6 ms·

The e-mail Larry Page should have written to James Damore

67 points by egb 9y ago

trevyn 9y ago
Larry doesn't really send company-wide emails anymore, that's Sundar's job now.
sauronlord 9y ago
Paywall? Didnt realize HN was promoting The Economist revenues
sauronlord 9y ago
What is this horseshit. Try reading it if you dare. So Damore misrepresents things and this letter pretends to be Larry. What the hell has this world come to where this counts as "news"
DarkKomunalec 9y ago
> Your memo was a great example of what’s called “motivated reasoning” Guess he'll have to join the throngs of people fired for motivated reasoning to arrive at 'diversity is strength' and 'everyone is equal'.
- CobrastanJorji 9y ago
  I see you are interested in logical fallacies. You may also be interested in the one called "tu quoque."
  - maehwasu 9y ago
    By that logic, you are never allowed to notice the unbalanced application of a rule or principle. Slightly off-topic, most "logical fallacies" actually have very important heuristic uses. Just to get the ball rolling, "ad hominem" becomes extremely useful in a world in which we have limited access to full information, and have to constantly evaluate the reliability of outside parties.
  - Chris2048 9y ago
    That only counts for logical arguments. There is an assumption that if a reason is given for firing someone, anyone should be fired under the same circumstances on basis of fair treatment.
  - why128319 9y ago
    A pure "tu quoque" fallacy like the contrived example here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque rarely happens. Step three is really missing most of the time. Calling out hypocrisy has the purpose of questioning self-righteousness. It is used to puncture the reality distortion field that some smug people use to "win" discussions. Since not everyone is a Vulcan, calling out hypocrisy has a legitimate purpose.
- maehwasu 9y ago
  Not sure why you're getting downvoted. Those two statements are not obviously true in any sense other than "they sound good and only BAD people dispute them."
metalliqaz 9y ago
Pretty good article. The economist can be counted on for insightful takes on current events. I recommend everyone add it to their daily reading list. There is one problem with the article, though. It's not going to bring along any of the right-leaning people who are upset about anti-male discrimination and other such things. The article opens (smartly) by calling out “motivated reasoning”. But by the end, it references a list of lefty (from their perspective) links. Perhaps a better interpretation of Damore's own references would have been better. Is it so unacceptable to admit that yes, men and women are different, but not mutually exclusive, and that women have plenty of the things the company wants? Edited last sentence for clarification.
- alexandercrohde 9y ago
  I entirely disagree on the "Motivated reasoning," point. Making that suggestion serves to discredit an argument without providing evidence (and complicates the debate) and it's doubly un-useful because either side could use it here (or in almost any argument)
  - metalliqaz 9y ago
    That would only be true if the criticism was "motivated reasoning" and nothing else. Going on to cite and discuss evidence for your claim is a good argument. You could say the same about "ad hominem" or "straw man". I could just argue against anything by saying those things, even if they aren't true. Let's look at motivated reasoning in this case. Google has diversity initiatives. What is their motive? Google exists to make money for their shareholders, the greatest beneficiaries being the executives and the board. Google has determined that they can be more successful (and therefore make more money) by being inclusive. Seriously now, how likely do you think it is that a company like Google is willing to give up their technical edge?
    - benchaney 9y ago
      > You could say the same about "ad hominem" or "straw man". I could just argue against anything by saying those things, even if they aren't true. These sorts of arguments are easy to refute. Motivated reasoning is impossible to prove in either direction.
adamnemecek 9y ago
"Have you ever noticed how no one takes sentences that start “I’m not a racist, but…” at face value? Here’s why, in the words of Jon Snow in “Game of Thrones” (season 7, episode 1). When Sansa Stark tells him: “They respect you, they really do, but…,” Snow laughs and comes back with: “What did father used to say? Everything before the word ‘but’ is horseshit.”" Lol, dem millennials with their games of throne, avocado toasts and snapchatting amiriteguise? Pls subscribe and disable the ad block, we'll keep referencing game of throne in every article. Pls, pls.
- devmunchies 9y ago
  a quote from a fictional realm in a fictional letter... followed by some stereotypes
FLUX-YOU 9y ago
What a dumb pretense for an article. If you want to write something criticizing James' memo, just do that. Don't use Larry Page as a scenario for your message and headline.
- alexandercrohde 9y ago
  I almost wonder if they're hoping people will misread the article, think it was an email, and share it on that mistake. It's strange to contrive hypothetical headers.
  - knicholes 9y ago
    I misread the article and thought it actually was an email from Larry Page.
  - mosdave 9y ago
    I don't disagree with your point, but this is a literary device that the Economist uses sometimes.
- Aron 9y ago
  The article is peppered with condescension and dismissal like 'I shouldn’t have had to write this: I’m busy and a little effort on your part would have made it unnecessary.' Maybe the author is more comfortable role-playing Larry Page with stuff like that.
  - curun1r 9y ago
    It's also kinda funny that the author calls out Damore for motivated reasoning and then...goes on to write paragraph after paragraph of motivated reasoning. It's basically impossible to discuss this subject without it being motivated reasoning. It's a profession in which it is notoriously difficult to measure aptitude and productivity. And it's a field of study that's a landmine for researchers to study for exactly the same reason as the fact that every single Damore-related thread here blows up into an uncivilized moderation war filled with name calling and insults. We're still at a point where the science isn't pointing one way or the other and we haven't even settled on any decent metric to give to the scientists to calibrate any testing they'd be brave enough to explore. Is it any wonder that discussions on this topic are rife with confirmation bias? We're not going to approach anything resembling a productive conversation on this topic until both sides concede that the other side might have some point and that the true answer, as almost all true answers do, lies somewhere in between the polar ends of the spectrum that people argue from.
IanDrake 9y ago
Decries "unsupported claims" then goes on the make a whole bunch of unsupported claims. Not very compelling, which is too bad because I was hoping to read something a lot more succinct.
keepper 9y ago
Great article. If anyone who agrees with James Damore's point is motivated to see the reason these arguments are summarily dismissed by many, I recommend reading "the mismeasure of man", by Stephen Jay Gould. The idea of biological determinism has one fatal flaw... the grouping.
- jackcosgrove 9y ago
  Stephen Jay Gould was later found out to have mismeasured data he used in that book. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/science/14skull.html?referer= https://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/science/14skull.html?r...
- splintercell 9y ago
  What do you think about Steven Pinker's "Blank Slate". I think he does a good job of refuting Gould's work.
mosdave 9y ago
so not only has the Economist taken to quoting Game of Thrones, but it now--taking as axiomatic the validity of said quote--projects this assumed validity onto the interpretation of real-world events? What a time to be alive.
- trevyn 9y ago
  Generalizing from fictional evidence! This is a thing! http://lesswrong.com/lw/k9/the_logical_fallacy_of_generalization_from/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/k9/the_logical_fallacy_of_generaliza...
xname2 9y ago
Really great reasoning here, looking forward to see football and basketball teams start to recruit more Asians.
Aron 9y ago
Pretty sure in a critically charged environment this article would fare far worse than the one it is criticizing. And the tone is so snotty and condescending.
jackcosgrove 9y ago
The article makes many of the same errors that they accuse Damore of making. It's inherent in rhetoric, also known as "motivated reasoning". I guess whoever draws the line between rhetoric and comprehensive, good-faith arguments wins the day.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
devindotcom 9y ago
This was definitely the best takedown I've read of not just the claims but the ideas behind the claims made in the memo.
altavila 9y ago
If this whole debacle has proven one thing is that there are a lot of assholes on Hacker News. Thank you for that.
sctb 9y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15020532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15020532
bberrry 9y ago
It baffles me how this rebuttal is convincing to anyone. Damore argued group differences are in part responsible for the relatively fewer women in tech. I can't see how that over-arching point has been refuted here, no matter how snarky the response.
- PrimHelios 9y ago
  Because he didn't provide any proof of his claim except a few cherry-picked misinterpreted Wikipedia articles. What proof is there that biological differences are at all responsible? Damore clearly can't seem to find any, or he just didn't care enough to try to find any. His over-arching point is fundamentally incorrect (as evidenced by the fact that other countries see engineering as a stereotypically female job), and even if it were correct, he didn't provide any actually acceptable proof of said claim. Let's ignore what I just said though and look at your "group differences are in part responsible" line there. What does it matter if something is in part responsible? How does that at all completely invalidate the possibility that Google is discriminatory? Let's say for a second that Google actually does discriminate against women. Is that perfectly fine now because biological differences are in part to blame? How does that at all invalidate the actual problem being addressed by the diversity memo?
  - Chris2048 9y ago
    For the articles to be "cherry-picked" they must be picked from ones that draw an opposite conclusion. There is a difference between proving something is possible and that something is True. Damore may have only demonstrated the first, but this is enough to refute the claim "There is sexism in tech because the gender ratio is not equal". This is why it is important that group differences are in part responsible - it puts a burden on Google et al to find the magnitude if that influence, rather than attribute all of it to sexism. In other words, you can't attribute anything to sexism (without proof) as soon as there are multiple possible influences/causes.
    - PrimHelios 9y ago
      >For the articles to be "cherry-picked" they must be picked from ones that draw an opposite conclusion. No, it means he picked articles that supported his viewpoint while ignoring the ones that didn't. >There is a difference between proving something is possible and that something is True. Damore may have only demonstrated the first, but this is enough to refute the claim "There is sexism in tech because the gender ratio is not equal". Damore demonstrated the first, and then used that to say that to completely discount any sexism in tech. >This is why it is important that group differences are in part responsible - it puts a burden on Google et al to find the magnitude if that influence, rather than attribute all of it to sexism. In other words, you can't attribute anything to sexism (without proof) as soon as there are multiple possible influences/causes. That exact statement could be used against Damore and his supporters. EDIT: to add to this, Damore would've been completely justified if he had said this to open a dialogue, but he didn't. He should have said "There are multiple possibilities, let's not immediately jump to conclusions.", but he didn't. He took a handful of Wikipedia articles, twisted around what they said to fit his confirmation bias, then said "I'm right, you're wrong, deal with it." and then claimed that was the truth (his twitter handle is @fired4truth). He's very clearly a narcissist who can't handle that he could possibly be wrong.

67 points by egb 9y ago

trevyn 9y ago

Larry doesn't really send company-wide emails anymore, that's Sundar's job now.

sauronlord 9y ago

Paywall? Didnt realize HN was promoting The Economist revenues

sauronlord 9y ago

What is this horseshit. Try reading it if you dare. So Damore misrepresents things and this letter pretends to be Larry. What the hell has this world come to where this counts as "news"

DarkKomunalec 9y ago

> Your memo was a great example of what’s called “motivated reasoning” Guess he'll have to join the throngs of people fired for motivated reasoning to arrive at 'diversity is strength' and 'everyone is equal'.

CobrastanJorji 9y ago
I see you are interested in logical fallacies. You may also be interested in the one called "tu quoque."
- maehwasu 9y ago
  By that logic, you are never allowed to notice the unbalanced application of a rule or principle. Slightly off-topic, most "logical fallacies" actually have very important heuristic uses. Just to get the ball rolling, "ad hominem" becomes extremely useful in a world in which we have limited access to full information, and have to constantly evaluate the reliability of outside parties.
- Chris2048 9y ago
  That only counts for logical arguments. There is an assumption that if a reason is given for firing someone, anyone should be fired under the same circumstances on basis of fair treatment.
- why128319 9y ago
  A pure "tu quoque" fallacy like the contrived example here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque rarely happens. Step three is really missing most of the time. Calling out hypocrisy has the purpose of questioning self-righteousness. It is used to puncture the reality distortion field that some smug people use to "win" discussions. Since not everyone is a Vulcan, calling out hypocrisy has a legitimate purpose.
maehwasu 9y ago
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. Those two statements are not obviously true in any sense other than "they sound good and only BAD people dispute them."

metalliqaz 9y ago

Pretty good article. The economist can be counted on for insightful takes on current events. I recommend everyone add it to their daily reading list. There is one problem with the article, though. It's not going to bring along any of the right-leaning people who are upset about anti-male discrimination and other such things. The article opens (smartly) by calling out “motivated reasoning”. But by the end, it references a list of lefty (from their perspective) links. Perhaps a better interpretation of Damore's own references would have been better. Is it so unacceptable to admit that yes, men and women are different, but not mutually exclusive, and that women have plenty of the things the company wants? Edited last sentence for clarification.

alexandercrohde 9y ago
I entirely disagree on the "Motivated reasoning," point. Making that suggestion serves to discredit an argument without providing evidence (and complicates the debate) and it's doubly un-useful because either side could use it here (or in almost any argument)
- metalliqaz 9y ago
  That would only be true if the criticism was "motivated reasoning" and nothing else. Going on to cite and discuss evidence for your claim is a good argument. You could say the same about "ad hominem" or "straw man". I could just argue against anything by saying those things, even if they aren't true. Let's look at motivated reasoning in this case. Google has diversity initiatives. What is their motive? Google exists to make money for their shareholders, the greatest beneficiaries being the executives and the board. Google has determined that they can be more successful (and therefore make more money) by being inclusive. Seriously now, how likely do you think it is that a company like Google is willing to give up their technical edge?
  - benchaney 9y ago
    > You could say the same about "ad hominem" or "straw man". I could just argue against anything by saying those things, even if they aren't true. These sorts of arguments are easy to refute. Motivated reasoning is impossible to prove in either direction.

adamnemecek 9y ago

"Have you ever noticed how no one takes sentences that start “I’m not a racist, but…” at face value? Here’s why, in the words of Jon Snow in “Game of Thrones” (season 7, episode 1). When Sansa Stark tells him: “They respect you, they really do, but…,” Snow laughs and comes back with: “What did father used to say? Everything before the word ‘but’ is horseshit.”" Lol, dem millennials with their games of throne, avocado toasts and snapchatting amiriteguise? Pls subscribe and disable the ad block, we'll keep referencing game of throne in every article. Pls, pls.

devmunchies 9y ago
a quote from a fictional realm in a fictional letter... followed by some stereotypes

FLUX-YOU 9y ago

What a dumb pretense for an article. If you want to write something criticizing James' memo, just do that. Don't use Larry Page as a scenario for your message and headline.

alexandercrohde 9y ago
I almost wonder if they're hoping people will misread the article, think it was an email, and share it on that mistake. It's strange to contrive hypothetical headers.
- knicholes 9y ago
  I misread the article and thought it actually was an email from Larry Page.
- mosdave 9y ago
  I don't disagree with your point, but this is a literary device that the Economist uses sometimes.
Aron 9y ago
The article is peppered with condescension and dismissal like 'I shouldn’t have had to write this: I’m busy and a little effort on your part would have made it unnecessary.' Maybe the author is more comfortable role-playing Larry Page with stuff like that.
- curun1r 9y ago
  It's also kinda funny that the author calls out Damore for motivated reasoning and then...goes on to write paragraph after paragraph of motivated reasoning. It's basically impossible to discuss this subject without it being motivated reasoning. It's a profession in which it is notoriously difficult to measure aptitude and productivity. And it's a field of study that's a landmine for researchers to study for exactly the same reason as the fact that every single Damore-related thread here blows up into an uncivilized moderation war filled with name calling and insults. We're still at a point where the science isn't pointing one way or the other and we haven't even settled on any decent metric to give to the scientists to calibrate any testing they'd be brave enough to explore. Is it any wonder that discussions on this topic are rife with confirmation bias? We're not going to approach anything resembling a productive conversation on this topic until both sides concede that the other side might have some point and that the true answer, as almost all true answers do, lies somewhere in between the polar ends of the spectrum that people argue from.

IanDrake 9y ago

Decries "unsupported claims" then goes on the make a whole bunch of unsupported claims. Not very compelling, which is too bad because I was hoping to read something a lot more succinct.

keepper 9y ago

Great article. If anyone who agrees with James Damore's point is motivated to see the reason these arguments are summarily dismissed by many, I recommend reading "the mismeasure of man", by Stephen Jay Gould. The idea of biological determinism has one fatal flaw... the grouping.

jackcosgrove 9y ago
Stephen Jay Gould was later found out to have mismeasured data he used in that book. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/science/14skull.html?referer= https://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/science/14skull.html?r...
splintercell 9y ago
What do you think about Steven Pinker's "Blank Slate". I think he does a good job of refuting Gould's work.

mosdave 9y ago

so not only has the Economist taken to quoting Game of Thrones, but it now--taking as axiomatic the validity of said quote--projects this assumed validity onto the interpretation of real-world events? What a time to be alive.

trevyn 9y ago
Generalizing from fictional evidence! This is a thing! http://lesswrong.com/lw/k9/the_logical_fallacy_of_generalization_from/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/k9/the_logical_fallacy_of_generaliza...

xname2 9y ago

Really great reasoning here, looking forward to see football and basketball teams start to recruit more Asians.

Aron 9y ago

Pretty sure in a critically charged environment this article would fare far worse than the one it is criticizing. And the tone is so snotty and condescending.

jackcosgrove 9y ago

The article makes many of the same errors that they accuse Damore of making. It's inherent in rhetoric, also known as "motivated reasoning". I guess whoever draws the line between rhetoric and comprehensive, good-faith arguments wins the day.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

devindotcom 9y ago

This was definitely the best takedown I've read of not just the claims but the ideas behind the claims made in the memo.

altavila 9y ago

If this whole debacle has proven one thing is that there are a lot of assholes on Hacker News. Thank you for that.

sctb 9y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15020532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15020532

bberrry 9y ago

It baffles me how this rebuttal is convincing to anyone. Damore argued group differences are in part responsible for the relatively fewer women in tech. I can't see how that over-arching point has been refuted here, no matter how snarky the response.

PrimHelios 9y ago
Because he didn't provide any proof of his claim except a few cherry-picked misinterpreted Wikipedia articles. What proof is there that biological differences are at all responsible? Damore clearly can't seem to find any, or he just didn't care enough to try to find any. His over-arching point is fundamentally incorrect (as evidenced by the fact that other countries see engineering as a stereotypically female job), and even if it were correct, he didn't provide any actually acceptable proof of said claim. Let's ignore what I just said though and look at your "group differences are in part responsible" line there. What does it matter if something is in part responsible? How does that at all completely invalidate the possibility that Google is discriminatory? Let's say for a second that Google actually does discriminate against women. Is that perfectly fine now because biological differences are in part to blame? How does that at all invalidate the actual problem being addressed by the diversity memo?
- Chris2048 9y ago
  For the articles to be "cherry-picked" they must be picked from ones that draw an opposite conclusion. There is a difference between proving something is possible and that something is True. Damore may have only demonstrated the first, but this is enough to refute the claim "There is sexism in tech because the gender ratio is not equal". This is why it is important that group differences are in part responsible - it puts a burden on Google et al to find the magnitude if that influence, rather than attribute all of it to sexism. In other words, you can't attribute anything to sexism (without proof) as soon as there are multiple possible influences/causes.
  - PrimHelios 9y ago
    >For the articles to be "cherry-picked" they must be picked from ones that draw an opposite conclusion. No, it means he picked articles that supported his viewpoint while ignoring the ones that didn't. >There is a difference between proving something is possible and that something is True. Damore may have only demonstrated the first, but this is enough to refute the claim "There is sexism in tech because the gender ratio is not equal". Damore demonstrated the first, and then used that to say that to completely discount any sexism in tech. >This is why it is important that group differences are in part responsible - it puts a burden on Google et al to find the magnitude if that influence, rather than attribute all of it to sexism. In other words, you can't attribute anything to sexism (without proof) as soon as there are multiple possible influences/causes. That exact statement could be used against Damore and his supporters. EDIT: to add to this, Damore would've been completely justified if he had said this to open a dialogue, but he didn't. He should have said "There are multiple possibilities, let's not immediately jump to conclusions.", but he didn't. He took a handful of Wikipedia articles, twisted around what they said to fit his confirmation bias, then said "I'm right, you're wrong, deal with it." and then claimed that was the truth (his twitter handle is @fired4truth). He's very clearly a narcissist who can't handle that he could possibly be wrong.