And it's not even just that, it's that his takes are practically copypasted from r/theredpill. Like, if this were an assignment he'd be dangerously close to failing due to plagiarism, before the actual content were graded.

There are so many gems. I like how he put citations in his footnotes like he's David Foster Wallace.

And, one of these citations is to Kyle ****ing Smith from the New York Post.

Also, he cites that women are more neurotic than men, overlooking that none of his lady coworkers are stricken with the compulsions to bang out 10page manifestos of sophomoric nonsense.

The whole "Why We're Blind" section is pure gold.

But, to be fair, Hitler did end it by channeling his inner Paul Reiser with, "Look, I'm not saying we should kill all the Jews, I'm just saying..."

I had a professor who called HR the revenge of the C student.

I once had a senior manager at a large bank who was a massive liability to the company. Openly racist, sexist, total bully, just an all around walking lawsuit. Told HR. Guess how that worked out.

LOL that's the last thing I'd ever expect someone would want to hear, and I would only turn something in were it absolutely necessary (i.e. a legit safety issue). No way any of them would want the hassle unless they are evil and just out to get people.

Will be interesting to see a season of Survivor where no one survives. Hate that the editors telegraphed it so hard this early in the season, tho.

I think the real issue with the whole James Damore fiasco is that this is something people care about these days. This trifling nonsense that, to the extent that this is about justice or politics, is mostly about which of several extremely privileged groups gets to take home slightly more of.the largely undeserved monopoly profits. Let's face it - if you're on the cusp of getting hired by Google as an engineer, you're privileged regardless of your gender/race/etc, regardless of whatever personal heroic narrative you've constructed for yourself. If you get rejected and end up not getting that 250K or whatever, someone else will pay you 200K.

I've written about this many times before but it matters not where you stand on each issue, but which issues actually matter to you and what you're willing to do about them. We live in a country where the minimum wage is $7.25, millions of people have no access to health care, drug addiction runs rampant among the poor, 3% of the population are on/in probation, parole, jail or prison, 13% of the millenials are unemployed and somehow I'm supposed to care about some privileged white man working at a prestigious company living in one of the most expensive areas in one of the most prosperous countries whining about reverse discrimination or some privileged white woman in a similar situation whining about how someone else whining about discrimination is making it harder for her to enjoy her 250K salary. This is so far down the list of things that matter that it's hard to believe anyone on either side of the debate is sincere. Get a mother****ing grip guys - you are the problem and you know who you are.

Phone Booth's post should be bronzed and hung in the town square for all to see imo.

Meh, injustice to the wealthy is just as bad as injustice to the poors, and if it isn't confronted there it sure as **** isn't going to move the needle when it's Walmart locking its employees in the building.

Solid post by Phone Booth.

The thing I care about, however, is that the guy is just wrong. We've been through this before, where jews, slavs, chinese, irish, italian, hutus, tutsis, etc. were "known" to be inferior or to exhibit undesirable or antisocial traits, and it was all backed up by "science" and "data." Of course, the science and data were crap and it turns out that people often conform to the social roles society sets for them. And even though I lean toward the nature side of nature-nurture, and still beleive it's theoretically possible for women to be less naturally skilled, on average, at say math: 1) we're along way from ever getting actually accurate data on that question, 2) if we did have such data, known to a certainty, what would that imply regarding the workplace and women (or men, or anyone else), and 3) if you take an interest in such things and believe it's important for society to recognize the "on average" superiority of group x vs group y with respect to skills a and b, you're probably just developmentally stunted and have really shallow views about the nature of society generally.

100 years ago women just weren't biologically capable of taking on the responsibility of voting. And now, most men voted for Trump and women are much more apt to finish college and are a majority in most law and med schools. It's really amazing how much biological change there's been to women in the last 100 years.

Having to settle for mere 200K due to diversity hires or unconscious bias or whatever is pretty much the same thing as being a single mom having to juggle multiple minimum-wage jobs to make ends meet or having a criminal record due to smoking marijuana while black and poor and struggling to find employment. Just as bad indeed. Next up, a billionaire leaves just 100 million in cash to his daughter while his son takes over a billion dollar business. Should this sexist decision be allowed to stand? Great injustice or greatest injustice? How is she going to cope with this?

IMO, if you take the class, income and wealth gap for granted, you no longer have any moral authority to complain about gender gap or race gap or discrimination or reverse discrimination or whatever because you're no longer arguing for equality or justice, you're arguing for a prettier distribution of inequality and injustice. Why use a proxy when the real thing is readily available?

Good point, but on the other hand,

https://xkcd.com/386/

The above of course also characterizes my entire posting history so FML.

Yes when it comes to the specific people involved but that misses the important reason why it really matters. If we accepted inequality at this fairly high level then that feeds into a general acceptance that women are less valued or, far worse, less valuable employees at all levels (maybe in specific industries). That a systemic societal problem and while tackling it across the board is vital - these high profile 'privileged' or 'role model' type jobs matter disproportionately in addressing this long running systemic bias.

That doesn't mean in itself that he should have been sacked. The main thing is that he doesn't get his way.

The "he shouldn't have been fired" narrative is mainly from people who would not have fired him, which is mainly because they agree with him. People get fired for doing stupid things all of the time. Or for causing PR disasters. Or for no reason at all. Workplace protections for at-will employees in the USA are pretty limited.

I'm sure some less-offensive version of that which focused narrowly on Google's training programs or whatever would enjoy some legal protection. That's a bit different from what was circulated.

WSJ firmly on team White Male here. I know you guys were holding your collective breath. Could have said it in a more artful way, of course.

Don't get the love. Does caring about workplace discrimination mean I can't also be upset over minimum wage? Just seems like a standard "liberals need to be quiet!" post.

I mean could it be any more predictable, a bunch of right wingers suddenly very troubled and concerned to learn rich white employees can be fired for close to any reason too! Just like poors!!!

Yeah, and caring about workplace discrimination, even among rich people, doesn't say anything bad about you. But, as far as the post goes:

This is good in a motivational way. Talk is usually cheap.

In this particular story what just about everyone on one side did was elect Donald Trump though, so sometimes doing something doesn't take much effort.

Standard "shut up lib what are you doing in Africa!!!"

You're free to care about whatever but in aggregate, there's approximately zero outrage among upper middle class white liberals about minimum wage workers or for that matter anything that has to do with the lower class. It's like they are not actually people. And what people are outraged about here are: 1) the right wing upset that some rich white dude got fired for having poor judgment. 2) the left wing (well not really but not important) upset that some rich white women had to endure the indignity that one person in a 70K people corporation thinks women are different from men in ways that they don't agree. This is clearly and totally unacceptable and must be fixed immediately - who cares about poor people though, somebody has to make my burger and I can't go to fancy restaurants every day.

I will add that presently the workplace equality of the sort being pushed by the upper middle class more or less statistically amounts to the upper middle class deciding that rearing children and doing other household chores is the job of lower class women, who in turn are taken away from their own family to do work for another family for very little. They are not sending men home to help their wives and nobody's hiring men for babysitting or other domestic work.

The key here is the notion of equality. Both sides are supposedly concerned about equality - James Damore is concerned that maybe this time, white male Googlers aren't treated quite as well as some other groups. Others are concerned that white female Googlers and other would be female Googlers who are just doctors and lawyers instead just don't have enough encouragement and that's why there's such unequal representation. I mean wouldn't it just be great if things were more equal?

But suppose equality is something you actually care about. You don't have to go to Africa, which to many is an abstract concept that they've barely experienced and you don't even have to watch news - inequality is all around us. But why do we not really care? Two main reasons: 1) inequality at this level so deeply ingrained in us that we don't even perceive those who are less equal than us as as the same human beings as we are. 2) we deeply benefit from this inequality. I mean who wants to pay more for what they can get for less?

Given that lots of people on both sides of the issue are actually less privileged than the victims in question, we've kind of degenerated into a reality show where we're vicariously living through those rich people whose trivial concerns we use to drown out the unbearable parts of reality. We care about this not because it's important but precisely because it's trivial.

Jesus Christ you can simultaneously be outraged at income inequality and take the time to point and laugh at some rich white mega douchebag spouting eugenics and male supremacy. What the **** dude, I don't get to stand up for women/minorities/gays/whatevers if they have a high income? GTFO with that bull****.

I'm not Jesus Christ and I'm not talking about you personally - only you can judge your relative levels of emotional engagement in these issues. I'm just saying, deep down, if this applies to you, you know it. We know that in aggregate this is true by actually observing the real world.

lol wut? Raising the minimum wage and reforming the criminal justice system were like the main themes of the Bernie Sanders movement.

I mean, sure we're all guilty of posting about this because it's what's trending on Twitter today and there are probably more important things like malaria and obesity that we should be worried about. I don't see that as a reason to self-flagellate the forum.

Bolded is false in at least one framework. The rest is some trickle-down theory of justice, I guess? It maybe works on paper, but it falls apart in the real world. Agitation isn't really non-rivalrous, not when you think about how people agitate. It's an itch they scratch, as well as taking time. They aren't infinitely itchy and they don't have infinite time. And there will be no reciprocity from the beneficiaries.

It's similar to the minor brouhaha over the BBC's gender pay gap. Not only is it possible for that gap to be justified (I'm not saying it is, I'm saying it's not immediately obvious that that represents an actual injustice), but even if we agree it's not, by spending time and effort on agitating against it, what are we actually doing? We're demanding pay hikes for the rich. I just can't get too excited over that.

Definitely won't shed a tear over the dude's firing, though. Seems like a prick.