[twomoretime]

What's naive is bending over backwards to pretend that men and women are identical, after millions of years of sexually dimorphic evolution.

It's absurd that this is even a debate in our society. Scientific? Everything we know about genetics, hormones, and psychology clearly points to gendered differences and if you objectively look at the data, at the very least you must concede that you cannot conflate inequality of outcomes with inequality of outcome opportunity without gratuitous handwaving.

Progressivism in the US takes as a given that men in the past were backwards and ignorant - but there are literally tens of thousands of years of social wisdom in history that are being thrown away because people can't handle the fact that in this world there are no guarantees of equal ability across groups. Anyone who is offended by such a notion is hopelessly naive - but I suppose you can hardly blame someone after spending a lifetime indoctrinated to pretend that gendered differences magically disappear above the shoulders.

[ravenstine]

It's absurd but, by and large, people don't actually care about science, let alone understand it. They may occasionally appreciate the rewards of science, but only when it makes them happy. When it sends a negative signal, people are quick to ignore science, or only pay attention to tidbits of science that reinforces their world view. It's not even a question of intelligence. Smart people all the time, including on this very site, fall prey to both anti-science and "scientism" at about the same rate. The only difference between a smart human and a dumb human in this space is the smart human has a bigger vocabulary and knows how to cherry-pick data.

Damore might have been granted some more understanding if he had presented his memo to some scientists. Even then, there would have been a high probability that he would have been told to hush-hush or be asked to leave.

[hackissimo123]

> Damore might have been granted some more understanding if he had presented his memo to some scientists. Even then, there would have been a high probability that he would have been told to hush-hush or be asked to leave.

FYI, here are responses to Damore's memo from a few different scientists with relevant expertise: https://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists...

[ravenstine]

That's a dismissive viewpoint. To be consistent with your view, nobody should be commenting in this thread.

Moreover, a person's field of expertise doesn't have any bearing on whether their ideas are correct. It may go to explain why their views are the way they are, but it doesn't necessarily follow that a person is wrong about something scientific because they aren't a scientist, for instance.

[will4274]

> Damore doesn’t strike me as an expert in the field. Just a typical engineer who thinks he knows everything.

FWIW, Damore has a masters in systems biology. This fact was fairly widely reported. So, you can fall back on the facts instead of your own biases (what "strikes" you).