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0 pointshumanrebar8y ago0 comments

Thesis or not, this is right at the beginning:

"Google’s political bias has equated the freedom from offense with psychological safety, but shaming into silence is the antithesis of psychological safety. This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed."

...firing him, at least the way they did it, confirmed that position.

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bduerst8y ago· 2 in thread

There's nothing revelationary about that statement.

Anyone could read Google's code of conduct and know that Google would fire/reprimand someone for being toxic to their coworkers. Employees are free to debate and cherry pick evidence about their opinions on the world being flat, 9/11 being an inside job, even a fake moon landing.

James decided he wanted to debate about his opinion on his workers being biologically inferior (among other opinions). He had a chance to receive feedback on this from coworkers and change his position, the problem was he didn't and continued to broadcast his opinion which was toxic to his coworkers.

It's a strange hill to pick to die on because nothing is surprising about how this played out, other than how the media is still talking about it.

humanrebarOP8y ago

If he has the opinion that his coworkers are biologically inferior, I didn't see that in the memo.

Can you explain how you came to that conclusion?

bduerst8y ago

That's a loaded question. I didn't come to the conclusion, many others have based on his premise of using personality constructs as being caused by evolutionary psychology.

You can see it in the paper how he starts with the obvious, "Men and Women are biologically different" and then jumps into observable personality differences, which are not proven to be biologically driven. It wouldn't be so bad if he didn't attribute these "biologically-caused" personality differences (neuroticism, agreeableness, less ambition, etc.) to women being the ones to blame for their problems in tech.

This opinion is toxic to his coworkers, which is a violation of the Google Code of Conduct.

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