> To answer your question more directly: "Yes. If I were working with a coworker that I know has publicly and thoroughly quoted science that indicates men are categorically more impulsive than women and he gives me, a man, a bad performance review, I would wonder if he did because he doesn't think men have the self-control to make good leaders." That's the hostile work environment, sadly.
1. Okay. So the psychologists deserve a lifetime of unemployment for daring to choose that major. Understood.
2. This is, as far as I can tell, the same form of argument as: "Yes. If I were working at a company that I know has publicly discussed and implemented DEI policies that argue for hiring people on the basis of traits other than their ability to do the job, and I saw a coworker do a bad job, I would wonder if that coworker were an unqualified 'diversity hire'." This is, to my understanding, one of the arguments that got Charlie Kirk shot; as it's one of the ones people cite when trying to justify the shooting.
But that argument is more coherent, because it considers the effect of hiring policy on hiring, rather than the effect of statistical traits of the general population on hiring. And because it considers job performance as evidence of job aptitude, rather than misrepresenting a statistical difference as a "categorical" one and then making an interpretation about personality traits as they correspond to job aptitude. (Part of the memo was specifically about how to prevent personality traits from interfering with job aptitude, coming from a belief that they don't inherently.)
> one cannot be "just asking questions" about protected categories
Again: his feedback was explicitly solicited. It is extraordinarily unjust to solicit feedback but punish people for saying things you don't want to hear. This is in fact a hallmark of the sorts of authoritarian regimes Damore complained about.
> it's not like individuals from the categories with the ... traits ... magically stop being of that category when they are hired
No, but if the trait is relevant to job performance, then they do stop having that trait when they are hired, because the hiring process filters for it. That's the point. Damore repeatedly, explicitly stated throughout the memo that such stereotyping is inappropriate. It represents ignoring evidence you already have. "You are in a group that tends to X, therefore you are X" is false logic that Damore calls out as false logic. It is being projected onto him by the complainants. Reasonable people did not make that inference, because the inference is not reasonable — because it is not backed by logic, nor is it compatible with the principle of charity that is expected of reasonable people. Coming to these sorts of conclusions requires many unreasonable acts, such as repeatedly ignoring explicit disclaimers.
> So the psychologists deserve a lifetime of unemployment for daring to choose that major.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." People who have studied psychology and wish to work in an American workplace are welcome to do so. If they suggest modern psychological science indicates that Title VII is based on flawed reasoning and their coworkers have reason to believe they will act on that belief in an official capacity, that creates a hostile work environment. American businesses are not the places to lab-test OCEAN trait averages as policy guidance.
You have stated several times that Damore stated that wasn't his intent. I know he stated that (sidebar: one of the reasons this topic triggers my interest is I was there). I think, unfortunately for him, his protests failed the credibility test, fair or unfair that may be. He hadn't earned a benefit of the doubt from his colleagues (to be fair to him, "colleagues" is a very wide net the way Google organized itself back then; they were still acting like a small company in terms of organization when they employed over 50,000 people, and I think the experience with Damore was a nail in the coffin for their "big company with small-company ideals" model).
> publicly discussed and implemented DEI policies that argue for hiring people on the basis of traits other than their ability to do the job
I've seen this criticism in a couple of dimensions and I won't claim it doesn't happen, but (perhaps surprisingly) I agree with you to an extent. I'm not in favor of hiring people who can't do the job because they have other traits. Broadly speaking though, DEI initiatives are predicated on the core notion that most candidates are actually interchangeable, and if you don't back-stop in your company culture regular human biases, companies will hire more people who look, act, and think like them over equally-qualified people from different backgrounds. That's not the same thing as intentionally hiring unqualified people for a role; for most roles, strict stack-ranking of candidates is actually impossible because the responsibility domain is too broad.
> Again: his feedback was explicitly solicited
You are 100% correct, and I think Google as an org learned a valuable lesson about message channels in this story. There is also the dimension worth noting that the decision to keep it in house was taken out of both Google and Damore's hands because someone leaked the whole topic to the public, which thoroughly tied Google's hands; Damore's conduct in the public eye read worse than it did internally, so Google was faced with significant blow-back if they decided to go to bat for the guy at that point. It is entirely possible one of his coworkers did that on purpose, and that can be interpreted as malicious (... on the other hand, if the story is "Once the public knew about it, Google couldn't do anything but fire him..." Maybe the conduct was firing-worthy? All subsequent formal inquiry seems to concur it was).
> Reasonable people did not make that inference, because the inference is not reasonable
I think you make a reasonable case here, but unfortunately, I don't think the public agrees and we end up on the rocks of "reasonable person principle" again. If most of the public's interpretation doesn't fit the "reasonable person" standard, democracy as an experiment is a bit failed, yeah?
> such as repeatedly ignoring explicit disclaimers.
If you believe the disclaimers, you arrive at different conclusions than if you don't. Sadly for Mr. Damore, I think most people just didn't.
1. Okay. So the psychologists deserve a lifetime of unemployment for daring to choose that major. Understood.
2. This is, as far as I can tell, the same form of argument as: "Yes. If I were working at a company that I know has publicly discussed and implemented DEI policies that argue for hiring people on the basis of traits other than their ability to do the job, and I saw a coworker do a bad job, I would wonder if that coworker were an unqualified 'diversity hire'." This is, to my understanding, one of the arguments that got Charlie Kirk shot; as it's one of the ones people cite when trying to justify the shooting.
But that argument is more coherent, because it considers the effect of hiring policy on hiring, rather than the effect of statistical traits of the general population on hiring. And because it considers job performance as evidence of job aptitude, rather than misrepresenting a statistical difference as a "categorical" one and then making an interpretation about personality traits as they correspond to job aptitude. (Part of the memo was specifically about how to prevent personality traits from interfering with job aptitude, coming from a belief that they don't inherently.)
> one cannot be "just asking questions" about protected categories
Again: his feedback was explicitly solicited. It is extraordinarily unjust to solicit feedback but punish people for saying things you don't want to hear. This is in fact a hallmark of the sorts of authoritarian regimes Damore complained about.
> it's not like individuals from the categories with the ... traits ... magically stop being of that category when they are hired
No, but if the trait is relevant to job performance, then they do stop having that trait when they are hired, because the hiring process filters for it. That's the point. Damore repeatedly, explicitly stated throughout the memo that such stereotyping is inappropriate. It represents ignoring evidence you already have. "You are in a group that tends to X, therefore you are X" is false logic that Damore calls out as false logic. It is being projected onto him by the complainants. Reasonable people did not make that inference, because the inference is not reasonable — because it is not backed by logic, nor is it compatible with the principle of charity that is expected of reasonable people. Coming to these sorts of conclusions requires many unreasonable acts, such as repeatedly ignoring explicit disclaimers.