G--gle Culture
DO NO EVIL
These excerpts are from a recent online interview by Stefan Molyneux of the fired Google employee James Damore explaining himself:
"Generally, I just really like understanding things," he said about his reasons for compiling his argument. "And recently, through interactions with people, I have noticed how different political ideologies divide us in many ways. I wanted to understand what was behind all that."
"I read a lot into Jonathan Haidt's work, a lot about what exactly is the philosophy behind all of these things. And that led me to the beginning of the document," he explained.
He described his crystallizing moment as: "I could see that all of us are really blind to the other side, so in these environments where everyone is in these echo chambers just talking to themselves, they are totally blind to so many things.We really need both sides to be talk to each other about these things and trying to understand each other."
He critiques both the left and right for not working together: "The easiest way of understanding the left is: It is very open, it is looking for changes. While the right is more closed, and wants more stability. There are definitely advantages to both of those. Sometimes there are things that need to change, but you actually need a vision for what you want. There is value in tradition, but not all traditions should be how they are."
"We create biases for ourselves. This is particularly interesting, when we talk about how it relates to reality," he said.
"Both sides are biased in a way, they have motivated reasoning to see what they want out of a lot of things," he continued.
"This happens a lot in social science, where it is 95% leaning to the left. And so they only study what they want, and they only see the types of things that they want, and they really aren't as critical of their own research as much as they should. The popular conception is that the right doesn't understand science at all, that the right is anti-science. It is true that they often deny evolution and climate science, climate change, but the left also has its own things that it denies. Biological differences between people -- in this case, sex differences," he explained.
He described the experience of diversity training at Google, which inspired him to write: "I heard things I definitely disagreed with in some of the programs. I had some discussions with people there, but there was a lot of just shaming. 'No you can't say that, that's sexist, you can't do this.' There is so much hypocrisy in a lot things they are saying. I decided to just create the document just to clarify my thoughts."
I have often recommended Jon Haidt's research presented in his book, The Righteous Mind. It's worth a read because much of what is happening in social and political discourse these days reflects a psychological pathology that should be completely unnecessary. But getting out of our own way in politics is a difficult challenge.
I find nothing particularly mendacious about Mr. Damore's document or his intentions to clarify what is basically an empirical puzzle concerning gender differences. Of course, this was all blown way out of proportion because it challenges some unscientific political agenda.
As a scientist, I assume that all empirical phenomena should be open to skepticism and challenges. I'm not sure how we progress intellectually any other way. The attack on Mr. Damore is an attack on science and for me can only reveal an indefensible political agenda. This is sad, if not dangerous, to say the least.
My own approach in this blog has been to suggest analytical frameworks to help understand how human behavior aggregates up into social behavior that defines our civilization; past, present and future (see Common Cent$). The universe is constantly changing, and survival depends on successful adaptation. Unsuccessful adaptation leads to extinction. Thus, the problem for all species is how to successfully adapt.
It seems to me our knowledge-base in the biological and social sciences, and in the arts and humanities can help us humans out here and I can't understand why anyone who wants to survive would ignore or discount anything we can learn from that wealth of knowledge. Yet, some would choose to ignore anything that might challenge their world-view, even when they know it is false. G--gle seems to have succumbed to that pressure. That's a shame, but not a path any of us have to accept.
What's G--gle's motto again?