The evils of political correctness.

[LordKiran]

Kind of my whole point? If worker protections were better, such that this employee couldn't be fired for expressing his views off-the-job you wouldn't have this problem to begin with.

- - - Updated - - -

Your blame is misplaced.

PC didnt get that man fired, Google's legal ability to protect its reputation by firing employees who potentially tarnish this reputation is why this happened.

The bigger question is why it could potentially tarnish Googles reputation. That would require that a lot of people are against free speech and are aggressively PC.

Read the memo. It's well reasoned and well written. He's tried his best to write it as well he could without causing unnecessary offence. But still keeping to what he believed was true.

Nah. I think you're dead wrong. It's PC that got him fired.

I say it's a lack of worker protections and means of redress that allows Google (And other companies) to get away with firing people who express personal opinions while off the job. At one point I was willing to rationalize this to the company's benefit, but now I think corporations being able to stiffle the speech of its employees outside of the job by holding their continued employment over said employee's heads is completely counter to our shared values of personal freedoms (one such being, freedom of speech)

I understand there is an argument to be made that Goggle's right to associate freely also includes disassociation, but I don't think that should extend to an individual's expression or speech that has nothing to do with said business. Remember, Google doesn't have to prove or show that this man damages their brand, it only has to be a potential possibility, after that it all comes down to finding some pretext or another.

There was a story a while back about a woman who was fired from a news agency because she protested as part of occupy wallstreet (I'll try to find it.)

http://theweek.com/articles/480795/occupy-wall-street-should-npr-host-fired-protesting

Okay she wasn't a newsie but still, point stands. She was fired for exercising her rights to assemble and speak out against her governing institutions. That should be illegal no matter what your field is.

It wasn't off the job. The contentious memo he wrote was sent to and discussed with other Google employees. Google apparently encourages employees to have all sorts of conversations using a variety of company forums. Which makes it a very different issue. So the motive for dismissal can only be very narrow since this guy was not only authorised but encouraged by Google to have discussions with other employees. So the point is whether what he wrote somehow broke Google's rules. Which should give him much more leverage in court and may foretell trouble for Google.
EB

Hrmm, I hope he does sue, if only so we can see what happens next. If what you say is true then that definitely makes a case to be made for PC being the root cause for his firing.

 

[Speakpigeon]

So, is it PC, or is it being aggressively PC?

Please, make up your mind, I have other things to do than guess what you may mean.
EB

They're the same thing. I just added aggressively for emphasis. We've already discussed the differences at length. Being PC is just being a decent person. Policing other people and demanding political correctness is pure evil, anti-democratic and a slippery slide to fascism. The firing of the Google employee, the fact that they think it tarnishes googles reputation and that other people may judge Google, as a company, negatively because of this, is all the second kind, pure fascistoid evil. And its something we need to combat.

Demanding political correctness?! You think Google would demand PC from his employees?

If not, how would you know that's what it amounted to?

You effectively attributed motives to Google without evidence.

I think this qualifies as being aggressive, which is confirmed by the kind of language you use, which is inflated beyond reason: "pure fascistoid evil"?!

Please, come down dear.
-
-
-
-
And you seem to have missed something...

Oh, here we go again...


First, it may be the case that Google overreacted, I just don't know and it seems too early to tell.

It seems to me that one motive for firing this guy more likely than PC is brand image. Google is a brand, it has an image in the public, it's interest is to protect it, and if the perception at Google is that this guy's rant to discriminate against women hurt Google's brand image in the public perception then it's definitely a strong motive.

And PC can't be a motive except for idiotic people but then again idiotic people can well choose any motive they like.

Officially, in any case, the motive for sacking this guy was this: "portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace."

This sounds reasonable to me as motives go.

Now, either it is true that this guy's memo violated Google's code of conduct and then the sacking was presumably inevitable unless Google wanted to void their code of conduct, or it is not true that the memo violated Google's code of conduct, in which case the sacked employee will no doubt find plenty of lawyers all ready to help him pursue the matter in court and get damages worth being fired to start with.

And right now, you don't know in which case we are. Yet, you definitely pretend you do. See?


Now for a moral perspective on this, let's suppose the memo had been about discriminating between White employees and African-American employees rather than discriminating between men and women. Just read the memo by substituting "African-American" to any reference to women in it. Google's claim that the memo "cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace" may then look more credible to you if it didn't on first reading.

Anyway, you're clearly on a campaign to destroy PC and good luck to you. I believe you're not particularly unbiased in this exercise, though. Google gave a clear motive for sacking this guy and we don't have sufficient details on the case to assess for ourselves whether this official motive is the real one. But this is America. Don't tell me this guy cannot obtain redress in court.

And I would have liked to see how you would react if you had been the but of this guy's discriminatory claims.
EB

-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
And then this...

I don't want to live in a society where people are afraid to speak their mind. I suspect a lot of people who agree with this also voted for Trump, precisely because he's such a fucking moronic twit, who is too fucking stupid not to speak his mind.

You think America is a place where people are afraid to speak their mind?! Just because of Google perhaps?

America strikes me as a place where people can go on a rampage saying pretty much anything that's beyond "common decency".

You also seem to have missed the fact that this guy was on the job. It's not a question about Free Speech. It's a question about the workplace and Google's rules.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

If what you say is true then that definitely makes a case to be made for PC being the root cause for his firing.

How so?

Let me repeat an earlier point: "Officially, in any case, the motive for sacking this guy was this: "portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace."
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

No, I doubt he has a case at all. As I stated before, while California tends to be better in this regard, an employee can get fired for any reason or no reason at all, as long as it wasn't due to discrimination against *a protected group*, which he is not a member of...

Rather, let's see how this plays out.

Google has plenty of money so there's definitely a big potential for bright lawyers, of which America has more than enough. They will come if there is a case to defend like piranhas smelling blood.

But is there blood to begin with?
EB

 

[LordKiran]

If what you say is true then that definitely makes a case to be made for PC being the root cause for his firing.

How so?

Let me repeat an earlier point: "Officially, in any case, the motive for sacking this guy was this: "portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace."
EB

I mean if they encourage this type of communication, why some things and not others? Is there a rule that disallows gender topics? What does it mean to "Advance harmful gender stereotypes" there's a lot of vague ambiguity in that claim.

Here's a better question though: Why did they terminate his employment instead of taking more lenient disciplinary actions? Perhaps there is more to this story than we have access to? Maybe this happened more than once.

 

[J842P]

If what you say is true then that definitely makes a case to be made for PC being the root cause for his firing.

How so?

Let me repeat an earlier point: "Officially, in any case, the motive for sacking this guy was this: "portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace."
EB

That is PC! Their accusation of "advancing gender stereotypes" is essentially him writing about non-controversial and widely accepted findings in psychology and biology about gender differences. He goes out of his way to explain how population-level differences shouldn't be extended to individuals, and the painstakingly qualifies how this does not imply that any particular woman is not qualified, the type of fallacious reasoning that would lead someone to this conclusion.

 

[J842P]

You think America is a place where people are afraid to speak their mind?! Just because of Google perhaps?

America strikes me as a place where people can go on a rampage saying pretty much anything that's beyond "common decency".

This is your own bias. America is an increasingly polarized place. Both sides are becoming increasingly intolerant of the opposite political position, and yes - in overwhelmingly liberal places like Silicon Valley and the Bay Area in general, conservatives cannot give their opinions without expecting extreme social censure. This could not be a more clear example of this happening.

 

[J842P]

How so?

Let me repeat an earlier point: "Officially, in any case, the motive for sacking this guy was this: "portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace."
EB

I mean if they encourage this type of communication, why some things and not others? Is there a rule that disallows gender topics?

Here's a better question though: Why did they terminate his employment instead of taking more lenient disciplinary actions? Perhaps there is more to this story than we have access to? Maybe this happened more than once.

It's not the *topic* that is the problem, it's the *opinion* that goes against the far-left dogma that there are no gender differences, and that the reason that women are underrepresented in certain fields is because of the "Patriarchy" and "implicit" and explicit discrimination. The guy put forth a rather well-supported argument of why this isn't the case, or at least, why this isn't the whole story. This is fundamentally the problem.

 

[Bomb#20]

Right, pretty much the same as a Christian-owned company's legal ability to insist on only employing Christians, provided it's because the customers are Christian chauvinists and not because the owner is a Christian chauvinist. All the company is doing is protecting its reputation from being tarnished by having a non-Christian employee.

Kind of my whole point? If worker protections were better, such that this employee couldn't be fired for expressing his views off-the-job you wouldn't have this problem to begin with.

In case you didn't pick up the sarcasm, my point was that worker protections are better. You can no more fire an employee for outing himself as an atheist on the grounds that he's damaging your reputation as a Christian company among your bigoted customers than you can fire an employee for being black on the grounds that he's damaging your reputation as an all-white company among your racist customers. It's straight-up religious discrimination, and the circumstance that you're only trying to give your prejudiced customers what they want is not a legally substantive defense.

That's what Google is doing here: they fired the guy for visibly outing himself as an unbeliever in the religion that corporate management are trying to portray the company as belonging to for the sake of catering to the religious prejudices of people they see as their customer base. It's illegal. And it would be instantly recognized as illegal by the courts, if only the religion in question were one of the old ones rather than a johnny-come-lately religion that the courts have not yet figured out is a religion.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Google is fighting a wage discrimination lawsuit (according to Dr. Zoidberg's linked article). My guess is that lawsuit figured into this man's firing more than any "PC".

Amazingly, I find myself agreeing with you.

 

[Speakpigeon]

You think America is a place where people are afraid to speak their mind?! Just because of Google perhaps?

America strikes me as a place where people can go on a rampage saying pretty much anything that's beyond "common decency".

This is your own bias. America is an increasingly polarized place. Both sides are becoming increasingly intolerant of the opposite political position, and yes - in overwhelmingly liberal places like Silicon Valley and the Bay Area in general, conservatives cannot give their opinions without expecting extreme social censure.

Like what?

This could not be a more clear example of this happening.

This is what would have to be demonstrated.

But, I can't see how anybody could do it.

Questioning the motives may not be the brightest of strategies.

Let's wait to see how this pan out.

We can always Google the results in a few days.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

How so?

Let me repeat an earlier point: "Officially, in any case, the motive for sacking this guy was this: "portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace."
EB

That is PC! Their accusation of "advancing gender stereotypes" is essentially him writing about non-controversial and widely accepted findings in psychology and biology about gender differences. He goes out of his way to explain how population-level differences shouldn't be extended to individuals, and the painstakingly qualifies how this does not imply that any particular woman is not qualified, the type of fallacious reasoning that would lead someone to this conclusion.

A good lawyer should be able to tease out in court the clear distinction you're making here between Google's "harmful gender stereotypes" and what you call "non-controversial and widely accepted findings in psychology and biology about gender differences".

If you're correct, this guy can start to count the money.
EB

 

[J842P]

That is PC! Their accusation of "advancing gender stereotypes" is essentially him writing about non-controversial and widely accepted findings in psychology and biology about gender differences. He goes out of his way to explain how population-level differences shouldn't be extended to individuals, and the painstakingly qualifies how this does not imply that any particular woman is not qualified, the type of fallacious reasoning that would lead someone to this conclusion.

A good lawyer should be able to tease out in court the clear distinction you're making here between Google's "harmful gender stereotypes" and what you call "non-controversial and widely accepted findings in psychology and biology about gender differences".

If you're correct, this guy can start to count the money.
EB

No, not at all, and I'm not sure why you keep ignoring this, if I am just not explaining it clearly, but I am not sure how else to explain this, although I appreciate it might not make sense to someone from France, but that doesn't matter in court. Most employees in the United States are at-will. Google could fire someone for stating that the Earth isn't flat, and that person wouldn't be protected from that firing by law.


This issue with regards to PC is the fact that these statements are controversial at all. In particular, the evidence about population-level differences in the "Things vs. People" dichotomy is particularly strong with respect to prenatal testosterone exposure:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/

Note this relationship is born out when you look at differences between *and within* sex groups.

 

[J842P]

This is your own bias. America is an increasingly polarized place. Both sides are becoming increasingly intolerant of the opposite political position, and yes - in overwhelmingly liberal places like Silicon Valley and the Bay Area in general, conservatives cannot give their opinions without expecting extreme social censure.

Like what?

Like **the case we are talking about currently**. Or the many examples of conservative speakers being prevented from giving talks at liberal universities.

 

[LordKiran]

Like what?

Like **the case we are talking about currently**. Or the many examples of conservative speakers being prevented from giving talks at liberal universities.

To be fair, there are lots of people a university shouldn't be required to humor, like flat earthers, or creationists, or the black Israelites.(For lack of a better term, mind.)

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va1KBWpB_r8[/YOUTUBE]

While I am not against people like Ben Shapiro being allowed to speak at at a given university and am willing to stand by him in that particular instance, I wouldn't extend this to someone as caustic as Milo.

 

[Speakpigeon]

A good lawyer should be able to tease out in court the clear distinction you're making here between Google's "harmful gender stereotypes" and what you call "non-controversial and widely accepted findings in psychology and biology about gender differences".

If you're correct, this guy can start to count the money.
EB

No, not at all, and I'm not sure why you keep ignoring this, if I am just not explaining it clearly, but I am not sure how else to explain this, although I appreciate it might not make sense to someone from France, but that doesn't matter in court. Most employees in the United States are at-will. Google could fire someone for stating that the Earth isn't flat, and that person wouldn't be protected from that firing by law.

If this is the case then the issue is employment law.

Whether there might be an issue with PC would have to be demonstrated but you're basically saying that we cannot expect courts to rule on this particular aspect of the case. So, it's a catch 22 situation. Which leaves employment law as the only issue until a court could possibly look at a PC motive.

This issue with regards to PC is the fact that these statements are controversial at all. In particular, the evidence about population-level differences in the "Things vs. People" dichotomy is particularly strong with respect to prenatal testosterone exposure:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/

Note this relationship is born out when you look at differences between *and within* sex groups.

But you haven't established that this is a PC issue at all. Google's stated motive is "portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace." How would that be a PC issue at all?
EB

 

[J842P]

Like **the case we are talking about currently**. Or the many examples of conservative speakers being prevented from giving talks at liberal universities.

To be fair, there are lots of people a university shouldn't be required to humor, like flat earthers, or creationists, or the black Israelites.(For lack of a better term, mind.)

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va1KBWpB_r8[/YOUTUBE]

While I am not against people like Ben Shapiro being allowed to speak at at a given university and am willing to stand by him in that particular instance, I wouldn't extend this to someone as caustic as Milo.

All these groups should be allowed to speak. What better place for a flat-earther to speak than a University!

 

[J842P]

No, not at all, and I'm not sure why you keep ignoring this, if I am just not explaining it clearly, but I am not sure how else to explain this, although I appreciate it might not make sense to someone from France, but that doesn't matter in court. Most employees in the United States are at-will. Google could fire someone for stating that the Earth isn't flat, and that person wouldn't be protected from that firing by law.

If this is the case then the issue is employment law.

Whether there might be an issue with PC would have to be demonstrated but you're basically saying that we cannot expect courts to rule on this particular aspect of the case. So, it's a catch 22 situation. Which leaves employment law as the only issue until a court could possibly look at a PC motive.

This issue with regards to PC is the fact that these statements are controversial at all. In particular, the evidence about population-level differences in the "Things vs. People" dichotomy is particularly strong with respect to prenatal testosterone exposure:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/

Note this relationship is born out when you look at differences between *and within* sex groups.

But you haven't established that this is a PC issue at all. Google's stated motive is "portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace." How would that be a PC issue at all?
EB

Because the codes of conduct themselves are PC! It's one thing to have a code of conduct that prohibits harassment, but essentially Google is prohibiting any dissent from the social constructionist position - a position that is hardly scientifically tenable, I might add, and actually is rarely internally consistent. For example, transgender-rights activists argue that transgenderism is a true condition, that transgender women with male sexual genitalia and XY chromosomes, for example, have brains that are more "wired like a woman's" in the sense that their gender expression is like a woman's. Keep in mind these sorts of people are usually the most fervent social constructionists around, but the whole idea that transgenderism is an actual phenomenon is inconsistent with the idea that gender is a mere social construction!

I mean, if you read this guy's memo it is hardly a "screed", and it doesn't argue that women are inherently unfit to be software engineers, nor does it argue against efforts to increase diversity in tech (indeed, the last part of it are recommendations on how to effectively accomplish just that, including aiming for a culture where the male-gender role is relaxed!), and yet, those claims have been promulgated in the left *without question* and they are verifiably, categorically untrue.

The memo actually argues that population-level differences in personality and preferences (both of which we have good reasons to believe are grounded in biological factors pertaining to hormone exposure in the womb) could explain a portion of the gender disparity in software engineering - the guy explicitly states that discrimination is *also a factor that needs to be addressed*. The guy goes to inordinate pains to explain how population-level differences are just that - and that reducing people to their population-level statistics is not only fallacious but wrong. You can read the whole thing, with the original figures, here:

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf

And to elaborate on the gender differences in personalities and preferences, I think the best evidence that this isn't merely a social construction - and that's leaving aside lots and lots observational and experimental animal studies - is the effect we see across countries:

http://bit.ly/2wMN45j

So, in wealthy countries that have relative gender egalitarianism, so think the Northern European countries, gender disparities are actually *much more extreme* than in countries that are less wealthy with relatively strong pressures on conforming to gender roles (think the Middle East). Indeed, in Iran where gender roles are enshrined in law and vigorously enforced, you see the *opposite* disparity, so for example, they graduate more women engineers than men! This is very robust across countries. Note, this is precisely the *opposite* of what would be predicted by the social constructionist theory - that gender disparities in occupations *increase* when the surrounding culture is more gender egalitarian - and is exactly what would be predicted by biological theories about ecologically-evoked gender differences.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A good lawyer should be able to tease out in court the clear distinction you're making here between Google's "harmful gender stereotypes" and what you call "non-controversial and widely accepted findings in psychology and biology about gender differences".

If you're correct, this guy can start to count the money.
EB

Think there's no binding arbitration agreement??

And, unlike what many have said on here, he's not saying women are inferior. He's saying that they are much less likely to have the sort of mind that is what Google is looking for. That says nothing about the abilities of the ones that do have the right sort of mind.

Suppose you're trying to build a pro basketball team. Will anyone be surprised if you end up with more blacks than Asians? Blacks are on average slightly taller, by the time you're at the very end of the tail this translates into the very tallest being disproportionately black. Asians are on average slightly shorter--again, what is of no importance in the middle of the curve becomes a big difference at the tail. This says nothing about their merits beyond getting past the gate of being tall enough.

 

[DrZoidberg]

They're the same thing. I just added aggressively for emphasis. We've already discussed the differences at length. Being PC is just being a decent person. Policing other people and demanding political correctness is pure evil, anti-democratic and a slippery slide to fascism. The firing of the Google employee, the fact that they think it tarnishes googles reputation and that other people may judge Google, as a company, negatively because of this, is all the second kind, pure fascistoid evil. And its something we need to combat.

Demanding political correctness?! You think Google would demand PC from his employees?

I'd say they have proven it. Don't you?

If not, how would you know that's what it amounted to?

You effectively attributed motives to Google without evidence.

I think this qualifies as being aggressive, which is confirmed by the kind of language you use,

He's an engineer. If they wanted to fire him for doing a bad job, they would have said that they did it for that reason. But they didn't. They said they did it in response to his memo.

which is inflated beyond reason: "pure fascistoid evil"?!

Please, come down dear.

It's a slippery slope. I live in Sweden. We're close to the bottom of that slippery slope.

Oh, here we go again...


First, it may be the case that Google overreacted, I just don't know and it seems too early to tell.

It seems to me that one motive for firing this guy more likely than PC is brand image. Google is a brand, it has an image in the public, it's interest is to protect it, and if the perception at Google is that this guy's rant to discriminate against women hurt Google's brand image in the public perception then it's definitely a strong motive.

And PC can't be a motive except for idiotic people but then again idiotic people can well choose any motive they like.

Officially, in any case, the motive for sacking this guy was this: "portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace."

This sounds reasonable to me as motives go.

Now, either it is true that this guy's memo violated Google's code of conduct and then the sacking was presumably inevitable unless Google wanted to void their code of conduct, or it is not true that the memo violated Google's code of conduct, in which case the sacked employee will no doubt find plenty of lawyers all ready to help him pursue the matter in court and get damages worth being fired to start with.

And right now, you don't know in which case we are. Yet, you definitely pretend you do. See?


Now for a moral perspective on this, let's suppose the memo had been about discriminating between White employees and African-American employees rather than discriminating between men and women. Just read the memo by substituting "African-American" to any reference to women in it. Google's claim that the memo "cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace" may then look more credible to you if it didn't on first reading.

Anyway, you're clearly on a campaign to destroy PC and good luck to you. I believe you're not particularly unbiased in this exercise, though. Google gave a clear motive for sacking this guy and we don't have sufficient details on the case to assess for ourselves whether this official motive is the real one. But this is America. Don't tell me this guy cannot obtain redress in court.

And I would have liked to see how you would react if you had been the but of this guy's discriminatory claims.
EB

Quit the newspeak. Firing him to protect their brand name and succumbing to PC is the same thing.

I don't want to live in a society where people are afraid to speak their mind. I suspect a lot of people who agree with this also voted for Trump, precisely because he's such a fucking moronic twit, who is too fucking stupid not to speak his mind.

You think America is a place where people are afraid to speak their mind?! Just because of Google perhaps?

America strikes me as a place where people can go on a rampage saying pretty much anything that's beyond "common decency".

Nah. USA is big. USA is a big enough to defy any generalisation. Whatever you say about that country will most likely be way off base somewhere in it.

But just to contradict myself a bit. USA is above anything a country where morons feel empowered. The uneducated don't seem to have shame about their lack of education. Most countries have a name for this particular type of shame. In Sweden it's "bildningskomplex". Not in English.

It doesn't matter what idiots say, because they have no power. President Trump excluded from that rule. Idiots have no way of turning their moronic ideas into anything useful.

If the educated are afraid to speak their mind, we're in trouble. USA is actually better than most in that regard. If not all. Certainly better than Sweden. It's still a fascistiod slippery slope. Any impulse to unnecessarily curtail other people's freedom is a slippery slope to fascism.

You also seem to have missed the fact that this guy was on the job. It's not a question about Free Speech. It's a question about the workplace and Google's rules.
EB

He joined into an ongoing discussion on gender diversity at Google, and offered his well reasoned, well researched and well written opinion on the matter. Google, so far, has encouraged their employees to speak their mind. This is part of their success. Google has "feedback" rooms where people go if they want to be criticized. if you put your foot in their you've got to take it like man. They have those rooms everywhere and they're attributed to part of Googles success.

He didn't say anything remotely offensive IMHO. The lack of gender diversity is interesting and is something we need to talk about. We're been trying super hard to get more female engineers since the mid 80'ies. It's almost 30 years now. Progress has been slooooooooow.

Even in super gender equal Sweden progress is slow. It's clearly not for lack of ability. We still only have about 20% female engineers. Why? This is interesting. And something we're best off having an open nonjudgmental discussion about. In comparison, if we look at female managers in Sweden it's today about 50/50. In the 80'is this group of almost non-existent. What's the difference between these types of jobs? This is interesting. I think biology is a factor.