... alright, I'm doing it, but I swear this is the last time.
I can count
33 links in Damore's pamphlet.
Twelve of these links are overtly political rather than scientific or even sociological in nature. Mostly stuff like opinion pieces, blog articles, or even
forum posts. This includes the infamous "War against Boys" by professional troll Christina Hoff Summers, and rarely rises much higher in terms of quality.
Two links to articles about the characteristics of "PC supporters" and libertarians, respectively. While biased and reeking of us-versus-them mentality, these are IMO too plainly descriptive to fit into the above category.
Six of them are used to explain or illustrate a particular notion in more detail. These do not qualify as sources for his statements, since they are not supposed to make any statement in the first place.
Two links have nothing to do with the point that they are used to support: "men suffer 93% of work-related deaths" (probably true, but sourcing is
hard) and "some of the Right deny science" (cheap bait).
This leaves us with:
Nothing too earth-shattering, I reckon. Meanwhile, Damore's long list of
unsourced statements include such gems as:
- That hilarious left bias vs right bias chart that categorizes me as a right-winger and tries to tie Google's failures as a company to leftism
- Biological differences between men and women aren't just socially constructed. Well, thank you, captain Obvious! Okay, take two : observed differences between sexes... err, some of them, I guess? Okay, here it is: some differences between sexes are universal across human cultures and often have clear biological causes. Also, evopsych! Now make of that what you will!
- Women care more about aesthetics than ideas. Or in other words, feels over reals. But, wait! His exact words are that women are more open about feelings and aesthetics. Does that mean they are more aware and accepting of the ways these things influence their their perception of the world, as well as their decision-making process, and therefore less likely to fall in love with their own "skepticism" and "rationality"? Because this would certainly fit my anecdotal evidence.
- Bell curve graphs that do not actually represent any kind of data! Also, we could reduce groups to stereotypes... but, as a great man once said, that would be wrong.
- All the bait-and-switch around race. Come on, you're just being disingenuous, there are actual studies about this! After all that grandstanding on free speech and political correctness gone mad, why don't you tell us what you really think?
- RAWR RAWR SOCIAL MARXISM~~... okay, I'm going to stop there.
tl,dr: it's mostly just another piece of concern-trollish right-wing propaganda, tailored to the "rationalist" aesthetic and peppered with insincere deal-sweeteners on diversity and the inflexibility of gender roles. The usual mix of sourced mostly-uncontroversial truths, unsourced polemical bullshit, and complete batshit insanity that almost seems designed to coax people to pick a side : either total acceptance or total rejection. Of the many opinion pieces and editorials I've read on the subject, only one refused to take the bait and pointed out that Damore's charlatanism was built on the distortion of a solid base of facts.
Oh, and it's also chock-full of logical fallacies, emotional appeals and double standards. Sure, James, people disagree with you because we refuse to "acknowledge that not all differences are socially constructed or due to discrimination". You should be more careful with the flame wars, though ; that much straw has to be a fire hazard. My personal favorite is the part where he denounces empathy as irrational, shortly after trying to leverage it towards white males and conservatives ; there's the kind of libertarian moral clarity we weak-minded fools call hypocrisy. I could go on for
pages if I wanted to.
For what it matters, I actually think James Damore was mostly being sincere in his memo. It's just that he absorbed the tropes, mannerisms, sophisms and self-deceptions of... well, his own echo chamber. Hey, I'm actually fine with his tl;dr! The only part I would really object to is the idea that
any kind of positive discrimination is automatically "most authoritarian". Like any other model of society, ours comes with a fair number of built-in imbalances in power and authority, and this is why stuff like taxes on the wealthy or "affirmative action" are needed as necessary evils. I guess I should have stopped there, instead of pushing forward to see what he was
actually arguing.