US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8375

The roster of villains in President Trump’s world is legion. The list of people he has been willing, even eager, to publicly attack includes not just Mitch McConnell, his latest target, but Jeff Sessions, Chuck Schumer, Paul D. Ryan, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

And don’t forget James B. Comey, Robert S. Mueller III, Andrew G. McCabe, Rod J. Rosenstein, John D. Podesta, Nancy Pelosi, Lisa Murkowski, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rosie O’Donnell, Meryl Streep, the mayor of London and the cast of “Saturday Night Live.” The countries he has assailed include not just North Korea and Iran but also Germany, Canada, Mexico, China and Sweden.

But for all of that feistiness, for all of those verbal and online fisticuffs, there is one person who is definitely not on Mr. Trump’s target list: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Ever since Mr. Trump jumped into political life, Washington has scratched its collective head over his curious affinity for the strongman of the Kremlin. But the president’s determination to avoid saying anything even remotely critical of Mr. Putin was brought home in stark relief on Thursday when he twisted himself into a knot over a question about the Russian leader’s decision to order the United States Embassy to slash its staff by more than half. Rather than complain, Mr. Trump expressed gratitude.

...

Mr. Trump’s latest comment came just a week after he posted a message on Twitter blaming the deterioration in relations with Moscow on Congress for passing sanctions on Russia. The sanctions were passed to punish Russia for interfering in last year’s American presidential election and seizing its neighbor’s territory by annexing Crimea, but Mr. Trump made no mention of those actions.

On August 12 2017 05:28 Danglars wrote:

Which is why the bill's authors were hoping it wouldn't provoke notice. The terms of the offense leave wide open criminal penalties for misgendering someone. You can look to the Ontario human rights commission to see just how far it can go. The only question is if people are naive enough to trust the authors that it won't be used as such, or actually maliciously glad hate speech people that don't afford basic respect in pronouns will be open to criminal penalties.

OHRC. See discrimination laid out in all its glory.
Argument laid out before the Senate hearing prior to passage

I was fired by Google this past Monday for a document that I wrote and circulated internally raising questions about cultural taboos and how they cloud our thinking about gender diversity at the company and in the wider tech sector. I suggested that at least some of the male-female disparity in tech could be attributed to biological differences (and, yes, I said that bias against women was a factor too). Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai declared that portions of my statement violated the company’s code of conduct and “cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”

My 10-page document set out what I considered a reasoned, well-researched, good-faith argument, but as I wrote, the viewpoint I was putting forward is generally suppressed at Google because of the company’s “ideological echo chamber.” My firing neatly confirms that point. How did Google, the company that hires the smartest people in the world, become so ideologically driven and intolerant of scientific debate and reasoned argument?

We all have moral preferences and beliefs about how the world is and should be. Having these views challenged can be painful, so we tend to avoid people with differing values and to associate with those who share our values. This self-segregation has become much more potent in recent decades. We are more mobile and can sort ourselves into different communities; we wait longer to find and choose just the right mate; and we spend much of our time in a digital world personalized to fit our views.

Google is a particularly intense echo chamber because it is in the middle of Silicon Valley and is so life-encompassing as a place to work. With free food, internal meme boards and weekly companywide meetings, Google becomes a huge part of its employees’ lives. Some even live on campus. For many, including myself, working at Google is a major part of their identity, almost like a cult with its own leaders and saints, all believed to righteously uphold the sacred motto of “Don’t be evil.”

Echo chambers maintain themselves by creating a shared spirit and keeping discussion confined within certain limits. As Noam Chomsky once observed, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”

But echo chambers also have to guard against dissent and opposition. Whether it’s in our homes, online or in our workplaces, a consensus is maintained by shaming people into conformity or excommunicating them if they persist in violating taboos. Public shaming serves not only to display the virtue of those doing the shaming but also warns others that the same punishment awaits them if they don’t conform.

In my document, I committed heresy against the Google creed by stating that not all disparities between men and women that we see in the world are the result of discriminatory treatment. When I first circulated the document about a month ago to our diversity groups and individuals at Google, there was no outcry or charge of misogyny. I engaged in reasoned discussion with some of my peers on these issues, but mostly I was ignored.

Everything changed when the document went viral within the company and the wider tech world. Those most zealously committed to the diversity creed—that all differences in outcome are due to differential treatment and all people are inherently the same—could not let this public offense go unpunished. They sent angry emails to Google’s human-resources department and everyone up my management chain, demanding censorship, retaliation and atonement.

It saddens me to leave Google and to see the company silence open and honest discussion. If Google continues to ignore the very real issues raised by its diversity policies and corporate culture, it will be walking blind into the future—unable to meet the needs of its remarkable employees and sure to disappoint its billions of users.

—Mr. Damore worked as a software engineer at Google’s Mountain View campus from 2013 until this past week.

On August 12 2017 06:18 mozoku wrote:
May the Google diversity discussion never end.

James Damore's essay for WSJ "Why I was Fired"

Not too much new that hasn't already been discussed, though he goes into more detail on the alleged Google echo chamber.

On August 12 2017 01:52 Falling wrote:

So it is fair to say that he claims that post-modernism is neo-Marxism, but doesn't support that claim. I don't think he's really evidenced that except to say the first thinkers of post-modernism were Marxist. This is one part that I wanted to dig down a bit more because I don't like such strong assertions that are not supported (I wish at some point, you would lay out this argument clearly.) However, one thing I stumbled upon is a two part lecture on postmodernism by Stephen Hicks. He also claims that post-modernism comes from Marxist thinkers- so Derrida, Foucault, those guys were Marxists. However, he proposes the following claim and hypothesis. Marxism's major claims were demonstrated to be false by the mid 21st Century. But not just not true, but the very opposite of what Marxism claimed would happen was happening: rather than less and less people becoming wealthy and more and more people dropping into poverty, a greater number of people were becoming wealthy and the standard of living for everyone was increasing by leaps and bounds in the West.

Therefore, he suggests if one holds to ideology (and he intimates that there is a religious element to Marxism- it has it's own eschatology, a heaven on earth) and the facts of the idealogy do not come true, you have two options. One is to switch idealogies (what you believed was false and so believe something else) or Two is to deny the facts... or in post-modernism's case undermine the very idea that we can know facts.

It's an interesting theory- I don't know if anyone has thoughts on it. I now have his post-modern book on my e-reader, so I want to see if his argument holds up.

However, where Peterson came into play was regarding Damore, which was directly related to personality studies in psychology... and that is exactly in field. So that's why I would question the pseudo-intellectual claim in this instance. I can see not liking a lot of his post-modern rhetoric. ...on the Marxist front, now that I've read volume I of Gulag Archipelago, I think I understand why he has such a great concern for Marxism- little turns of phrases he uses, I see in Gulag- and while perhaps he overstates the problem in North America, there are certain echoes of 'right think' that perhaps parallel modern rhetoric... however, currently we do lack a major buy in to a particular idealogy that could actualize such sweeping changes to our society.

On August 12 2017 06:20 KwarK wrote:
Somehow he still doesn't get what he did wrong.

On August 12 2017 06:25 zlefin wrote:
his statement seems to disprove his thesis; so I mock him and his stupidity.
he clearly states that google didn't fire him over the document; and that when he circulated it internally it was discussed some and largely ignored. he wasn't fired or silenced at all over the doc discussion. it was only when it went viral that he was fired; fired not for dissent or for daring speak against the google orthodoxy, but for a much simpler and graver offense: he caused the company bad press.
it doesn't matter whether you're justified or not, if you cause the company bad press and become more of a liability than an asset, you get fired.
so that looks quite settled; idiot improperly casting blame on some echo chamber orthodoxy when he's already admitted the far more obvious reason right in front of him.
or just trying to get easy money by using the culture war fools.

On August 12 2017 06:23 WolfintheSheep wrote:

Politics and Religion, never discuss at work or at the dinner table.

tl;dr someone didn't learn from their parents.

On August 12 2017 06:34 mozoku wrote:

Neither do I? Care to elaborate? I'm curious how you're defining "wrong" here. Was it what got him fired? His views in the first place?

On August 12 2017 06:34 Sbrubbles wrote:


Exactly. Companies shouldn't be expected to do nothing when an employee endorses a political opinion that generates bad press. If enforcing an echo-chamber is the way do minimize bad press, Google is correct in doing so.

On August 12 2017 06:59 mozoku wrote:

While I agree that the law shouldn't necessarily play in here, I'm not sure what you're describing is good from a societal perspective or a business perspective. Doesn't it make anyone else nervous that a company with as much media influence as Google is content to enforce an internal ideological echo chamber?

From a business perspective, having a variety of viewpoints is usually beneficial. Echo chambers mitigate that, though it's hard to measure the impact it has. Furthermore, at Google's level, they're competing for top talent. An oppressive echo chamber is a significant turn-off to prospective employees--who at Google's level, can choose from a wide variety of employers. This obviously isn't nearly enough to sink Google as a top destination for talent, but Google has been getting more and more mini-issues that might catch up it with eventually.

I'm not sure whether it was the right or wrong decision from a business perspective, but I don't think it's as clear cut as you think.

On August 12 2017 06:36 KwarK wrote:

His spreading of his manifesto at work was his mistake. I've got nothing against people like him having jobs. I don't think that all conservatives should be fired.

On August 12 2017 07:09 Mohdoo wrote:


I guess this is a good point that I haven't been thinking to make.

Everyone who I have argued with: If some woman wrote the exact opposite of what this guy was saying, I would hope she would be fired too.

Note: Not putting words on Kwark's mouth. Just saying that the avenue was the deal breaker, not the ideas, for me.

On August 12 2017 06:25 kollin wrote:

Marxism and post-modernism, as academic and intellectual doctrines are diametrically opposed. From what I understand, Peterson's entire understanding of post-modernism comes from Hicks, who wrote a harsh polemic on it. I'm sure on psychology he's a reliable source (as reliable as any other with similar qualifications) but I see him as so driven by rhetoric and such a strongly held ideological belief that I don't trust much of what he says.