Google Employee's Memo: "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber", Goes Internally Viral - Sensationalist Headlines

[QUOTE]A software engineer’s 10-page screed against Google’s diversity initiatives is going viral inside the company, being shared on an internal meme network and Google+. The document’s existence was first reported by Motherboard, and Gizmodo has obtained it in full. In the memo, which is the personal opinion of a male Google employee and is titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” the author argues that women are underrepresented in tech not because they face bias and discrimination in the workplace, but because of inherent psychological differences between men and women. “We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism,” he writes, going on to argue that Google’s educational programs for young women may be misguided. The post comes as Google battles a wage discrimination investigation by the US Department of Labor, which has found that Google routinely pays women less than men in comparable roles.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE] "From what I've seen it's been a mix of women saying, 'This is terrible and it's been distracting me from my work and it shouldn't be allowed;' Men and women saying 'this is horrible but we need to let him have a voice;' and men saying 'This is so brave, I agree,'" the employee said. Motherboard spoke to one current employee who agrees with the document's author, who wrote in the manifesto that "Google's left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence." "The fact that colleagues are calling for him to be fired—on very public forums—proves his point that there is an ideological silo and that dissenting opinions want to be silenced," the second employee told Motherboard. "Why don't they debate him on his argument? Because it's easier to virtue signal by mentioning on a social network how angry and offended you are. Debate and discussion takes time."[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]The text of the post is reproduced in full below, with some minor formatting modifications. Two charts and several hyperlinks are also omitted. [I] Reply to public response and misrepresentation I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions. If we can’t have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem. Psychological safety is built on mutual respect and acceptance, but unfortunately our culture of shaming and misrepresentation is disrespectful and unaccepting of anyone outside its echo chamber. Despite what the public response seems to have been, I’ve gotten many personal messages from fellow Googlers expressing their gratitude for bringing up these very important issues which they agree with but would never have the courage to say or defend because of our shaming culture and the possibility of being fired. This needs to change.[/I][/QUOTE] The full 10 page memo from the Google engineer + the response from Google’s Vice President of Diversity, Integrity & Governance Danielle Brown: [url]https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320[/url] Some of the responses from other employees: [url]https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywpamw/internal-reaction-to-google-employees-manifesto-show-anti-diversity-views-have-support[/url] It's worth it to give the whole thing a read for yourself, see if you agree or disagree with it. Seems to be quite an even split with people agreeing with him and people who are against him.

[quote]an internal meme network[/quote] i want in

Looks like this opens a whole can of worms for Google and the Tech Sector in general. Some of the stuff he says that "are true about Women in average" seem to me more like empirical thoughts. However, gender bias and echo chambers are always a bad and toxic thing in a company. [QUOTE=Segab;52544248]i want in[/QUOTE] the spiciest and rarest memes are reserved for the 1%

I thought the whole "women with similar jobs and experience make less per hour than men" thing was debunked like 10 times over?

Damn, this guy had some good points. Why did the diversity officer or whatever hes same just reply with "nah fuck you, you're wrong"?

I haven't read the entire paper yet, but I can't help but think that there is going to be a large backlash against the progressive movement some time soon. From what I've read so called Generation Z is setting itself up to be one of the most conservative generations in the last several decades. And conservative movements worldwide have appeared to of been gaining serious traction. I'd like to see some studies and see what could possibly have lead to these things starting to gain more and more ground lately if anyone has them. From the brief things I have read about the Google paper, it sorta of sounds like the writer is advocating for ideological diversity. Considering Silicon Valley and the Bay Area is one of the most left leaning places in the United States right now. It must be frustrating to feel as though you can't share your political beliefs without being disapproved of or attacked. At the same time, some of those beliefs can be pretty shitty. It's tough. Makes me wonder how the country is going to get through the next few years.

I've gone through about half of this employee's essay now and I think this guy is pretty full of shit tbh. I understand the need for discussion of these ideas, but I can imagine being a woman and reading this would be so incredibly frustrating and probably pretty upsetting as well I think it would be an authoritarian and wrong headed response to fire this guy, but I do wonder if he has at any point tried to play devil's advocate with his own view here and seen if it led him anywhere IDK, I'm in the tech industry and I see a lot of dudes with similar views to the guy who wrote this essay and it really shows the gaps in their thinking and it is very frustrating to me

[QUOTE=AlbertWesker;52544262]I thought the whole "women with similar jobs and experience make less per hour than men" thing was debunked like 10 times over?[/QUOTE] That was more about the flawed conclusion that "women earn 77% as much money as men do overall therefore individual women are being paid 77% as much as their male colleagues", specific cases of gender-based wage discrimination can and apparently do still exist.

[QUOTE=i_speel_good;52544261]Looks like this opens a whole can of worms for Google and the Tech Sector in general. Some of the stuff he says that "are true about Women in average" seem to me more like empirical thoughts. However, gender bias and echo chambers are always a bad and toxic thing in a company. the spiciest and rarest memes are reserved for the 1%[/QUOTE] things can't "seem" like empirical thoughts, they either are or they aren't. The problem is the gizmodo document doesn't supply his sources. Without his sources, it's pretty hard for us to judge which parts of his essay are fact and which are conjecture. [editline]6th August 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=AlbertWesker;52544262]I thought the whole "women with similar jobs and experience make less per hour than men" thing was debunked like 10 times over?[/QUOTE] No, it hasn't. If you take into account by industry, and also include a cross section with being a racial minority, the figures start to look a bit more complicated. From memory a black woman can in many industries still get paid a lot less than a white guy. But then you have to take into account geography, etc. It's a bit silly to say it has been debunked completely. It's arguable on both sides.

[QUOTE=killerteacup;52544280]I've gone through about half of this employee's essay now and I think this guy is pretty full of shit tbh. I understand the need for discussion of these ideas, but I can imagine being a woman and reading this would be so incredibly frustrating and probably pretty upsetting as well I think it would be an authoritarian and wrong headed response to fire this guy, but I do wonder if he has at any point tried to play devil's advocate with his own view here and seen if it led him anywhere IDK, I'm in the tech industry and I see a lot of dudes with similar views to the guy who wrote this essay and it really shows the gaps in their thinking and it is very frustrating to me[/QUOTE] what are some of these gaps?

The one thing I will give this guys essays are that while his assumptions seem wrong to me (obviously I can't conclude without his sources), his recommendations are actually fairly sound. Improving work-life balance, making programming more social, making the male gender role more flexible. These are good ideas which I agree with. He's critical of Google's current policies - I'm not familiar with their policies beyond the STEP internship which some people I've met have had a problem with but I have not personally had a problem with. [QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;52544291]what are some of these gaps?[/QUOTE] In my experience, which has largely been anecdotal admittedly, but I've been in the tech industry for 5 years now, and I've noticed that there's very little credence placed in anything that rings of sociology or psychology. Anything that is a grey area, or arguable both ways tends to be a weak point. At its worst this can become a pretty severe demonstration of a lack of empathy, but obviously it's by no means universal I've met programmers who've told me unironically that women being in the workforce was bad because working is a 'mans space' because men are biologically predisposed to work. Stuff like that basically. Sometimes it's just a lack of awareness of basic ethics. Obviously I can't back it up with any data but I have met so many people like this in tech. Either I can conclude it's a problem with my industry or it's an attitude / way of viewing the world that is still more common than people would like to admit. Neither of those conclusions would make me have confidence in this paper. To support this, here's even a recommendation from the essay: [QUOTE] De-emphasise empathy. I've heard several calls for increased empathy on diversity issues. While I strongly support trying to understand how and why people think the way they do, relying on affective empathy — feeling another's pain — causes us to focus on anecdotes, favour individuals similar to us, and harbour other irrational and dangerous biases. Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts. [/QUOTE] It's this sort of attitude that is so prevalent and I believe is incredibly harmful to the industry. In this essay, one of the points I really disagree with is the following: [QUOTE]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. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life. Status is the primary metric that men are judged on[4], pushing many men into these higher paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail. Note, 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% of work-related deaths.[/QUOTE] So the author here has basically said well, men are judged based on status, so the [I]reason[/I] that most of the higher jobs go towards men is because we're under pressure to try harder than women to get these jobs so it's obviously natural that this would happen. Honestly I think that's really dumb. There's a wealth of evidence to show that women are often sidelined for promotions because their superiors fear they'll prioritise having a family over the job, and that's only one argument of the many that satisfactorily explain why men are more likely to be in leadership positions, none of which draw such a tenuous conclusion as the author of the paper did above.

[QUOTE=killerteacup;52544310] So the author here has basically said well, men are judged based on status, so the [I]reason[/I] that most of the higher jobs go towards men is because we're under pressure to try harder than women to get these jobs so it's obviously natural that this would happen. Honestly I think that's really dumb. There's a wealth of evidence to show that women are often sidelined for promotions because their superiors fear they'll prioritise having a family over the job, and that's only one argument of the many that satisfactorily explain why men are more likely to be in leadership positions, none of which draw such a tenuous conclusion as the author of the paper did above.[/QUOTE] I think the reason why he focused on this argument in particular was because he though that was the one that would be the most overlooked in the current silicon valley political climate, in spirit of his whole article

[QUOTE=WhyNott;52544329]I think the reason why he focused on this argument in particular was because he though that was the one that would be the most overlooked in the current silicon valley political climate, in spirit of his whole article[/QUOTE] I suppose so, but from my perspective the reason people might overlook this argument is because it's just not correct, but you're probably right The whole paper is riven with weird hangups about stuff though. Firstly, he conflates leftism and authoritarianism, and then on that shakey ground, makes a pretty big number of weird claims [QUOTE][7] Communism promised to be both morally and economically superior to capitalism, but every attempt became morally corrupt and an economic failure. As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn't going to overthrow their "capitalist oppressors," the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the "white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy."[/QUOTE] I mean this just isn't historically correct and it's also not really relevant. I guess that's why it's a footnote but still, it sort of makes it hard to take it seriously

[QUOTE] "Why don't they debate him on his argument? Because it's easier to virtue signal by mentioning on a social network how angry and offended you are. Debate and discussion takes time."[/QUOTE] Though this is worded oddly (imo), this is one of the things that I truly wish people would remember these days. Debate and discussion takes time. It's indefinitely better to convince the opposition and persuade them, rather than create a climate where discussion is simply just not possible. Not to say that this is the case everywhere, but it definitely seems to be in a lot of places (regardless of left leaning or right leaning.) The point of a discussion and debate like this should honestly persuade the person that you're correct -- not belittle them, which is another thing that I've seen happen a lot and results in people remaining misinformed about certain topics, opposed to learning and participating in active discussion. I don't think the guy should be fired, but if he's willing to debate -- there definitely should be some sort of discussion. On a side note, those Gizmodo comments turned to shit real fast, arguing about using the word "race" vs "ethnicity" which is just arguing semantics as it's pretty clear what his intent was.

[QUOTE=Smores;52544368]Though this is worded oddly (imo), this is one of the things that I truly wish people would remember these days. Debate and discussion takes time. It's indefinitely better to convince the opposition and persuade them, rather than create a climate where discussion is simply just not possible. Not to say that this is the case everywhere, but it definitely seems to be in a lot of places (regardless of left leaning or right leaning.) The point of a discussion and debate like this should honestly persuade the person that you're correct -- not belittle them, which is another thing that I've seen happen a lot and results in people remaining misinformed about certain topics, opposed to learning and participating in active discussion. I don't think the guy should be fired, but if he's willing to debate -- there definitely should be some sort of discussion. On a side note, those Gizmodo comments turned to shit real fast, arguing about using the word "race" vs "ethnicity" which is just arguing semantics as it's pretty clear what his intent was.[/QUOTE] He definitely shouldn't be fired, but I don't think anyone should be discussing and debating this with him if he isn't able to provide sources or reasoning to back up some of the claims he is making. That way lies madness. That said, engaging in conversation is so important and noone even bothers anymore. Such a shame.

[QUOTE=killerteacup;52544372]He definitely shouldn't be fired, but I don't think anyone should be discussing and debating this with him if he isn't able to provide sources or reasoning to back up some of the claims he is making. That way lies madness. That said, engaging in conversation is so important and noone even bothers anymore. Such a shame.[/QUOTE] Definitely, if one is going to make claims -- the burden of proof is on them. I think part of debating, specially in regards to things like these is showing the other person that "hey, i have evidence here otherwise. please look at it." (even if they don't have evidence themselves, as this would make them rethink, at least hopefully.) At that point, if the other person refuses to listen -- they're just choosing to remain ignorant. Not much you can do there. Given, chances are if they're making claims without evidence in the first place, they'll probably remain ignorant.

skimming over it, i only agree with not shaming dissenters as far as this goes don't shame dissenters, don't be a condescending dick to them either, it's the fucking worst (as someone who is shamed all the goddamn time by the people i'm around (unrelated to politics)). someone has a different opinion? discuss, don't belittle, don't condescend, don't shame. [editline]6th August 2017[/editline] happens a lot in polidicks actually, lots of shaming/belittling/condescending behaviour against dissenters

[QUOTE=TacticalBacon;52544284]That was more about the flawed conclusion that "women earn 77% as much money as men do overall therefore individual women are being paid 77% as much as their male colleagues", specific cases of gender-based wage discrimination can and apparently do still exist.[/QUOTE] Can you show these cases? Because as far as I know, pay discrimination based on gender is illegal in most western cultures.

[QUOTE=killerteacup;52544372]He definitely shouldn't be fired, but I don't think anyone should be discussing and debating this with him if he isn't able to provide sources or reasoning to back up some of the claims he is making.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]The text of the post is reproduced in full below, with some minor formatting modifications. Two charts and several hyperlinks are also omitted. [/QUOTE] This part makes it seem like he did provide sources for his claims, but they were apparently removed by the gizmondo website for whatever reason

[QUOTE=Segab;52544248]i want in[/QUOTE] It's legit awesome. Funny story, Googlers get Christmas bonuses each year (like phones and stuff), and last Christmas they decided to give the money they'd spend on that to charity. Memegen (internal meme network) was full of everyone wanting to be mad but not because it went to charity. [editline]6th August 2017[/editline] I was an intern so I didn't get a gift regardless, so it was just a sit-back-and-eat-popcorn time for me.

[quote]Once we acknowledge that not all differences are socially constructed or due to discrimination, we open our eyes to a more accurate view of the human condition which is necessary if we actually want to solve problems.[/quote] No thanks

[QUOTE=FinalHunter;52544352]This seems to be what happens in every relatively closed environment these days on both ends of the political spectrum, and it's toxic. The fact that people here are calling each other "contrarians" as an insult in SH is evidence of that.[/QUOTE] Well, there's being contrarian for the sake of just wanting to stir shit up, but then there's people saying "hey, maybe this actually is racist," and SH will go beserk.

[QUOTE=AlbertWesker;52544262]I thought the whole "women with similar jobs and experience make less per hour than men" thing was debunked like 10 times over?[/QUOTE] It got heavily misrepresented by the media. The initial statement wasn't "women make less per hour than men" all else the same, it was simply that [I]on average[/I] women make less than men, across all jobs, across all sections of the population, and all levels of education. That's where the number came from - take the salaries of [I]all[/I] women in the country and compare them to the salaries of [I]all[/I] men in the country. Once you account for some of these other factors, the gap becomes much smaller (though it still exists). Women aren't getting paid less per hour for the same job with the same experience - that's already an illegal form of discrimination. The wage gap isn't a "wage gap" per se - it's an opportunity gap. There's loads and loads of studies that show that assertive women are perceived negatively, while assertive men are seen positively in many work environments. Women are less likely to seek raises, and are less likely to be promoted. A second part of this is that traditional "women's work" is less valued in our society than "men's work" - meaning jobs that are disproportionately occupied by women are lower-paying than jobs disproportionately occupied by men. The wage gap isn't "debunked," because the original statistic is 100% true - on average, women in this country earn about 3/4 what men in this country earn. The media misrepresented that stat, and people misinterpreted it, until it became "the average woman with the same job earns 3/4 as much as a man," which is patently false. There's a difference between "on average" and "the average person," and people got that totally mixed up. It's a huge-scale ecological fallacy - you can't generalize a stat that includes literally the entire population of the US to such a small scale.

[quote=Gizmodo]Exclusive: Here's The Full 10-Page [highlight]Anti-Diversity[/highlight] Screed Circulating Internally at Google [Updated][/quote] [quote=First line of the post][highlight]I value diversity[/highlight] and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes. [...][/quote] :thinking:

[QUOTE=horsedrowner;52544522]:thinking:[/QUOTE] Yes, because it's not like anyone has ever said they valued something while knowingly or unknowingly working against it before Not saying that's necessarily what's happening here, just that it's kind of moot to point out the above

Don't know why a 10 page screed I could find on any website comments section on the internet is suddenly an enlightened piece of truth because it came from the mouth of a google employee. Seriously, this reads like a fucking reddit comment, or a south park monologue. I'm going to go through this. [QUOTE]Google’s political bias has equated the freedom from offense with psychological safety, but shaming into silence is the antithesis of psychological safety.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]Extreme: all disparities in representation are due to oppression Authoritarian: we should discriminate to correct for this oppression[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]Google has several biases and honest discussion about these biases is being silenced by the dominant ideology.[/QUOTE] despite paying lip service to the need for "both sides," he immediately establishes that he believes that the other side are authoritarian fascists who need to be stopped [QUOTE]At Google, we’re regularly told that implicit (unconscious) and explicit biases are holding women back in tech and leadership. Of course, men and women experience bias[/QUOTE] For some reason he feels the need to say that MEN are also facing bias in the tech industry. Just in "different ways," I can only assume the ways it affect men certainly aren't related to wages or opportunities. [QUOTE]On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed because:[/QUOTE] It only took us a few sentences to reach the BIO TROOFS in this document. [QUOTE] I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.[/QUOTE] I'm going to come back to this later. Essentially, here he's acknowledging the bias towards men in terms of leadership positions. What follows is a BLISTERINGLY STUPID series of bullet points, where he insists that the reason women don't earn the same money as men, or don't earn the same positions as men, is because their stupid oestrogen riddled brains force them to become nurses and teachers. [QUOTE]Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing). These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics.[/QUOTE] He's attempting to substitute any social arguments about these problems for biological ones. Under the pretence that biology is real and truthful science, so his horrendous mangling of many biological and social concepts can go unchallenged.[QUOTE]This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. Note that these are just average differences and there’s overlap between men and women, but this is seen solely as a women’s issue. This leads to exclusory programs like Stretch and swaths of men without support.[/QUOTE] Almost likes there's a wage gap or something. And he has to add that last bit about men not getting support, just because? [QUOTE]We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism. [/QUOTE] This statement is meant to come off like some reasoned, high level thinking. But it's actually just a way to imply that these problems, many of which have been attributed to sexism, aren't actually about sexism at all and they're all just made up. The only person "assuming" here is the author. [QUOTE]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. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life.[/QUOTE] Here's the bit where he hands out the age old sexist excuse of men not wanting to start families like those women which is why they don't get leadership positions. Which in itself is sexist thinking. Are you starting to see the problem with this memo yet? He follows this up by saying men do all the dangerous jobs but I'm not even going to touch that one. [QUOTE]Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration. Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles and Google can be and we shouldn’t deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this).[/QUOTE] Women are only interesting in things if MEN are involved, is an actual, written argument in this piece of shit memo. That women need constant supervision from others to be able to preform their jobs properly. [QUOTE]Women on average look for more work-life balance while men have a higher drive for status on average[/QUOTE] We're back to the pregnancy thing again. At no point so far has he drawn the connection that this line of thinking is partly WHY women don't earn those positions he was talking about earlier. [QUOTE]Unfortunately, as long as tech and leadership remain high status, lucrative careers, men may disproportionately want to be in them. Allowing and truly endorsing (as part of our culture) part time work though can keep more women in tech.[/quote] Men just want to be in leadership positions, unlike women who are highly allergic to responsibility and susceptible to pregnancy. [QUOTE]These practices are based on false assumptions generated by our biases and can actually increase race and gender tensions. We’re told by senior leadership that what we’re doing is both the morally and economically correct thing to do, but without evidence this is just veiled left ideology[7] that can irreparably harm Google.[/QUOTE] VEILED LEFT IDEOLOGY [QUOTE] Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of humanities and social scientists learn left (about 95%), which creates enormous confirmation bias, changes what’s being studied, and maintains myths like social constructionism and the gender wage gap[9].[/QUOTE] It's not a fucking myth, it's a statistical reality. Just because you clearly don't understand why and how the gap exists doesn't mean that it doesn't exist at all. You've openly discussed how women struggle to earn leadership positions in this very memo, using your own sexist reasoning and yet you're still unable to put two and two together and realize how that contributes to the wage gap. I genuinely do not understand how you can openly state the arguments used to support the wage gap, and then a few sentences later insist that it doesn't exist. And then to put the cherry on top of the shit sundae, in this citation, footnote or whatever. HE SAYS THIS: [QUOTE][B]Yes, in a national aggregate, women have lower salaries than men for a variety of reasons.[/B] For the same work though, women get paid just as much as men. Considering women spend more money than men and that salary represents how much the employees sacrifices (e.g. more hours, stress, and danger), we really need to rethink our stereotypes around power.[/QUOTE] So it does exist after all, and you know it does, but for the sake of your argument you need to move the goalposts and say that it's on a position to position basis, an argument that literally nobody has ever used in regards to the wage gap. [QUOTE]The same compassion for those seen as weak creates political correctness[11], which constrains discourse and is complacent to the extremely sensitive PC-authoritarians that use violence and shaming to advance their cause. While Google hasn’t harbored the violent leftists protests that we’re seeing at universities, the frequent shaming in TGIF and in our culture has created the same silence, psychologically unsafe environment.[/QUOTE] Yeah I'm done. This memo belongs in the bin, not published onto news sites anywhere.

Do we know enough about the human brain to claim things like these as factual? As far as I've understood it, we still lack a lot of tools to properly measure it's workings and by extension our behaviour. A lot is left to interpretation, which might not be entirely reliable.

[QUOTE=Hinterlight;52544267]I haven't read the entire paper yet, but I can't help but think that there is going to be a large backlash against the progressive movement some time soon. From what I've read so called Generation Z is setting itself up to be one of the most conservative generations in the last several decades. And conservative movements worldwide have appeared to of been gaining serious traction. I'd like to see some studies and see what could possibly have lead to these things starting to gain more and more ground lately if anyone has them. From the brief things I have read about the Google paper, it sorta of sounds like the writer is advocating for ideological diversity. Considering Silicon Valley and the Bay Area is one of the most left leaning places in the United States right now. It must be frustrating to feel as though you can't share your political beliefs without being disapproved of or attacked. At the same time, some of those beliefs can be pretty shitty. It's tough. Makes me wonder how the country is going to get through the next few years.[/QUOTE] Can we stop spreading the "generation Z is gearing up to be a conservative backlash" meme. It's really not true. It's quite a mixed bag from what polls I've seen, on social issues they tend to be much more "liberal" than millenials, most share dissatisfaction with the status quo, but interestingly they appear to be more financially conservative. The problem is though there isn't really enough reliable data, and some of what gets cited a lot like the gild's poll have problems. Also yep, welcome to the paradox of free speech political philosophy has not solved since the dawn of time.

I'm pretty upset that they removed his provided evidence. It feels like Gizmodo wanted to cripple the meat of his argument.

[QUOTE=Streecer;52544573]Don't know why a 10 page screed I could find on any website comments section on the internet is suddenly an enlightened piece of truth because it came from the mouth of a google employee. Seriously, this reads like a fucking reddit comment, or a south park monologue. I'm going to go through this. [words][/QUOTE] Honestly as I try to stumble through your post it just reeks of desperately finding every possible little thing to overhype and ridicule. You make several fundamental misinterpretations of his argument - for example, the "national aggregate" bombshell you quote refers to the fact that women as a whole population are paid less than men, which is true, but you flat-out ignore the statement immediately behind it that women are paid just as much for the same work, which is his point. You then say that "literally nobody has ever used" this argument, when in fact, that's [i]exactly[/i] the argument that gets used every single time, including in the very thing you're replying to. All of these strange attacks you make on him are reflective of your own poor interpretation and arguments, frankly.