Some Thoughts on "So, about this Googler’s manifesto" by Yonatan Zunger
I'm seeing a lot of friends in the tech field share this Medium post on Twitter and Facebook and have some thoughts about it:
So, about this Googler’s manifesto.
It's an 8 minute read.
We'll wait.
Here are my initial thoughts, and I'm curious what you think. To be clear, I have not read all of the manifesto in detail as I'm more interested right now in the impact is has and less so the content.
Yes, men and women are biologically different from an evolutionary perspective1. And, yes, in many ways we've transcended basic evolutionary pressures so that memetic transfer is highly influential in making us "us" (i.e. the power of culture, ideas, and nurture, not just nature).
I also sympathize with the author of the manifesto being roasted here because I too am grossly ignorant. I've said things and done things which are stupid and hurtful to others and, worst of all, I didn't do them with malicious intent. I was (and am) ignorant in many senses of the word. My intentions may seem right to me in that I'm just trying to help, but that doesn't mitigate the damage done. Sometimes it makes it worse. If I was just an enemy, people wouldn't care much what I say or do. When I'm a friend, that's when the results can be devastating.
This write up by Yonatan Zunger, I think, is really important. It helps cure many of their ignorance. I'm confident there are people who agree with concepts and ideas in the manifesto without realizing how harmful they can be to others.
Yonatan's post touches on free expression of ideas. I'm not saying "free speech" because too many only think in terms of law with that phrase. I'm more interested in the spirit of what the law is trying to protect. I'm in support of people saying what they really mean and believe. Hopefully they do it in ways which limit the amount of damage to others while still exposing themselves for some negative consequences in order to learn and grow (though I recognize this is rarely the case). Making mistakes and properly dealing with the results is how we eventually get wisdom.
From a evolutionary stable strategy perspective, we need people like this manifesto writer to share their thoughts so they can be exposed. What's the alternative? Would it be better if people who work with this individual have to deal with years of abuses and aggressions (even if only slight or barely expressed in words)? This goes for many other social problems like racism, bigotry, discrimination, etc. Do we really want that cancer lurking under the surface or exposed to the daylight so it can be called out for what it is and the harm it causes? For other ignorant people with "good intentions", which approach helps them change for the better?
Maybe it's a good thing to let these ideas be shared openly while working hard to ensure their negative consequences land squarely (and solely) on the originators of those ideas so they become personally aware of the harm involved.
At the same time, bad ideas can spread like wildfire and bring even more people into thinking in ways which harm others. It's no easy problem to solve, which is why I've been thinking about it in terms of evolutionary stable strategies. If the toxicity is normalized, discussed, and spreads, we end up with systemic risk. If it's never talked about because it's never openly expressed, it can fester in the shadows, also causing systemic risk.
I also liked this post because it's a great write up for explaining the various levels of software engineering. Most developers are not building Google. They don't level up beyond writing code for simple websites and small projects. I've resisted this on many levels myself. I've been programming since 1996 and co-founded a software company which has been running for over a decade now. Being a good developer means working well with people, but most developers have a reputation for only working well with code. As Yonatan pointed out, it takes grueling, difficult work for computer-focused people to become people-focused people. It takes time. It takes being called out when you're being an ignorant jerk by people who care.
If the larger discussion on this issue ends up bringing about positive change, does that mean the original manifesto had some value? Well, that's a slippery slope I'm not yet ready to go down. Saying bad ideas which harm others could be seen as good sounds like a broken window fallacy to me. At the same time, can we really move completely beyond evolution and the importance of evolutionary stable strategies which require some balance of good and bad actors for long-term stability?
For more on that, see this excellent video by Veritasium, one of my favorite edutainment channels:
On a personal note, thank you to the friends and family who care enough about me to call me out when needed. Without that, I can't become a better person.
What do you think of Yonatan Zunger's post?
How should we deal with the spread of ideas which cause harm to others (specifically if the intention is to normalize and promote them)?
1 Edit: by this, I mean physically most men and women have different body parts such as penises and vaginas, not that this may matter much at all when it comes to how we perform in the workplace.
Second Edit: This is a great talk I heard in 2014 at RESTfest by Lorinda Brandon (you can see my head there in the video, wearing a purple shirt) on how we approach the women in tech discussion.
REST Fest 2014 \ Lorinda Brandon from REST Fest on Vimeo.
I am firstly an Engineer. I am also a female. Hearing people say that "They are unequal, and women are worse within this profession" referring to me makes me honestly very sad and frustrated.
From what I have experienced it is actually the complete opposite. My graduating class was ~10/110 females. This is low. In our class and many like it statistically the females are actually better than the males because why would we go into a profession that is not directed at females, that makes us feel like outsiders and say things like this unless we were good at the work.
I am equal to my male counterparts.
Well said! I completely agree, women are often even better than man when it comes to programming because they stuck with it enough to overcome all the biases against them. Please, if you get a chance, watch Lorinda's talk. I really think you'll like it and it may give you and your friends some tips on how to help improve this situation for everyone.
Hey there,
I'm not an engineer, but I am a feminist. So the first thing I have to say is, yes, I think this is a useful, measured response that Yonathan Zunger gives.
But more to the point, while I respect your attempt to offer value to the conversation, I think his point one is something you should take to heart as well. You say "Yes, men and women are biologically different from an evolutionary perspective." Since the extent to which this is true is something that is actively debated by people who are social scientists and biologists, I think we should be careful when asserting it to either back our statements up with research links or to leave it to the experts entirely.
There are a bunch of useful links in this article: https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/brain-science-male-and-female-debunk-problems-feminism-neuroscience-hearken
Most evidence points to insignificant biological/evolutionary differences between male and female brains. Hopefully that leads us to avoid statements like "Yes, men and women are biologically different from an evolutionary perspective."
Socialization has a lot to do with what we think of as "male" and "female" traits.
Respectfully, there is very little debate in the hard sciences (biology, genetics, anthropology, etc.) regarding whether male and female behaviors and preferences are biologically different. However such debate is quite common in the so-called "social sciences" which are motivated as much by politics and social justice objectives as by the scientific method.
The article to which you link is not particularly relevant. It only addresses the issue as to whether observed differences in male/female behavior can be linked to STRUCTURAL differences in the brain. While this is, in fact, debated within the hard sciences, whether or not the observed male/female behavior differences are biologically determined is not. There are many innate biological differences between men and women (for instance, hormones) that are known to contribute strongly to these observed differences in behaviors, and this is nearly universally recognized in the hard sciences.
Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke famously debated this issue and Pinker summarized just some of the overwhelming evidence (from the hard sciences) supporting the fact that males and females are innately different in their behaviors and preferences. By contrast, Spelke offered little evidence for her contrary conclusion, instead making a series of conclusory statements and citing papers (I hesitate to call them research) primarily from the social sciences. Details on that debate can be found here: https://www.edge.org/event/the-science-of-gender-and-science-pinker-vs-spelke-a-debate. And there are YouTube videos of the debate available online also.
To give just one example of how biology dictates behaviors and preferences, we need only to examine testosterone as an example. The research on testosterone is really not debated. We can give males or females higher doses of testosterone and their behavior (in particular, risk-taking behavior) does change as a consequence. Higher testosterone correlates with more risk taking. Remarkably so. Innumberable studies have confirmed it.
There is no doubt that men on average have massively higher testosterone levels than women on average. And, there's very, very little doubt that this difference in testosterone levels is biologically innate. From this difference in testosterone we can predict that men should take more risks and therefore experience a greater variance of outcomes and...they do. And even among men, those with more testosterone should take more risks than those with less. Men are universally recognized as engaging in higher risk activities, and levels of testosterone appear to dictate differences in risk taking between men.
Chart bell curves of sample populations of sufficient size of greater risks takers and lesser risk takers and you'll invariably find that the bell curve for risk takers is wider and flatter. The tails on both ends of the curve are longer because sometimes the the risk pays off (leading out outlying levels of success) and other times it doesn't (leading to outlying levels of failure). Furthermore, the further you go out on tails of the curve, the more the risk takers will be overrepresented (as a percentage of the total at that level).
And, this is exactly what we see when we measure men versus women in most any describable attribute. The variance in outcomes among men is greater than women (the curve is flatter and wider), and the further you go out on the tails at either side of the bell curve the more men are overrepresented (which again, is completley predictable given their higher risk-taking tendancies). So, yes, men are vastly overrepresented among Fortune 1000 executives (the right tail of the curve), but they are vastly overrepresented among prisoners (the far left of the curve) also. Risk taking results in more binary types of outcomes--great success or great failure. It's matter of simple and rather undebatable statistics.
As Pinker described in his debate, other differences are similarly innate. For instance, both human and primate infants show preferences for certain types of toys--male infants being more infatuated with mechanical types of toys (cars, machines, mobiles, etc.) and female infants being more infatuated with "social" types of toys (for instance, dolls). This finding has been replicated. It seems likely that testosterone or other hormonal differences explain these preferences.
It's possible, even likely, that innate differences in risk-taking tendencies and hormonal driven personal preferences explain why men are so overrepresented in engineering and the "hard sciences" while females are so overrepresented in teaching and the "social sciences". Many stereotypes are biological rather than social or cultural.
Hey Sean! Glad you found this post as I was curious of your thoughts on it.
I finally listened to all of that Pinker/Spelke debate today. I'm curious what you think about the counter arguments made by Elizabeth Spelke such as parents who perceive male and female babies differently given tasks they objectively accomplish the same? Or, when dealing with the averages (not the exceptional CEO examples), women are perceived as less hard working or productive if, again, objectively it's not the case.
We're like fish in water trying to run experiments on how much the water impacts us. There's no clear way to fully determine the influence of nurture but we can demonstrate how it's unequal in ways which don't match objective reality, i.e. the way we treat people is actually causing harm, and we can do something about it as a species.
The real issues being discussed here aren't "Are men and women different biologically?" Both Pinker and Spelke (and anyone else, really) says "Yes, of course!" What matters here is the context and if those differences impact why women have not been treated equally as men for so long. Do those differences have much of anything to do with the discussion at hand dealing with sexism in technology and if so, how do we know it's related to nature and not nurture without committing a naturalistic fallacy?
If we know nurture plays a significant role and we know we can actually do something about that by education, shaming, social pressures, rewards, punishments, etc, etc... then we at least have a path towards a better future where women are free to do whatever they want and they will (ideally) be judged by their abilities, not their sex/gender. If we're stuck on debating the impact of physical differences such as hormones and chemicals, how can we tease apart the role of epigenetics and gene expression? How can we know how much of the physical differences we're pointing to are a result of neural plasticity after a lifetime of lived experiences within a culture that may be misogynistic?
At the same time, we should be cautious starting with physical differences and then extrapolating from them causality when, in controlled settings dealing with priming and such, we can directly show causality. Historically related to both race and sex, we've seen how starting with the argument that physical differences play a role has led to some really, really awful conclusions. Not only did they turn out to be scientifically unsound, but they caused direct harm by further changing or reinforcing the perceptions which may be much more influential in causing discrimination.
I really like Pinker and I liked his book The Blank Slate. Just as he describes himself as a feminist, I've seen you describe yourself in similar ways, wanting to empower women to be and do anything they want and most importantly to thrive within their strengths without trying to conform to a self-image put on them by society which may not fit biological reality. That's a wonderful message which I do think should be spread. Unfortunately, I think it gets hijacked a bit by some who currently profit from a disproportionate amount of power and influence over society and don't want to see the status quo change. They want to continue controlling and defining how women are perceived in order to maintain power, even if that means granting women a new sense of self-discovery and identity which is, again, still controlled in many ways by the same classic white, male stereotype power role.
Given the waters we swim in, to say men are better than women at getting CEO jobs may have very little to do with biology and more to do with those who are already in charge and get to set the rules. What if cooperation is more advantageous than competition? Would it then make sense to have more women with lower testosterone in charge of making decisions (if we follow that testosterone argument)? The point here is we haven't yet talked about what we prefer in society, the philosophy of what "good" looks like, before we've jumped to explaining the way things are using things which can remove responsibility from harmful actors.
Most people who are passionate about this discussion are more interested in figuring out what we can do to align things along how they'd like them to be (i.e. women, minorities, etc being treated based on their ability, not their gender/racial identity).
If the answer is, "Well, we're just born that way and that's how it is" there'd be no discussion to have. Since we can provable show how much our own perception changes things, it makes sense to focus on the things we can change and go from there.
Great questions, as always. I'm looking forward to responding later today when I have more time.
Respectfully, after reading the first half of each debater (I confess, it's long enough that I don't plan to finish it.), I think you're dismissing Spelke undeservedly, and I'm not sure why. The results of at least the portion of the debate I read, would incline me to retain my notions of where gender differences are relevant and where they aren't. And the example of testosterone that you give as if it's the only factor determining both prison populations and fortune 500 CEOs seems overly simplistic. Non-white people are also over represented in the prison population, are you going to claim that's not because of social pressures? I don't reject the idea that testosterone is correlated with risk-taking, but the conclusions you draw are leaps, not steps.
I doubt we'll agree until or unless one of us actually makes the issue the core of our scientific investigations. Otherwise, it seems like there's plenty of scientists on both sides of the controversy for either of us to cite. As both the debaters mentioned, it is a very political topic, so divorcing politics from the science isn't something I'd believe whomever I'm discussing it with capable of, and I confess, I don't think it's possible for me either.
I will furthermore point out that the site itself mentions "Both presented scientific evidence with the realization and understanding that there was nothing obvious about how the data was to be interpreted."
So... even they don't think it's obvious.
More to your point, though, both debaters agree there are biological sex differences. The significance of those is what's debatable, and that's where I think you and I differ.
All of the detailed evidence for his position came in the second half of his talk, so if you stopped before then you missed most everything of substance. Also, the citations are included in his slides (which are available the link I provided).
In the concluding discussion part, or in the second half of his initial presentation? I'm in the midst of the concluding discussion at this moment. I guess I am devoted enough to read it all.
LOL. It's fascinating stuff! The second half of his initial presentation is what I meant.
Having read it all now, I think I'll conclude with a quote from Spelke: "I think the only way we can find out [if biological differences make one sex more capable of doing exceptional math] is to do one more experiment. We should allow all of the evidence that men and women have equal cognitive capacity to permeate through society. We should allow people to evaluate children in relation to their actual capacities, rather than one's sense of what their capacities ought to be, given their gender. Then we can see, as those boys and girls grow up, whether different inner voices pull them in different directions. I don't know what the findings of that experiment will be. But I do hope that some future generation of children gets to find out. "
I completely agree and was trying to throw a bone to those who discuss these differences at length as if they really matter. It's clear we can say things about the physical body like "Yes, I have a penis and you do not" for most of the human population (but not all, of course). What is not so clear at all is gender which has to do with the mind. I tried to be clear about that by saying "biologically" but maybe I should say "physically" instead. But even then, I get your point in that what makes someone male or female might be a trivial difference in hormones at a very specific time in development. Maybe we shouldn't be making such a big deal about it.
I look forward to reading that link, thank you for sharing it.
You're welcome! Glad you made that clearer. I think people grab ahold of openings like "biological differences" and try to extrapolate "can write my name in the snow with pee" to "better spatial thinking".
I enjoyed that post and may look into the supporting links a bit more, but this last sentence was cringworthy:
No, sorry, that's not how good science works. "Hurray for flawed papers which support my agenda"? Scary. Her agenda may actually prove to be the "right" one most accurately describing physical reality, but the perspective communicated in that last sentence has historically led to a lot of bad outcomes. Other than that, I though it was well written and balanced enough to include counter perspectives, which I always like seeing.
Sure. To what I think her point is, though, it's a field with too little research being done. Every study is flawed, and for many studies, the flaw is limited sample sizes due to funding. Each individual study contributes to a larger picture that will make future meta-studies possible. That IS how science works. The vanguard has to deal with inevitable restrictions because they are paving the way for future, more extensive studies. It may be too early to say anything definitively, but having studies at all is a good thing, when the alternative is no studies, and just a reliance on "what everyone knows" which is where the gender determinism camp tends to operate from. (e.g. "everyone knows that men are better at spatial orientation and women are better at understanding emotions.")
And I'd add that, since we live in a society that still leans so heavily on sexist tropes to enforce the status quo and since public perception often ignores scientific consensus, if flawed research results in tearing down the patriarchy, it still has value, especially if it merely supplements less flawed research.
Very little research isn't flawed. It is meta-studies that we must rely on to give us a clearer picture, since any individual study has so many limitations. And especially in fields that aren't thoroughly examining their pre-existing assumptions for flaws.
Yeah, that's a great way to think about it. Thanks for bringing that perspective. I just get concerned about people pushing their agendas with "science" that may, as you said, still be uncertain.
But, if it causes less harm in the world, I'm all for that, regardless of the details as long as it doesn't create more long term, systemic risk down the road.
Totally. I think it's imperative that one be skeptical and approach every piece of new information with a cautious eye, but at the same time, we must be open to the possibility that we are wrong. It's a delicate balance.
Interestingly, in the article that @sean-king linked, one of the debaters says, "There is evidence, admittedly squishy in parts, that differences in prenatal hormones make a difference in later thought and behavior even within a given sex. "
That "admittedly squishy in parts" seems remarkably like "even when it's flawed".
Hmm... maybe, but one clearly celebrated an agenda being pushed by "flawed" science. The other is simply saying "There is some weak evidence for this conclusion" without any declaration of whether or no that conclusion is good, bad, a desired agenda, etc.
This is a very interesting topic and I'm not going to pretend that I have the answer. On some level I think we cannot be afraid of bad ideas and what's more we should learn from them. Maybe in the spirit of the dialectical method.
On the other hand, Jordan Peterson likes to repeat after Jung that "People don't have ideas, ideas have people." In his view people generate ideas to further their survival but over time ideas take a life of their own. As a result, ideas can take control over someone and spread (like religion). In this sense they have their own goal. This can make certain ideas dangerous.
It's a concept similar to Dawkins' meme that spreads through behaviour that it generates. Some memes go extinct but others can reproduce even if they are harmful to the 'host'.
As long as we are flawed we will have flawed ideas. It's dangerous to think that we can stop spreading them, because they only die when the last 'host' dies.
Anyway, it was a great post @lukestokes, it got me thinking!
Memetic warfare!
Thank you for your comments. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
"“Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas. The man of no ideas will find the first idea fly to his head like wine to the head of a teetotaller.
Can anyone please explain to me how ideas are hurtful when wielded by an intelligent and informed populace?
Well, I think we need to stop sheltering people from "bad ideas". If you are an adult, you need to grow up and realize not everyone thinks the same.
A diverse world requires assholes, plain and simple. There will be people that say things you disagree with. As an adult, equipped with the skills to navigate the world, you should be able to interact with these people without going into a meltdown.
Brow beating people for thinking different is not progress, it's a re-dressing of everything these people claim to be fighting against.
(Boo! The definition is too small to read. It says "a person who is intolerant toward those holding different opinions." Accurate, no?)
Why don't more women work on the Oil fields or do underwater welding? Why don't you see women on the fishing boats in Alaska? Why don't more women do sewer maintenance?
Please, keep in mind though, I am not a misogynist, nor am i a feminist.
I'm a Humanist. and we need to realize there are stunning differences in not only physiology of men and women but psychology. And if anyone cares to disagree, please point me to the scientific studies and conclusions which decisively show that Men & Women have the same levels of the same hormones. I won't say women aren't "cut out" for these jobs. I will say, most women aren't interested in those jobs for reasons beyond my understanding.
Ask them. Many don't want to work in those fields. Some do want to work in STEM, but have to deal with sexism when they attempt it.
There are a lot of studies about gender and they aren't cut and dry. We're not doing ourselves any favors if we assume the current status quo is the most accurate representation of reality. Many of the things we believe about gender were put there by culture. See @improv's reply for an interesting article with more info.
No problems with thinking different, but I do have problems if that thinking directly harms others by creating systemic workplace problems of physical/verbal/mental abuse. Some people are tough, some people are not. The tough shouldn't expect everyone else to just get over it, if a better approach would be for more people to stop being assholes.
Exactly! Many don't want to work in these fields! Even when it comes to programming. I am not trying to stereotype, but as the "Misogynist Manifesto" made clear, women are more interested in front-end people work. Which seems to be supported by statistics about Women who own businesses. Those businesses tend to be Retail and Service, heavily focused on... drum roll...
people! "Gender is a social construct" but biology is scientifically based. And biology is why the male individuals do not develop ovaries, and females do not grow testes. And biology also affects the mind.
this article came out before PC BS really hit the fan, trigger warnings
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hope-relationships/201402/brain-differences-between-genders
(someone should tell the old man who wrote this article that Gender is a socially imposed prison put over the entity's free expression.)
Interesting article, thanks for sharing it.
Citation needed! Without linking to the research he's describing, this is just an opinion piece. It's also coming from someone who probably has a financial incentive to keep the current boy/girl stereotypes in place:
But that's just a presumption on my part.
There are a lot of very interesting claims here, and I wish he had linked to the studies in order to better understand how much of this is supported by current research and what the various rebuttals are.
The brains might very well be different but then we get to another interesting question: How much those differences are caused by culture and external influences and not just biological pre-determined systems? What role does epigenetics play in changing gene expression based on environment?
It's like the example I hear often: Cab drivers have more active parts of the brain dealing spacial awareness. Cool! Now the tricky part: Were they born that way genetically, or did the neuroplasticity of their brains adjust to their daily working conditions over time?
I don't think we have good answers for this yet. As such, I think we should be careful to accept the current status quo, especially if it causes harm to some.
Great post, really interesting
Great post sir, keep it up.
Sorry, you post is about an article about a manifesto...
And it is difficult to follow which you are talking about.
Anyway, what do you expect of a company that has
Do Be Evil
as their slogan?
What the original manifest seems to be about comes from the frustration of having to work with women and being told that they are equal, when they are not. The sexes are different. Each has unique qualities of thought and expression. Ignoring that, and just saying "they're equal" leads to much strife. And its usually men who are the bearers of that strife, and have to pick up the slack for women who aren't qualified for the job but where hired based on sex quota.
Sigh. That's is the opposite of their slogan. You know it is. You're saying it anyway. That's annoying. You may have personal disagreements with moral nature of Google's actions, but instead of having a rational debate about those issues, you prefer using bold letters and ironically incorrect statements. Not very helpful for people who actually want to discuss approaches for positive change.
Who is saying "They're equal"? The manifesto (based on the parts I skimmed) was trying to say "They are unequal, and women are worse within this profession" which, as Yonatan's post describes, was a very bad (and he argued completely incorrect) statement.
The assumption that women in tech are in this role because of a quota is the problem being addressed. In many ways, they are superior to men because they were able to survive through toxic work environments based on their coding skills and their ability to deal with bullshit all around them, every day, all day.
The universe does not hear the word NO.
So, instead of saying something positive, such as "Build Great Things", they chose a phrase that would make them the company that the CIA wanted them to be. "Don't Be Evil." Which, the universe, and your sub conscious turns into
Do Be Evil.
In which they are. Getting people killed and imprisoned in China, just so they can have market share? Filtering out specific people from the search results.
They are being evil.
I do not assume about quotas and hiring, I speak from experience of quotas and hiring.
Or how frustrating it is to work on code where she named all the variables after her cats.
It is not that women can't, its that hiring standards are lowered to make quota.
A typical story from an engineering company. 100s of resumes from men, 3 from women. And two of them are completely not qualified for the position.
And, so, this "toxic environment" that women get to complain about, men are actually experiencing. Do not talk to women, do not compliment women, have a pocket recorder going whenever work has you dealing with a woman. And further, because of those lowered standards for hiring, men are the ones left to pick up the slack.
Statements like this sound ridiculous to me and make it hard for me to take you seriously.
Well, its a universal law.
It doesn't care if you believe in it or not.
Everyone ,who makes affirmations work for them, knows about this. And it is really important in self-talk.
And with Boogle, I say the results speak for themselves.
It will not be long now before Boogle destroys itself, as evil always does.
Here is an article about working with your subconscious/unconscious.
It talks about how it doesn't hear no.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/focus-forgiveness/201307/conscious-the-unconscious
So, when you read boogle's sign "Don't be Evil" you are programming yourself to "Be Evil".
Men and women are different. They were built that way through evolution. They are designed to complement each other.
Behind the relentless drive to eliminate our perception of the differences between the sexes is a subconscious attack on the nuclear family, because that is the thing that evolution created that the new god of Statism seeks to eliminate. It seeks to eliminate it because it does not want society separated apart into little nuclei that are most happy when they are self sufficient. Nuclear self sufficient families are not an organizational design that a large cooperative can manipulate or utilize.
So the nuclear family is attacked as irrelevant, bigoted, anachronistic, limiting. The new family is the village, which of course needs leaders, and hey! What do you know, there are the politicians and social scientists with open arms.....
Cultural Marxism is a solution in search of a problem. It doesn't solve anything. it creates more problems than it purports to solve.
I'm not a statist, but you seem to have a nice story going for yourself here. And what if valid scientific research does actually show males and females of the human species aren't so significantly different in areas such as programming? Will you say science is in on this scam you speak of? You talk about villages as if they are a bad thing, but prior to the State, many argue life was more voluntary and villages were based on respect and mutual benefit, not on hierarchies maintained through violence.
The idea that life used to be more voluntary comes from videos like this:
The nuclear family is a relatively new thing. Do you think it's part of evolution of homo sapiens or something?
via Wikipedia
No one was talking about cultural marxism until you introduced it to the conversation. Seems like projection to me. Not everything is a boogie man conspiracy by The State. We'd do much better focusing on real, obvious problems such as the prison industrial complex, the "war" on drugs, the extortion/theft that is taxation, the violence caused by imaginary lines known as national borders, etc, etc.
IMO, reliance on the state has nothing to do with someone's gender identity, their view of the nuclear family, or anything along those lines. Mostly, it has to do with the myth of authority.
So having read the original memo and a few articles.
I thought the memo was well written, thoughtful and made some good points.
I think Google firing him; went on to prove his point more.
I am concerned at the lack of free thought at Google. If they are willing to repress views internally (for a good reason of course); what other views might they repress (for a good reason of course). Censorship wether the great firewall of China; self-censorship; or 1984 needs to be carefully monitored.
It is actually sort of funny that a software company -inherently ran by a bunch of computer geeks- is having this problem.
There is a great Dilbert Cartoon in here.
What kind of PC world have we come to that a person can't say that men and women are different? May I sell you some magic fabric that only the intelligent can see? (alluding to the story of the Emperor has no clothes...)
This memo is likely "interpreted differently" whether you are male or female.
Anyway... a few of my thoughts.