SIO79: James Damore, Author of the Google Memo

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This episode number 79. I'm your host Thomas Smith. My interview today is with James Damore, the author of the Google memo. To not color it with any preamble. I will just say it's unedited because James was sensitive to his previous interviews with left-wing sources in his mind being selective in editing. So this is uneditted, makes it a little more rough, but I don't think it's too bad. Uh, so here it's also very long because there was a lot to cover and we did not even get to, I don't know, the half of what we could have covered, but here we go. James Damar.

0:01:21 Thomas: I am joined right now by James Damore. How you doing, James?

0:01:24 James: I'm doing good.

0:01:25 Thomas: I want to thank you for coming on. I know, I think what happened was someone watched your Dave Rubin interview and you lamented that you weren't, as of then, I guess, getting too many lefty podcast or interview requests. And you said you'd be willing to do it and you responded. And so I wanted to say thank you. For agreeing to come on, I'm definitely an unabashed lefty, but I appreciate you coming on and talking to me.

0:01:48 James: Yeah, no problem.

0:01:49 Thomas: And I definitely can promise you that there's... there's no selective editing or anything like that. So you don't need to worry about that. We can have a nice long form chat. First thing I do kind of want to ask you because there's a lot of language you've used and some, I would say almost like methods of thinking too that I think are pretty good. Like you talk a lot about how you wanted to make sure you weren't being biased. You wanted to run it by the skeptic group. You want to keep your biases in check. And I respect a lot lot of that. So I guess just to start off, do you worry now that you're completely priced into this thing? Because imagine now if someone were to change your mind, it's not like you get your job back.

0:02:37 Thomas: Then you're just stuck. Do you worry that you are kind of pretty much priced into this conclusion? Because now it seems like, and you can elaborate on this if you want, It seems like your living for now is going to have to be based on, I don't know, GoFundMe or interviews or something, right? What do you think about that?

0:02:56 James: Yeah that's definitely Something that I worry about, and it's something that I try to consciously avoid. You know, it's definitely unfortunate that we don't really, uh, we don't we like punish those that do change their minds, even though that's exactly what we want people to be able to do, to, you know, look at new information and decide based on that new information that their original opinion was incorrect.

0:03:27 Thomas: Right.

0:03:28 James: But, you know, my opinion hasn't changed too much just because, I mean, I wrote it a month before it went viral. And within that month, I did do a lot of editing after a lot discussions with people. And, you know, this document was never meant to be the entire story. So there's a lot that's missing, right? But it was just the perspective that's being silenced at Google. Right.

0:03:52 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. So I was all prepared to talk about the memo, and I am very prepared to tell you about the memoir. I want to ask you some stuff. There's plenty there. I know you're a smart guy. I know your a logical guy. And then I see two days ago, you're tweeting about the KKK. And I just got to ask you, man, like, what in the hell were you talking about? Cause I don't even, I can't, I'm having trouble even getting into like what your mindset of like what you're trying to do with this tweet where you said, uh, the KKK is horrible and I don't support them, but can we admit that their internal title names are cool? Grand wizard. I mean, what, what were you trying to doing? I just, with that tweet storm.

0:04:30 James: Yeah, so I really wanted to ask, you know, is it appropriate to say that Grand Wizard or whatever sounds cool, or is that itself racist? Racist. And because, you know, I think people have started expanding the definition of what racism is, and it often now includes, you know, denying that bigotry or racism is the sole cause for some social problem, that itself is racism. And that's a definition that I don't really agree with. And, you know, saying that, you know, racism is the Soul cause for some of the inner city violence that we, we see, when, you know, there's a lot of cultural and socioeconomic factors at play, uh, like it's, it's that type of thinking that I was trying to counter.

0:05:22 James: And, you know, I, I think that there still is, like, I wasn't trying to say anything particular about the KKK or anything, but, you know, it, it is something that we should look more at, because I don't think that it's just racism or white supremacy that's causing people to join these types of groups, because, you know, they do provide, you know, so a little bit of like a community for these people, and it's often these, uh, disenfranchised young white men that join them. And, you know, they're able to speak whatever they want, you know, be totally politically incorrect, and, you know, they provide sort of a social safety net which maybe some of these people are missing within society.

0:06:11 James: And if we could instead provide that to them, we could perhaps prevent some of this extremism that we're seeing. And, you know, this could be applied also to gangs, the mafia, and other terrorist groups. But, you know, I think once you start moralizing an issue where you just say, no, it's only racism that's causing this, and any other opinion is racist itself, then you sort of close yourself off from other options, right?

0:06:44 Thomas: Well, okay. There's, there's quite a bit there. I think some of it we can get to later because my biggest problem is someone who's on the far left, I think, on a lot of this stuff is there's a huge focus on like cartoon racism. This is something Rubin does that's really obnoxious where he constantly emphasizes like, look how nice you are, James. You're just such a nice guy. He does that with everybody. He'll have Richard Spencer on and do that. But that's not the problem. Like, it is true. I will agree with you, actually, probably, that outright bigotry and racism has become incredibly unacceptable in our culture, for the most part. I think that we took a step back with Trump in the alt-right a little bit. But for the most part, like I agree that outright bigotry is largely unacceptable. You get fired for it. You lose your job. You know, if you're a broadcaster and you say something racially charged, you know, and there's a ton of sensitivity there. But what what happens is while that has been the focus, like outright overt bigotry has been the focus in in our racial dialogue,

0:06:58 James: So.

0:07:44 Thomas: Covert bigotery has gone unnoticed, and things like the drug war, and imprisoning so many black men and tearing their families apart, and the way we zone for schools that leave the inner cities and leave predominantly black neighborhoods with the worst options for schools, and they're, they're sort of the districts are gerrymandered. Stuff, stuff like that is not in our conversation, and that's what we need to be talking about.

So part of that also has a theme, I think, in sexism, and we can talk about that later with a memo. But I think what I'm blown away by, with your tweet thread here, is why is this a concern for you? Like, the KKK is, like, why is, when people take a look at these tweets and they say, boy, you're really worried that we might, there might be some people in the KKK that that somehow joined it for not racist reasons, like what kind of numbers do you think we're talking about there? It's the KKK, there's nobody who's joining it because the names are cool. Like, if they think Grand Wizard is a cool name, they could just go play D&D, like, that's already an option for that, I...

0:08:51 James: I mean, I think we also have to acknowledge that people that play D&D are socially ostracized too, and, you know, it's exactly the same demographic, the socially disenfranchised white male that plays D&D predominantly. So I don't know that the connection is necessarily there, but, you know, I think you, we also have to acknowledge that. But yes, they're not necessarily joining it because Grand Wizard, but the fact that Grand Wizard gives them some sort of power that they don't otherwise have, we have to at least acknowledge that.

0:09:26 Thomas: Guess, but so does, like, the Rotary Club. And so, I mean, there's... there's all kinds of clubs and things you can do where there's an internal structure and an internal hierarchy you can try to rise through. I mean, the, the idea that that's such a big problem, that the KKK is attracting men, and, and I, I really doubt, I think the over, there's no overlap. I mean, there can't be that much overlap between the D&D player and the KKK. That's, that's a, you, you might be right to say they both tend to be more ostracized, but for vastly different reasons than, you know, like, like one is because they have a disgusting ideology, and the other is, I don't know, society kind of doesn't like nerds all the time, but that's rapidly changing.

0:10:09 James: Yeah, I'm not sure. I mean, I think we're both not necessarily well informed on this. And you may be basing this on a stereotype of what type of person joins the KKK. And I'm not sure that we really know, or at least you and I really know who exactly is joining the KKK, because there are a lot of white men that are into fantasy. That is how you escape reality. Right. And, you know, I think even if we're not talking about one particular hate group, there are other violent groups like the mafia and gangs. And, yeah, it's similar problems where there are no other options for these young men.

0:10:55 James: And, we have to be cognizant of what the actual incentive structures are that are causing people to join these groups.

0:11:05 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. Well, if we're both uninformed, I mean, we can kind of just give our views and then people can judge what they want to or something. But I mean there's other options besides join the KKK, which is just not join the KKK. I mean that's a pretty easy option. But I'm amazed.

0:11:20 James: Well, I mean, if you feel totally disenfranchised, though, then there really isn't many other options, perhaps, in the South. You know, there's not much to do, necessarily.

0:11:30 Thomas: Yep. Why is it in the South then? Like, why isn't it disenfranchised people in other places? The fact that it's geographically more located in the South would tell you South would tell you that ideology is a huge role in this. Like, yeah,

0:11:44 James: Well, yeah, so I'm not saying that ideology doesn't play a role, but it's ideology plus something else, perhaps. And, you know, the inner cities have gangs. The South has the KKK. And this is just a broad analogy that obviously doesn't fully hold up, but I think that there are some common elements.

0:12:05 Thomas: But the gangs, I mean, gangs are a way to make money. I mean, gangs are to protect territory for drug dealing, and that's a that's that actually provides a lot of income for people who see they have no other choice. I don't see how the KKK would be analogous to that.

0:12:18 James: Yeah, the KKK does help with income. So at least historically, they pressured employers to hire certain people and they provide a sort of social safety net for these disenfranchised individuals. And there is an economic incentive, at least for some people.

0:12:38 Thomas: Okay. Okay. I'm amazed that this would be a focus though. I guess that's what I'm so confused about. Like you, you, in one minute you're focused on gender, which we'll get to here because we shouldn't spend too much time on this. You're focused On Gender Imbalance in Tech. And that was what your memo was all about really. And then, and you're not an expert in that. I mean, we can both acknowledge you're not a sociologist, you know, you were doing, that's

0:13:04 James: I was studying biology and I have read significantly into psychology and sociology.

0:13:10 Thomas: Fine. I just mean it's not, you're not an expert at it and somebody who is a sociologist. I mean, somebody like the people you cite. I mean, you saw, you cited plenty of experts. I'm not saying you didn't. I'm just saying, like, Well,

0:13:13 James: How do you define expert? I feel like this definition of expert is sort of arbitrary, though. And it's sort of just a way to attack anyone whose opinion you don't agree with, because there are many people that agree with me that do write papers, have written books on this. And so it's rather not to attack a person than attack the ideas, right? Right.

0:13:43 Thomas: No, I, sorry, the point I was making, that wasn't meant to attack you for your views on gender, um, but what I was trying to transition to was, while you have read into that, like, what made you decide to focus on the KKK in this way? Like, that's what I'm asking, you're, You're not an expert in either, technically, so, oh,

0:13:58 James: So they're both examples of extreme political ideology run amok, in my opinion.

0:14:08 Thomas: Okay, wow, all right, well, let's get to the memo, then, so you can back that claim up, I guess, so one thing I do want to, I think, concede and ask you about is I think a lot of the coverage on this, on parts of this were not very good, because I would like, if you don't mind, could you you describe the process quickly? I know you already have a lot, but of what, why you wrote this and who you shared it with, you know, because a lot of people did say that, you know, you spread this or you were trying to like harass people with it or whatever. What really happened in terms of this memo?

0:14:15 James: Yeah.

0:14:49 James: Yeah. So, I mean, I was interested in inclusivity at Google. And so I went to these diversity and inclusion programs and they explicitly asked for my feedback. So I decided to clarify my thoughts into this document and I sent it to them directly. Correctly, and they would look at it and read it, but then just never respond. I went to several of these and I would do the same thing each time and they never responded. So then I had some individual conversations with people and they'd read it and either just say, yes, I agree, or they would have some constructive feedback.

0:15:29 James: And then at some point, a high level manager suggested that I send it to a different group, and so I ended up sending it to the skeptics group, which, yeah.

0:15:40 Thomas: What is this skeptics like within Google?

0:15:42 James: So you know, there's just these different email lists that some people subscribe to, and one was called skeptics. I heard some, there was one, uh, thread that was about, uh, different political ideologies, so I thought that this might be a good setting. And, you know, I thought skeptics, just by based on the name, they would be able to to point out any errors that I had. And so if you read my actual message that I sent to them, it was like, hey, what do you think about Google being an ideological echo chamber? Is this legitimate at all, or am I in my own echo chamber? So I really just wanted them to point at holes, but it ended up just exploding from there, and I didn't control it being spread throughout the company at that point.

0:16:26 Thomas: Do you know how many people were in that skeptic group that you were sending it to?

0:16:31 James: Not that many, a few hundred or something, out of many thousands or like 70,000 Google employees. So

0:16:39 Thomas: Right. Right. So from there, so once you were sending it out to a group of a couple hundred or so, somebody started sharing it and it did it pretty much go viral within the entire company very soon.

0:16:51 James: Yeah, there's multiple internal message boards like me and Jen and internal Google Plus where people are posting about it.

0:17:00 Thomas: Was this on company time? Like, when did you find the time to do all this? Like there's a lot of research and writing that went into this. Are these groups that you're sharing stuff with, how are they structured within ordinary business at Google? Is this something that But they're just allowed to just kind of do as a like, what was the point of them forgetting your document? Like, what is the normal point of these groups, I guess?

0:17:08 James: Yeah, I guess, I mean, how I found time to do it is I flew to China for work and I wrote it on the plane ride. So I'm actually not really subscribed, subscribe to a lot of these groups. And that's why I maybe chose the wrong group for it. Because yeah, I generally just do my work during work. But there are a lot people that are involved with political and just general information things. And they write emails about it at work. I don't really know how they get anything done. But I think that this is actually another symptom of some of the culture problems at Google, where people start talking about politics during work, and unfortunately only one side is allowed to be talked about, and these message boards are one way of them discussing it and shutting down people that ever dissent.

0:17:34 Thomas: OK.

0:18:26 Thomas: So did you have no intention of trying to share this with the entire company?

0:18:33 James: Yeah, I definitely didn't want the entire company to be looking at this.

0:18:37 Thomas: And you didn't share it outside Google ever. That was done by someone else.

0:18:41 James: Yeah, I never leaked it. So someone else leaked it and leaked all the other internal things that ended up on the internet.

0:18:51 Thomas: So I do want thanks for clearing that up, because I do think it's important to be fair about, you know, what what went on, what you meant to do. You know, I think that the conversation about your firing and that that response is kind of separate from the science of the document. And I just want to say, like, I'm kind of agnostic about that. I don't know. Obviously, you you you got fired, so I'm sure you're not happy about it. But in terms of in general, you're firing as a PR move. Do you feel like Google was kind of obligated to do that? Or what are your feelings about it?

0:19:30 James: No, I think that it gives them a very bad image for a lot of people, because now they're seen as anti-science and very politically biased. And also, they've shut down the discussion, which is something that I really think is harmful, because I think there's a lot useful things that I point out. Out. And, you know, if you just shut down the discussion, then you can never really address these issues fully.

0:19:57 Thomas: Yeah, well, I mean, I think the view is that the science isn't accurate and therefore you're perpetuating these stereotypes. And so let's say hypothetically you got the science, just hypothetically to separate the issues. Let's say, hypothetically, you got the science wrong or you believe the science was wrong, would it then make sense to fire you? Or what do you think the appropriate response should have been in that world?

0:20:20 James: I mean, I think they should have addressed what was in the document. They never have addressed the document, and they haven't even said what exactly about it was against our policies and what was fine. Because now no one can ever bring these things up, and they feel like they have to walk on eggshells if they ever try to dissent against the current narrative.

0:20:44 Thomas: Right. What kind of reaction were you wanting when you sent your feedback? You know, you talked about sending your feedback on this training or whatever. I've done a lot of trainings in my days at my job. I do this full time now, but I used to work for the state, actually. So you can imagine the government's got a lot and stuff. I think I've sent feedback back like once, I don't, you know, and it was something that the trainer said that was, or did, actually, they showed a video that was, that was pretty insensitive, like without any warning, they just showed a video of the 9-11 attacks, and it was just like, that was kind of unnecessary, because it was on something completely unrelated. What I, didn't get a response then, you know, even though that was, it seemed like everybody agreed that was unnecessary and a stupid thing to do. What response were you expecting when you're sending a document that's kind of building this large case for why everything they're doing is wrong? I mean, did you really expect them to like change their entire $265 million diversity policy or whatever?

0:21:20 James: I Expected there to be a discussion, because Google is very much a bottom-up company where people will create a document. There's many different documents that have been made, and I modeled mine after some previous ones. They share it, and then people modify it and and give comments. And at some point, you find some happy middle, and it becomes part of the discussion for the company going forward. And I just really wanted to work with the diversity programs myself. And I had talked with the Women at Google Group and we had discussions where they seemed to be happy for me to give my perspective on a lot of these issues. But, I mean, they just never followed up on it. So they said that they would. And then I had to message them like five different times, and it just never amounted to anything. So, you know, I just really wanted to start a dialogue, and it seemed like they weren't really up for that. That.

0:22:55 Thomas: Yeah, well, I think a big issue with that is that long before this, I mean even back, well let's see, I don't know how far back, but Google has been under fire for not being diverse enough for quite a while, right? I mean I think I think 2014, when you cite that $250 or $60 million figure, I think that's 2014 through 2016, right, when it comes to their diversity measures. So, I mean, that tells you before that already they were responding to a very public attitude that they weren't diverse enough.

0:23:25 James: Yeah, and I think that they've overreacted to a lot of that pressure now. And what they're doing currently is misguided and not really backed up by the science. So it's unfortunate.

0:23:43 Thomas: Okay, the only reason I mentioned that is I feel like that dialogue, it already took place. It's almost like your document maybe needed to take place in the public sphere like it it is now, because it's already been several years since they've decided and recognized that they had a diversity problem, and they did so because of public pressure. So if they adopted your beliefs, I guess, doesn't that need to be a public change? Otherwise, they're still in the same bind where they're facing horrible PR because of their diversity issues.

0:24:20 James: Well, my thing is very pro-diversity. I actually give ways in which we can address the gender gap. Yet. It's that I found a lot of our policies to be harmful and probably illegal. And so I felt like that itself...

0:24:35 Thomas: All right, well, let's Let's get to that then. So we'll stop being around the bush. We'll talk about the document. Is it fair to say, because I read the whole thing, obviously, and I've got a lot of notes on it. Is it fare to say your big concerns seem to be, and this is based on your tweets too, because you tweeted that, here, let me get off the KKK tweets. Let's go to the other tweets. You tweeted that I think it was early on, something like, imagine if your company believed in Santa Claus or something. What were those tweets? Can you repeat your sentiment there? Doesn't have to be word for word, but what

0:24:39 James: So The metaphor was believing in Santa Claus versus believing in total social constructionism. And that's what a lot people at Google currently believe. And that is what I was trying to counter. And they have these beliefs that all disparities that we find in the population are due to social pressures and injustices, and so that's what they're basing their programs on, and they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on them, and I wrote a reasoned and I think well-argued document that not everything is socially constructed, and here's how we could modify some of the things to not be illegal and actually be helpful in my, my opinion. And then they fire me.

0:25:57 Thomas: Is it you think is illegal?

0:26:00 James: So they're using someone's race or gender in some critical situations, which is against our policy. So, you know, they're Using someone's race or Gender during the hiring process, and after they're hired, in multiple different situations.

0:26:18 Thomas: So it's not illegal to factor in race. I actually checked with my Harvard Law partner. I do a law podcast too. You can factor in race into hiring, but you can't have a quota. So quotas are illegal, but factoring in race as one of several factors is totally legal.

0:26:37 James: It depends on who you ask, because the lawyers that I've talked to have said that this is illegal. And when I talked to the actual HR people and Google, they were very concerned that this was happening. So it's against our stated policies internally too. Their

0:26:53 Thomas: Well, how is it against you? Because there's... there's stated policies there, I mean, they have a ton of um diversity policies, how could, are you just

0:27:01 James: Stated policy is we will not use someone's protected status, which is race or gender or some other things in employment critical situations or in hiring. So that's what their stated policy is. And some of their public statements are saying, yeah, we don't do that. But then when you actually go into these secret meetings that are totally unrecorded, they admit that they are actually doing that by

0:27:01 Thomas: Yeah. How Would you possibly, because, okay, I'll just come out and say, my opinion is that they should be factoring in certain demographics as a factor to make a decision when you have two similarly qualified candidates, because there are such awful diversity uh measures going on at Google. For example, there's what, one to two, I think 2% Black employees at Google? I mean, that's terrible. How would you ever fix that if not by making an attempt to factor in race in some way?

0:28:03 James: Making the environment itself more inclusive to different people, that's the best way of increasing diversity, because especially if you don't do that, then that diversity can actually be counterproductive, when it's, when the environment isn't inclusive, then people start segregating and it becomes more divisive and I

0:28:25 Thomas: But how does that factor into hiring? Because we're just talking about percentages of workers. I mean when you're talking about 2% black employees, employees, they're not even a big enough group to segregate. Like it's just going to be a couple people here and there, but they're

0:28:42 James: Mean the company is 70,000 people, so it's not like it's just a couple people uh and yeah

0:28:48 Thomas: Vastly outnumbered. Like any individual work group they're in, any individual, you know, like they're going to Be vastly out numbered 98 to one or to two. Sorry. Like how would they not, how would the, is it, you Know, like, and you're talking about Google's employees is workforce. What nationwide seven 70,000. When you use that that figure, what are you talking? Worldwide?

0:29:07 James: That, that's the global uh engineering or full-time employee number And it, that's about a year old or something, but I, I think the things that you're suggesting, though, though, of having different bars for different people based on their race or gender, that's something that many people are very uncomfortable about. And but

0:29:31 Thomas: I never suggested that. I suggested it as a factor.

0:29:33 James: I mean, how else how else do you factor it in? I mean besides having different Bars, essentially, I

0:29:39 Thomas: How you'd factor it in is there are a ton of qualified candidates for most positions. And if two candidates seem pretty close, use diversity as a tiebreaker, essentially. I mean, go ahead.

0:29:56 James: Think that that's what a lot of people often say. But I mean if you have a thousand slots say for the next year, you could choose to hire the thousand best, or if you want to hire more of different groups, then you have to lower the bar essentially. And that's unfortunate.

0:30:17 Thomas: But that is under the... First off, okay, so I actually took a look. I think, I think, Google's one of their trainings, I don't know if it's the one you would have been to, but one of their like diversity, unconscious bias trainings is online. And I took a look at it and they talked about all these factors. Here's what the biggest problem with, one of the biggest problems I think with your line of reasoning is you're viewing the status quo as already neutral. You're viewing the status quos like we're not factoring in race at all. You are saying the thousand best qualified, that'll be that. We'll maintain whatever level it is. But we have all of these measures where where we see that it's not neutral, that resumes are treated differently based on the name, like different candidates, recommendations are given out based on, you know, like 80% of them are of the same race or gender.

0:31:05 Thomas: Like there's all these facts and figures in this diversity training, which I can link, that shows there already are biases in favor of the status quo, in favor of white males. Well,

0:31:16 James: It's not clear that the status quo is in favor of white males, because when we look at doing gender blind interviews for CS, we see no bias in that. And when we Look at doing, like, there are multiple studies, too, that have shown the reverse gender bias. And for example, STEM professorship jobs. So you can always find studies that paint a certain narrative, but then there's often studies that say the exact opposite. So when you do meta-analyses, you often don't see much of an effect. So I mean, you can say, oh, because there are these disparities, we know that there must be some injustice happening. And that's the left's ideology, but it's not clear always that that's really what's happening.

0:32:05 Thomas: That's not the left's ideology. We look at studies that show when people review a resume with a black name, they treat it far worse than resumes with a white name. There's reasons. You might not want to grant them or something, or you're trying to say there's always studies that go the other way, but it's not as though you start with the assumption that that a disparity means racism, and also a lot of these measures you're talking about, first off, one thing to get right first and foremost is that your document doesn't cover race. You have done your best to try to explain a gender gap and say that science causes a difference in preference. We should talk about that separately. So many of these programs you're talking about involve race and not gender. They involve typically underrepresented races. So So wouldn't you need to write a whole new document to have the opinion you have, to have a justified opinion that they shouldn't be spending money trying to increase the representation of minorities in tech jobs?

0:32:41 James: Sure.

0:33:09 James: No, so all of these programs are both women and underrepresented minorities, as far as I know. And yeah, so yeah, that's one of the programs that Google has, yes. But the ones I cited, so

0:33:17 Thomas: There's a program to increase interest in programming among historically black colleges and universities, for example. There are plenty that are... So is that one good? Is that a good idea?

0:33:31 James: I mean, you really have to look at it from multiple perspectives. And I think that many people will see that as unfair, and it really depends on what your underlying morals are. And you know, I think we're being dominated by one side's morals. And I mean, would you agree then? You said that it's not the left's ideology to assume that disparities are due to injustices. Is that really something that you disagree with?

0:34:03 Thomas: I think that... No, no, I'm saying it's not ideology that that's the direction the logic goes. The logic that my logic that I utilize when I'm looking at this as someone on the left is historical context and the reality of the numbers we're seeing. And they support a lot of time that there is either conscious or mostly unconscious bias going into a lot of disparities in treatment of people. I mean, that's not

0:34:34 James: So, I mean, would you acknowledge that the social sciences being 95% left-leaning is a problem, and a problem with being able to find actual good science?

0:34:48 Thomas: A problem with being able to find actual good science. I would say that what,

0:34:53 James: When no one is looking for disconfirming evidence, then science doesn't work,

0:35:02 Thomas: But the fact that 95% of social scientists are left-leaning doesn't mean that that's causal in that way. So like the problem with this, and I read a lot about this because, you know, it seems like Jonathan Haidt, is it? Seems like he's a lot of your sources. And I would agree that there can be blind spots here and there that would occur with that. But so much of the, I mean, we're still talking about science. So many of these results are still going to be replicable and incontrovertible. Like, you would really have to dig down and pose a question and say, here's something that's not being researched because of this 95% number.

0:35:16 James: Right? Yeah, and that's exactly what's happening. And there is a huge replication crisis that's happening, basically.

0:35:43 Thomas: That what's not been, hold on, what question is not being research?

0:35:50 James: Basically just anything that would try to solve a social problem that somehow blames the victim. That's something that's not really being researched at all.

0:36:08 James: One, sexism against men is something that is not really studied, and just a lot of non-sexist reasons for the gender gap in tech is another reason, is another thing that's not being studied as much. And this also shows up, so,

0:36:25 Thomas: So then would you say the science you use to justify that is not complete then? And there's not enough to make that case if it's not getting studied? Studied.

0:36:38 James: I mean, yes, I agree that there's definitely not enough to make concrete conclusions. And the discussion or the, you know, this is really just an unsolved problem at this point, but that there is significant evidence to suggest that it's not all socially constructed differences between men and women that are causing the gender gap or that it's all sexism against women.

0:37:05 Thomas: Let's talk about this in broad strokes. Here's how I look at your document. I believe, and again, I'm as left as they come, I believe there are plenty of differences between men and women. It's obvious. There are plenty physical differences. There have plenty of, there are several trends in terms of attributes, like there are differences. But what I see is, is, let's look at this historically. If I were to summarize my case kind of against most of what you're saying, it would be, let'S look at THIS historically. We know that there's all kinds of sexism in tech. We know there are these examples, and you probably know them better than I do, but high-profile examples, not to mention examples you and I don't hear about every day, or maybe you did, but I don't. But these high- profile examples, examples, the Tit Stare app, you know, like all this bro culture that goes on in tech. We know that there is sexism in hiring. We know there is unconscious bias in resumes and references and all that. We also know there could be factors that are more toward your side.

0:37:27 James: Right.

0:38:21 Thomas: But in 1985, the computer science majors, percentage of computer science majors that were women, was 37%, and it was trending upward, along with medical school, law school, and the physical sciences. They were all trending upward because, you know, obviously if we go far back enough, women just weren't working as much, they were expected to stay home, that kind of thing. As these fields opened up, all of these, uh, fields are opening up to women, so they're trending upward. And in 1985, you see the computer science trends just start going downward, just, and and it's gone down to where now it's below 20. And what your document doesn't explain is why just that number has gone down when physical sciences, law school, medical school, things that are still systems, law, law school is systems for sure.

0:39:18 Thomas: Law school was very systematic. Physical science, very systematic. Those continued upward and got sort of, sort of near 50%. But computer science, right around 1985, which, you know, there's nothing significant about that other than, uh, according to this, this theory on this NPR article that, uh, I find pretty convincing, marketing. It started being marketing toward boys. More computers were marketed toward boys, um, um, that that sort of disproves the idea that the number we're at now is a good number. Sure.

0:39:52 James: So, OK, there's multiple things that I have to address. So you say that we know that there's a ton of sexism in tech and that it'S all against women, essentially. And I really have to counter your certainty with this, because when we look at the people that leave tech and we survey them on why they left, what their feelings were, 30% of women felt like there was unfair treatment and harassment, but 40% of men felt like there was unfair treatment or harassment, or 38%. And also, there wasn't much of a difference between men and women in how much unwanted sexual attention they had. So there is a certain narrative being told, but it's definitely not that we know that this is happening and that this is all that's happening. A lot of the other side is just being silenced.

0:39:56 Thomas: Yeah.

0:40:43 James: And that's part of what I was trying to point out. And so addressing the 1985 drop, I mean, it's not that fewer women started doing it. It was actually just that more men started doing. And there could be multiple multiple reasons for this. So, you know, tech became a high paying job, and men are more attracted to high paying jobs.

0:41:10 James: It's also, you know, computer science has changed throughout the years. It was at some point, you know, when it was actually called, you know, When someone's job was called a computer, that was basically just, you being a part of a calculator, which is actually something that women are good at. They are better than men at mental calculation. And so, computer science has changed a lot throughout the years. And when you compare it to law, law is much more verbal and women are better at verbal than men. And that is what's causing some of that, why women are so good at it legal. And physical sciences, I mean, physics is about 20% also, right? I mean physics and engineering are also about the same level as computer science.

0:42:02 Thomas: But we're looking at, um, so first I'll try to deal with those in order, I suppose. The high paid thing, that, first off, where are your numbers that are saying it wasn't fewer women, it was just more men? Because I don't have a source for that, more

0:42:15 James: Yeah, if you look at the actual numbers and not the relative fraction, it's just that men increased. There was a boom in 1985 and in 2001 and both of those caused more men to go into tech than women. Right, yeah, But It wasn't That women left, it was just that there were more men that joined, and Also

0:42:33 Thomas: Men, yeah, but the, so the ratio still decreased though, like there was a ratio That Was, well But But What that means is, for every, it doesn't mean that women left the field necessarily. It's the graduates who have this degree. So that means for every graduating class, fewer women as a percentage decided to go into it. It's still a percentage, though. If this was a boom, you would think there would be a boom relative to the percentages you already had. Why would it go down?

0:42:43 James: Right So No Because in these economic booms, where, you know, they're very high paid, men are more attracted to those types of jobs, and

0:43:18 Thomas: Why not law school then? Law and medical school. Medical school. Cool. Incredibly well-paid. Why would those continue to trend up?

0:43:19 James: Yeah Yeah So Uh Because There's a large people component to medical school. And And there's a lot of verbal skills that you need for law. And when you look at the different specialties within the medical profession, the highest paying ones are the ones with the most men, and the lower paying ones are the most women. So you see this gender gap in every profession, generally.

0:43:53 James: Also, I do think that the toys may have contributed to this, but when you look at how men and women approach technology and computers in general, they do approach them differently on average. So men approach them, or boys approach them, more like toys and a system in itself to be understood and tinker with, while women see them more as tools to improve the world. And so, you know, yes, these toys that made tinkering with the computer itself accessible to young people, that naturally led more boys to be attracted to it. But I don't think it was necessarily because they were only being advertised to boys.

0:44:39 James: It's just that boys are more attracted to computers as toys because

0:44:45 Thomas: Why would that have changed? Why would it trend? I just don't think this is consistent with the data. It's trending up along with everything else. And then all of a sudden it starts trending down. Why not before that?

0:44:56 James: There's more men that are interested in it. It's not that women are leaving, which is the sexism argument. Women aren't leaving. It's that there are a ton of men that are joining.

0:45:04 Thomas: Well, let's, We're talking about two different things. So this is, this is a computer science is a field. So no one, no individual woman is necessarily leaving. It is just people, people are deciding not to major in it, versus when you talk about tech. One of the biggest things that I'm not seeing people talk about that I think is very interesting and I think highly damaging to what you're saying is the attrition rates. Attrition rates are so much higher for women in tech than in other jobs. It's something like 50% attrition rate in STEM, 20% for all other fields. And so you can't... That's

0:45:44 James: Yeah, so there's multiple things going into that. So one is that, again, when forming sexual relationships, women are attracted to men that get paid more. And if you have a spouse that gets paid more than a tech job, or just as much, then you really don't need two people's salary. And so at some point when they get married and have children, they don't they find it more fulfilling potentially to just stay home with the kids. That's one factor at play. And another is just when you actually survey those that left.

0:46:20 Thomas: Right. Hold on. Let me hold on. Hold on. That's actually that fact. Let's isolate that factor because that's the opposite of what should be happening. So tech is a high paying field. You're saying if someone else is making more than women stay home. So then you would expect that in lower paying fields, more women would stay home because they would be married to more men that have higher paying jobs. In the highest paying field, i.e. tech, you would expect more men to, sorry, you'd expect more women to be keeping their their jobs. So when you compare STEM fields to other fields and you see a 50% attrition in STEM and a 20% in other fields, that doesn't explain it. It actually is the opposite of what you're saying.

0:46:24 James: Sure. Why?

0:46:48 James: No, no, No. So I'm saying women will marry people that have a higher salary than them. So if you have a low salary, they'll just hire, they may marry someone that just has a slightly higher salary. But once you're both making 200k per year, you don't need to make 400k as a family. So but if you're just making 400k or like 40k, and your spouse is making 50k, you may need both to raise a family line. And also, when you look at the people that leave and you survey them based on their career interests, you see that one of the best predictive factors is their differing interest in people versus things or their interest in realistic careers versus some of the social ones.

0:47:47 James: And that's one of the factors that I point that's causing the gender gap out

0:47:52 Thomas: Well, I'm looking at the numbers right now and only of this survey here, which I can, I'll cite my source here. It's showing that only 20% left to take time out of the workforce. Force. So that would be what you were, you were saying 20%. Um, 20% of the, of the women in, let's see, nearly half. Okay. So half the women who are leaving went to a different sector to use the same skills. 31 took non, uh, STEM jobs and only 20% left to take time out of the workplace. And the high, the reasons for leaving, uh. Workplace experiences, less opportunity for for training, development, support for manager, support for balancing work and competing responsibilities. There's all these factors that make it the case for women. More women are leaving these jobs than men. And that makes a strong case for the bro culture over and above. Because what you're talking about

0:48:08 James: Of 20% of of the 50 or but None

0:48:53 Thomas: Involves interest.

0:48:54 James: Of those reasons were bro culture, they were all the aspect of the work environment and yeah So this is exactly what I'm trying to push for though, is you know, maybe men and women on average need different things in the workplace, and we can change the culture to support that, but it's not this sexist bro culture that you're suggesting, necessarily, necessarily, yeah.

0:48:59 Thomas: You're not being supported in their work environment.

0:49:19 Thomas: But we have so many accounts from women who do say it is a sexist bro culture.

0:49:25 James: Yeah, there's a very vocal, uh, minority of people that are saying that, yes, it was this toxic bro culture, but then when you also, I mean, there's a silent majority that aren't saying that, I

0:49:39 Thomas: What? So what's your support for that? By definition, I guess you can't support that, huh?

0:49:45 James: I mean, you're saying, oh, yes, there are some anecdotal evidence that there is bro culture, pero then, you know, I get hundreds of messages a day of people saying, yes, thank you for telling me, or thank you, you for saying what I've been wanting to say all this time, that this isn't a toxic environment, that I don't like being treated as if I'm just a token female in the workplace, which is what taking my gender into account during hiring would do. And they don't have any problem with the culture. They like the culture. I mean, it's just a nerd culture. It's not necessarily a a bro culture. The portrayal on Silicon Valley of Hooli is not what Google is like at all, as far as I can tell.

0:50:33 Thomas: So what I'm trying to do here, and what we're both trying to doing, is see which hypothesis is more compatible with all the data. And when we look at historically women being more a part of tech than now, so it's going down, and biology isn't changing. And we look at the fact that in Google's training stuff that I referenced earlier, where a presentation was made available, they talked about a computer simulation where, and maybe this will be, we can tell if this is the one you ended up seeing or if it's a different one, where if you rate, they modeled the hiring, comparing and how the demographics would change with merely a 1% bias for men over women.

0:51:19 Thomas: So they rated men on random scale from 0 to 101 and women, this is just a computer simulation, randomly from 0-100 and over 20 simulations there already was a 65-35 disparity in the highest levels and the lowest levels, it's a little less because the more you get promoted the more the selection happens. When we see that this is changing, it's trending down, and we hear these stories, these high-profile stories of awful sexist behavior, it seems to me that the model that explains that better and that explains the downtrend better isn't biology, which isn't changing, but is rather the culture and the women being pushed out. Out. The quit rate is twice as high. Quit rate is 41% in STEM careers for women and 17%. So over twice as hard for men. So they are feeling pushed out.

0:52:17 James: Yeah, but I mean, you're the one saying pushed out. And I think that that's that's a little pushing it. But so, again, it's not that women started leaving. It's just that more men joined it. And so it's Not as if fewer women in The population joined tech. It's that more men joined tech, and also, you know, you have to acknowledge that the job itself changed. So you, you can't say that, oh yes, computer science in the 1950s and computer science in the, you know, 2000s, that that was the same, but the percent changed, therefore biology can't explain anything, you know. Oh, which

0:52:39 Thomas: No, no. I literally told you the quit rate.

0:53:05 Thomas: No, I don't. And you're setting up a straw man. I'm not saying biology doesn't explain anything. I think biology would explain a small split. I think biology would explain like a 45-55 split. It. And did you see this? One of the psychologists that you yourself referenced in your own document disagrees with you. Did you see that? Let me pull it up.

0:53:23 James: One what, which, I mean, you'd have to be more specific.

0:53:27 Thomas: Sure. David, let's see, David P. Schmidt. And I'll give him credit, and you credit, because you referenced him in your document, and he has the link here where he wrote about it. He actually agrees that you shouldn't have been fired. So he has your back on that. And I think that's important to point out. He says he shouldn't have been fired, uh, this for merely discussing these ideas, but his explanation, again, someone you cited, his article on your memo was, "Biology probably explains a small difference," it doesn't explain the whole difference, uh,

0:54:01 James: Yeah. No, no. So what he says is, and you'd have to quote it exactly, but I think what he's saying is, yes, there's a small difference in the average level of neuroticism between men and women. And biology explains some of that. I mean, that's what he said, right? And then he goes on to say that you shouldn't apply this to individuals, which is exactly what I say. So he's not really disagreeing as much as the article makes it out to be.

0:54:31 Thomas: I'm not, you might, we might be talking about a different thing here, because I don't know that he's taught, he didn't talk about the neuroticism, um, he talked about, about negative emotionality.

0:54:42 James: Yeah, that's what neuroticism is. That's another word for it. Negative emotion. So

0:54:42 Thomas: Okay. Um, but the problem with the, the, that is, what does that have to do with interest in programming? Yeah.

0:54:54 James: Yeah, I never use it to talk about interest in programming. So I use it in two places. One, to counter the idea. So at Google, we have this Google guy survey, which is a once a year company-wide survey. And one of them was, and we break it down by ethnicity and gender, and we saw that women are reporting more anxiety at Google, and Google was using this as evidence that we're being sexist against women somehow.

And I, was I pointed this out, because neuroticism is how much you report anxiety, and so if women on average have more neuroticist, then they're going to report more anxiety on these tests, you know, independent of how they're treated, and so it's something that we would have to control for already to, you know, really say something conclusive about whether or not they're actually being treated and differently, and that's sort of why I pointed out, also, uh, stress tolerance, I believe, is important in all leadership positions, and so men are overrepresented in people that are extremely stress tolerant. And women are overrepresented in extreme anxiety disorders. And so that was part of the possible explanation for why we see fewer women at Google in tech. And one way that we could fix that is to make leadership less stressful and have more stress reduction classes, for example.

0:56:32 Thomas: But then that would, wouldn't that fall into the exact same categories you're talking about, which would be dollars spent to try to increase women representation so

0:56:41 James: No, but So many of our programs are only for women, and they stereotype women as a certain type. So, for example, we have these programs that only women can attend, and they address the fact that women are on average more agreeable and they cooperate more and are less assertive. But that's just the stereotype, or that's the average woman. There are many men that have those characteristics that would really want those programs. And so having these stress reduction programs would be helpful for a lot of men too. Too. The difference in neuroticism isn't necessarily so large that this would only be benefiting women, for example.

0:57:23 Thomas: What, what do you, what, what are your problems so much, because you, you've talked, talked about spending so much money on these programs. Did you answer, like, do you think trying to, I think what's so great about these programs, and where a lot of the money is going, is they're trying to get at people earlier on. So they're not trying to like have programs just for Google employees. Like they're tying to encourage the historically underrepresented minorities at the school, like high school level or earlier, you know, like to try to get them more involved in this field? Because in my opinion, and what a lot of the science shows, is that the marketing and the social values and ideas and stereotypes push men and women into stereotypical careers oftentimes.

0:58:12 Thomas: Do you have a big problem with that? Because that's a lot of the money you're talking about with trying to reach people before their college.

0:58:18 James: I would also counter this idea that stereotypes are playing such a large role, because when you look at children at different ages, and you ask them, what are your stereotypes about women and their computer skills? There is really no difference between the skills or stereotype of men and women's ability at computers, so I'm not sure that there is much of a stereotype holding women back on that. And so one of the problems that I have is, one, they're exclusionary. So, you know, if you don't have a certain race or gender, then you can't go to these, and that really segregates people and increases tension, often. And a lot of people see that is unfair.

0:58:56 Thomas: Well, that's not true for some of the ones you're talking about. You even cited them. You cited the BOLD program and the CSSI program. The BOLD program is trying to reach historically underrepresented minorities. You've got 2% black employees at Google, and you're that worried that one program is try to increase that a little bit? Why is that such a big deal to you?

0:59:13 James: A lot of people feel like affirmative action is unfair on many levels.

0:59:29 James: I think that it's an acceptable position to hold. It depends on what your internal morals are.

0:59:37 James: Of course, the left's position is that it is helping a victim group and therefore it's good, but that's not what the center and right think. I think there just needs to be a bigger balance What?

0:59:47 Thomas: How do you decide what the center Thinks on this. I Don't get how you get to speak for the center and the right on this, how do you, like, you're paying this out as though any attempt, like this, by the way, this BOLD program trying to reach historically underrepresented minorities in, I believe, high school or college, you really mean to tell me if we polled everybody only lefties would be in favor of that and the center and right would be against it?

1:00:12 James: I'm not saying that only everyone on the left and no one outside that. But yes, there is a general trend that the left favors these programs and the libertarians or centrists and the right don't. And I mean, we are seeing this right now where there's currently a lot of legislators trying to repeal affirmative action from colleges, and it's coming from the right, right.

1:00:37 Thomas: Yeah but they're wrong about it so it's an overreaction because the

1:00:41 James: Why are you saying that they're wrong about it?

1:00:44 Thomas: Affirmative action that happens in colleges, the conservative storyline on it is absurd. It's one factor out of a bajillion. If you look at the criteria in the, I think it was the Texas case, it's one-factor out of one- factor out-of-one-faktor out- of-one factor. It's a sub-factor, four factors in.

1:01:01 James: Well, how does it cause such huge gaps in the SAT scores of those admitted then?

1:01:07 Thomas: Where are you seeing that it causes huge gaps in the SAT scores, scores of those admitted? Large

1:01:10 James: At least of the studies that I've seen, there are large gaps between the average SAT score of, for example, an Asian and an African American that are admitted at Harvard or MIT.

1:01:27 Thomas: Gaps between third minute, so I, the, the problem is, so here's the issue, though, the reason why this is the wrong way to look at it is because minority groups in this country are already getting screwed before this point, like, there are, it's already happening before the SAT test. Like Their, their schools they're attending don't have as many programs to help with SATs. The only way to do it, like the small efforts people are making to try to make a difference, keep getting fought back by this status quo warrior stuff, that I think is a good label for it, which is fighting against any effort to try and increase representation in colleges.

And in the facts for that Texas case, it talked about the fact that, like, I did it on an episode of Opening Arguments, I'm not going to get the number exactly right, but it was something like, like, 50 percent of these classes had one black student in them.

And like the idea that that's an OK learning environment, and that that's a fair thing to have happen, like, the, there's no, if there were a magic wand to fix this instantly, I think we would all be in favor of it.

1:01:48 James: So I

1:02:39 Thomas: But there's only there's only the solutions we can try to have, which is to encourage college attendance, encourage programming, encourage all these different maneuver, you you know, like all these different areas of interest, there's only the tools we have. We're not able to instantly reconfigure the school zones and make it so that the schools are better in minority neighborhoods. And so these are the tools that we have, we're

1:03:04 James: Think, again, I would counter the idea that this is a wrong perspective when really it's just a different perspective. And, you know, when you say left and right or progressive and conservative, there's not necessarily right or wrong. And I think one of the larger issues, and you brought this up, is that, you know, they end up having often on average worse schooling growing up. And I think the largest factor is socioeconomic status. And that's something that really isn't being taken into account when we're going to college admissions. And I think that's a much larger factor than someone's race. And I think when we take a more holistic view of it, rather than just reducing someone to their race or gender, then we can have fairer programs that everyone can be satisfied with.

1:03:58 Thomas: Not reducing people to the race and gender. It's just a factor of a factor, of a fact. And go ahead.

1:04:06 James: That's what some people feel, like they're being reduced to their group identity.

1:04:10 Thomas: The problem is the status quo reduces people to group identity. The status quo makes it so there's only 17, 19 percent women in these STEM fields. And, you know, like the status quo is already doing that. So any measure you try to do to reduce that is going to have to target groups differently.

1:04:30 James: So I mean, you seem to be very concerned about these gender gaps, but how concerned are you about other gender gaps, like the homeless, the prison population. A lot of these gender gaps that are much larger and where men are falling behind. What sort of measures would you do to address those gender gaps?

1:04:41 Thomas: I'm very concerned about the prison population.

1:04:54 Thomas: If we want to do if you write a memo about that, we can have a different conversation on an individual gap. Like give me one, for example. I mean, what

1:05:02 James: The prison populations are largely male and so are the homeless. Obviously, there are some biological differences between men and women that are causing more men to commit violent crimes. But there's also sexism within the justice system, which is also doing that. But it's still not clear to me that we should be having programs just to address the gender gap in prisons, for example.

1:05:26 Thomas: About the race gap? Because the racial disparities in sentencing are awful. If there were some program to try to reduce that, would you come and tell me, hey, you can't, sorry, you're grouping people together. You got to look at people individually. What?

1:05:39 James: If we see that there's racial bias in the justice system, we should address that. When you talk about racial bias, it's about 10%, maybe. And when you have the same evidence and they have different races, which one are more likely to be sentenced? It's about 10% for white versus black. But then when you look at male versus female, the man is 60% more likely to be committed and they'll serve longer sentences. So there's a huge gap there that's not being addressed at all.

1:05:50 Thomas: What is 10%?

1:06:13 Thomas: Yeah, I think one of the benefits of feminism is it is a lens through which we identify these gender roles, and feminism can do a lot for the male gender role as well as the female gender role. So my answer to that would be, we can have a separate conversation on our prison population and our policies on policing, which, by the way, sentencing isn't where it all happens. Sentencing is where a portion of it happens. Where it really happens racially is in how we police these neighborhoods, how police officers, their biases when they stop people, their biases when they decide, like prosecutorial biases. There's all these different levels that add up to an incredible disparity.

1:07:00 Thomas: But when you talk about gender, I, yeah, I think that that would be something I would support. Like if, if we were able to take a look at, if there's some policy idea, which, because we're talking about policy, we're trying to talk about things we can actually change, change, if there's some policy that would enable us to reduce, because I think what we really need to do is just reduce how many people we're putting in prison, that would reduce that yeah, like that would reduce the sentencing and disparity for men and women by reducing it for men and getting it closer to a lower number, I would totally support that. Well, you were talking about, um, the, didn't you didn't talk about length of sentence, or what were you saying, there was a gap, happen, right?

1:07:24 James: Yeah, that'd be good.

1:07:36 James: That wouldn't necessarily reduce the gap in percentages, though, right?

1:07:46 James: Yeah, both length in sentence and in when they have the same evidence, the man is more likely to be committed. And also, I think, you know, when they're looking for criminals, they're much more likely for a man than a woman, although I'm not, I don't have any studies on that. Just heuristically, I would believe that to be

1:08:03 Thomas: Yeah, but but there's all, but just like, I mean, now it's, you're trying to switch the roles here, um, men commit more crime than women, like full stop, and I would be, if there's an over, if there is a statistical anomaly in how we're sentencing and how we are convicting, like, yeah, I'm all in favor of trying to reduce that

1:08:05 James: True. Yeah.

1:08:24 James: Yeah, there is a huge disparity. And it's something that the feminist community isn't being addressed, that isn't addressing. And it's actually actively shutting it down, actually.

1:08:25 Thomas: Okay so we're agreed that when there's a big, but feminism is the way you address this. No, they're not active. That's bullshit.

1:08:35 James: I mean, if you look at the red pill documentary, they addressed many of these things, and then there were extremist feminists that tried to shut it down.

1:08:44 Thomas: Okay. Well, there's extremist misogynists that do shit too. Are we, I mean, that cancels itself out. Like we can, we can really,

1:08:50 James: No, but it's one side has much more power than the other.

1:08:56 James: Yes, and in social value, I mean women are seen as perpetual perpetual victims, and their issues are seen as more important than men's issues in many ways in our society.

1:09:06 Thomas: Where are you? What is, what do you have a source for that? Why are you saying that

1:09:12 James: Just the fact that feminism generally just approaches female issues and there are a lot of disparities that aren't being addressed by feminism. They've taken away all the sexist laws that were sexist against women, but there's still many sexist laws against men on the books.

1:09:31 Thomas: Taken away all the sexist laws that were sex? So this is a quote I was actually going to ask you about. I might as well tie it in now. Cause it's in your document where you said the male gender role is currently inflexible. Feminism has made great progress in freeing women from the female gender role, but men are still very much tied to the male gender role. If we as a society allow men to be more feminine, then the gender gap will shrink. Although probably because men will leave tech and leadership for traditionally feminine roles. So I don't know how that, That seems to contradict the rest of your document, because I thought this stuff was biological. So how would we change our gender roles?

1:10:14 James: Again, I'm never saying that this is 100% biological.

1:10:21 James: I'm just saying that there are these forces in society too that are causing some of this gap. Pushing men to be very masculine and pushing them away from feminine roles like like nursing, for example, that would, and not putting so much pressure on men to make a ton of money, that could help address some of these issues.

1:10:45 James: But I mean, there's also biological roots to something.

1:10:45 Thomas: But what's your evidence for the idea that the male gender role is inflexible and the female gender role isn't? Because that is not my experience of the world at all. And what is your source for that?

1:10:54 James: Look at what clothing you can wear. I mean women can wear jeans and dresses. Men can just wear jeans. They can't wear dresses. They cant act feminine. A tomboy is sort of acceptable for a female, but being a sissy or something is a death sentence for a man. And of course, you can be homosexual, but that's a completely different issue.

1:11:19 Thomas: Why is that? Well, there are plenty of men who dress to varying degrees of masculinity. I mean, I don't...

1:11:28 James: It's not really socially acceptable to wear a dress as a man, is it?

1:11:35 Thomas: But that, that's one element of a thing, like, it the

1:11:39 James: Yeah, there are many elements of the gender role, and many of them are inflexible. The gender role of being the protector and provider is also also pretty inflexible. I mean, if you don't provide for your family, then you're seen as a loser and you are just ostracized. And that's partly why there are so few men that end up reproducing.

1:12:02 Thomas: Care for for elderly and children is so unbelievably tilted toward women, and the burden they bear in this society for having to do that emotional work, there is far bias toward women. Are you, do you mean to tell me that it's a bigger problem right now that too many men are pressured to like take care of the family than women? No,

1:12:25 James: No, so I mean, I think gender roles and restricting people to gender roles in general is likely not good. So yes, there are cases where women are being pressured into this, but, you know, there's also, uh, there are links to prenatal testosterone and how interested you are to infants, so, you know, the nurturer role has biological roots. Like, both of these have biological roots, so it's not totally socially arbitrary. It's

1:12:54 Thomas: Yeah, I don't think it's arbitrary. But feminism is the lens through which people have looked at these gender roles. So if you want to say that we need to be identifying ways that male gender stereotypes are harmful, feminists will be right there with you. They'll say yes. Yes.

1:13:04 James: A lens, yes, not Not in my experience, no. I mean, there, there are some feminists, of course, that are. And, you know, I've talked to Liana Kurtzer, and she was very supportive of what I'm saying, and she agreed with me that, yes, the male gender role is much less flexible. I mean, this is a an accepted theory, as far as I know, that the male general is less flexible than the female one in society currently

1:13:41 Thomas: Yeah. But there's but it's Also, so what needs to happen is, the, OK, the reason that you're seeing this gender role, like, like men, more women aspiring to more masculine gender roles than the opposite, is because more masculine gender roles are more profitable and free. You get to have a job, you get to not be saddled with kids. Like, that's why you see that direction one way and not the other. It's not because people are making men do something. You know, like, it's Well,

1:13:43 James: Uh No. I mean, I think part of it is that the male gender role is seen as what's normal, and then, uh, anything else is, is different. And so that's part of it. And I mean, I would argue that a job is something that saddles you down too. And, you know, many men are essentially slaves to their job, because if they quit, then they're totally useless to their family.

1:14:42 Thomas: Yeah, but women can't just quit being moms either. Like, anyone in a role in their family is pretty stuck in that role. But we got into this because when confronted, confronted with differences in tech and what I view as discriminatory, you're trying to say, well, what about other gaps? You're red pilling me with, what about prison? And my answer would just be, yeah, like, okay, if there's gaps, then I will support policies that would try to reduce the sentences for men. And I would support social policies, which I think you're seeing, by the way. Like, have you seen the shit men wear these days? Like, it's going nuts. I think this masculine role is declining. Like, this idea that you have to be wearing, like, a suit or something, like, that went away, you know, like, that also changed. I think that's a big part of it. This is happening, and I don't think that is just a distraction. You're just trying to point to other stuff, but why don't we talk about your actual memo? Because

1:14:49 James: Yeah.

1:15:42 James: Well, no. So I was pointing out, because I think that there is an asymmetry in how much we're willing to commit to some of these affirmative action programs when they help women, which we see historically as victims. But we wouldn't do any of these affirmative action programs, for example, for nursing or for school teachers or social workers, which are historically, I

1:16:04 Thomas: Largely there's a huge gap in men and women in working, and men have the higher-powered, higher-paying jobs, and so STEM is seen as a way of trying to reduce that gap. That's why there's a focus in it.

1:16:19 James: Mean, nursing is a high paid job. Why isn't there affirmative action for that?

1:16:23 Thomas: Well, and you'll notice the highest-paying nursing jobs actually are more balanced because, you know, there's more men in them.

1:16:29 James: Right. I would expect that because men are attracted to these high paying jobs. It's not that these high-paying jobs are just chosen because they're masculine. It's men are attracted to the high- paying jobs. So there will always be gender gaps in the high paying jobs, as long as that's the case.

1:16:50 Thomas: So, there is a difference, though, between between something being biological and, by the way, that that goes back to that guy you cited who who disagrees with like half of what you're saying, not all of it, to be fair, but he disagrees with like halfway, where he's saying that we we can expect like a small measure, but there's too much, like, there's two much disparity in this. And furthermore, I think the most, the the biggest part of it that I don't think anyone is talking about is this attrition rate. If the attrition rates are higher for women, and they're over two times higher than men, you're going to have to hire way more women just to balance it, just to keep it at a 20, a pathetic 20%. Like, so how,

1:17:32 James: There's multiple explanations for why more women are leaving, though. One is that we're pushing a lot of women into this. You know, there's so many programs in early education to push women into coding and to treat coding as a very people-oriented job when it really isn't. And people go into coding, then they start to realize that, no, it's not like that. And so when you look at the surveys of the people that leave, the best predictor is whether or not they're interested in people versus things. I mean, I can show it.

1:18:04 Thomas: Where's the data on that? I did. Cause I, that's not a source. I saw you site anywhere. Um, I, if you have an exit interview that they're more interested in people versus things, I'd be very interested in that because I'm seeing different data. I'm saying that they're not leaving for the They're not measuring it.

1:18:11 James: Yeah.

1:18:20 James: They're not measuring that, right? I mean, the study that you have, they're not measuring that certain metric. They're not looking for potential non-sexist reasons why there is a gender gap. And that's part of the reason why I'm saying that this social science has distortions.

1:18:36 Thomas: Well, no, they're there they are they're looking at there's there's plenty of non-sexist reasons

1:18:41 James: What?

1:18:41 Thomas: No, There's funny and non-sexy possibilities in that, in that study. There's plenty, there is family, there was wanting to move to different feet, like there was plenty of options that were not sexist. So it's unfair to say they aren't looking for Let me check my document here. I know there's something I wanted to get to I didn't So, I would say, I do want to get your answer on that. I feel like I still haven't pinned you down on this. Are you really saying that it's bad for Google to be spending some money on trying to increase racial representation? Because we could even ignore, like I could even grant you everything on your gender gap stuff. Stuff. Like we could even just pretend we both agree on that.

2% black people at Google, like, do you not see a value in trying to change that number? Even the, even the, you have a sort, one of your sources is Wall Street Journal article, which in itself, if you read all of it, it's like eight pages. In the bottom, it says like, it's undisputed and it admits that diversity is a benefit. Like to have 2% black people at Google has to be bad, right?

1:18:41 James: Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah.

1:19:53 James: There's definitely disadvantages to having, or being, for example, a minority in a majority company, uh, no.

1:20:04 Thomas: Whoa, hold on. Advantages to being a minority in a majority.

1:20:07 James: No, I'm saying there's disadvantages to being a minority. Yeah.

1:20:09 Thomas: Disadvantages. Okay, sure, sure.

1:20:11 James: Uh, so you know, making sure that people feel included is very important, and I don't, I don't think that just having these programs is going to make people feel more included. It actually, actually can really backfire by making people feel less included, by making them feel like they're just a token minority candidate. And this is a common sentiment that I keep hearing.

1:20:34 Thomas: Well, but these are programs in schools. These are trying to get to the root of the problem, like trying to get in schools to try to encourage programming and STEM.

1:20:41 James: Then why don't they go to poor schools? Why do they only focus on the race of the people? Because that's the actual problem that we're seeing in society, that the poor are not really getting the opportunities that the middle class and upper class are having. And when you control for socioeconomic status, there isn't really this racial problem that you see as much, right?

1:20:59 Thomas: That's by definition though. Hold on. So we're talking about Google programs, and there are programs to try to reach people in lower socioeconomic statuses. They happen to mostly coincide with the historically black colleges and universities. They're kind of serving the same purpose because the black unemployment rate is double the white unemployment rate. Like, these things aren't race neutral. Like, poverty isn't race mutual. It affects people of color more than white people. So, like, when you're always trying to bring stuff back to some race neutral solution to a problem that isn't race neutral to begin with. So that just perpetuates a status quo. And that's the biggest problem I see with with your ideology.

1:21:16 James: Not as far as I know.

1:21:51 James: So yes, I definitely agree that people create stereotypes. And so having disparities between groups is a negative in the society. And that's something that we should to address. It's not clear exactly for me how best to address that. But I think a lot of people do feel like these programs that are only for particular races or genders is unfair. And it's something that people need to at least discuss.

1:22:22 Thomas: Why do you keep phrasing it that way? You keep saying a lot of people think, you know, I've noticed that when you're talking about some of these issues, you're like, well, the conservatives or some people think that this is unfair. Fair.

1:22:32 James: And because My Personal opinion doesn't matter, it's, and we decide policies based on what the society thinks in general, and, you know, to totally shut down one side of the perspective, which what Google is doing, it's, you know, it's very much a progressive echo chamber and it doesn't allow any other perspective to be heard. And I mean, I'm trying to address that fact. So, you know, I, I'm, I don't really think that my My individual perspective matters as much as this whole other perspective that represents half of the population, say, is not being heard, and that's a problem.

1:23:14 Thomas: But that perspective, well, why doesn't that logic apply to when there's only 2% of black people? It's weird that you're so concerned about when a possible perspective on a diversity training is not representative. But when we're talking about people, which in my opinion, it's more important when you're affecting people versus ideology, like immutable characteristics to me are more important because you can't choose them. You can choose an ideology. You You can't choose an immutable characteristic. So it's weird to me that your priority is more toward this idea of some conservative view about diversity than it is for diversity itself. Like, you can't, you won't even acknowledge that we should have these programs that try to target black people to get them more involved in coding.

1:24:01 James: One I'd like to address is that political orientation has genetic roots. It's not that you just get to choose whether or not you're left or right or libertarian. That has biological roots. It's actually highly heritable, and it's tied to your personality in many ways.

1:24:13 Thomas: Genetic roots? Wow.

1:24:24 James: So yes, I agree that there can be programs that help address the gap that we see in different ethnicities and genders. I'm just saying that we need to have more nuance in them, and I'm pointing out that many people find them unfair. And that needs to somehow be addressed. Maybe we can have some sort of compromise.

1:24:48 Thomas: Well, but then I could, if your

1:24:50 James: I'm not sure.

1:24:50 Thomas: Answer is many people find them unfair, I can say many people find it unfair that there's only 2% black people. Like it, that's doesn't solve anything. If we both just say many people find it unfair. So what they need, so what I would argue, no,

1:25:02 James: No, no, it does. Because we can find some solution that the majority of people are satisfied with. Right now, it's one side of the political spectrum that finds it satisfactory, and the other side is just being silenced. And also, I think just looking at at Google, which is, you know, Silicon Valley and a particular company is not as fair as looking at the entire computer science graduates. And I think that is more representative of the population. So there, there's much more than 2% of graduating college students that are in computer science that are African American.

1:25:11 Thomas: I don't think we can, but that would make it even more necessary to try to make sure you're hiring more black people. Wouldn't it? Because that, that, do

1:25:46 James: There's multiple reasons why that those two numbers don't match up. But when you're saying, because

1:25:53 Thomas: You not think a possible reason could be, it's like, it's like we're at an impasse because you're saying liberals only think a gap means bias, and I'm saying well we know there's some, like, we have evidence of bias in many situations and we have a gap, so why not try to fix that, and you're resistant to it, but they're wrong they can be wrong like I don't, you, that's not a defense, to say like some people see it as morally repugnant, I think they're right, they're not, they're, they're the wrong people they're wrong. Well, how

1:26:15 James: The solution is seen as morally repugnant by some people, and there may be other solutions, I think it should be addressed, though. I mean, I agree that I'm pro-choice, and some people find abortion morally repugnant. And I don't know, there needs to be some sort of compromise, though, and, you know, if I

1:26:43 Thomas: Could you get a compromise, I mean the compromise has to be that it's legal, like there's no compromise between those two, like it's one, it's either legal or illegal, legal to get an abortion.

1:26:53 James: Mean if 80% of people felt like it was killing the baby, then it would be illegal though, right? So, you know, it does matter what people believe in, but I mean that, that's a very side issue, um, I because

1:27:06 Thomas: All I'm saying is it's not a defense to say people find programs where you're trying to increase the number of black people you're hiring, for example, it's not a defense that some people find that repugnant. Give me an argument why it is.

1:27:25 James: You're treating people differently based on their race or gender, and you're making race a real thing, which may increase actual tensions between groups, I mean, this is what we see in academia. But

1:27:35 Thomas: But society divides us by race and gender. Society already does that. You're never going to solve a a discrepancy like this without addressing the discrepency. Like you're trying to find a race neutral way to fix a racial divide in something. It's not going to work because the divide was put there by racial problems to begin with. But

1:28:00 James: Separating people and saying, okay, only people of this race can go into this program, that is increasing the segregation. And so there are definitely negatives to these approaches. I'm not saying that there aren't positives. There are positives. And we should be cognizant of it. I was just trying to point out that there are negatives. I'm not saying that we should definitely not do these programs, just that we should maybe reconsider them because there's a voice that's being silenced that is against them.

1:28:38 Thomas: Isn't what matters for Google the bottom line? Because they've already seen in the higher ups at Google long before you did this and all that before 2014, when they started doing these initiatives, they've already seen that they have a PR problem. And so they started putting money to try to solve this diversity problem. So it might be that some people don't like it, but apparently based on their best analysis, it's more profitable to them to try and fix this problem.

1:29:11 Thomas: And furthermore, something I looked up, you're worried about through two years, you're worrying about $250 million. Google spends a billion dollars a year just on advertising. So even if all this was was like a hundred million dollar a year virtue signaling that fixed their, you know, like even if we said it did nothing that tried to fix their appearance, that would still be dwarfed by their other advertisements. It still seems to me a reasonable thing to try to do to improve your image as not a sexist, racist organization.

1:29:42 James: So, I mean, I think that there's multiple things to address here. It's not just the external programs that I'm worried about. It's a lot of the internal programs that are actually increasing tensions between groups at Google. And that doesn't really have to do with PR necessarily. And those can definitely be addressed without any mention of, oh, is this program what's making Google look good?

1:30:10 Thomas: Let me stop you there. What are these consequences? And what are these tensions? What's your evidence for them? And what is the product, like the end product of it?

1:30:19 James: So I mean, there are secretive practices where, you know, only people of a certain race or gender can go to these programs and many people feel silence and also to justify them, you have to use a lot of social science that's been debunked and not address any of the other viewpoints, so you know, they have to make a psychologically unsafe environment to even push these through

1:30:40 Thomas: There's so much generality there. I don't know what to... James, what do I do with that claim? There are so... There's like 10 general things there. You're saying people feel this. You're saying they're based on sociology that's been debunked. I don't have any evidence of that. Like, there's too much unevidence claims for me to even judge what you're talking about there.

1:30:44 James: True.

1:30:56 James: No, I mean, a lot of the microaggression, the unconscious bias stuff, a lot of stereotype accuracy, they're basing it based on these things. But the social science based on it is very shoddy. And so then they're just cherry picking single single studies that support their view without ever addressing the fact that when you do meta-analyses, no effect happens.

1:31:31 Thomas: Effect of what? What are you talking about that specifically. Can you give me a study or something? Like I can't evaluate this because it's just generalities.

1:31:39 James: So the IAT, for example, that has been shown to not really be predictive of behavior. They also say that stereotypes aren't accurate, but that's also another very biased result that's due solely just to bias and Right.

1:32:04 Thomas: You know, I came across something interesting. I just, I don't even know how to evaluate that. You'd have to give me sources or something. Cause like, I know, you know, like we can't really go anywhere on that. But one thing I did find interesting was there's this Harvard business review article about these programs, because one thing, I can agree with you on is that not all of these diversity measures and unconscious bias measures and microaggression measures. Not all of them work because I think it would be absurd to expect that all of them would work. What we're seeing is people are trying to fix a very real problem. They're doing what they can. Sometimes they don't have a crystal ball and know what the future will bring.

What is interesting to me is white fragility is a big theme of my show because there's so much of it going on. What they found was this Harvard Business Review article that I I can link you, called Why Diversity Programs Fail. They don't work because if you require them, white people are so fragile about it that they actually backlash and decide to hire fewer people of color, which it's interesting to me, like, why wouldn't we hold people accountable for that? Like, the solution to that is that those people need to be disciplined in some way, like not that we quit trying to deal with unconscious biases. The solution isn't we give up on trying to battle unconscious biases, the solution should be those people shouldn't be so fragile.

1:32:29 James: Right. Right.

1:33:32 James: I, I think, you know, there's a lot of issues in the workplace that if you talk about white fragility, there's also just a lot of sensitivity training that I think is unnecessary, so yeah, I agree that, you know, we probably could do more and that it shouldn't, we shouldn't necessarily just stop because employees are act a certain way, you know, we should maybe hold people accountable. I think, you know, when you look at the studies that Google has done on what improves worker productivity, they've shown psychological safety, which is basically, you know, the ability to bring your whole self to work and speak up without being harshly judged. That's something that I, I think a lot of these programs are actually degrading. So they're increasing people's sensitivity and making it so that you can't say anything. You feel that if you mess up in any particular way, then you'll be harshly judged. And this is particularly bad for a lot of the people on the autism spectrum, which are overrepresented at Google because they don't understand social cues as well. Well,

1:34:30 Thomas: Do you have support for that? Why aren't we seeing them leave then and women and minorities increase? If this is such a problem, that this sensitivity, it's driving them out or causing them... Why is the bigger problem, why is the bigger result that women and minorities are not represented?

1:35:12 James: I mean, so these sensitivity training things are relatively new. And also, a lot of the people with autism don't necessarily even have anywhere else to go outside of tech. So that's part of the issue.

1:35:25 Thomas: Okay, well, we've gone on really long. There's one thing I just wanted to point out to you, because I think a lot of what you said in the document is, in my opinion, I know we have a different opinion, but I think it's an incomplete picture of the science. But there's parts in your document, especially toward the end, where it became very ideological, and I would suggest that that could bring you from the realm of "I'm just discussing science" to "I'm bringing in my ideology," because toward the end, where you talk about, like, you know, nearly every difference between men and women is interpreted as a form of women's oppression, and we don't take men's oppression seriously, we treat women as victims, all that kind of stuff, I mean, that's ideological. You don't have any sources for it, and and Just, just,

1:36:06 James: Well, I mean, feminism itself is also just an ideology. And, you know, it's of course, that's not science. Like, this is just sociology. So I don't know that that's necessarily a perfect counter to it. Oh,

1:36:07 Thomas: No, It's not a counter, but I'm just trying to point out that I don't think you stuck to the science, like, if that's Your View, You,

1:36:27 James: Yeah, of course. There's I mean, the whole stuff about political ideology, too. And that's ideological stuff.

1:36:28 Thomas: Okay, Yeah, But One thing that I found really revealing, um, was in your Dave Rubin interview, you said, uh, you mentioned, I think you guys were talking about the gender split, and you mentioned, like, oh, it turns out the gender spit in libertarianism is 80 to 20, men to women, and then immediately the answer you gave was because men tend to be more logical, and Like, I just can't believe how biased that is, because

1:36:54 James: Yeah. No, but this is this is what the studies show that the libertarian personality type is the most masculine. And, you know, if you know Myers-Briggs, it's the NT, the intuitive and thinking style that is overrepresented by men.

1:36:56 Thomas: Yeah, But Here's A far, here's A far more, yeah, it is. I'm not disputing that's overrepresented by by men, and specifically white men, but the the idea that's because they're more logical is insulting, because a more historically complete picture is that men and women, or sorry, women and minority groups, tend to be Democrats because historically, when things were the most shitty for marginalized groups, the government had to intervene. So being in favor of government intervention is something that would automatically appeal more to these people who have needed it, who have needed the Civil Rights Act, who've needed the Voting Rights Act, all these things where the government, that are not libertarian, they're anti-libertarian, where the government had to come in and tell states to do stuff, you know, like the marriage equality, all this stuff, like that seems to me a far more logical connection to libertarianism than, oh, men are just more logical. So that's why they prefer to be libertarians.

1:38:07 James: I think you're, and you've did this before when you're saying that people just choose their political ideology, are deep moral biases that affect what political ideology we're most drawn to. And it's tied to your personality and also like highly heritable. So it's not saying that, I don't think that people are just choosing the best ideology that suits them best. And, you know, there are multiple examples of this, like the South, you know, they are voting Republican, even if that may not be in their economic best interest, for example, that people don't necessarily choose their political ideology based on their self-interest. It's, there's a lot of factors at play and, you know, your internal morals have a lot to do with it. I

1:38:49 Thomas: I'm not sure, what so what's the argument you're making that I'm How is that a response? So do you, are you, are you sticking with the idea that libertarianism is like necessarily the more logical position then, because I don't find that to be true, I think it's pretty illogical

1:39:17 James: Mean, yes, this is what Jonathan Haidt has found, is that people that identify as libertarian are more logical. They have more masculine personality traits.

1:39:30 Thomas: Yeah, no, they're more masculine, that's that's not in dispute, and and it goes the other way, like if if you're going to say that there's info, there's support that men are more logical, then, it's okay, I'll go with that, and we can build it the other way, but it seems to me the historical context makes far more sense. I mean, there's a reason that black people were Republicans before the Southern strategy, and then they turned, they they they turned to the Democratic Party, like there's reason for that, and it's not explained by genetics or biology, it's explained by the historical context. Yep.

1:40:04 James: Well, no, but you're talking about political parties and not political ideologies. So political parties change between conservative and progressive. You know, it used to be that Republicans and Democrats were both a mix of conservative and progressive, and now they're much more polarized. And more pure in that Republicans are more conservative and Democrats are more progressive. But it wasn't always that case. And I

1:40:10 Thomas: They're not That separated Though Yeah It's Because of the Southern strategy. I mean, what happened was Nixon specifically tried to appeal to racists in the South, and that's when the parties flipped, and it became more polarized. Like, it became less an issue of, oh, there's some some political issues that we may disagree on, but we form a party, and became more racialized and driven toward whether or not you were in favor of allowing black people to vote and to, use, you know, and desegregating. And and that just has has polarized people more, I think there's different reasons for polarization now, but that started that switch in the 60s. But anyway, I don't think we're getting anywhere more on that. I'll leave you with the last word if you want, but we probably got to get going.

1:41:16 James: Mean, I guess one suggestion I would have is just to read the actual document for your audience, because I think if they just read the headlines, they would see a much distorted view of what I actually wrote. And it's much more moderate than what people are saying, saying. And again, it's not trying to be the entire perspective. It's just the perspective that was being silenced at Google. And, you know, it was meant for a very specific audience at Google, which, you know, is not the general public.

1:41:49 Thomas: Right. I said at the beginning, and I do think I agree that I think it's important to represent that factually properly, that you didn't try to like spread this to the public or spread it to everybody. I think that's important. So, yep, I echo that. People should read it if they want to get the real picture. And I read it. James Damore, thanks for being willing to do this. You know, it's definitely not the most hospitable environment, I suppose, but thanks for the conversation.

1:42:18 James: That was fun. Thanks.

1:42:20 Thomas: Yep. All Right, well, there you have it. I think that there were so many counters to his claims that if I were in an encyclopedia or a computer with all the research handy, I would have been able to bring up faster. Did my best, but I think there's a lot that I didn't have on hand, and I think there's sort of a uh, asymmetrical warfare there to being able to just kind of claim stuff without links. There are so many times you just claim something without a source, and then having to refute that with, you know, like multiple sources, it's such an asymmetry there, so I wasn't able to do that as much as I wish I could have, um. For example, women leaving STEM jobs faster than men, they, his, his reasoning made no sense.

1:43:29 Thomas: He thought it was because of marriage and dual income. They leave also during the first two years. So it definitely isn't because of that. You wouldn't expect that people would be getting married and having dual high incomes within the first few years. They live at a higher rate, way higher rate within the First two years, I think it's reasonable to conclude consistent with the rest of the data that it's the atmosphere there. There's a lot of examples like that. We're already at, this is a really long episode. So if you guys are interested, maybe we could do a follow-up. I could do follow-ups and kind of research this and try to debunk some of the things that, the claims that kind of came out of nowhere that I think would take some research to follow up on. So there you have it. I hope you got something out of that. I think that it really, when you're coming from a background of not recognizing white white male privilege, it's very hard to argue with that.

1:44:23 Thomas: I think it takes time. I think recognizing white male privilege, if it is going to happen, takes time, and I think it's such a different lens to view the world through that it's hard to interact, really. So we were really from different background assumptions, and that is a very interesting problem and something to think about. So feel free to give me your feedback back. Believe Let me I already had a lot a feedback for my self. But if there's any research that you happen to already know or look into, I'm always all ears for that to be able to refine my arguments more. So I hope you enjoyed and I will see you next time.