Damore Memo: Intellectual Weeds¶

Introduction¶

Near the beginning of August 2017, James Damore penned a document titled ref:google_echo. It stirred a controversy and James Damore was summarily fired as a result of the backlash against the memo. Before reading this article you should read the memo in full. It’s better to first approach things without the lenses provided by others.

Reactions to the memo ran the gamut between fury and agreement with all the ordinary casual demonizing of people on each side of the divide. The lack of productive discourse is the natural result of a polarized social climate. Much effort has been given to clumsily attacking the character of Damore rather than heeding what is perhaps the best advice in the memo:

“People generally have good intentions, but we all have biases which are invisible to us. Thankfully, open and honest discussion with those who disagree can highlight our blind spots and help us grow, which is why I wrote this document.”

The attacks of character from those that disagree with the contents of the memo serve to amplify the most dangerous aspects of the memo. The memo is so constructed that people who disagree with it were also manipulated by it and all opportunities for frank discussions of the issues raised are lost as a result.

Examination¶

It’s unlikely that Damore is going to read this article1 but in the interests of being open I have to admit that I find his memo somewhat disturbing. It’s not disturbing so much because of the views it represents but rather the nature of it. The pieces in the article fit together well and the whole thing is created with an air of both humility and knowledgeably that lends itself to being extremely persuasive. Reading along on my first trip through the memo I found myself thinking “This isn’t so bad. It’s really reasonable. All of this sounds well reasoned and rings of truth. And he is honest enough to note he may be wrong or biased!” I initially was somewhat surprised by all of the vitriol surrounding the memo and it wasn’t until I’d had some time to digest it that doubt crept back in.

The first part that jumped out at me was the following quotation:

“the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership”

In the memo this is prefaced by a list which itself is a little circumspect. The list expresses evidence that the differences between men and women aren’t purely social. It contains some easily verifiable facts but includes what appears to be opinion as well, specifically the idea that the expressed differences are “exactly what we would predict”. It’s what some would predict for sure and it has an intuitive sense to it, but it’s not a fact the way other items in the list are and is there purely to bolster the argument by adding weight.

Of course all of that still sounds on average reasonable enough and I really didn’t give it a second thought when I was reading. A day or two later though it occurred to me that there was a point in history where computer science was dominated by women and women were responsible for many of the biggest advances in computer science including but not limited to the compiler. All of this is to point out that generally speaking computer science was for a long time a female dominated field both in terms of theory/discovery and daily work. This isn’t a surprising fact to anyone who knows anything about the history of computer science; it’s pretty much common knowledge. It also intrinsically throws a huge spanner in the works of the idea that biological differences explain the gender gap. Damore in this section has used real facts to draw an association that is easily dismissed out of hand. Women dominated the field and as they entered the workforce they also increased their percentages in degrees in computer sciences. The pursuit of computer science specific degrees rose steadily then fell off dramatically starting around around 1984 and although the reasons for the shift are debated the arguments don’t stray into biological territory for obvious reasons. The shift was cultural rather than biological.

There ARE differences between men and women that are not likely to be purely from the culture and there are average behavioral differences between men and women. The problem with Damores list of reasonable assertions is not as much it’s content but the quote I mentioned before. He uses these facts to postulate the theory that “the biological differences may explain” differences in gender representation. This is a major issue because the two are disjointed. There is no link drawn between the biological differences and the differences in gender representation. Rather it implies that one explains the other without explaining how (he lists some evidence later in the memo but still fails to draw a causal link). Worse he hedges and uses the word may and thus distances himself from an assertion of a fact that doesn’t really exist because there is direct evidence that the difference is cultural and there is no direct evidence that the difference is biological. The original dominance of women in computer science in the United States and the near egalitarian ratio of women in computer science in India directly contradict claims that the current gender gap may be significantly biological. The memo takes a lot of effort just to make a hedged easily countered assertion.

In his memo Damore expresses the need to stop implying causal links between gender gaps and sexism but he disappointingly makes exactly this mistake in his assertion of a link between biological differences and gender gaps in technology.

He also overplays descriptions of many very real average differences. For instance he asserts that women being more neurotic than men might explain their lower prevalence in high stress jobs he fails to note that the difference between women and men in the paper he cites is actually quite small and also varies quite a lot among different cultures. That same paper also notes “the existence of innate sex differences alone would not explain the widening gap between the personalities of men and women with the development of more prosperous and egalitarian societies”. Personality differences are more well defined in prosperous and egalitarian societies which indicates cultural influence rather than biological. Even David Schmitt, the author of one of the cited papers wrote : “These sex differences in neuroticism are not very large, with biological sex perhaps accounting for only 10 percent of the variance. It is unclear to me that this sex difference would play a role in success within the Google workplace (in particular, not being able to handle stresses of leadership in the workplace. That’s a huge stretch to me),”

Damore is cherry-picking from the paper much as I just did to counter the assertion. Despite being well cited it’s very easy to counter assertions made in the memo simply by quoting from the same cited sources or even the authors of the papers themselves.2.

Danger¶

The articles craftsmanship is very worrisome. It’s likely that people who already think that what he is asserting is true are likely to find much to agree with here. He also does an excellent job of mixing in some very real issues and linking them together. This allows him to paint a picture of an issue, support it with both citations and interpretation, and overall come across as very convincing that there is a very real problem all the while being careful not to commit directly too much to any particular vantage point. The articles tone indicates a clear message but it’s so full of capitulation that one can easily take it as a well intended message. Better still he mixes in a lot of issues around the repression of speech and the [very real] dangers of an overly politically correct environment and leverages them to provide legitimacy to his positions. This is a very clever move and tends to work. Nevermind that the strategy can be used to defend almost any form of speech.

An important aspect of a free and open society is the ability to discuss ideas and theories that are not necessarily in lock step with prevailing ideas or whatever is considered acceptable in our current time. The pursuit of truth should never be held back merely to avoid conflicting with existing dogmas. Right now political correctness creates an environment where people with unpopular opinions are demonized. The current left is often not just hostile to conservative ideas, it’s often downright extreme and dishonest. Even so, there is a very important difference between an unfounded opinion and the open and honest pursuit of truth. The problem with this article is that it seems on one hand to be exactly that while on the other hand could be conceived as a cleverly disguised attempt at persuasion.

I don’t doubt that Damore feels like his workplace is hostile to his ideas and I don’t support his firing as it merely proves his point. It makes him a martyr who can be seen as speaking truth to power and just puts more evidence on the scale of intrinsic bias against certain ideals.

Patterns¶

Given that Damore isn’t someone I know personally I’m reluctant to ascribe with too much certainty anything about his intent. It may be that he’s simply well meaning and as he said: “I may be biased and only see evidence that supports my viewpoint”.

What I can say is that there is a pattern which is probably partially Darwinian in nature where certain ideals which have been taboo for quite a while have begun to find new ground by way of more measured wording and action. A person exposing blatantly misogynistic ideals is going to be largely ignored by the majority of people but a person speaking with humility and lots of citations can make a very convincing appeal to people who are put off by extreme counter messaging or simply already harbor some related beliefs.

No one can be an expert on everything so we are drawn towards what feels right to us, leaving each one of us vulnerable to certain kinds of messaging. It’s often easy to tell when we’re not thinking for ourselves. Obvious hints include the regurgitation of idiomatic phrases—i.e. “womans right to choose”, “sanctity of life”, “war on X”, “social justice”, “snowflake”, “trigger warning”, “participation trophy”, “safe space”, “right-wing terrorists”, “gender-wage-gap”, “deny biological gender”, “science deniers”, and other such phrases we find ourselves repeating but just heard from someone we agree with and start adopting. What’s more difficult is discerning between honest communication and well crafted manipulation.

With the Damore memo, months worth of reflection have left me without a solid conclusion either way and this disturbs me.

Footnotes

1

Asinine Media just isn’t that big yet. Feel free to send this link James Damore though!.

2