Tuesday, August 08, 2017

Biologists Should Start To Worry

So the dude who wrote a decent defense of sexual dimorphism got fired from Google for violating the social justice laws of the Reich. I guess that was bound to happen to someone with unclean thoughts and he drew the short straw. Rather than let sleeping Untermensch lie, I think we should start tracing this kind of thinking back to its source so we can root it out once and for all.

I'm looking at you, biologists. Especially evolutionary biologists.

Males and females have different roles and different characteristics? Really? You're going to teach that kind of nonsense to unsere Kinder and you think we're going to let you get away with it? Allow me to suggest a line of questioning for our cultural einsatzgruppen as they track down and exterminate those with hateful thoughts.
  1. Are humans animals?
  2. Do humans have two different sexes?
  3. Has evolution led to sexual differences in other animals with two sexes?
    • Why?
    • What are some examples?
  4. Does evolution apply to humans? 
  5. What are the implications of these differences?
Think carefully before you answer, biologists. Your careers hang in the balance.

We just want to ask you a few questions.

7 comments:

Ilíon said...

Uncommon Descent: Fired Google engineer got his ideas from… evolutionary psychology

K T Cat said...

Great link. From it: "Ideology matters and evidence that might conflict with ideology is the enemy."

Ohioan@Heart said...

Let see... that sort of thinking resulted in the Catholic Church confining Galileo to house arrest and banning books. Hitler took the easier route by burning books. North Korea and Mainland China limit the internet to control access to dangerous ideas. And, of course, Big Brother, simply monitored every person and sent those who dared to think differently to re-education camps. This is exactly where today's "progressives" want to take us.

Frightening. Truly frightening.

Ilíon said...

Read here to understand what that iconic Nazi book burning photo was *really* about.

tim eisele said...

Well, leaving aside the exact content of the guy's document, I do rather have to question his tactics.

Let's say that your company's management has a policy that you think is harmful to the company, and needs to be corrected. You happen to know that this is a topic where there is a good chance of pissing a lot of people off just by bringing it up in public. Do you:

(a) do some variant of writing to or speaking with your boss privately, with the intention of simultaneously convincing him to change the policy while also figuring out how he can look good doing it; or

(b) write up a 10-page document that oh-so-politely insinuates that you think your bosses are ignorant, incompetent asses, and then email it to everyone in the company? Bonus points if you include some items that are pretty certain to tick off at least a third of your co-workers.

He appears to have opted for (b), which gives his bosses no choice but to fire him, for insubordination if nothing else. I certainly wouldn't want to employ somebody who would force my hand like that.

Now, maybe his intention was to get loudly fired with a great deal of sound and fury, and get into all the news for a few days, so that he can play the martyr and get a lot of attention for his opinions. In which case, well done. But if that wasn't his intention, I can't say as I can work up a great deal of sympathy for him.

K T Cat said...

Tim, you can see an interview with James Damore here. He has a PhD in biology and specifically evolution. He wrote the essay to try to start a conversation internal to Google after attending a diversity meeting which recommended illegal practices to increase diversity. He sent it to the "skeptics" group at Google to see if they could poke holes in his research, which was substantial and well-documented. They couldn't and from them, the thing got loose.

This is, straight up, enforced conformity of thought in contradiction to scientific fact.

tim eisele said...

See, that's the thing. While he mentioned the legal issue of "incentivizing illegal discrimination", it was brought up almost in passing as if he regarded it as a side issue at the time, and it got buried in the furor over everything else. If he was really concerned about the welfare of his company, that should have been the main thrust of the whole document - heck, it should have been the title: "Google Diversity Programs are Setting Up the Company for Severe Legal Trouble". And he should have gone straight to his boss with it, followed by the company lawyers. That is how you get a corporation to take notice. That is what the corporation cares about. Corporations don't inherently care that much about fairness, or equality, and only care somewhat about getting the best people for the job. They do, however, care a great deal about not getting sued or jailed.