James Damore Is Not Entirely Wrong

All the way back in the distant time of last week, it seemed that everyone was talking about “the Google memo,” written by a brogrammer named James Damore who was subsequently fired. Better writers such as Conor Friedersdorf have already taken the commentariat to task for misrepresenting the contents of his memo, David Brooks cited some evolutionary psychologists who backed up some of his claims, and Damore himself added a self-serving note at the head of his memo, which you can still read here , which I will ignore for the moment.

Damore begins his “memo” — more of a sophomoric essay, really — by discussing left- and right-wing biases, which is useful for discussing the rest of what he has to say. Later on, the question of why he “has to say” it can be raised, but it is not yet relevant. Under the heading “Left Biases,” he includes among these “Compassion for the weak,” “Disparities are due to injustices,” “Humans are inherently cooperative,” “Change is good (unstable),” “Open,” and “Idealist”; under “Right Biases,” we have the polar opposites “Respect for the strong/authority,” “Disparities are natural and just,” “Humans are inherently competitive,” “Change is dangerous (stable),” “Closed,” and “Pragmatic.” In a footnote, Damore identifies himself as “a classical liberal and strongly value individualism and reason.” All well and good, so far.

He further adds that neither left nor right “is 100 percent correct and both viewpoints are necessary for a functioning society or, in this case, company.” In his opinion, “Google’s left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence.” Once that is out of the way, he moves on to the part that got him fired: population-level distributions of traits between men and women that “may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.”

He adds a disclaimer, as clear as crystal: “Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.” In an accompanying graphic, Damore states, “Reducing people to their group identity and assuming the average is representative ignores this overlap (this is bad and I don’t endorse that).” Under the heading “Personality Differences,” he writes that women, “on average, have more openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas.” This is a questionable statement but it is not necessarily sexist.

He also says women, again on average, have more “neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).” This is dangerously close to the misogynistic adage “bitches be crazy,” and by his standard that makes me a woman. His larger point is that “we need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism,” which on its face makes some sense. Under a section titled “Men’s higher drive for status,” Damore continues: “We always ask why we don’t see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs.” The reason for this? “Status is the primary metric that men are judged on.” What is the “primary metric” on which women are judged? There’s no answer for that.

Nonetheless, “the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93 percent of work-related deaths.” In another interesting point, Damore writes that while feminism “has made great progress in freeing women from the female gender role,” men as a group “are still very much tied to the male gender role. If we, as a society, allow men to be more ‘feminine,’ then the gender gap will shrink.” This may be the clearest proof that this fellow is not some troglodyte.

In what may be the key section — titled “Why we’re blind” — he makes the following observations:

We all have biases and use motivated reasoning to dismiss ideas that run counter to our internal values. Just as some on the Right deny science that runs counter to the “God > humans > environment” hierarchy (e.g., evolution and climate change), the Left tends to deny science concerning biological differences between people (e.g., IQ and sex differences). ... In addition to the Left’s affinity for those it sees as weak, humans are generally biased towards protecting females. As mentioned before, this likely evolved because males are biologically disposable and because women are generally more cooperative and agreeable than men. ... Nearly every difference between men and women is interpreted as a form of women’s oppression.

Under the heading “Suggestions,” Damore prefaces it by saying, “I hope it’s clear that I’m not saying that diversity is bad... My larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas and evidence that don’t fit a certain ideology. I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).”

His “thesis,” as it were, is all about blind spots, but there is a glaring one in which he is engaged: There is no acknowledgement anywhere of personality differences that cut across gender. This is especially odd when considering how much stock he puts into individualism. Another is his argument, as a whole, is ahistorical, since there is no mention of the fact that for most of human history, men, as a group, have dominated social relations. It is not “anti-men” to point that out, just as much as it not “anti-women” to broach the subject of evolutionary psychology when making claims about aggregate trait differences among populations.

Judging by what he actually wrote, Damore does not appear to be some sexist pig, but rather is guilty of sloppy work that is packaged in a way that makes it look edgy and provocative. It is a shame Google fired him, because instead they could have dropped some knowledge.