NPR gave David Brooks a chance to repeat his very inept reading of James Damore’s memo yesterday.

[AUDIE] CORNISH: One last idea that came out of Silicon Valley, and this is a debate over a viral memo from a Google engineer who argued, among other things, that Google had a left bias that created a politically correct mono culture that shamed dissenters into silence. Also made some comments about men and women and biological differences. David, you argue that the person who should have been fired is Google’s CEO. How come?

BROOKS: Well, you know, all of this starts with a long debate we’ve been having for decades about evolutionary psychology and the differences between men and women. And there’s this vast body of research out there on this subject. And it shows, first, mostly, there are no real significant differences between men and women on abilities, on the ability to do math, on IQ – pretty much the same. There are some minor differences between populations, mostly in levels of interest, not in levels of ability. And – but these are all about populations. You can’t tell anything about a person, about an individual from any of these studies. Who should work at Google? Who should not work at Google? Who’s good at tech? And James Damore…

CORNISH: But just to stop you there, like, if you say something bad about your…

DIONNE: That sounds like a critique of James Damore.

BROOKS: No, that’s exactly what James Damore…

CORNISH: This is the name of the engineer.

BROOKS: And this is exactly what James Damore wrote in his memo. And now a whole series of evolutionary psychologists have come out – I quoted a couple in my column today – saying that he was a pretty accurate summary of the body of research. And so someone at a scientific company should not be fired for sort of accurately summarizing the science. Now, I understand why – go ahead, E.J.

No, that is not what Damore wrote in his memo. Jesus. If you can’t even get that right then shut up about it.

DIONNE: Oh, go ahead, David.

BROOKS: I understand why some of the people who are there, who are – especially some of the women who are in a hostile work environment being silenced in meetings are upset because they’re living in one reality, which is the reality that we live out every day as individuals. And they’re absolutely right. But James Damore, his – the research he summarized is talking about populations. And he, too, is right. And Pichai should have done a much better job of, A, not firing him and, B, explaining the differences.

CORNISH: E.J., last word to you.

DIONNE: Where I disagree is I don’t think the research is anywhere near as good as David is suggesting it is. And some of what he said were pure stereotypes. Women generally have a stronger interest in people, rather than things relative to men. And I thought Anna Wiener in The New Yorker really had it right that this memo was a kind of smack in the face for plenty of tech workers and executives – for plenty of women who are used to tech workers and executives considering hiring women as lowering the bar. I mean, there was something just terribly wrong with this memo. I’m a pro-labor guy. I don’t like people getting fired, but I think this memo had a lot of problems in it.

I’m pro-labor too, so that includes being in favor of women’s ability to work in an environment where their presence is just taken for granted. Women shouldn’t have to feel they’re only provisionally there, subject to the daily judgement of men who swap stories about how much more neurotic women are.

I wonder…if Damore’s memo had been about Other Races as opposed to the Other Sex, and had been otherwise identical, would David Brooks be defending it and saying the CEO should be fired?

I don’t know, of course, but I doubt it. I doubted it when Michael Shermer said it’s more of a guy thing – I thought if it had been “it’s more of a white thing” it wouldn’t have made it out of his mouth. I still think that. The same applies to Sam Harris’s “estrogen vibe” – I don’t think he would have said “melatonin vibe.” I think guys like Shermer and Harris and Brooks can hear it when it’s about race, and stop themselves, but they can’t damn well hear it when it’s about women.

One or two comments on Brooks’s dopy gurlz R diffrunt frum Us piece.

LT:

Mr Brooks, as someone paid to express opinions instead of say, writing software, you may be surprised to learn that most companies are not interested in providing a platform for employees to express controversial opinions outside of their job scope.

When such opinions interfere with the employees ability to effectively perform their job they are often asked to leave.

Mr. Damore expressed his thoughts in a way that made leading and working with a diverse team of engineers who may not share his opinion, difficult if not impossible.

You may feel Damore made several good points but Google is not a debating club and Pichai had every right to fire him.

And if next week someone at Apple or Microsoft or Walmart, decides that their company needs to read their valuable thoughts about say, Charles Murray’s “The Bell Curve” , perhaps they should remember they are not a columnist before they press send.

atmt:

“Fire the CEO”, says Mr. Brooks, but fails spectacularly to build a case supporting such an action.
Firstly, he assumes that because some scientists have supported Damore’s memo, it represents settled science. It doesn’t. Other scientists/ academics including Adam Grant have disputed the memo’s claims. A recent article in the Guardian points out that the memo’s claims do not hold up in other cultural/ geographical contexts, such as in China and India, where controlled empirical tests do not demonstrate the gender differences cited in the memo. Etc.
Secondly, Google is not a gender/ genetic research laboratory, whose primary goal is to give a platform to the latest scientific research in the field, regardless of whether it is settled science. It is a private company, whose primary responsibility is to its shareholders. It needs to make money, for which it must make sure that employees feel motivated, energized and valued, rather than discontented, demoralized and devalued. Hence it must nip the seeds of discontent in the bud. In that context, Pichai made absolutely the right decision.

gemli:

Well, there are differences between men and women. I mean, vive la différence! Hubba hubba!

Also, women are supposed to take care of Wally and the Beaver, putter around the kitchen in dresses and high heels and prepare meals for the breadwinner, who’s an executive at a big company that is quite diverse, in that it probably hires black people to run the elevators.

I exaggerate to make a point. I read James Damore’s memo, and I don’t think I was as shocked as a liberal is supposed to be. Then again, I’m a little insensitive to bunny-hugging college kids who need trigger warnings before sensitive topics, like literature and history, are discussed in class.

But I’m not sure what Damore was trying to accomplish in this memo that justified what amounted to juggling nitroglycerine, or why defending himself on right-wing AM radio seemed like the best venue for defending his thesis.

Is Google not making enough technological progress? Is taking over the world being slowed by offices full of hysterical females?

Back when my parents were born, women couldn’t vote. When I was born, the front page of the local newspaper reported that a woman(!) was a jury member in a murder trial. It’s been an uphill slog for women to gain fully human status and a modicum of respect, and it’s alarming that despite so much progress, crotch groping is not a disqualification for the presidency.

Damore needn’t grease the skids. They’re plenty greasy enough.

Jessica:

In the late nineteenth century and beyond, it was common to asssert that women were biologically unsuited to the medical profession. Now nearly half of medical students in the United States are women. Imagine how doctors’ demographics would look if the Damores of earlier times had won the day. Perhaps it’s better to assume the dominance of discrimination until proven otherwise, especially when the gender balance is as highly skewed as it is in the tech sector.

I cherry-picked comments critical of Brooks. There were plenty of fans commenting.

Oh good. Superb. David Brooks has weighed in, as usual with an air of omniscient authority as if he were au fait with all the relevant research as well as all the arguments, and he comes down with a thud on the side of poor oppressed James Damore. And his piece is at the top of the Times’s trending links.

There are many actors in the whole Google/diversity drama, but I’d say the one who’s behaved the worst is the C.E.O., Sundar Pichai.

The first actor is James Damore, who wrote the memo. In it, he was trying to explain why 80 percent of Google’s tech employees are male. He agreed that there are large cultural biases but also pointed to a genetic component. Then he described some of the ways the distribution of qualities differs across male and female populations.

Note that credulous “he was trying to explain why 80 percent of Google’s tech employees are male” – as if it were a deep mystery as opposed to just another iteration of the commonplace fact that employers favor men in hiring. Note that minimizing “but also pointed to a genetic component.” Note the assumption that Damore was up to the job of describing “some of the ways the distribution of qualities differs across male and female populations.” Note the way he frames the whole thing, and then pause to swallow bile.

Damore was tapping into the long and contentious debate about genes and behavior. On one side are those who believe that humans come out as blank slates and are formed by social structures. On the other are the evolutionary psychologists who argue that genes interact with environment and play a large role in shaping who we are. In general the evolutionary psychologists have been winning this debate.

That’s a very simplistic and manipulative way of framing it. I don’t think it’s the case that everyone who emphasizes the role of culture / social structures / environment discounts genes entirely, and I don’t think it’s the case that evolutionary psychologists are the only ones who argue that genes interact with environment.

Brooks quotes a couple of Damore-approvers and none of the other kind.

We should all have a lot of sympathy for the second group of actors in this drama, the women in tech who felt the memo made their lives harder.

Oh fuck you, Brooks, and your “we.” News flash: half of us are that second group: the women in and out of tech whose lives the memo has made harder. We don’t want your lot of sympathy, we want you to go write another book about yuppies.

What we have is a legitimate tension. Damore is describing a truth on one level; his sensible critics are describing a different truth, one that exists on another level. He is championing scientific research; they are championing gender equality. It takes a little subtlety to harmonize these strands, but it’s doable.

Puh-leeze. Damore is “championing scientific research” only in the sense that he used the words; he didn’t actually include any citations. He’s not a scientist and he doesn’t work in genetics. What he’s championing is the use of cherry-picked research to prop up his preference to keep the numbers of women in tech small. And “they” are not championing gender equality as opposed to scientific research, so quit painting “them” as akin to creationists.

Then he rants about mobs, then he quotes Conor Friedersdorf, then he rants at the CEO.

Which brings us to Pichai, the supposed grown-up in the room. He could have wrestled with the tension between population-level research and individual experience. He could have stood up for the free flow of information. Instead he joined the mob. He fired Damore and wrote, “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not O.K.”

That is a blatantly dishonest characterization of the memo. Damore wrote nothing like that about his Google colleagues. Either Pichai is unprepared to understand the research (unlikely), is not capable of handling complex data flows (a bad trait in a C.E.O.) or was simply too afraid to stand up to a mob.

Brooks is unprepared to understand the long and prolific history of Damore-like “memos” and posts and tweet sequences that has built up over the past few years (and echoes a history that goes back decades and centuries before that). He thinks Damore wrote a sober, disinterested, research-based piece well worth reading and discussing. He didn’t. As so many people have said over the past few days: what he wrote is all too familiar and stale and flimsy and wrong. That Brooks takes it so seriously is laughable…or would be, were it not for the fact that the Times has elevated him to a position of authority he hasn’t earned.

William Pietri wrote a thing that resonates strongly with me (and a lot of other people).

Some people are having a hard time understanding why the Google engineer was fired. “Let’s debate his points,” they say, “so his bad ideas can be defeated.” That sounds reasonable, but it isn’t. To understand why, let’s conduct a thought experiment.

Imagine that tomorrow, your least-favorite work colleague reveals that he is a literal Nazi. At your company all hands, he would like to debate a proposition with you. His proposition is: “Inferior races like the n****** and the k**** should be immediately executed; women should return to their status as property of men and be executed if they object.” You ask why he wants to debate this. He says that this is what he believes should happen. Do you accept the debate?

Let’s assume that you refuse, possibly with some swearing. This means you believe, as I do, some ideas are not worth debating. Perhaps you recognize how this would make non-white-male members of the audience feel to have their humanity and survival up for debate. Perhaps you see that by debating his ideas, you help normalize them, making them more likely to happen. Perhaps you realize that you’d be exposing your company to a massive lawsuit. And maybe you just don’t want to give this guy or his terrible ideas the elevation in stature that comes with treating them as worth serious discussion. Your colleague slinks away.

The next day, he proposes a different, less extreme debate topic: “Non-white races should be enslaved; women should be treated as property and beaten if they object.” You ask if he has changed his beliefs. He shakes his head. Again you say no; again he goes away.

On day three, he has another proposal. “Non-white races should be isolated in ghettos and reservations; women cannot work or own property and must always be accompanied by a male relative when outside their home.” Again you say no. Again he leaves.

Each night, he realizes that his ideas as expressed are beyond what’s socially acceptable. Each day, he comes back to you with a slightly more mild debate proposition. His intent never changes; he’s just looking for a way to get on stage. When do you say yes?

You might say, “Never!” But at some point, he will have refined his pitch enough that a bystander not having heard the history will say, “Why are you refusing to debate him? That seems like an entirely reasonable thing to talk about.”

That’s where we are with James Damore and his manifesto. If one has plenty of privilege, doesn’t know the long history of race- and gender-based oppression in America, and hasn’t kept up with the arguments of terrible people, it is apparently easy to read his screed and say, “Well, maybe we should talk about it.” That’s especially easy to say if your humanity and your participation in the workforce aren’t up for debate. Not only is it no skin off your nose, but you are being invited to judge everybody else, which can feel appealing.

Exactly. Damore’s manifesto is strikingly un-novel, unoriginal, unsurprising; it’s the same old shit we’ve been seeing forever, especially and with extra venom over the past few years (thanks, Twitter). No we don’t need to “talk about it” yet again; it’s been talked about ad infinitum for decades. Plus it’s shit.

It’s the same trick the alt right and the neoreaction loons have been pulling. They get that white hoods and swastika armbands and prison tattoos are beyond the pale. So they have carefully rebranded their ideas. They are still white nationalists. But they talk about their opposition to multiculturalism. They talk about supporting people who want to live near people like themselves. They fret about “too much” immigration “changing the character” of America. America first, they say! They still admit to wanting ethnic cleansing, but maybe they describe it as peaceful demographic change.

I won’t tell you not to talk to these people. But I will tell you that giving them a platform is exactly what they want. Getting the mildest versions of their ideas discussed is the foot in the door, the leading edge of the axe. They will use your attention and credulity to shift the Overton window bit by bit. You might think you’re being brave and open-minded, but marginalized people around you will realize that you can’t be trusted. That you value the appearance of openness far more than their safety.

That window? It’s shifted a lot already.