I know I’m late to the game on this Google incident, but this is such a good illustration about how we, as a society, are unable to talk and think about serious issues except through our ideological filters. Further, some questions that can be explored through science apparently should no longer be even raised.

First, a comment from a Gizmodo article by Melanie Ehrenkranz, who characterizes former Google Engineer James Damore as follows: “The man thinks women are inferior to men as engineers.” That is typical of a lot of how Damore has been treated on the Internet.

Now consider the basic facts about what Damore wrote at Google:

Calling the culture at Google an “ideological echo chamber”, the memo says that while discrimination exists, it is extreme to ascribe all disparities to oppression, and it is authoritarian to try to correct disparities through reverse discrimination. Instead, it argues that male/female disparities can be partly explained by biological differences. According to research he cited, those differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things, and tending to be more social, artistic, and prone to neuroticism (a higher-order personality trait). Damore’s memorandum also suggests ways to adapt the tech workplace to those differences to increase women’s representation and comfort, without resorting to discrimination.

Damore has given detailed interviews about what happened at Google and why he wrote his comments. That includes this interview with Joe Rogan:

Damore also appeared on a panel of a freethinker group at Portland State with former Evergreen State biologists Bret Weinstein, Heather E. Heying, PSU philosophy professor Peter Boghossian, and writer Helen Pluckrose.

There is no debate that Google held a diversity program, which Damore attended. The organizers of the diversity conference asked for attendees to give them feedback. Damore offered his comments, which were ignored by the organizers. When his comments reached the general public, Google fired Damore.

Demore has now filed a class action.

This incident involving Damore is an excellent starting point for finding a new way to discuss thorny issues relating to alleged discrimination.