated with testosterone exposure in utero. This is solid science!”

Cordelia Fine would point out:

“People simply don’t develop a successful career doing one thing really well, like identifying facial expressions of emotion, being sympathetic, or being able to bang a fist on a boardroom table in a highly effective way. What’s more, for most jobs there simply isn’t one single ideal combination of characteristics, skills and motivations, but a range that could all fit the bill equally nicely.”

Josef Parvizi, Assistant professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University Medical Center

Fast Company: Everything You Believe Is Wrong

“Busting the Myth of Women as Risk Averse” (Gupta, Maxfield, Shapiro, & Hass)  

“Prejudice and Truth About the Effect of Testosterone on Human Bargaining Behaviour” (Eisenegger, Naef, Snozzi, Heinrichs & Fehr)

And again, there is no evidence or data offered by Damore or Jordan to support the claim that men and women go into these fields (engineering and nursing, respectively) in disproportionate numbers due to innate biological factors. If Damore and Jordan are keeping social factors in mind, they’re being very quiet about it.

18:30 - 25:00

Jordan complains about the lack of the political Right’s representation in academia. Maybe he’d prefer some kind of diversity hiring practices to be implemented so there’s equal representation in political viewpoints?

To be clear, Jordan does not advocate this…in this statement…explicitly. He will go on to say throughout the interview that Conscientiousness is a trait more associated with the Right (this is also in Damore’s memo), and then say towards the end of the interview that hiring practices should be weighted to favor Conscientiousness.

At Google, we talk so much about unconscious bias as it applies to race and gender, but we rarely discuss our moral biases. Political orientation is actually a result of deep moral preferences and thus biases.”

Damore’s memo and Jordan equate the biases for political values with biases about gender and race, ignoring the fact that political values are malleable (see: Ronald Reagan and others) and concealable in a way gender and race are not, exposing them to considerably less prejudice.

They discuss the where things go from here for Damore. Jordan relates his experiences with the press- “…you’ll get jumped on and [they’ll] call you the sorts of epithets that would be appropriate if you were a bad guy.”

I don’t know what this means. Jordan has deduced that Damore is a good guy after reading ten pages of Damore’s writing and getting to know Damore over the course of twenty-one minutes (this may be a slight exaggeration, but they’ve only known each other for a short amount of time wherein Damore was in the public eye championing Jordan’s views/attacking views that Jordan is critical of). Jordan has every reason to want to give Damore the benefit of the doubt, and does so in a way that he doesn’t seem to extend to his critics.

Jordan equates Damore’s calm demeanor as a sign of rationality. I wouldn’t call Damore a ranting-raving champion of Mens’ Rights, but it’s a false equivalency to say that because his arguments are being stated in an even tone means that they are reasonable arguments.

Jordan hypothesizes that the media will eventually rally around Damore and commends the press for being champions of free speech at the end of the day.

25:00 - 31:30

Jordan says that it’s unfortunate that Google and the media are using a “broad brush” to paint Damore and the memo’s ideas. Seriously. This memo that says women are more into “aesthetics than ideas” (because: biology) is being unfairly painted with a “broad brush.”

Jordan commends Damore’s memo for it’s detailed analysis. I don’t know what copy of the memo Jordan is reading, but I want a copy.

Jordan builds on Damore’s theories on the traits inherent in certain groups of people on average:

 “The data is solid […] our research has indicated that ‘open’ people, who are primarily liberals, start companies and the more ‘closed’ people, the conservatives, the traditionalists, are good at running it.”

I went through this interview’s citations and found the article that best corresponds with this observation, which argues that political beliefs are heritable, meaning caused by genetic disposition. Not life experience or education, but genetics. This is dangerously close to biological determinism and eugenic thinking. That’s not even being hyperbolic.  

Jordan refers to “our research,” but no such research is listed in the citations to support his claims that the Left is good at starting stuff but can’t follow through, or the inverse for the Right.

Jordan keeps reading from the memo, pointing out the graph that Damore provided. The data that Damore used for this graph is not sourced, so it’s impossible to look at what research this graph is based upon. Another example of Damore’s detail-oriented thesis.

31:40 - 35:05

Jordan: 

“[Google is arguing that] men and women and people of different races are so different that in order for a full diversity of viewpoints to be achieved you have pull in people by race and gender-- which implicitly states that the differences are so great that the distributions [of traits] don’t overlap. Right? You couldn’t make a more racist and misogynist statement than that.”

Google is arguing that the differences between men, women, and people of different races is in the opportunities given to them, not their inherent traits or skills. That’s what Damore and Jordan are arguing (maybe not the ‘race’ part, though).

And it should be pointed out that the same arguments have been made against affirmative action, but the legal consensus (even from judges and scholars on the Right) is best surmised:

“The rule for hiring the most competent was justified as part of a right to equal opportunity to succeed through socially productive effort, and on grounds of increased welfare for all members of society. Since it is justified in relation to a right to equal opportunity, and since the application of the rule may simply compound injustices when opportunities are unequal elsewhere in the system, the creation of opportunities takes precedence when in conflict with the rule for awarding positions. Thus short-run violations of the rule are justified to create a more just distribution of benefits by applying the rule itself in future years.” - Alan Goldman

For more on arguments for/against Affirmative Action: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2017 Edition)

Jordan on Damore’s list of personality traits inherent to women (on average): 

“…you were taken to task for using the word ‘neuroticism’-- however that is the technical term in personality literature, there are historical reasons for that. A better word might be ‘negative emotion.’ But it’s clearly the case that women are higher in negative emotion than men.”

Women are higher in negative emotion and lower stress tolerance compared to men? Yet men are more likely to suffer from stress-related illness such as heart attack or stroke at a younger age than women. While women do suffer from more strokes on average annually, it should be noted that these strokes occur later in life for women and the longer median lifespan of women is attributed as the reason for the higher rate. 

And while some studies show women report higher levels of stress, even Damore states that social pressures make it so “[men] are expected to be strong, to not complain, and to deal with problems on their own,” suggesting men may suffer from equal levels of stress and negative emotion but are simply less likely to report it or even acknowledge it to themselves.

Other things on neuroticism:

The Origins of Neuroticism (Barlow, Ellard, Sauer-Zavala, Bullis, Carl)

Neuroticism and Men’s Sexual Coercion as Reported by Both Partners in a Community Sample of Couples (Daspe, Sabourin, Godbout, Lussier & Hébert)

Telegraph: “Worrying is good for you and reflects higher IQ”

Examining Sexism Through the Lens of the Five-Factor Model (Vick)            

"The Stress Process and Social Distribution of Depression” (Lloyd & Turner)

Jordan brings up Damore’s point that societies that strive for gender parity tend to find more instances of differences in mate preferences, suggesting an evolutionary origin for the gender differences. This is hardly the scientific consensus, as two major studies examined by Klaudia Mitura and Marcel Zentner revealed:

“Both studies show that gender differences in mate preferences with presumed evolutionary roots decline proportionally to increases in nations’ gender parity.”

Jordan: “We all know women are hypergamous when they choose men on the basis of their socio-economic status.”

Again, Jordan and Damore present this as something that’s a biological given (“[Women do this] rationally because women have to make themselves dependent when they are pregnant and then they have infants,” [There are 11.5 million single moms in the U.S. that would likely disagree with this]) and ignores the social factors that created an environment where this would occur.

Jordan even seems to recognize the folly of this line arguing, following up with: 

“You are not diverting from the central tenets of evolutionary psychology and biology. People will dispute those findings, but you’re not conjuring this out of thin air.” 

“You didn’t make up this faulty argument on your own, you’re referencing an already established faulty argument.” (Ed. Straw-man!)

35:10 - 39:30

Looking at U.S. labor statistics on gender difference in occupation, Jordan says: “It’s so funny to watch the radical* feminists go after only the highest status occupations. It’s like 100% of brick-layers are men. We don’t hear that being complained about.”

If dozens of women were to speak up and say they wanted bricklaying jobs but were forced out due to a ‘toxic environment,’ or if women were once proficient in the bricklaying industry but suffered a decline in interest after a shift in social perception, we’d be having a debate about bricklaying. 

But that’s not the case and the same is not true for the tech industry.

Jordan reads from the memo and adds his own take on it: 

“’Women are on average more cooperative--’ Yeah, especially with members of their In-Group. Whether they’re more cooperative with members in their Out-Group is different story, right? […] I think that’s partly why the ‘PC-types’ are so hard on their enemies.”

Where to begin with this…

This is the most explicit statement in the interview that equates feminine traits with the Left and masculine traits with the Right. How this conclusion is reached is unclear, but it’s a belief of Jordan’s (and very possibly Damore) that’s important to keep in mind.

Jordan is saying that women/Left-folk will prioritize those within their peer-group and family more than men/Right-folk. Anything to back it up? Nope. Just an anecdote that confirms his worldview.

Jordan says that the Lefty PC-types are the bullies while the Right is trying to be Reasonable™. Go read a Breitbart article and tell me how soft and fluffy the non-PC-types are.

Jordan continues reading: “’Woman on average look for more work-life balance.’ That SEEMS to be the case…I don’t know if the literature is as tight on that, y’know?” LOL. Even Jordan has some doubts about this argument.

Jordan gives an anecdote about how difficult it is for law-firms to keep female partners because they don’t want to work 60 hours a week and are unable to be as focused as male partners. No data, just an anecdote. Anon prompts for further details from Jordan on this. Jordan replies:

“We’ve got to get the mystery right here. The mystery isn’t why are there a bunch of people who are low status. Because almost everyone’s low status […] men and women alike. It’s a small minority of people who are high status on any dimension, and they tend to be hyper-successful and they tend to be men.”

Jordan is approaching this from an evolutionary psychological standpoint, so it’s not a stretch to say that he believes that the hyper-successful traits are more commonly found in men due to biological factors. Men are inherently inclined to be more intelligent and successful, absent environmental/societal factors, and are burdened with this genetic gift that nature has bestowed. Jordan’s saying that this is a Reasonable™ fact that women and the Left need to just deal with. Preferably quietly.

One rationale for this is that in the last 100 years of IQ test scores, men have had the higher scores. But what Jordan and Damore ignore is that the female IQ has risen at a faster rate than men, and what they fail to address is that many colleges didn’t become coed until later in the 20th century (Dartmouth in 1972 and Yale in 1969), which greatly undermined educational opportunities accessible to women that were available to men.

Even one of Damore’s citations, “The War Against Boys,” points out females are more academically engaged, have higher grades on average, and that “the [IQ] scores do not even signify lower achievement by girls.”

Jordan agrees with the memo’s point that standards will likely need to be lowered in order to create gender parity. The same concerns were brought up when colleges became co-ed, but the opposite has happened:

”...while some college presidents fret to increase male enrollments they’ll be forced to lower standards (which is, incidentally, exactly the opposite of what they worried about 25 years ago when they all went coeducational) no one seems to find gender disparities going the other way all that upsetting. Of the top colleges and universities in the nation, only Stanford sports a 50-50 gender balance. Harvard and Amherst enroll 56% men, Princeton and Chicago 54% men, Duke and Berkeley 52% and Yale 51%.” 

- “’What About the Boys?’ What the Current Debates Tell Us, and Don’t Tell Us About Boys in School” (Kimmel)

(Note: This report came out in 2000, around the same time as “The War Against Boys.”)

39:30 - 43:10

Jordan criticizes the reliability of Implicit Associations Tests, which are meant test for unconscious bias, and I would agree with him. While evidence for unconscious bias holds up, the idea that this test or any currently developed can accurately measure this bias is dubious at best.

NY Magazine: “Psychology’s Favorite Tool for Measuring Racism Isn’t Up to the Job”

Jordan loses me again when he says appropriate hiring practices “should be objective standards that are universally applied, without bias, because that’s the best we can do.” 

Jordan believes the world is by and large unbiased. Sounds lovely. I’d like to live in that world, but evidence consistently proves we don’t.

”The Sociology of Discrimination: Racial Discrimination in Employment, Housing, Credit, and Consumer Markets” (Pager & Shepherd)

“Investors prefer entrepreneurial ventures pitched by attractive men” (Brooks, Huang, Kearney, & Murray)

“Male-Female Differences: A Computer Simulation” (Martell, Emrich & Lane)

”Constructed Criteria: Redefining Merit to Justify Discrimination” (Uhlmann & Cohen)

“Formal and Interpersonal Discrimination: A Field Study of Bias Toward Homosexual Applicants” (Hebl, Foster, Mannix & Dovidio)

"BS AT WORK: How Benevolent Sexism Undermines Women and Justifies Backlash” (Glick)

“No Credit Where Credit Is Due: Attributional Rationalization of Women’s Success in Male–Female Teams” (Heilman &Haynes)

“Ambient Belonging: How Stereotypical Cues Impact Gender Participation in Computer Science" (Cheryan, Plaut, Davies & Steele)

“Killings of Black Men by Whites are Far More Likely to be Ruled ‘Justifiable’” (Flagg & Lathrop)

Also, if being unbiased is a conscious choice, one of these days we should all really get around to choosing to not be biased, and then all political and religious views and races and genders and orientations will be accepted.

Anon returns from the ether to ask Jordan if there’s an optimum stress-tolerance level in the workplace, reasoning that certain levels of anxiety can actually help motivate and propel a person to advance. If this is true, Jordan/Damore’s theory that women are skewed to have higher levels of Neuroticism can’t really be viewed as a handicap to the success of women in the workplace.

Jordan disagrees with Anon, saying that Neuroticism is associated with negative emotions such as self-loathing and depression, and says this is nothing but detrimental to a person’s success. 

I don’t think Jordan has ever heard of Larry David. Anon wins this round.

43:10 - 48:00

Jordan says:

“The best hiring screeners are the Big Five personality test, roughly speaking, especially weighted towards Conscientiousness.”

If Jordan believes that values are ingrained, isn’t this tantamount to discrimination? (Ed. Pulling a Damore and gonna say that I’m just asking questions and want to be proven wrong) 

Don’t forget, Damore and Jordan believe Conscientiousness to be a trait more commonly found in conservatives (because: Biology).

Anon wonders what the American Defamation League will do in cases concerning Jewish people being excluded from leadership positions. Not exactly sure what cases or leadership positions he’s referring to. Jordan goes on to talk about how Asians are not being accepted into universities on the grounds of diversity.

This was something I heard about a few weeks ago and have been thinking on it ever since. In the end I hold to the idea that diversity must be nurtured in our (academic) institutions and if that puts admissions boards in an awkward position, so be it. Some Asian American groups have claimed that Harvard is using implicit racial quotas (such quotas are illegal), but other groups representing Asian Americans students have argued: 

“Neither of us believes that any racial or ethnic group should be subjected to quotas. Nor do we believe that test scores alone entitle anyone to admission at Harvard. Students are more than their test scores and grades.”

Back to the memo:

“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.”

I’m honestly not sure what Damore is saying. Is he saying that affective empathy is being used to justify diversification at Google, as opposed to an “emotionally unengaged” reasoning? This is not credible as there is ample evidence showing the benefits of diversification in business:

“Do Differences Make a Difference: The Effects of Diversity on Learning, Intergroup Outcomes, and Civic Engagement” (Holoien)

"The Financial And Economic Returns to Diversity in Tech” (Thomas, Dougherty, Strand, Nayar, & Janani)

Forbes: “ Fostering Innovation Through a Diverse Workforce”

"What is the Impact of Gender Diversity on Technology Business Performance?” ( Barker, Mancha, & Ashcraft)”

This doesn’t seem to be a disagreement about policy, just that Damore personally doesn’t emphasize affective empathy like some of his peers and I don’t think Damore should be forced to. If Google created a policy that mandated this, I’d oppose it. But Google doesn’t have such a policy, so...

Jordan on why Empathy (a more feminine trait/value of the Left, according to Jordan/Damore’s binary system) is not a good ethic for running a company, but Conscientiousness (a more masculine trait/value of the Right) is: 

“We don’t have good animal models for Conscientiousness, see. Conscientiousness probably evolved so that human beings could operate in groups that were than just kin size, yknow?”

To break that down:

Jordan admits to having no reliable data

He speculates that a trait he believes is inclined towards conservatives/men is the superior trait to running institutions of wealth and power, and that liberal/Female inherent values are better suited to the homestead and family. 

No ass-backwards implicit misogyny here, folks. Just a Reasonable™, unbiased observation.

48:00 - 51:09

Jordan and Damore wrap it up, discussing Damore’s current situation and future plans.