https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=agU-mHFcXdw
Hello, so some of you may have heard about the leaked Google memo that has been circulating virally around the internet for the last couple of days. That was written by James DeMore who was fired for it last night and a colleague of his reached out to me and put us together and so I’m going to talk to James today about exactly what happened and why and perhaps what should be done about it. So that’s what we’re going to do and the interview I had with him which finished at about 3 o’clock on Tuesday August 8th follows immediately after this introduction. Hi everybody, I’m speaking today with James DeMore and an unidentified Google employee who wishes to remain anonymous for reasons that I think are obvious and James last week put his hand in a blender by circulating an internal memo that I would say has become somewhat infamous. So James, let’s start with a bit of discussion about you. Tell us who you are, about your background and about what you were doing at Google. Yes, so I was actually just, you know, I’m really interested in science and psychology and stuff and then I really like puzzles and that’s how I got into Google actually. I did one of their coding competitions. They just recruited me out of that and so at Google I was mostly working on search and image and video search in particular. So tell us about your educational background a bit. Yes, so I just did a random science and math in undergrad and I ended up with a degree. I didn’t really know what I was going to do so I started doing research at MIT and then I went to systems biology at Harvard. I initially wanted to work with Martin Hovec. He’s really great in evolution and game theory but then I started working on other things. So tell us a bit about systems biology. What is that exactly? What kind of research were you doing at MIT? Yes, so systems biology has many different meanings but it’s generally just mathematical biology and I guess seeing biological systems as a whole rather than just individual molecules. So I like looking at populations and so my interest in evolution. So why did that make you a viable candidate at Google do you think? I think they just saw a smart guy that could code. Now you’ve been there three years is that correct but also as an intern before that? Yes so about four years total. And so how would you say you’ve performed as an employee at Google? Have people been happy with you or have you been in trouble? I got promoted twice. My last review was the highest possible, Superb, which is the top few percentile. So it definitely wasn’t based on performance that they fired me. Have you enjoyed working at Google? Has it been a good experience? Yes, I love Google. That’s the horrible part. I’ve always been the biggest Google fanboy. I’ve never had an iPhone. I’ve always tried to convince my friends to use Android and all these different things. This just puts a sour taste in my mouth. So you’ve got a good educational background. You’re interested in things that Google would be interested in. You’re a good coder. You’ve worked with them for a number of years and done an excellent job and you’re pretty pro-Google. That’s basically the background. Yeah. Okay now last week you wrote a memo which has attracted a tremendous amount of attention. And in that memo you made a number of claims and the claims were, and please correct me if I’m not summarizing this properly, you were attempting to describe reasons why a lack of gender parity might exist within Google for example and within engineering more broadly, but also in occupations more broadly. And you laid out a very elaborated document and I reviewed it and as far as I can tell, your opinions are well supported by the relevant psychological science. And I think what I’ll do in the description of this video when I link it is putting the references so that people can decide for themselves. I want to put up a webpage about gender differences in general, but I’ll try to hit the highlights for this particular document. So why did you do this? Yeah so about a month and a half ago I went to one of our diversity summits, all of it unrecorded and super secret, and they told me a lot of things that I thought just were not right. Okay what do you mean unrecorded and super secret? Well I mean they were telling us about a lot of these potentially illegal practices that they’ve been doing to try to increase diversity. What kind of practices? Well basically treating people differently based on what their race or gender are. Oh you mean racism? Yeah basically. I see and it was ultra secret and unrecorded in what manner? Yeah so most meetings at Google are recorded, anyone at Google can watch it, we’re trying to be really open about everything except for this. They don’t want any paper trail for any of these things. Okay why? Because I think it’s illegal and as some of the internal polls showed, there were a large percent of people that agreed with me on the document. And so if everyone got to see this stuff, then they would really bring up some criticism. Yeah well a large number of people in Google and a very large number of well informed biological scientists we might also add. So I mean I was quite struck by your document given that it would have been a decent document for a well informed research psychologist to write. But you’re somewhat of an outsider but you got the highlights accurate as far as I’m concerned. So okay so you went to this diversity meeting and you weren’t happy with the sorts of things that you were being told and with the practices. Is that both correct? Yeah. And so there’s a lot of ways in which they pressure people to increase the diversity of their team and there’s no way to do that besides actually choosing someone based on their race or gender right? What do they mean by diversity precisely? I mean more women or underrepresented racial minorities. Can I jump in? I would hesitate to say that that’s 100% true across 100%. Right. So the organization that I’m in, I have not personally seen anything that I would deem cross the line. I personally believe that there are a good amount of synergies to be found if you can combine slightly different ideologies into a room. And that is the thesis that some groups are working towards. Obviously there’s going to be a distribution of how people follow the rules. And you know it’s unfortunate to hear that it could be that some people fall to the wrong side of that distribution. But that certainly would not apply to everybody. Well it’s certainly also distressing to hear that there is acceptance of the idea that diversity can be mapped onto race and gender. Especially with regards to performance because there’s no evidence for that whatsoever. Okay so you went to this meeting and then you decided to write this document. How long had you been working on it before you released it? Yeah so I was doing it throughout my free time. And I just wanted to clarify my thoughts on this. I really just wanted to be proven wrong. Because if what I was saying was right then something bad is happening. And so about a month ago I submitted it to feedback to that program. And I saw that people looked at it but no one actually said anything. And what sort of feedback did you submit? I basically said what I said in the document and then I linked to the document itself. And so I actually published this about a month ago. And it was only after it got viral and then leaked to the news that Google started caring. Okay so how did it go viral? And do you know and how was it leaked? Yeah so there was a group at Google called skeptics. And so I was like okay maybe they’ll be able to prove me wrong in some way. Like they’re skeptical about things right? I don’t know. I was naive I guess. And so I sent them a message like okay what do you think about this? Is Google in some sort of echo chamber or am I in an echo chamber? And then it just exploded after that. And our internal, yeah it was just spread throughout all of Google. And do you know, was it the skeptics group that started to spread it around? Yeah and then there were a lot of upper management that specifically called it out and started saying how harmful it is and how it’s unacceptable. This sort of viewpoint is not allowed at Google. Yeah what sort of viewpoint exactly? The idea that there are differences between men and women that actually might play a role in the corporate world? That’s an opinion that’s not acceptable? Yeah it seems so. Well you know understandably these issues are tricky morally and politically. But the thing that was disturbing to me about watching the response to you is that as far as I can tell there isn’t anything that you said in that paper. First of all that is in fact biased in a manner that should open you up to the sorts of charges that have been opened up against you. Or that violates the scientific literature as it currently stands. So both of those are rather distressing. Yeah and there’s a lot of misrepresentation by upper management just to silence me I think. Yes and why is that do you think? Why is it that Google couldn’t have actually, do you think that Google couldn’t have come out and had an intelligent discussion about this instead of, well first of all releasing. I read Danielle Brown’s response to you which I thought was absolutely appalling. Ill-informed and appalling. And then they fired you which seems to be a really bad PR move but more importantly doesn’t actually deal with the issues at hand. You know they’re basically saying something like, well what was their rationale for firing you exactly? What was the excuse that was given? So the official excuse was that I was perpetuating gender stereotypes. That you were perpetuating gender stereotypes? And did they say anything else about your performance or about anything else that you had done? No. That was the only reason. And who fired you technically? It was my HR representative and my director. Okay and do you have any idea on whose orders they were acting or if this was something that they conjured up themselves? I’m sure it probably went from higher up than that. Because this is a huge PR move. So they would need approval from higher ups. Right and I think the CEO actually made some comments about the issue today which I’ll probably cut into this video as I edit it. So yeah okay. Alright so the first question is how are you doing? I’m doing okay. There’s a lot of messages that I’m trying to sort through and just trying to figure out what I should do now. Yeah you’ve been given some interesting job offers as far as I can tell. Yeah I’ve gotten a surprising amount of support. Yeah well I suspect, in fact I’m virtually certain that you have a majority viewpoint. It’s just that the people who hold the alternative perspective which are the radical social constructionist types who insist that everything is a consequence of socialization. They’re a little bit more organized politically but they’re clearly wrong scientifically. They’re wrong factually. They’re wrong ethically for that matter. So you probably have more support than you think and it’ll be very interesting to see how that turns out. So what do you think about having written this? I mean now your life is going to be turned upside down and for quite a while I suspect. So you put yourself out on the line doing this. So what do you think about that? It definitely sucks but at least I was proven right. What do you mean by proven right? Well just that the whole culture just tries to silence any dissenting view. And that we really need some more objective way of looking at these things. Yeah well I felt the same way when the University of Toronto decided to attempt to shut me down after I made my videos. I thought well that just proves my point. Because I made the videos saying well I don’t like the climate that’s developing. It’s making it very difficult to have conversations about certain things. Your example is even more egregious I think because I at least objected to a piece of legislation that in principle would have been a benefit to an identifiable group. Let’s say the transgender group. I don’t believe it is of any benefit to them but you could make a case that it was. But you, all you did as far as I can tell is review the modern personality literature. And the literature on individual differences relating to men and women and other groups. There’s actually not very much opinion in your piece at all. So what that means is that it is not possible to actually have a discussion about the scientific literature on these issues. Without putting yourself at risk. And that’s a hell of a thing for an engineer because engineers rely on the facts as far as I can tell. One of the things I like about engineers is that they tend to stick fairly closely to the facts. They’re not a very political group. You know generally speaking. They’re much more practical. Yeah, I don’t know how they can expect to silence so many engineers and intelligent people and just deny science like this. Yeah, well the question too is what are your supporters within Google going to do? Because you know I would say you’re a great warning man. Because you showed exactly what happens if you have enough, I don’t know what you’d call it, curiosity and courage I suppose. But mostly curiosity. To lay out what you think for discussion. I mean even when you opened this conversation you said that you weren’t jumping up and down and insisting you were right. You were trying to lay out what you understood from doing a fair bit of reading. And make the case that these facts, the facts about the differences between men and women and employment choice and payment and all that aren’t being discussed. And they’re not being discussed. I mean we know for example, and I’ll put this citation in the description. It’s been very difficult for the Swedes for example to flatten out the gender distribution for engineers in Sweden and in the Scandinavian countries in general. Despite their advanced social engineering let’s call it. And they also can’t get male nurses. You know I think it’s four out of five nurses in Scandinavia if I remember correctly are female. And the reverse number are engineers are male. And you know that seems to be associated with this quite well founded scientific observation that women tilt towards interest in people and men tilt towards interest in things. And that that’s associated with testosterone exposure in utero. This is solid science you know. And it isn’t anybody beating an ideological drum because most of the people, I would say that most of the people who are publishing this would have been even happier having a better life. Had it turned out the other way. You know the findings actually run contrary to their biases because academia is generally full of people whose biases are left. And now and then you know scientific findings emerge to dispute an ideological proposition. That was certainly the case with the role of biology versus society in establishing gender differences. So the science is very credible. It doesn’t mean it’s completely beyond dispute. But that’s not the point either because your survey was actually a pretty decent survey of the current state of affairs with regards to individual differences. That doesn’t mean it’s right. So okay so what do your family think about all this? Yeah they definitely support me. But they don’t really know what I should do from here. They don’t want me to you know just go to a ton of news corporations and do all these interviews and stuff. And because they just want to twist whatever I say towards their agenda too. It’s not really clear what I should be doing. Yeah well there’s certainly no shortage of people that want to talk to you. I mean I’ve been contacted by four or five journalists who would like to speak with you. We can talk about that afterwards. I can let you know who they are. But yeah well you’ve got a conundrum on your hands. I mean you’re a very straightforward person and you’re obviously not grinding any acts at least not in any obvious way. So my suspicions are that talking to the right people could be of substantial use to you. But I guess it also depends on what it is that you want. And that’s something we can talk about. Now you’ve rattled up the cages of a fair number of people and a fairly large organization. Interestingly enough just on the heels of Google and YouTube’s announcement about their new free speech restrictions on YouTube. And their incorporation of NGOs into that censorship process. So it’s been quite a week for Google I would say. So you’ve opened up this can of worms. So imagine if you’re looking six months down the road saying things happened that were good because of what you did. What is it that you would like to have happen? At the very least I want, because I do still care about Google, I want some conversation to be had. And for the ideologues to not just have their way. But yeah I still don’t have a clear vision on how exactly this will happen. How this can spread farther than just Google. Well I mean you’d spread it farther than just Google that’s for sure. I mean I would say my experience with the press is that the first thing that happens, that will happen is that you’ll get jumped on. By people who call you the sorts of epithets that would be appropriate if you were a bad guy and you should just shut up and go away.