The Rebels of Google

Over the weekend there was a major kerfuffle at Google regarding a memo discussing the subject of diversity and inherent sex differences affecting career selection preferences. In other words, men and women tend to be better at different things due to biological and genetic hard wiring that is impervious to social conditioning. The memo in question was written by one James Damore. The memo also discussed the atmosphere at Google in which those who don’t automatically accept the Social Justice Narrative can find themselves the target of workplace harassment and may potentially suffer the loss of their jobs.

The full text of the memo can be found here.

Google’s biases

At Google, we talk so much about unconscious bias as it applies to race and gender, but we rarely discuss our moral biases. Political orientation is actually a result of deep moral preferences and thus biases. Considering that the overwhelming majority of the social sciences, media, and Google lean left, we should critically examine these prejudices.

Left Biases

  • Compassion for the weak
  • Disparities are due to injustices
  • Humans are inherently cooperative
  • Change is good (unstable)
  • Open
  • Idealist

Right Biases

  • Respect for the strong/authority
  • Disparities are natural and just
  • Humans are inherently competitive
  • Change is dangerous (stable)
  • Closed
  • Pragmatic

Neither side is 100% correct and both viewpoints are necessary for a functioning society or, in this case, company. A company too far to the right may be slow to react, overly hierarchical, and untrusting of others. In contrast, a company too far to the left will constantly be changing (deprecating much loved services), over diversify its interests (ignoring or being ashamed of its core business), and overly trust its employees and competitors.

One can’t help but point out that the author has unwittingly named the difference here between r and K sensibilities. But I digress. Official Google TruthSpeak was quick to respond.

Many of you have read an internal document shared by someone in our engineering organization, expressing views on the natural abilities and characteristics of different genders, as well as whether one can speak freely of these things at Google. And like many of you, I found that it advanced incorrect assumptions about gender. I’m not going to link to it here as it’s not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages.

Diversity and inclusion are a fundamental part of our values and the culture we continue to cultivate. We are unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success as a company, and we’ll continue to stand for that and be committed to it for the long haul. As Ari Balogh said in his internal G+ post, “Building an open, inclusive environment is core to who we are, and the right thing to do. ‘Nuff said.”

Naturally the Social Justice Warriors are furious that anyone might be engaging in WrongThink.

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