Damore, Peterson, and rerouted anti-corporatism

So the typical "left" line on this guy and his continuing crusade against Google and "PC corporate culture" (or whatever else the Peterson drones are using as buzzwords to replace SJW these days is) is already fairly well documented. And to a degree I agree with the idea (maybe more than the typical board member here) that in an "ideal" work environment that harassment of coworkers would need to be dealt with and that his manifesto is full of junk science. But given his latest lawsuit stunt against Google, is there a leftist tack to take advantage of the battle and the media exposure around it? Or is it a lost cause with a right wing autist fighting an idpol battle that we should just ignore? Is the whole thing doomed to be about right wingers talking about "muh white oppression"?

Article on the lawsuit:
npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/01/09/576682765/james-damore-sues-google-alleging-discrimination-against-conservative-white-men

Relevant CA article on the subject that articulates some of the back and forth I've felt on the subject:
currentaffairs.org/2018/01/everyones-a-leftist-once-a-corporation-tramples-on-them

To mods: I know this can be interpreted as minor "internet celeb" culture but I felt it was going to be symptomatic of the way internet politics will be framed for the next month or so so it was at least worth minor discussion.

Other urls found in this thread:

theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/16/james-damore-google-memo-interview-autism-regrets
pythagoreancrank.com/?p=5802
slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2018/01/why_is_monsanto_inviting_alt_right_hero_jordan_peterson_to_a_fireside_chat.html
thebaffler.com/latest/new-atheisms-idiot-heirs-nichols
faculty.gvsu.edu/deanerr/Winegard et al 2014 Misrepresentations of Evolutionary Psychology in Sex and Gender Textbooks.pdf
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

Idk about the lawsuit but there's no angle where this dude doesn't look like a half-bird hybrid

Damore is anti-union, anti-workers' rights, and an all around closet fascist "centrist" (he appeared on Molymeme for fuck's sake.) If anyone deserves to get raped by google it's him.

However I think it would be a mistake to not highlight how this sort of thing wouldn't happen if all tech workers were union.

He doesn't have a leg to stand on and is going to be curb stomped so fast there won't be any time for a conversation. I honestly am not even sure the media will bother reporting his loss given its inevitability.

Do you have any good quotes or documentation of this? It seems pretty hypocritical that this guy is crying discrimination in what can only be considered a worker's rights case. There is still that troglodyte segment of the Right that never accepted legal prohibition of the employer's "right to discriminate"

Well yeah the goal really isn't to win. He's trying to increase his notoriety so that can start a lame "center-right" media company or something after he loses.

The dude is way too autistic for a sustained media career though. This seems like an incredibly badly thought out plan

dunno man, looking at what he's filed in his complaint and a brief look at the content of California's anti-discrimination laws, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss his chances. Of course, we haven't seen google's response yet so it's all just speculation at this point, but if I was a betting man, I'd put my money on him getting a pretty fat settlement payout with an NDA to shut him up.

Regardless of what you think about the 'science' and some of the half-baked stuff in his memo, there was little to nothing in there that could be honestly described as harassment or "hate speech" and my understanding is that he posted it to a company wide forum/mailing list that existed specifically for feedback on hiring practices (could be wrong on this - the press lies/gets details like this wrong all the time). Presumably if he'd written some diatribe about the superiority of the essential mystical characteristics of the feminine in relation to JIT Java web applications, he'd be sitting pretty.

But really, employers should not be able to summarily fire workers because their political views are not the preferred politics of their "corporate culture" nor because they find the feedback they get when they ask for it to be politically uncomfortable. Beyond that, I was actually pretty disgusted by what passed for the Left's response to the whole thing last year when it happened and I expect I'll continue to be disgusted by it as this case continues. I don't really care about this guy in particular, he seems like a pretty standard le rational skeptic austist, but pretty much everything I saw from the Left on this was tacit support for the dictatorial power of bosses to enforce political views on their workers via threats to their livelihood. That's obviously the reality, especially in silicon valley, but seeing the Left crowing about it because this time it was some douchebag from the other tribe was pretty disappointing.

What other avenue does he actually have available to him? My understanding is that most of burgerstan (not 100% on any peculiarities in California on this) has no unfair dismissal provisions beyond those that relate to discrimination against protected identities like race, sex, etc. So this guy was sacked, is probably now unemployable in his field and.. what? He's just supposed to roll over for that when he has resources to try and get something out of them? And if the only viable legal approach is to try to do something via anti-discrimination laws, then can he really be faulted for going that way?

Arguing that women aren't suited for tech or whatever is a violation of worker solidarity. Instead of complaining that Google is wasting its money trying to hire women he should instead argue for better working conditions and for more say in how the company is run.

He could have focused on union strengthening or right to work legislation. God knows he has or at least had the exposure to do so. Instead he just make it about some identity nonsense that no one will buy (despite all this pablum about quotas and diversity hires, everyone knows that Google is mostly white men)

I guess you never actually read the memo? It was long and autistic and apparently nobody else who commented on it ever bothered to read it, so I don't blame you, but I don't recall that he ever said
the closest he got to that was saying that there could be, on aggregate, differences in the proclivities of men and women that mean that number of women who are both qualified and interested enough to choose a career in that kind of work might simply be less than men. He was actually quite careful to make clear that this did not mean that any particular woman was less qualified just because she was a woman or whatever. Just that the current policies and quotas/"goals" might be unrealistic. He then went on to make suggestions that he thought would actually help bring more women in if the company was serious about it. I mean, there are plenty of criticisms to make about what he wrote, but people ascribe all sorts of shit to his "screed" that just isn't there.


There's all sorts of things that he could if he was exactly the kind of person you'd prefer him to be with the precise politics you'd prefer he have, but get real honestly. None of that is plausible for a suit to bring to court (as I understand the laws) and none of it would pay at all probably, let alone enough to make up for what is basically the end of his career in his field. Now it's possible that the dude is making some political stand based on his own shitty politics, but chances are he's looking for a payout after he got fired and blackballed and this is the only legal avenue available with a shot at getting one.

The implication was pretty obvious.

Let me interject here before this disagreement gets more autistic. The memo said that there are gender differences in job preference, not in ability. With that said, this is still very heavily rooted in pseudoscience and is a pretty anti-leftist stance since it ignores environmental factors. If you're going to disagree with him, disagree with him there and don't use the "he says women *can't* do the work" line

Only tangentially related, but getting people fired for bad opinions is the capitalist equivalent of swatting…don’t do it folks, even if they’re Nazi idiots. Just punch them instead

Nazis and other fascists deserve to suffer endlessly in life. Do whatever you can to damage them.

He also said that workplace culture should be more cooperative and consensus based to accommodate female fragility, which is a good idea if you ignore the underlying evopsych stereotyping

Nazis are just a symptom, they are personally repellent to normal individuals, on par with pedophiles…by getting them fired you are empowering the owner class. Punish them in ways that don’t reward our true enemies.

No, it wasn't and isn't. Have you listened to this guy speak? Have you actually read his writing? This is not a guy prone to or probably even capable of the sort of ~implications~ people ascribe to his memo. People inferred them because the (pseudo-)science he used to support his ideas would clash with certain ascendant political dogmas if it was accurate and there is a large subculture of people who somehow perceive this as "violence" and "hate".

Again, you can disagree with him all you like (and you should), but at least
1. disagree with what he actually said and preferably have some evidence of your own to demonstrate it and
2. try to demonstrate some elementary leftist principles regarding the dictatorial power of bosses to destroy workers' livelihoods based on political views.

We really need to talk about this science denialism that's going on here (and elsewhere in liberal circles, but I honestly expect self-described leftists to be better than that).

Pretty much what this guy said, can't say I care much for Damore but this is a class issue first and foremost. Tinfoil hat time though. What do you want to bet that after the memo google decided to do a background check on the guy including reading his personal emails and browsing history and what they found there is what led to his firing.


I'm going to be super disappointed if your argument is just that Damore cited some studies and therefore anyone who disagrees with him is a science denier.

His conclusions fall far outside the consensus of the current scientific community, and hedging your opinion on how correct a layman is in his science is mindbogglingly naive

Not so much science denialist as a denial that evopsych ‘insights’ (when they are not just-so stories) are prescriptive. What is the point of bringing up that men and women have different brain chemistry, behave differently, etc? Most of us acknowledge this but it has no bearing on female equality de jure.

My goodness, just take a look at that 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧nose🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧.

He's not exactly a layman, and the scientific accuracy of his memo has since been confirmed by pretty much every scientist who spoke about it (including those who do not agree with his conclusions). Note that his point was explicitly "stop ignoring these data for ideological reasons", so if yours is going to be "but it isn't settled science", then you don't exactly have a leg to stand on.

Besides, I'm not just talking about Damore and this thread. I.Q., for example, is settled science at this point, and I'm seeing the same kind of denialism about it on this board.


If males and females behave differently, you cannot measure equality by the male-to-female ratio and indeed you cannot expect it to be 1:1 in the first place.
And since that's the assumption of some of the current "equality" initiatives and regulations, I'd say it has enormous bearing on them.

I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt here but I want to illustrate to everyone else the sort of ill constructed discourse that's been surrounding this case. Note how every person's contention with the memo are the badly extrapolated conclusions and misunderstood implications of many of the studies cited, and yet somehow the framing put forth by defenders of the memo (I am specifying of the memo since I don't believe he should have been fired) will make this false distinction that no one else makes and add that the conclusions are disagreed with as some sort of irrelevant aside at the end

lmao

He's absolutely a layman on the topics of sociology and psychology being discussed. Stop being so determined to be a pedant when I was helping your case. He should be protected as an employee regardless of how right he was on the topic.

this sentence tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the poster
absolute retard

The problem is that we're also disputing his conclusions because of how he's framed the data, not necessarily because the data have no correspondence with reality.

It's idiotic for the left to give greater power to corporations to discipline workers for their views, however, so I would defend him on that basis and no other.

...

i noticed that, im suprised pol hasnt edited him into a happy merchant meme

That's not true, unions do not support christian workers or workers with right-wing views

Were you dropped as a baby?

That would rule if it were true, seeing as Christian churches and right-wingers try their absolute best to bust unions and destroy worker solidarity.

Proofs?

I think there is a left approach to this. When a was a liberal free speech autist it always pissed me off that companies were alowed to fire their employees for political statements. Regardless of this guys position this is a workers rights issue and if it weren't for the so called 'leftists' celebrating we could you use this issue to point out how capitalism impedes freedom of speech, which is all these liberals care about.

Nah the suffering of fascist enablers is always a good thing. Also he, like all FT non-contract tech workers in SV is either petty bourgeoisie or is a labor aristocrat. Fuck him.

Mom!!! Phineas became a right wing activist!!!

That guy is just an autist. Less "That guy talked to non leftists, ruin his life", especially when you have to enable terrible corporate practices to enable that.

This lawsuit is sure to succeed.

No he isn't. He has a PhD and is quite intelligent. He knows what he is doing.

No, he literally is autistic
theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/16/james-damore-google-memo-interview-autism-regrets

You can be reactionary and autistic.

You can both mock him for being a reactionary and use this situation to point out how it's capitalism that causes this problem. Just point out the absurdity of the shirt he's wearing. Google is enormous corporation. The idea that they are secretly communist sympathizers is laughable.

Wait, what is the context there?

But the claim was that he was autistic and you said "no he isn't". No one else set up that dichotomy

You mean that line? I don't know I just thought it was funny.

Thank Gawker pundit, as we know, cool guys like you tend to win cases for being Chad. Wait, Former Gawker pundit.

Jews doesn't count as Jews if they have the right opinions i guess.

Try being leftist in a blue collar trade.

Union busters are not "workers with right-wing views", they're class traitors.

got a feeling that "don't support" means "don't defend bigotry and intolerance"

Top Kek.

Marx looks like an old wolverine
and Hegelpuff is a creature straight out of nightmare land

No the claim I was responding (>>2349865) to was that he was "just an autist". The problem isn't his autism it's the fact that he feels that whining about muh women and worrying about Google's bottom line is more important than worker solidarity.

"Only I will decide who is a Jew" – Göring

That strange, I'm pretty sure that's called class collaboration. I suppose leftist ideals stop where petty power grab begins.

Dude was a glorified cop. There's no side to support.

He was making something like $200k/year and also probably had stock options. The guy is labor aristocracy at best.

If your idea of the working class only includes blue collar workers then you are going to have a problem organizing any proletarian movement as those jobs continue to disappear.

You left out half of my post you numbskull.

I’m not gonna defend him or anything but cost of living is insane in SV. I can’t imagine being one of the poor service industry workers who served guys like this their chicken tendies as they chortle about EsJayDubyas


Productive workers or “blue collar workers” will never disappear because capitalism can’t function without them. White collar workers need to learn they are just as vulnerable to automation as the blue collar workers they look down on. I’d say even more so, if I’m an employer I have much greater incentive to automate the job of someone making 200k then I do the guy making 20k

What difference does it make where they are working? Engineers can make a lot of money wherever they are. They still not capitalists if they don't own private property. I don't see how their anything like a cop either.

Nuclear take: cops are typically more working class than engineers.

Neither side is really worth cheering on in this case, but Damore probably has a case, judging from some of the screenshots of Google's internal memos and documents.
He actually has a paper trail backing his assertions, so unless the judge is heavily biased in Google's favor it's pretty much a slam dunk.
And anything that brings Google down a peg or two is okay by me.

That's Taco Bell Hot at most

Cops are guard labor.

I'm so dissapoint in you son….. Data is data… sort of, the conclusions about what that data means are based on your interpretive frame. Not that I blame you for trying to turn around the whole 'you're a science denier' thing onto the leftists. But it was a pretty disgusting argument to start with. "Anyone who has a problem with medical treatments or gmo's is basically a holocaust denier." Bringing yourself down to that level only makes everybody stupider.


underrated comment

So is being an APA (aka “Greeter”) at any big box store but it’s def still a working class position.

Every engineer I’ve ever known always talks about how much money their making or expect to make and how one day they’ll one their one company or be the boss etc.

Cop unions are actually a formidable force whereas engineers unions are hardly existent as far as I can tell.

Well , that's a good opportunity to push the idea of unions to engineers , now that it's proven that they are at risk of being fired.

Well I meant disappear in the sense that they're leaving western countries as well.

They do. All I'm saying is we should use situations like this to show how capitalism doesn't really care about their rights like free speech, which is all they talk about, and it could be a useful way to make them think about class conflict. I don't think people like this are going to be the vanguard of the revolution, they are too comfortable living under capitalism, but even the complaints they do have are related to capitalism.

Never hurts to lay the groundwork, I've been working for some smaller companies doing programming work for the last couple years and I'll probably be moving to work for the big corps in a little while. I'd be very interested in some sort of labor organization for tech workers but there just isn't really much out there. The most interesting thing I've heard on here was a Canadian bro who worked at a worker owned tech cooperative and the IWW has a tech workers section that does not seem to do anything.

How exactly do you plan to explain that this is capitalism's fault to a sperg who wears a "Goolag" shirt?
Fuck him, I'd be on the guy's side if he recognized that he got fucked by a power mongering corporation but no, he had to be a retard and blame it on muh sjw boogeyman.

I'm not talking about explaining it to him specifically.

Did you eat at any kind of restaurant in the past month? That’s productive labor even from a conservative Smithian perspective of what counts as productive labor which isn’t Marxist btw

If you look at all the sectors that potentially counts as productive (such as including mining, forestry and construction along with manufacturing) then the decline really isn’t as steep as it seems.

There has been a decline but with low-interest rates and rising third world labor a lot of industry is starting to move back. Let’s be real the reason a factory worker’s job gets automated and not a retail worker so far is because the average pay in industry is higher due to greater unionization.

The push towards a service-economy by the capitalist establishment had not a little to do with that fact. Tech workers will likely suffer the same fate as steel workers if they don’t organize. You wanna know what makes me think that? The first great tech sector complete with a highly paid coterie of skilled workers was in the telegraph industry—once more people got trained to do that job and it needed less skill the wages fell and eventually it started bleeding jobs. They want to hit the white collar workers with mass immigration of skilled workers from the third world and then you’ll see the type of smug four-eyes who laugh at the Dey-took-our-jobs but from South Park get really angry about it.

You see a move towards deskillinv and automation with Apple’s new programming language designed to cut down on the labor-time required to code.

*bit

I think you underestimate the utility of having a team of corporate lawyers

posting screens of smug liberal cunts on twitter is sure to get us where we need to be on this issue

Just piping up to say Peterson just sold out to fucking Monsanto. They have some PR wizard trying to penetrate into young internet demographics, and Kermit was his ticket, it seems.

So much for the anti-establishment 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧classical liberals🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧

A lot of "centrist" types love sucking monsanto cock though. But yeah they have been circling around this demo for a while now.

link? I have a few lib friends whose faces I want to rub it in

He looks like he'd be banned in Germany because his face is an antisemitic cartoon

pythagoreancrank.com/?p=5802
slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2018/01/why_is_monsanto_inviting_alt_right_hero_jordan_peterson_to_a_fireside_chat.html

I posted this in the Kermit thread but no one seemed to care.

Nothing screams "counter culture" like being associated with a multi-billion dollar multinational agrochemical company.

Same chemical company that made Agent Orange for the Vietnam War. That’s real counter-culture libtards!

lol at how that slate article treats peterson's appointment like the worst thing monsanto's ever done and acts like they're above this at all

NOSE
That picture has to be distorted somehow

He doesn't have the bare minimum wit or charisma needed to be a pundit, but I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up being paraded as a model "sensible centrist".


As far as liberals care, this is the worst thing.

I see it as a good opportunity to, if nothing else, bash SJWs an other liberals, because the right is doing exactly what they have been preaching for decades: playing identity games and oppression olympics. Now they act shocked, shocked I say, that reactionary are obeying them.

Damore is just the victim of liberal-capitalist attempts to increase the supply of labor with an influx of women in tech. What he wrote was right; there is an argument to be made that women and men differ in brain-structure.

He did not argue that the gender-difference is universal.

The entire liberal narrative on this case fits entirely within the pattern of the defanged american left; whenever progressive ideology clashes with capitalist ideals, the capitalist narrative prevails.

pic related

This makes sense on its face, but in this case, Damore is acting against that increase in labor supply, yet the mainstream narrative is against him. Dunno, maybe Porky figures he can wring out more juice from liberals before switching back to pandering to reactionaries again.

It's not universal, as in; being male MUST imply mechanical orientation, and femininity MUST imply empathy orientation. Damore argued that these orientations are gendered and follow a skewed normal distribution, like most of everything.

Damore's essay inadvertently clashed with mainstream liberalism. He didn't mean to upset the liberal narrative; he just pointed out that Google HR is at odds with contemporary scientific evidence.

as an exceedingly ugly person, man he's ugly

He looks kind of cute until you get closer.

Burger standards are so garbage now that just not being fat makes you semi-attractive to a lot of people

Doesn't the capitalist want an increase in labor supply? So what he was advocating was against the capitalist's interest in that sense. On the other hand I think what he was really saying was that when Google hires they should hire more males instead of females. The capitalist hires the same amount of people but they are supposedly better quality, which is in the capitalist's interest.

I have to say I don't like the normal left's response to this. My position is that when you go to work there shouldn't be any change in your rights. You retain all the rights you had before you walked through the front door and you don't gain any new ones. Since I don't want the government to prevent or punish Damore from publishing the memo outside the workplace, I don't want Google preventing or punishing Damore from publishing it inside the workplace. Where am I going wrong?

The fact that Damore doesn't believe in any of that.

Good article on Damore
thebaffler.com/latest/new-atheisms-idiot-heirs-nichols

how does Damore not believe in it?

Love to see that you guys are still going strong with Lysenkoism.

No

...

NOSE

WTF I LOVE GOOGLE NOW!

I know that you're a brainlet but evopsych where you just tell a good enough story to justify the evolutionary chain in your head isn't the strong scientific basis you think it is

Damore is a self described lolbert and believes in the inherent right of corporations to hire and fire workers "voluntarily". The only problem he perceives is that outside cultural influences had changed the "natural" order of how companies operate wrt their employees

I hope Google kicks his teeth in.

Maybe, maybe not.
Like I said, he has documentation backing his assertions.
And unlike many states, California actually has laws that offer (limited) protection to employees in regards to political leanings.
It'll be interesting, no matter which way the judge rules.

the nose knows…

You probably don't even know what evopsych actually is because your professor either taught it wrong himself or used a textbook that doesn't get it right.

faculty.gvsu.edu/deanerr/Winegard et al 2014 Misrepresentations of Evolutionary Psychology in Sex and Gender Textbooks.pdf

Also, your complete blank state theories isn't just creationist-tier, it literally requires creationism to be true.

Read Sex at Dawn. Evo Psych basically destroys monogamy and the "traditional" family. There's a reason why reactionaries don't rely on it anymore.

thats more likely to make them go FASH / anti immigrant than left wing tho

Eh my argument wasn't that they'd go commie or even SOC DEM GANG but rather that the living standards of these smug fuckers is open to the same type of attacks on their standard of living as ordinary workers. What you say very well could be true, and we may already be seeing it with the "nerd goes fash" phenomenon that seems to show up on the Aut-Right.

The funny thing is is that Trump never said anything about blocking all immigration, he said he might even want to increase immigration but it would have to be skilled immigration. The Silicon Valley guys could make do with illegal day workers standing around Home Depot going away but they've been pushing Trump hard to keep the H1B-Work Visa program that allows them to bring in skilled Pajeets and Changs to compete with American workers.

So much for the reign of the software engineer…

No one brought up blank slate except you because you're having an imaginary conversation with a straw-socialist. Stop being a pseud on fringe imageboards it's unbecoming and not worth your time (hopefully)

Basically the psych version of reading settlers. A lot of really appealing conclusions, many of them even true, drawn from really shoddy methodology and outright guess work at times.

The only thing more pathetic than those who think the blank slate is real are those who think it's realy but don't admit and take refuge under "oh no, there are some slight differences between the sexes but they're completely malleable".
If you don't even believe that, you mentioning evopsych is just a red herring.

This is perhaps the hardest projection I've ever seen on this board and that's saying a lot. Don't think no one notices the consistent uptick in pseuds at this time of day. Please go back

What am I projecting? My secret belief in tabula rasa? Do you even know what "projecting" means? If anything, given how often you repeat pseud, you're probably the one projecting.

It wasn't that hard to decipher that you're projecting your general lack of education and insecurities in your knowledge. Maybe I should just keep it simpler and call you a common moron, that seems more your speed.

So, again, projecting?

unsurprising

Well between the two of us it's you the one who started throwing around pseud and moron, so if there's someone who's insecure of his ability to actually discuss the topic, it's not me. Even the socialists who in your mind are made of straw are better at this.

What's even the point of lying on such a public forum? Everyone can see who replied to what, and it was you first started calling people lysenkoists and blank slate idealists for thinking Damore's work and understanding of the subject is shoddy, because it is. If that triggers you, that's not my problem.

You again! That book is just such an awful pile of reaching justifications for modern polyamorous relationships being natural I almost want to side with the alt-right on this. People aren't monogamous in the classic sense that it's meant but the historical examples of polygamy among people are much more like patriarchal harems and the general pattern has always been opportunistic cheating with serial monogamy. The whole people acted like bonobos thing and monogamy is a recent social construct has zero evidence. Book a shit. Fight me!

You're right, why lie on a public forum?

That's exactly what evopsych is.