Sept. 7, 2017 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
01:35:23
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| All right, everybody, we are live and joining me is former Google senior software engineer | ||
| turned guy who shared his opinions, turned guy who was fired for those opinions from | ||
| Google, James Damore. | ||
| Welcome to The Rubin Report. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| It's great to be here. | ||
| I am looking forward to this. | ||
| To prove that we're doing this live, we were about to go live about a minute ago, and right before we started, you said to me, should the dog be in here? | ||
| Should the dog be in here? | ||
| My dog was laying here, but we took the collar off, but we let her go, so I appreciate that. | ||
| You have had a crazy whirlwind of a month, and I mentioned to you when we were in the green room that I asked you what the exact day that you thought all this went down. | ||
| You said August 5th. | ||
| Which was right when I was going off the grid. | ||
| So as I was getting my phone out of hand when I was gonna put it away and disappear, I saw your name, I saw the story, and I was like, man, this is the type of guy that I gotta talk to. | ||
| I should be all about this story. | ||
| But then I disappeared. | ||
| So I'm glad we're doing this. | ||
| So let's start with this. | ||
| First off, how are you? | ||
| Just as a human being. | ||
| We're gonna get to your backstory, we're gonna get to the ideological echo chamber they have right here, but how are you as a human being right now? | ||
| I'm doing okay. | ||
| I mean, I wish I had a job, but, you know, it's not until you don't have one that you realize the benefits of, you know, having a job and going to work every day, having a group of people that you hang out with. | ||
| It's nice. | ||
| So you were fired, do you know the exact date? | ||
| August 7th-ish? | ||
| August 7th-ish. | ||
| So this thing ruminated and banged around for about three or four days or so, and then you were fired. | ||
| Were you absolutely shocked that you were fired for writing this 10-page manifesto? | ||
| That's the word that I see. | ||
| What word would you prescribe to this document that I'm holding here? | ||
| I've just been calling it document. | ||
| Just document? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| It's funny, you said to me before, you said, you know, sort of something like, I can't believe I'm in this. | ||
| Like, I'm just some nerd. | ||
| And I guess the way a nerd would describe a document is just by document. | ||
| But were you completely shocked at what happened here? | ||
| Yeah, I never really thought that it would explode like this. | ||
| I just wanted to have a one-on-one conversation with the diversity programs and really discuss the issues, but it never really came to that. | ||
| Okay, so for the people that don't know what this is about, obviously we're gonna get to that. | ||
| But before anything else, I thought it would be important just to talk about your biography a little bit, just to prove you're a guy who knows what he's talking about and you're a well-educated guy and all that. | ||
| So can you just take me through a little bit of your history, schooling, types of jobs you had, and what your job was at Google? | ||
| So I went to the University of Illinois for undergrad. | ||
| I was doing science, like biology, physics, chemistry. | ||
| And then I didn't really know what I wanted to do, so I decided to graduate early and then just work at MIT for a year. | ||
| And that was a lot of fun. | ||
| Took some classes there. | ||
| And then I decided to go to grad school, so I went to systems biology, which is like mathematical biology at Harvard. | ||
| And that program was really great. | ||
| So I went there for about two years. | ||
| It was the PhD program, but while I was there, I got really into algorithms and these little puzzle things. | ||
| So I did a coding competition, and Google found out that I did well. | ||
| So they actually just directly contacted me, said that, oh yeah, you should apply to Google. | ||
| So I interned there and decided Google is a great place. | ||
| It's probably the company that will change the world. | ||
| And its benefits are great, so I was like, okay, this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. | ||
| I'll just do it. | ||
| And so I left the PhD program to join Google. | ||
| Yeah, and this is just a couple years ago, obviously. | ||
| You're a young guy. | ||
| So you mentioned some, I mean, these are big-name schools. | ||
| MIT, Harvard, you are educated in biology and you're working with algorithms, all these things. | ||
| Google finds you after you do this competition. | ||
| So, sort of to lay out how this whole thing got written and why you did it, First, you're working at Google for a while, and then they started sending you guys, not just you, but people to diversity training. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Okay, so can you explain what diversity training is? | ||
| Yeah, it's... | ||
| Kind of complicated because there's multiple different programs, but it's often talking about how, you know, we have 50% of people in the population are women, but at Google we only have 20%. | ||
| And so they discuss all of the sexism that's happening and how that's holding back women in general. | ||
| Then they also have stuff about racism and all these other unconscious biases, because we don't really see anything like, oh, you're a woman, therefore you can't code. | ||
| There's never these explicit forms of bias that we see. | ||
| And we haven't really been able to measure actual bias at Google. | ||
| So we just assume that there's some sort of low-level bias that's happening. | ||
| Always really impossible to measure. | ||
| These programs go over microaggressions and white male privilege and then discuss how we can make the workplace better for women and how we can get more women on our teams, basically. | ||
| Now, you don't have anything against women, do you? | ||
| Is that something I need to know that James Damore thinks about women before we go any further? | ||
| I definitely like women. | ||
| I had women on my team, and I treated them well. | ||
| I mean, I discussed a lot of these issues with them, and they actually largely agreed. | ||
| And they helped me discuss, you know, okay, on average, women are, say, more cooperative, and how can we change the workplace so that it's not just Yeah, so it's interesting to me because I obviously have a small business here. | ||
| Most of my jobs in my life have been odd jobs or doing stand-up, things like that. | ||
| I've never worked for a giant corporation like Google before. | ||
| And it's funny because when you talk about, well, 50% of the population is female | ||
| and Google only has 20%, it's almost like, well, how is that an issue | ||
| for the average employee at Google? | ||
| Now, the microaggressions and that other stuff, I can see why if you buy that that stuff is legit, | ||
| if they're HR people, buy that that stuff's legit, I can see why they'd sit down with employees | ||
| and talk about that. | ||
| But to talk about the 50% of women in the population, and we only have 20% here, isn't that something for HR to deal with? | ||
| What does that have to do with bringing in software engineers and talking to them about that? | ||
| Yeah, I think Google just has a long history of, you know, the whole don't be evil. | ||
| And, you know, we make a ton of money through ads, therefore we feel sort of guilty and we have to help the world in general. | ||
| So we do a lot of philanthropy and they're really big on being allies for these groups and just outreach in general. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If it makes you feel better, they're not making much money on us because they don't monetize anything and I can't... Our video, I just told you before we started, our video from this morning, from this morning, with Phil DeFranco, who has almost 6 million subscribers, who's one of the first YouTube creators around, was demonetized this morning. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| So I do wanna talk to you a little bit about the algorithm, but let's keep going with your story. | ||
| Okay, so you go to these meetings. | ||
| Obviously, you're having a bit of an ideological difference in terms of what you think versus what they're pushing on you. | ||
| They asked for your feedback, correct? | ||
| After these things, so can you tell me about that? | ||
| Yes, in all of our meetings and programs in general, we're usually very open, and we ask for feedback on how we can improve these. | ||
| And so I wrote this document because I really wanted to put my thoughts down. | ||
| And so I sent it to them, and they looked at it, because it's a Google Doc, so I could actually see that they looked at it and read through it. | ||
| But they just never did anything. | ||
| And this happened multiple times. | ||
| I went to multiple programs, and they just ignored it every time. | ||
| Yeah, so to be clear, when you say program, so you sent it to a, they have several diversity groups, right? | ||
| So you sent it to several different groups. | ||
| What are some of the groups? | ||
| So one of them was about unbiasing, and another was your journey towards, you know, rethinking race. | ||
| So those are several of them that I went to. | ||
| And yeah, it was sort of the same thing. | ||
| And we're just ignored. | ||
| You saw that they were open, but you were just ignored. | ||
| So just to be clear, you write this in response because they want feedback. | ||
| That's actually nice to hear that companies want feedback. | ||
| I keep trying to get them on the phone with me to discuss some of the problems that I'm having with YouTube. | ||
| That seems to be kind of difficult. | ||
| But you write this in response, which is sort of what they're asking for. | ||
| They're asking for your feedback. | ||
| Now you are a scary White male, and you're tall, so that's gotta be working against you. | ||
| You do what they want, then you submit this to several of these diversity groups who ignore you, then you submitted it to one particular one, and that's where this really took off. | ||
| So which one was that? | ||
| Yeah, so after a month of actually sending it to individual people and some smaller email lists and actually getting some good feedback that wasn't, you know, this emotional outrage, I... Wait, that's interesting. | ||
| Let's not jump past that. | ||
| So first, you are getting some feedback within the company that people are basically Yeah. | ||
| Basically okay with what's happening. | ||
| Half the people would be just like, yes, I agree, totally. | ||
| And then the other half would disagree on certain points. | ||
| And they say, oh, are you sure that this is happening? | ||
| And especially if you're progressive, then you often don't even see a progressive echo chamber because you just see, oh yeah, that's how things should be. | ||
| And what's wrong with all this? | ||
| And, oh, are you sure that people would actually be shamed for saying these things? | ||
| Because you think that that system or that worldview is so complete or something, it's hard for them to imagine, which is exactly what an echo chamber is. | ||
| And so that was all fine, but then I was sent it to this one email list called skeptics. | ||
| So I thought, you know, skeptics would be rational and they'd be able to point out holes in my argument. | ||
| Because honestly, the whole time I was just, I want to be wrong because if I'm right, then there's something bad happening, right? | ||
| Please tell me how I'm wrong. | ||
| And that's not really what the response was. | ||
| It was just, this is crap, what are you doing? | ||
| And it eventually just exploded within the company from there. | ||
| All right, so to be clear, so the skeptic group, which is the group that should be skeptical of all facts and opinions and all that, you send it to them, but then how within that, so now you start getting some feedback on it, how within that group did this then get to the larger world and that's when all hell broke loose? | ||
| Yeah, so some of the people would start sending emails to, say, my upper management and HR demanding that I be fired or something. | ||
| And so HR and some of the higher level execs started sending out mass emails saying, oh, yes, we know about this document. | ||
| Don't worry. | ||
| You know, it's harmful. | ||
| Don't look at it. | ||
| This is not what Google stands for, which obviously, you know, if you tell someone that this is harmful, they're going to just look at it. | ||
| It's harmful. | ||
| Don't look at it. | ||
| That's what executives were saying. | ||
| I mean, that's incredible. | ||
| And also, there were a ton of memes within the company just talking about how horrible this was and just blasting me as a person. | ||
| Now, was there any retribution on those people? | ||
| We'll get to you actually getting fired and called into the office, but as far as everything that I read in this document, which I did read, you didn't attack anyone personally. | ||
| You go out of your way not to stereotype. | ||
| People can argue with your conclusions or all that, but you were being attacked personally by people then within the company. | ||
| Was there any retribution onto those people? | ||
| No, not that I know of. | ||
| There was even someone that emailed directly saying, you are a terrible person. | ||
| You're a misogynist. | ||
| I'm going to hunt you down until you're fired or I'm fired. | ||
| Send this to HR. | ||
| I don't care. | ||
| Which means that maybe he knows that HR isn't really going to do anything. | ||
| And so I sent it to HR. | ||
| So you sent it to HR and did they even respond? | ||
| They said, oh yeah, work from home. | ||
| They told you to work from home? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think it's so important to repeat some of this stuff. | ||
| You wrote this in response to being taken to a place where they wanted your feedback. | ||
| Now, they happened to not like your feedback, okay. | ||
| Then you were being threatened, in a way, by other employees and being attacked online with the memes and all that stuff, again, while you're still an employee there. | ||
| And HR tells you to work from home. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you have no evidence that they contacted this person at all? | ||
| I honestly don't know. | ||
| And I mean, there were many people that started attacking me. | ||
| And it was mostly public attacks, because, you know, most people aren't really courageous enough to send me an email like that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And they just want to show other people, oh, look how great I am. | ||
| I got offended by this. | ||
| And let's all band together and punch Nazis. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Right, virtue signaling, I believe is the industry term for that. | ||
| Okay, so then, now you were being attacked personally, you're being told by HR to stay home. | ||
| Now, did you get a call or an email? | ||
| How did you end up in an office where they said, you're out of here, buddy? | ||
| Yeah, so they eventually just called me Monday night and said, James, you've been terminated for perpetuating gender stereotypes. | ||
| And then, you know, I tried to discuss it with them, but they didn't have any of that. | ||
| They did this on the phone? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They didn't even have you come into the office and tell you face to face? | ||
| And they were probably afraid that I would just, you know, have some outburst or something. | ||
| Well, you seem very violent in this area. | ||
| I mean, I've never seen a more soft-spoken, you know, slim, you know, you don't strike me as someone that's gonna hurt anybody. | ||
| But even, I mean, the sort of cowardice of that is actually kind of incredible. | ||
| So, okay, so then you get fired. | ||
| Now, this is after it had gone public, obviously, so the stories were all over the place at this point. | ||
| Did you try to plead your case? | ||
| I mean, did you say, this is crazy, I was just doing actually the same thing that you're asking everyone else to do, you just don't happen to like my opinions? | ||
| Yeah, I tried to, but obviously it didn't have any effect. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Is there a legal issue there that you know of? | ||
| I'm assuming every lawyer and their cousin is out to talk to you these days about lawsuits and all that. | ||
| Even before they fired me, I made a claim to the National Labor Relations Board. | ||
| Because what this is, is I was making concerted effort with multiple other employees that agreed with me to improve our working conditions. | ||
| So I pointed out multiple ways in which there was harassment in the workplace | ||
| and that there was illegal discrimination in our hiring practices. | ||
| Can you give me an example of that? | ||
| Of the legal discrimination? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, so as far as I know, and according to our internal policies, you can't use someone's protected status, so their age, race, or gender, when you're determining hiring or other employment critical situations. | ||
| So, and, but we do in these, you know, we treat different candidates differently, and then if someone is going out for promotion, they may be treated differently. | ||
| So there's a lot of small things that we're doing. | ||
| They may be treated differently in a positive way if they're one of those protected. | ||
| It's just worth actually saying the full sentence because I think people are so confused by what's going on these days that everything is upside down, yeah. | ||
| Okay, so you contact them, and then where are you at in terms of any legal stuff right now, as much as you can tell me? | ||
| So we've filed the claim, and so they're investigating right now. | ||
| And we are also looking for other Googlers that have had similar treatment, and we've gotten multiple responses for that. | ||
| So there have been multiple cases in the past where, say someone, and like, I'm of course for gay rights, but someone just didn't want to go to Gay Pride Parade, and they got fired for that. | ||
| So like, that's a little too far. | ||
| Wait, that's literally true? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So someone at Google just said, I don't want to go to the Gay Pride Parade. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And they got fired for that. | ||
| At least according to them. | ||
| We have to look into it more. | ||
| And there have been multiple cases like that where if you don't agree with the progressive ideology, then you're discriminated against. | ||
| By the way, you could also be totally pro-gay and just not want to go to a parade. | ||
| I'm not a huge parade guy myself. | ||
| You're a big parade guy. | ||
| I enjoyed the gay pride parade in San Francisco, but I can definitely tell it's not for everyone. | ||
| Right, that's a bit of a sidebar there. | ||
| All right, so all of this happens, and again, the reason I started with how are you as a person is that I know, you know, I can't compare some of the things that I've gone through over the last couple years with what you've gone through because you were hit with a A landslide. | ||
| I've sort of had a more, like, slow evolution into craziness, dealing with the media and craziness. | ||
| But I know what it's like when people write terrible things about you and deeply dishonest things and call me a Nazi or alt-right or, you know, just all that crap, right? | ||
| So suddenly you're a private citizen, from everything I can tell, a pretty decent guy, and now the media There's blood. | ||
| What was that like for you? | ||
| Because I think that also is a lot of, you know, I talk about the culture of fear right now, of why so many people email me and they say, well, I'm afraid to say this, or I'm afraid to post your video on Facebook or any of this stuff. | ||
| And I think it's because everyone fears this retribution. | ||
| So as someone that has gone through it in a very high profile way, but you're still here, you're still here. | ||
| And even though you said to me before, you don't know what you want to do next. | ||
| You don't know if you want to be a public person next or a voice for any of this. | ||
| But you made it to the other side. | ||
| You're alive right now and you're okay and you're smiling. | ||
| So what can you say about that? | ||
| Yeah, I think I realized that it was sort of do or die. | ||
| And because if I didn't say anything and I didn't defend myself, then the media would just keep pounding on, oh, this bigoted guy said the sexist stuff. | ||
| And, you know, I talked to Jordan Peterson very early on and he told me, yeah, just, Talk to the media, because once they see that you're just a normal person, and you're not some crazy, aggressive woman hater, then your case will just get better. | ||
| Your public image, at least. | ||
| Do you sense that that has worked? | ||
| Because you've done some stuff. | ||
| So you did Jordan Peterson, you did Joe Rogan yesterday, you got some mainstream stuff, right? | ||
| It's helped. | ||
| I mean, unfortunately, it's often either the center or the right will interview me, and I've tried to get long-form interviews on the left, and just no one is biting. | ||
| So people will just I'll complain saying, oh yeah, I'm just pandering to the right. | ||
| It's a no-win situation. | ||
| You know, it's incredible to me how much I see this story repeated and repeated. | ||
| So Brett Weinstein, who I know you're familiar with, he was only asked to go on Fox News. | ||
| Tucker asked him to go on. | ||
| I'm going on Tucker tonight. | ||
| I'm just saying it now for the first time to discuss everything that's going on with YouTube. | ||
| And I get invited on Tucker and Greg Gutfeld and a bunch of other things on Fox. | ||
| Nobody invites me from MSNBC. | ||
| I can't bash the door down much like you can. | ||
| So you tried. | ||
| You did try to get on other left-leaning outlets. | ||
| I've given interviews to CNN and Bloomberg, Business Insider, and they were pretty hostile interviews, but at least I did do them. | ||
| But it was often I would do an hour-long interview and then they would cut it down to five minutes of the worst possible stuff. | ||
| I still don't think I... | ||
| It was bad, but. | ||
| Did you have anyone helping you with media sensitivity training or anything? | ||
| Because like right here, I mean, I know you're aware of the show and who I am and all that, and I don't have an agenda. | ||
| I truly want to hear your story and that's it. | ||
| But that when you go on these shows, I know for me, if I've learned anything, is that I would never do a show at this point that's not live because I know the way these people act and behave. | ||
| So did you have any training or did you hold counsel with anyone? | ||
| You just really just went out there and did it. | ||
| Yeah, I'm usually a pretty independent person, so I don't like asking for help, really. | ||
| So I just did it, learning it as I go. | ||
| Yeah, so then I saw on Twitter that you were happy to take these interviews, and you did interviews with people all over the place. | ||
| You were on Stephan Molyneux. | ||
| Now, I've done his show a couple times. | ||
| I've never had him here. | ||
| I've enjoyed the conversations that I've had with him. | ||
| I get a lot of hate for even talking to the guy. | ||
| But then suddenly after that, then you were a member of the evil, scary Alt-Riot. | ||
| So I also saw you tweet out that you are not part of the alt-right, or that you've said publicly you're not part of the alt-right. | ||
| How does that even fit into this? | ||
| Because I think that's an interesting thing, this now catch-all phrase of alt-right is becoming really bizarre. | ||
| I think it's just another one of those labels that the media has put on anyone that they disagree with. | ||
| They were calling Jordan Peterson alt-right, they were calling just everyone. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And you know, when you look at it and you look at the definition, and it's actually white nationalists or white supremacists, you can see that no one, like very few people are actually white supremacists, but they're just using this broad brush to really label too many people. | ||
| Yeah, and they're almost making the tent bigger, because every time they call you alright, or they call me alright, or Jordan Peterson, well, all these people who like what we think about things, they're going, wait a minute, that's what the alright is? | ||
| Then it must be pretty decent. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| If Damore and Peterson are in there, and these guys aren't bigots or racists or any of these other things, but you, that you are not part of the alt-right | ||
| or any of that kind of stuff. | ||
| Were you shocked? | ||
| So did any of this shock you? | ||
| That's what I think is most interesting here. | ||
| It's like, you obviously have seen all this. | ||
| Like, it's pretty clear to me. | ||
| But did you, as someone that was going through it, did it shock you? | ||
| It definitely shocked me. | ||
| I mean, I knew at least some of the lower level, you know, political bias can shape how we view the world, but I never knew that it was this widespread and the media portrayal was so inaccurate. | ||
| And, you know, I'm not necessarily a fan of Trump, but I can see what he's saying about, you know, CNN being fake news. | ||
| Because every one of their articles about me would just be this horrible stuff. | ||
| And people, it was really nice to see that all the comments were, you know, CNN, this is fake news. | ||
| Did you actually read it? | ||
| So people are fighting back. | ||
| Right, and then I'm sure they're deleting those comments. | ||
| I even saw something when I was doing a little research, a few people sent me something that you mentioned me in a Reddit AMA that you did, so I quickly googled both our names and then it came up, I think, I can't swear to it, I think it was a Think Progress article, basically implying you're all right, and then they quoted me, obviously it wasn't talking about you, it was something from months ago, making it seem like I was part of that too, and it's like you're all Liars. | ||
| And the more you lie, the more you are just putting water on gremlins and you're spreading the very thing that you fear most, which I guess is probably good for people like us, but it's a little annoying. | ||
| So let me ask you this. | ||
| I have your scary document here. | ||
| By the way, I flipped through this thing many times. | ||
| I didn't even get a paper cut, so we're not dealing with that much here. | ||
| What would you say is the most controversial thing that you wrote in here? | ||
| Is there one piece of this thing that you could go, well, I guess maybe that's the one, or maybe I said this wrong, or what's the thing that people were most sensitive to? | ||
| So, me saying neuroticism, which is just a personality trait, and that's the official term, that was a mistake, maybe, because a lot of people were like, oh, he said women are neurotic, and that has a ton of negative connotations. | ||
| And then, yeah, just the whole biology, you know, whenever you mention biology, that's controversial when it comes to differences between people. | ||
| Okay, so I'm glad you mentioned that, because I think this might be the most important part of anything we're gonna discuss right now. | ||
| And if people are listening to this, I think this may be the key thing of all this. | ||
| It seems to me that the social justice movement and this hierarchy of oppression and the oppression Olympics and the virtue signaling, it seems like it is in direct conflict with biology, which is why they've been so against Richard Dawkins, a biologist. | ||
| It's why they've thrown Brett Weinstein, a biologist, under the bus. | ||
| It's why they've attacked you, someone who has studied biology, under the bus. | ||
| It seems to me that because biology has nothing to do with what they're talking about, they're talking about this sort of amorphous thing of victimhood as virtue, but that's not how biology works, it's not how evolution works or anything else, that it had to get here. | ||
| Do you think that's a fair statement? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, there are some biological truths that you can't just paint with, oh, this is just oppression, this is societally, like, constructed oppression. | ||
| And, you know, it's really hard to just keep denying some things. | ||
| Yeah, so what would be an example of that? | ||
| Of a simple biological truth that would be against? | ||
| I mean, at least, you know, according to this, just the link between prenatal testosterone and some masculine-like behaviors. | ||
| And so, you know, we know that testosterone does affect behavior and, you know, if you ask someone that transitions, you know, a transgender, then they'll also tell you that, yes, taking this hormone treatment did change me in some ways. | ||
| And it's not good or bad, it's just different. | ||
| And if we were all the same, wouldn't there be then truly an equal amount of women in the NBA as men? | ||
| I mean, you wouldn't need the WNBA, right? | ||
| Let's say women, I mean, I have no idea, but let's say women love basketball as much as men do. | ||
| I suspect, generally speaking, men like it more. | ||
| I'm probably getting in some trouble there. | ||
| I don't know what the exact Pew study has shown on men and women in basketball. | ||
| But why would you have, I mean, there's obviously biological differences, otherwise you would have women doing 360 dunks, you know, like LeBron James. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, physicalness and height is definitely something that's well-known and not that controversial. | ||
| And I feel like if a woman wanted to join the NBA, they should be able to. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| If a woman has the skills and can play in the NBA, if the NBA had a rule and said women cannot play in this league, I would have a problem with that, actually. | ||
| I believe it's equal opportunity. | ||
| They have their own league, which is sort of separate but equal, but also nobody watches because it's simply not as good as the NBA. | ||
| Man, I'm digging it. | ||
| I'm digging it for those people, but I don't really care what they think. | ||
| So, the biology piece, though. | ||
| How do you, as someone that cares about this, how do you navigate that? | ||
| I mean, when you've seen people like Dawkins and Weinstein treated the way they're treated, how does this conversation get cleaned up a little bit if guys like that have so much trouble navigating or will be kicked out by those voices on the left? | ||
| Yeah, it's really hard. | ||
| You have to just find someone that's reasonable and have a one-on-one discussion because if you just have this huge public thing, then there's inevitably going to be someone calling you some bigot or racist. | ||
| I still don't really know how to navigate the water, so I'm maybe not the best to ask. | ||
| Yeah, well, you seem like you're doing a fine job. | ||
| I mean, you're willing to be part of this fight. | ||
| We don't always get the heroes we ask for. | ||
| We get people that are suddenly either brave enough to write this, and again, you weren't trying. | ||
| That's the irony here, is I think a certain amount of people will look at you or watch this and think, oh, he just wanted to say something controversial and profit from it somehow, or get in the news, or do these shows, or whatever it is. | ||
| When, in fact, you did everything possible to play by the rules that they had set up to have your voice heard. | ||
| Yeah, I definitely never meant for this to become huge. | ||
| It was never my intention to make it so big that I got on this show, although it's obviously great to be here. | ||
| I know it was all to get on the Rubin. | ||
| I'm curious, what about women, either at Google or just that you've heard from on email or social media or anything else, that are agreeing with you? | ||
| Are you getting an interesting amount of support from women? | ||
| Yeah, I'm definitely getting a decent amount of support from women. | ||
| And I think the support is generally just based on your political orientation. | ||
| So, libertarians and conservatives are much more likely to agree with my document than a progressive is. | ||
| And it depends just sort of just how libertarian sort of you are. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So you're saying women are allowed to be libertarian and conservative. | ||
| They don't just have to be progressive? | ||
| Right. | ||
| There are actually fewer women that are libertarian, though, for maybe similar reasons. | ||
| So that's kind of interesting. | ||
| So there are so that's a fact is that there are less women that are libertarian because they might play into some of these causes. | ||
| I don't know this fully, but the ratio is about the same, 20 to 80. | ||
| So 80% of libertarians are about women. | ||
| And it's just the personality type of highly logical is more represented by men. | ||
| And that's the personality type of libertarians. | ||
| And, you know, very individualistic rather than a more collective personality. | ||
| Now people are gonna hear that and that's just, so this is so interesting because it does get to the heart of so many of the things we talk about here and what Ben Shapiro says, facts don't care about your feelings. | ||
| You've said a couple things right there that they feel wrong in a way, like there's some, what do you mean, how could that be? | ||
| But the evidence, that doesn't mean things can't change and that we all can't evolve differently and all that, but the evidence, the facts in this case, basically support what you're talking about here. | ||
| Yeah, and I mean, I don't feel like people would necessarily say that being libertarian is better than being progressive or conservative. | ||
| I guess it depends what you are. | ||
| I think a lot of progressives that would find defense with this think that being progressive is good. | ||
| And they honestly think that conservatives are evil. | ||
| Yeah, they're happy to be like how they are. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay, so now you've done a bunch of these shows, you've gotten your story out there, you've sort of been through the storm already. | ||
| It sounds like you don't know exactly what you want to do next. | ||
| Have you been presented with any interesting opportunities? | ||
| I've talked to random CEOs that were supportive, but obviously many of them didn't want to be publicly known that they supported me. | ||
| Does that show that we've sort of lost the war in a way? | ||
| We're winning interesting battles. | ||
| A guy like you, who nobody outside of your world knew a month ago, You're now known and you're gaining traction and all that. | ||
| So I see that as a win of a battle, but in the war sense that all these CEOs of companies that they might want to work with you, having nothing to do with this, they might just go, man, this guy's got a great resume. | ||
| I want to work with this guy. | ||
| He's a free agent right now. | ||
| But even that, they just might be cowed because they don't want to deal with it. | ||
| Yeah, and part of this lawsuit is potentially trying to push it the other way, because so much of their concern is that they're being attacked so much by these social justice activists, and so if they ever go more to a more rational side on these topics, then they'll just be attacked. | ||
| But if there's ever, you know, A lawsuit that says, hey, you know, you can't be, you can't discriminate against conservatives and you know, you can't be just some extreme left and discriminate and do whatever you want, then maybe they'll finally see the light. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But you know, if there's only one side happening, then they'll just become more extreme. | ||
|
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Right. | |
| And it's so interesting to me because, as you said, there were several different diversity groups. | ||
| Now, I suspect, but please correct me if I'm wrong, if there was a group of pro-life people at Google, would they be allowed to form a group? | ||
| Do you think? | ||
| Or how would that group be treated? | ||
| I'm not sure that they would be able to make a group. | ||
| I think some people would say, oh yeah, that makes people uncomfortable, don't do this. | ||
| Right, now you obviously would be able to create a pro-choice group. | ||
| I suspect there would be no, right? | ||
| That's in line with leftism and progressivism. | ||
| But the difference between pro-choice and pro-life really is, it's always been known as a political choice. | ||
| It's a tough choice. | ||
| But you're saying most likely that group doesn't come to be. | ||
| Yeah, so, I mean, I know of several anecdotes where someone came out as pro-life and then their team just abandoned them and started just ostracizing them. | ||
| And there have been events where Planned Parenthood and some more pro-choice things were advertising in some event. | ||
| And someone said, hey, you know, either let's show both sides or let's take politics out of the workplace. | ||
| And they were just, you know, no, don't talk to us. | ||
| So there's definitely an asymmetry there. | ||
| Yeah, I'm curious because I've mentioned a little bit lately that with all the stuff going on with monetization on YouTube, it's hard to feel, when I've had the limited contact I've been able to get with Google people, it's hard to tell who knows what or where the buck stopped. | ||
| We'll escalate this, we'll send somebody, just submit another form for this. | ||
| Do you think that Google as an entity has almost become too big? | ||
| It's become that 1984 monster That the bones of it, it's sort of crumbling under its own bones because it was abandoning biology in the name of, biology or science or reason, whatever you wanna use there, in the name of social justice. | ||
| Yeah, I think definitely there's a lot of disadvantages to it becoming too big. | ||
| Especially, you know, nothing like this would have ever happened if it was just a hundred person company because people would know me and they would know that I'm not some crazy bigot. | ||
| And if they disagreed, they would just come and talk to me rather than write some public messages of how I'm a Nazi and we should all punch him, you know? | ||
| So, yeah, there's a lot of miscommunication and just people not knowing what's happening at Google. | ||
| There's, you know, it's common where we have multiple chat apps and stuff. | ||
| It's just not really some coordinated actions. | ||
| Yeah, it's so interesting because the idea that they fired you Even if, let's go on their side for a second. | ||
| Let's say that they figured out, whatever it is, there's some loophole that they've got legit cause to fire you. | ||
| It's almost like that then makes you stronger, strengthens the ideas that they don't want strengthened, as opposed to they could've just given you a silent death. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| They could've been like, this guy wrote this thing, they let the 24-hour news cycle spin out, and then they slowly just degrade your position, or stop giving you things, and eventually, most likely, you leave, right? | ||
| You just leave on your own accord, and that's that. | ||
| Yeah, there have been multiple cases where that happened, where they just, you know, they try to hurt them, they put them on probation, and they just make life as harmful or just as bad as possible for these people. | ||
| And that's what usually happens, but... | ||
| I think it was just too much of a PR issue for them. | ||
| Yeah, so you had a great tweet a couple days ago, which was that if we have desensitivity training, then shouldn't we have sensitivity, wait, sorry, sorry! | ||
| If we have sensitivity training, then shouldn't we have desensitivity training for those who are easily triggered? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Do you want to say that better than I just said it, just to be clear? | ||
| Did I get the point across there? | ||
| Yeah, it's mostly, you know, we have so much training about these microaggressions and, oh, someone might find that random thing offensive, and so it just keeps pushing the line of what we can't say, and there's never any pushback on the other side. | ||
| You know, I think, yeah, there are definitely some people at Google that are socially awkward and need to be told that, no, it's not right to be saying some of the things that you're saying. | ||
| But we also need to be telling some people, like, come on, just calm down. | ||
| Just look at what their intention was and don't get so upset about this. | ||
| Yeah, because jokes are now becoming dangerous. | ||
| I mean, it's sort of like, you know, when Bill Maher said the N-word on his show, whatever you might think of saying that specific word, I don't think anyone in their right mind thinks Bill Maher's a racist. | ||
| And suddenly I literally saw comedians that I know calling for him to be fired over a word, which is sort of an odd position to be put in. | ||
| All right, so we've got biology, we've got your, Sort of, we're caught up on where you are at now. | ||
| Do you sense that because of this that Google is going to do any sort of introspection or any sort of re-evaluating of these policies? | ||
| I really thought that they would, but at least according to my friends that are still working there, they've only doubled down on the diversity efforts and haven't really addressed any of the political discrimination. | ||
| And we've brought up these blacklists that people had before, these blacklists where people will just have spreadsheets of names. | ||
| Where these are people that pretty much are just conservatives or think differently and they try to sabotage their work or just don't work for them at all. | ||
| So what does that actually mean? | ||
| Like sabotage their work? | ||
| Are you talking about public people who are creating using Google services or are you talking about employees? | ||
| Employees within Google. | ||
| So there's so many interdependencies between projects that I will often have to depend on someone to help me, but if I'm on this blacklist, they'll just ignore my email. | ||
| And, you know, if I ask them for a promotion or a peer review for a performance review, then they'll just give me a bad review. | ||
| And then once I do get fired because I'm treated so badly, I won't be able to find work at another company because they share these blacklists. | ||
| Okay, so that's incredible. | ||
| I think that's quite revelatory and incredible and obviously evil and insidious and all of that stuff. | ||
| Do you think then, I hope you have an answer for this, but I know this is a tough one, that those lists exist for the creators too and the people that are using Google services? | ||
| Because I don't have to tell you the amount, I mean, forgetting monetization aside, the amount of people who generally are center to even a little bit right to, you can go as far, then you can go all the way to Alex Jones, but all of that people, that group that are out of the mainstream think, that feel like the algorithm's screwing them, the monetization's screwing them, the subscriber growth is screwing them, all that stuff, do you have any evidence that any of that is real? | ||
| So, I don't know if they just have your name in some random file, but there's other ways for some of these same things to be happening, where they look for offensive videos, and according to them, it's these central or right-wing videos that are offensive, and they never look at the other side, because they're on the left, and so it's... | ||
| through their own political bias. | ||
| And they may not even be trying to directly target people, but they just find all of these things. | ||
| And then they actually feel like removing these videos or demonetizing them is the good thing to do. | ||
| Because, you know, if I disagree with you, you must be misinformed or evil. | ||
| And so you're either evil or you're telling people wrong things. | ||
| And either way, you should just stop doing that. | ||
| Yeah, I mentioned to you right before we started, and this is why I'm doing Tucker tonight, I mean, the amount of stuff that they've demonetized from us, I'm talking from Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who I think is one of the greatest human rights activists on the face of the earth, to then plenty of conservatives, of course, Ben Shapiro, and Larry Elder, and Dennis Prager, but then also atheists like Michael Shermer, comedians, Michael Ian Black, and a host of other people, that I think that it's not censorship. | ||
| That's what I want people to understand, that that in and of itself is not censorship, But if they are screwing with the algorithm to not allow our videos to get out, now, I don't have evidence of that, but at some point, when you take all of these pieces together, you know, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as Carl Sagan said, but you start having to go down that rabbit hole here, right? | ||
| Yeah, I think a lot of this is also just multiple teams at Google maybe doing the same thing and they may not even understand some of these algorithms because you just give them training data and then it gives you output. | ||
| So they don't really understand this neural net or what's happening within it. | ||
| And so it'll be really hard for, even if the government does try to prosecute them, to show that there's explicit bias within the algorithms. | ||
| And which is so ironic because for me as a classical liberal, even with some obvious libertarian leanings, I don't really want the government to come in and tell Google what to do. | ||
| But I do think there's something interesting that it seems to me Google itself as a public company, they have a fiduciary responsibility. | ||
| They're bored to do what's most profitable and not necessarily what's politically correct. | ||
| And I suspect that they're doing things that probably aren't, but I just don't know. | ||
| And again, I say that as someone, I don't want the government necessarily coming in, although I think there's an interesting argument to be made that these companies have now become so big and so important to how we communicate that they sort of are like electricity and gas and the rest of that, but that's a whole other topic altogether. | ||
| We got a zillion questions from the audience. | ||
| Do you think in just what we've done here, do you think we missed anything that is really important before we move on to that portion? | ||
| Huh? | ||
| No, we can just move on. | ||
|
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We did it! | |
| We did it! | ||
| All right, here's what we're gonna do. | ||
| I say it every time we do this, that we're gonna take a one-minute break. | ||
| Now we end up with like a three-minute break. | ||
| We're gonna make this a two-minute break, and we're gonna take your questions on Patreon. | ||
| We've got a ton of them already. | ||
| We're gonna also take questions on Super Chat on YouTube. | ||
| I suspect that this video will not be monetized, but c'est la vie. | ||
| All right, so hang on. | ||
| Give us two minutes just to freshen up here. | ||
| We didn't drink, you want to take a sip of water here? | ||
| Let's take a sip of water. | ||
| All right, two minutes and then your questions with James Damore. | ||
|
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All right. | |
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| Two minutes, there we go. | ||
| So first off, we have a gajillion questions on Patreon here, which I'm glad that my audience is so receptive to what you're talking about because I think it's really why people are supporting me on an alternate platform right now and helping me do what I'm doing. | ||
| Okay, so I'll go with the heavy one first from Patreon. | ||
| Any Snowden-like info that you can dish out on Google sharing our info with the government, et cetera? | ||
| So, at least when the whole Snowden thing was happening, they denied a lot of it. | ||
| But, I mean, there are cases where the government does request personal information, just like a lot of other companies, and Google does give it out. | ||
| And it's about 40,000 cases per year or something. | ||
| And, you know, one thing that this is linked to, too, is maybe they will only give it out to maybe right-wing extremists and not left-wing extremists. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Right, we just don't know what the answer is, and I guess that also depends on what the government's going for, if we have a more left-leaning government or a right-leaning government. | ||
| Well, they'll push back on some of them. | ||
| So maybe they'll push back on the left-wing extremists. | ||
| Oh, that's interesting. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| James, what alternatives to Google products are superior in function for us users? | ||
| Bing isn't that bad. | ||
| I don't know if it's better, but... | ||
| Yeah, it's hard to say because I do use mostly Google products. | ||
| Well, that's the funny thing. | ||
| I think there'll be a certain amount of questions here like people want you to either throw Google under the bus or the products under the bus. | ||
| I suspect you don't dislike the products and you liked the company that you were working for. | ||
| Yeah, I don't want to hurt Google. | ||
| I just want to make Google better. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, that's exactly how I feel about YouTube. | ||
| I'm not trying. | ||
| I want YouTube. | ||
| I want the platform that I'm on to be the best it can be. | ||
| I want this thing to grow so we can grow, you know? | ||
| Here we are. | ||
| Okay, we'll do a couple super chats here. | ||
| Well, this isn't even a question, but it's just something nice. | ||
| Thanks for having the courage to say something, James. | ||
| To everyone else, if you see something unethical taking place where you work, do something. | ||
| Say something. | ||
| The cost of saying silent is incalculable. | ||
| Do you have any regrets about doing just that? | ||
| It's hard to really regret things because I hope at least the world will be better because, I mean, Google is a huge place and it's going to be our future. | ||
| So these are huge issues that we need to solve. | ||
| So you're sort of like, what's his name that was going after Skynet, the Terminator? | ||
| Oh my God, what's his name? | ||
| I'm blanking everyone in the comment section. | ||
| John Connor, John Connor? | ||
| It was John Connor, yeah, there you go. | ||
| Let's see, we'll go back to Patreon. | ||
| In the time since releasing your memo, have any of the resulting discussions made you change your mind or rethink any of the conclusions or even the way in which you outline your thoughts? | ||
| That's a great question. | ||
| I've definitely had many discussions with people, some that disagreed with me. | ||
| I haven't really differed on some of the core things. | ||
| Maybe there were some nuances. | ||
| Some things, like, there may not be explicit sexism happening, but there's just male typical behavior, which men are just Uh, prone and trained to do throughout their childhood, that is what's rewarded in the workplace sometimes. | ||
| And that may be an issue that we need to solve. | ||
| But it's not this explicit sexism of, you're a woman, you can't do this. | ||
| It's just, you know, a lot of competitive, competition and, you know, talking over people is rewarded in some ways. | ||
| And that hurts a lot of people, both boys and girls, that aren't as assertive. | ||
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Right. | |
| But in and of itself, that generally happens more to women, right? | ||
| Right, because women are less assertive, which is what I... Because of biological reasons is your basic argument. | ||
| Yeah, and so I would say that, you know, these are, they may be predisposed to be a certain way on average, but it's not like we can't change that in some ways. | ||
| And, you know, you could obviously train your kid to be a certain way, and culture has some effects, but... | ||
| How much do we want to really social engineer things? | ||
|
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Right. | |
| Well, it's also like when they'll talk about, well, men do a lot of business dealings while playing golf and not enough women play golf. | ||
| Well, you can't force women to play golf. | ||
| I'm all for women playing golf if they want to play golf, and I don't think they should be excluded if they want to play golf, but you can't force them, nor would I want a man to be forced to do whatever women are doing. | ||
| What are women doing? | ||
| Let me see if I get in some trouble here. | ||
| What do women do? | ||
| Like golf, men for golf. | ||
| Let it go. | ||
| At least what I heard was, you know, going to the nail salon. | ||
| Going to the nail salon, naturally. | ||
| All right, now we know it's going to be clipped. | ||
| Can James elaborate on the underground conservative groups that you mentioned with Rogan? | ||
| Being myself in the computing industry, that sounds terrifying. | ||
| So you were on Joe Rogan yesterday. | ||
| I didn't even realize it, unfortunately, so I haven't seen it yet. | ||
| But I love Joe. | ||
| He's become a major ally in this space and for helping Yeah, so there's some groups within multiple companies of conservatives that feel alienated by the dominant culture, and they're not really connected at the moment because there's so many people that want to infiltrate them. | ||
| And record, oh yeah, this person said this one thing that could be construed to be racist, and then get all those people fired or something. | ||
| And so it's really a tricky thing that I don't want to disclose too much of because of some of these issues. | ||
| Okay, I think that's fair. | ||
| Superchat, as a guy studying IT who also leans conservative libertarian, I feel as if everyone else in the field leans far left. | ||
| In your experience, is that true? | ||
| Yeah, far left or libertarian, because libertarian is this very logical type, but they often just, and they agree with a lot of the social issues of just being, you know, socially liberal. | ||
| But if you're socially conservative, then you'll get ostracized often. | ||
| I think, at least for some of these people, working for a smaller company is maybe the better thing to do. | ||
| That's an interesting piece of this. | ||
| That at the end of the day, if you want to have as much autonomy over yourself and your thoughts and all of those things, that maybe working at one of these giant monsters who are trying to appease it to everybody is just not the way to do it. | ||
| Yeah, or appease the mob, really. | ||
| Right, the mob, exactly, well said. | ||
| Do the strongest political activists have any special access to our information, or are they mostly in lower positions in the company? | ||
| I think this is particularly interesting because it gets to something that we talked about before, where even when I've had discussions with YouTube people, I don't think that anyone necessarily is outright lying to me. | ||
| But how can we figure out where things are going up the chain, or where the final decisions are, or where that subtle thing that could happen in the algorithm is happening, or any of that? | ||
| Is there any way to decipher any of that stuff? | ||
| At least for outsiders, no. | ||
| There's no real way of figuring it out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| What do you mean, outsiders? | ||
| Well, just people that aren't employees. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| So someone probably knows something that you probably don't know. | ||
| Yeah, there's definitely some people that know certain things, | ||
| but it's pretty distributed throughout the company. | ||
| Right, because I would guess, I mean, if you were a smart company up to bad shit | ||
| and you wanted to slowly harm certain people on an algorithm, well, you wouldn't tell the people | ||
| who talk to the creators about what you're doing. | ||
| So the people who are talking to them, it's like plausible deniability, right? | ||
| They're going, oh, no, no, we don't do anything, and they think they're being honest, | ||
| but the guys higher up are going, yeah, we're tightening the screws on the algorithm | ||
| so we know that this stuff isn't gonna get out. | ||
| Yeah, there's a lot of legal things that the PR people or anyone that discusses it with external people, | ||
| they can't really discuss at all. | ||
| Right, and by the way, I asked the YouTube people to send me a representative. | ||
| I said anyone, I mean, you wanna send me a janitor? | ||
| Just give me somebody that works in that building, and of course I got declined. | ||
| Um... | ||
| How bad do you think this echo chamber problem is in other companies or business spheres like engineering, business, legal, etc? | ||
| Do you think there's something unique to the Silicon Valley stuff? | ||
| Yeah, I think it probably happens elsewhere, but it is pretty bad in Silicon Valley, particularly because there are so many of the same tech companies in a small area, and they have so much money, and they just throw it out to causes that they believe in, and they feel so guilty because they're only 20% women. | ||
| That pushes a lot of these issues. | ||
| So we sort of hit on this one, but maybe we can get more of your feelings on this. | ||
| Do you think it makes sense to treat monopolies more like we treat government institutions, that is, hold them accountable so they don't engage in practices that Google seems to be engaging? | ||
| How about a market share tax to prevent great concentration of power instead of punishing success directly? | ||
| So the basic crux of the question is when does, is there a time that the government sort of has to step in here, and I know you have obviously some libertarian leanings, Probably don't really want that. | ||
| But are we getting to like some point now where this may be out of control in a way that somebody has to step in? | ||
| Yeah, because I definitely have the leanings of I don't want the government to be regulating them at all. | ||
| And I don't know if we have examples of them actually regulating websites, because it's much easier for someone to just go to a different website. | ||
| But they have been getting a little too big in some ways, and Europe has fought back. | ||
| I don't know if the U.S. | ||
| will fight back. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I mean, and then even when you say that, the idea of the government now regulating these things, I don't like that. | ||
| But what I would want is more competition, and I guess the inherent problem is that maybe they really are a monopoly in a certain way. | ||
| You could take 10 of the richest people on earth, and if they had to create a YouTube alternative, they still may not have enough money because of what they're dealing against. | ||
| Let's see, search for something about James on Google and they disable the autocomplete for your name. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Really some 1984 stuff going on there. | ||
| How about that one for you? | ||
| Any thoughts on that? | ||
| I guess, oh really? | ||
| All right, that was your answer. | ||
| They definitely looked at what the autocompletes were, and maybe they didn't like what they were. | ||
| I don't know if anyone saw what they were before. | ||
| Well, I would suspect, if they're not letting it load, that it probably was people saying, is right, isn't a Nazi, not a white supremacist, etc. | ||
| We've sort of hit this already, but do you intend on staying in public for long? | ||
| I'm sure the drama is addicting. | ||
| I mean, there's something to be said about that, just that, you know, people know who you are now. | ||
| That's pretty cool. | ||
| You get a lot of traction on Twitter and all that stuff. | ||
| There are nice things of, you know, being recognized on the street and, you know, having random followers on Twitter, but it's definitely draining and it's not my innate personality, so I'm still trying to figure out what's best for me. | ||
| Yeah, you don't strike me as much of a publicity whore, to be honest with you. | ||
| James was, of course, aware of the PC climate and culture and why did he write the memo? | ||
| What did you think would happen? | ||
| That's sort of interesting because... | ||
| Did you think there was a chance, knowing everything you know about all this stuff, did you think there was a chance that it was gonna get to the diversity people and they'd be like, well, you know, page six, he actually kinda makes a point, it's reverse of everything we've ever said here and promoted, and that they were gonna do anything. | ||
| I mean, did you think that that maybe it would get through? | ||
| So I really thought that they would at least look at it and think about it rationally, because that's what we do for everything else at Google. | ||
| You know, you see a problem, and then you write a document, Right, don't hold your breath. | ||
| and then people look at it, make comments, and something is done. | ||
| So we're really big into this type of objective, open exchange of ideas, but apparently not for this. | ||
| And I actually list 10 different suggestions that we should do. | ||
| Hopefully they're actually looking at that, but I don't know. | ||
| Right, don't hold your breath. | ||
| Okay, back to Super Chat. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| You and others should form a group similar to FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, but for tech companies. | ||
| Thoughts? | ||
| I love this question because one of the things that I actually meant to ask you is all these organizations, Eric Weinstein, who I know you've now met, he has said to me a few times that what these companies need is that it's one thing, okay, you wanna have a diversity group and make sure there's equal opportunity for everyone, and that's great, but what you also need is a free speech group or a free expression group. | ||
| So these things sort of work in parallel together to make sure that the diversity group isn't stepping on freedom of expression or the ability for someone with a contrarian opinion to say anything. | ||
| Do you think that's a good idea? | ||
| Yeah, I definitely think that we should be looking more into this. | ||
| And I've been talking to the Heterodox Academy, where they look a lot about, you know, what universities can people freely exchange ideas. | ||
| And there's a lot of interest from companies to apply that same idea to their workplace. | ||
| So, because, you know, HR is now realizing that, hey, a lot of people agree with this and they feel alienated. | ||
| I wasn't even aware of that. | ||
| Maybe we should do something. | ||
| I'm curious, this isn't on here, but we're just bringing it back to the monetization one more second, because it's just rattling in my head right now. | ||
| When you hear about this stuff related to monetization, do you actually think that the companies that are selling ads to Google, that are putting their ads out there, that they really don't want their ads on all this stuff? | ||
| Or do you think that this is ideological, or is it a combination of both? | ||
| Yeah, it's hard to say. | ||
| I think there's a few very loud voices saying, oh yeah, these videos are horrible, and that may create bad publicity for Disney or something if they put their ads there. | ||
| But I'm at least hoping that we won't be dictated by just the one really loud voice. | ||
| No. | ||
| This is interesting. | ||
| What do you think about the role of collective bargaining, unions, etc., and, oh, and at-will employment in tech? | ||
| I think definitely, you know, I'm pretty libertarian, but I think that there are cases for some of these collective bargainings and just, you know, giving more power to employees because there is a huge asymmetry in power between employees and employer. | ||
| It's not as much of a free market type thing that we would like to see. | ||
| And, you know, I do agree that You know, even at will doesn't mean that they can just fire you for no reason at all. | ||
| And there are some cases in the National Labor Relations Board right now where people have, you know, this is a bad example, but they said the N-word to someone and then they got fired, and that's actually against the law. | ||
| You can't fire someone for doing that. | ||
| Which is, you know, maybe they should be able to, but there are limits to what people can fire you for. | ||
| Superchat, if AT&T listens to your calls and disconnected your phone when you said the wrong thing, we would be up in arms. | ||
| The FCC should remove Google's common carrier status because they monitor and filter traffic. | ||
| I mean, I think we've sort of danced around. | ||
| Do you have any other thoughts on that? | ||
| I mean, this is a tough spot for a libertarian, I think. | ||
| Yeah, it's getting to a point where, you know, power is being accumulated in just a few key players. | ||
| And at some point, we're really going to have to fight back against that because too much power, whether it's in the government's hand or a private company, isn't good for the general public. | ||
| I found that my political views changed completely when I was on antidepressants. | ||
| Are you aware of any studies linking far left political views and antidepressants? | ||
| That would be fascinating, like fascinating, fascinating. | ||
| You got anything on that? | ||
| So there are some connections between, you know, some drug use and political orientations. | ||
| So psychedelics, for example, can increase your openness long-term, and openness is related to progressive or left. | ||
| So, you know, that was potentially one of the reasons they actually banned psychedelics, was that it actually changed how you voted. | ||
| But I don't know about antidepressants in particular. | ||
| Specifically, okay. | ||
| Keep up the good work, Dave and James. | ||
| If James wants to come up to Toronto and make $15 an hour, he's got a job waiting for him. | ||
| Alright, we got you a job! | ||
| Also, Dave, you pronounced the word because strange. | ||
| Because? | ||
| How do you say because? | ||
| Because? | ||
| I'm from Long Island. | ||
| Suck it up. | ||
| All right. | ||
| A question for both of you. | ||
| Does having YouTube Reb help the content creators I watch with demonetization or does the money go straight to Google? | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Love the show, Dave. | ||
| I'll let you answer that one first. | ||
| So you don't know? | ||
| So, well, I know that when they look at our monetization, which is quite horrific these days, when I look at the back end, we see a certain amount just from regular ad plays and that sort of thing. | ||
| And then we see another number for YouTube Red. | ||
| I have no idea how that number's broken down or anything like that. | ||
| That's all I know. | ||
| But I know that, yes, if you have YouTube Red and you watch this, that we're getting some. | ||
| That's all I know. | ||
| Yeah, I would at least hope that they don't give you a smaller percent than normal. | ||
| They may just be, right, but. | ||
| Do you wanna finish that sentence? | ||
| No, I think no one really knows besides them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| After seeing the Google attempt to disable Jordan Peterson's account, how soon do you think Google will begin cutting off access to average users with these harmful opinions? | ||
| I mean, hopefully they saw how much bad PR the whole Jordan Peterson thing was for them, that they'll stop doing this type of stuff. | ||
| Do we know what happened there? | ||
| I mean, I remember the day that it happened, but do we know what specifically happened that caused that whole thing? | ||
| So they claim that there was some automated anti-spam detection and, you know, maybe that was... And there were some contradictions in the story where they said that there was some human looking at it, but then later they said that there was no human looking at it. | ||
| I mean, it just sounds like such anti-spam protections. | ||
| I mean, the guy's one of the most brilliant professors and I think preeminent thinkers we have literally in the world right now. | ||
| The idea that that's the way these things would be treated is just ridiculous. | ||
| What about putting programs like this on Twitch, denying Google traffic and income? | ||
| I would like to see them punished. | ||
| for this action. | ||
| I mean, people are trying to figure out some other avenues. | ||
| Do you have an alternate avenue for any? | ||
| Well, I guess we asked you about the services before. | ||
| Anything else we don't know about? | ||
| I mean, there's Twitch, Dailymotion, Vimeo. | ||
| Those are all other video hosting sites. | ||
| They're just much smaller than YouTube. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| There's a lot of these people that are saying that they're conservative or libertarian that just feel that they're afraid to talk about things. | ||
| In some ways, are you relieved not to work for a company that is so hell-bent on pushing their agenda? | ||
| Because you strike me as actually kind of at peace with everything. | ||
| I mean, I can tell you're in it, but do you feel a certain sense of peace in this craziness? | ||
| I try to, you know, I meditate and I try to just not regret things in general. | ||
| But, you know, I really wanted to change Google from the inside rather than what I'm doing right now. | ||
| You would rather. | ||
| Yeah, I would rather. | ||
| So you would have rather had this thing just, everything being equal, you would just go back and have had them listen to some of this stuff and maybe make it better. | ||
| James, I interned at Google in LA this summer and watched this debacle unfold from the inside. | ||
| Do you think the unique culture inside Google, MemeGen especially, reinforces progressive dogma by design or does it arise naturally? | ||
| Also, did you write an epitaph? | ||
| It wasn't visible when I last checked. | ||
| So yeah, Epitaph is something that you can write and so that people can contact you after you leave and you can give some reasons why you left or something. | ||
| Oh, I thought it was much darker than that somehow. | ||
| I didn't write one because, so when they called me and said, oh, you're fired, they shut off my access completely. | ||
| Man, just like that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Had you ever been in any trouble with Google before? | ||
| No. | ||
| Had even one comment sent to HR? | ||
| Had anyone at HR ever said your work is not good? | ||
| No, I had just gotten promoted, so I got the highest performance review possible, so it definitely wasn't performance related. | ||
| But there was a first part of that? | ||
| Yeah, so the first part being, do you think that the unique culture inside Google, | ||
| MemeGen especially, reinforces progressivism by design, or does it arise naturally? | ||
| There's... it's hard to say. | ||
| I think a platform like MemeGen is only going to push these mob mentalities and virtue signaling. | ||
| And the head of MemeGen was actually very active in trying to attack mine. | ||
| At some point he... So this was just a Google doc. | ||
| He suggested to just delete it all, which would do a strikethrough through all the words. | ||
| And that was just left there for a while. | ||
| People couldn't read it. | ||
| People that high up in the company shouldn't be doing stuff like that. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| Okay, just to remind everyone, where are you? | ||
| There, you're over there. | ||
| Just to remind everybody, we're taking questions on Patreon and on Super Chat. | ||
| We're with James Damore for a little longer. | ||
| Super Chat, Dave, welcome back. | ||
| Wanted to say that we, I at least, donate to you because you're using our money so well, so it's a two-way appreciation. | ||
| Thank you for that. | ||
| For my question, can James explain more context around memos And this was just a Google Doc. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| Yeah, so, and this was just a Google Doc. | ||
| It wasn't an email that I just sent out. | ||
| Wait, can you just take that a little further? | ||
| Because I think there's a certain amount of people, again, that think you blasted this publicly, you went to whoever was gonna get it to the most eyeballs and all that, but that is simply not what you did, as we explained earlier. | ||
| Yeah, it was just a Google Doc that I shared with some people, and then I put it on the skeptics list and was like, oh, what do you think about my views of Google's ideological echo chamber? | ||
| Am I onto something, or am I in my own echo chamber? | ||
| So, yeah, there's a lot of documents at Google that try to fix issues in the culture, and I actually modeled this after some of the other ones that I saw. | ||
| I don't know if you know the answer to this one, Superchat. | ||
| Will you join the people of Kekistan and provide your skills to create an algorithmic weapon to surpass Metal Gear? | ||
| I guess I... Just say you'll think about it. | ||
| I'll think about it. | ||
| Should Google's machine learning algorithms be made open source? | ||
| That's really interesting. | ||
| Possibly. | ||
| It's part of their intellectual property and that's how they have an advantage over other competitors. | ||
| It's hard to say what they really should do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fair. | |
| Let's see. | ||
| The Department of Labor is trying to cook up a discrimination against women case against Google. | ||
| Their only problem is that they don't have evidence to support the case. | ||
| So arguably this case was caused in large part by government over-regulation. | ||
| Because I've been a little out of the loop the last little bit. | ||
| I haven't heard about this. | ||
| Do you know anything about that? | ||
| Yeah, there's some case of they're saying that there's a pay disparity between men and women. | ||
| And all I know is that the internal reports that they've been doing for like four years now, have shown that there is no gender disparity | ||
| once you control for performance, which the external government agency | ||
| doesn't really know about our performance reviews and anything, they just know the aggregate statistics. | ||
| So I don't think they'll really find anything, but. | ||
| Especially since it's not like individual managers even get to choose, oh, you get to pay this much or that. | ||
| It's all by committee, and they try to do this control by gender stuff. | ||
| Quote, do no evil, end quote, used to be Google's motto. | ||
| How does James feel that Google and Alphabet as a whole are doing in general in living up to their former motto? | ||
| Yeah, so I think that they still believe in the do no evil, don't be evil thing, but it's that the definition of evil has changed, and they started mandating it both internally and externally. | ||
| So it's now just if we don't agree with you, then you're evil. | ||
| You know, we don't like your YouTube thing, so we're going to censor it or demonetize it. | ||
| So there is some evil, by my definition of evil. | ||
| Welcome back, Dave. | ||
| It looks like a month off. | ||
| Did you do some good? | ||
| I have libertarian leanings, but government still has a place in some areas, does it not? | ||
| The key is to not have too much power in one place, in my opinion. | ||
| We've discussed this already a couple of times, and I think that's why this story is so interesting to me, too, because it puts our own beliefs and biases up for the challenge now, right? | ||
| You see a major problem with a company that, again, that you like, that you wish this would have helped. | ||
| You don't want the government to come in and take too much power. | ||
| And it's a great argument to have over all that stuff. | ||
| Do you have any other thoughts on that while I answer quickly? | ||
| Yeah, no, I think we've already covered that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Now we're really gonna put you on the spot, super chat. | ||
| How has James' newfound infamy affected his love life? | ||
| Are the liberty-minded ladies storming the D'Amour castle? | ||
| Yeah, so my girlfriend, she sort of disagreed on some things, but it's more that she really doesn't want this to be true, that there is some sort of political bias affecting how we're seeing these issues. | ||
| I mean, we've grown stronger because of this. | ||
| Struggles sometimes bring people together. | ||
| I mean, I have gotten random messages from women that seem to like me, but I haven't really bit on that at all. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, for a crazy misogynist, your girlfriend's stuck with you and you're hearing from other women. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| Oh, this is interesting. | ||
| In your experience at Google, do the witch hunters use their colleagues' social media content against them? | ||
| Should young conservatives and libertarians in tech stay away from social media altogether? | ||
| I get this type of question a lot related to college kids when I go to schools and they'll say, well, can I talk about this now? | ||
| I wanna get good grades. | ||
| I don't want my professor fighting against me or anything like that. | ||
| Yeah, I think it can definitely hurt you if you post conservative or just other types of things on social media. | ||
| And, you know, we've even seen, I think, Pax Dickinson wrote some things on Twitter, and then he got fired from the CTO position. | ||
| So what you say in social media can be used against you by these social justice warriors. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Super chat plus one for rational and respectful dialogue. | ||
| Hashtag real news. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Real news. | ||
| Something's real. | ||
| I can't believe it. | ||
| The blacklists, this is super chat, are designed to bully. | ||
| That is disrespect at work by the bullies. | ||
| The Nazis did the same thing. | ||
| All right, let's put the word Nazi aside, because you're being called a Nazi, which is obviously idiotic. | ||
| But the idea of these lists, these secret, or it sounds like they're not even that secret, right? | ||
| I mean, these are- Yeah, people admit to having them. | ||
| Yeah, how dangerous do you think that is? | ||
| I suspect quite, because you were probably on, you were probably on every single one of them. | ||
| Yeah, they're pretty dangerous. | ||
| And just the fact that it's socially acceptable to admit that you have these and you openly pretty much hate certain people, that's a slippery slope. | ||
| Is there any evidence that Google conservatives secretly have lists of lefties that they won't work with? | ||
| Is there any evidence of those lists existing? | ||
| I have to ask. | ||
| I don't really know. | ||
| I think that they're so angry at just the idea of these blacklists and they see the harm that it's causing. | ||
| But there may be some people that see the tactics used by the other side and want to use them too. | ||
| Are decentralized platforms like yours.org, library, steam and others the future of media? | ||
| And do you have any interest in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin? | ||
| I think, yeah, they definitely have potential, and the more that people see that centralized power can lead to some negative consequences, the bigger they will become. | ||
| What about Bitcoin, and what's the new one? | ||
| Erythium? | ||
| Erythium? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Beryllium? | ||
| What the hell is it? | ||
| I know they were mining it on Avatar. | ||
| What's that one? | ||
| The new one, Erythium? | ||
| I don't know how to pronounce it. | ||
| Ethereum? | ||
| I think it's Ethereum or something? | ||
| Yeah, Ethereum. | ||
| Yeah, what do you make of cryptocurrency in general? | ||
| They have potential, but it's really hard to say. | ||
| And there's a lot of disputes even within the Bitcoin community on exactly how it should be implemented. | ||
| And that's why we're seeing multiple of them now. | ||
| So it's pretty risky, but people have made a lot of money. | ||
| Betting on them. | ||
| I have like two Bitcoin. | ||
| I'm just kind of leaving them there and we'll see what happens. | ||
| It's like $12,000 or something. | ||
| Is that $12,000? | ||
| Yeah, it's really grown. | ||
| Don't worry, I'm losing enough on YouTube monetization that it probably all evens itself out. | ||
| From Patreon, do you think there's any chance for a pendulum shift back towards the center in tech and large companies generally? | ||
| Where these issues can be reasonably debated and discussed without the immediate social pariah status and firings, or have things gone so far past that point that the only viable alternative is for new companies to be created? | ||
| Again, we've sort of hit on this, but that's interesting. | ||
| Do you think there's a chance, we could even put Google aside for this one, that this story, the lesson of this story might help in ways that we can't see right now? | ||
| Yeah, I think if there's a chance, just because, you know, even though there's the political bias and just natural biases that are causing some of this, there's also just the financial incentive that they may have, where they see if they don't, you know, toe the party line that they'll get attacked. | ||
| But if there's also financial incentives to not, you know, have these blacklists and fire anyone that disagrees, then that'll at least moderate them in some way. | ||
| Any idea of how far Google is willing to go to silence viewpoints it doesn't agree with? | ||
| Well, we know they fire people. | ||
| You got anything else? | ||
| Yeah, they'll do some certain things. | ||
| I mean, they'll remove ads from certain websites. | ||
| They'll remove YouTube videos. | ||
| They may push results far from Google search results. | ||
| I don't know the exact extent that they'll go though. | ||
| Yeah, well it's interesting because I can see you're really trying not to throw them under the bus. | ||
| You're being careful with your words, not to say anything that's untrue, and yet you're sort of giving a little bit of like, you're leaving some crumbs for some of the path to be found, and I think that's what people are trying to figure out here, which I think is, I think it's a credit to you. | ||
| Let's see, I don't think this is a cause for government intervention. | ||
| I think this is a symptom of government interference in society in general and supporting social justice. | ||
| Do you agree? | ||
| That's an interesting take. | ||
| Yeah, and that can definitely be the case, because as I was saying before, there's a lot of people suing for these social justice causes, and at least I've heard anecdotes of these activists that will blackmail companies to say, hire us for these diversity programs or we'll sue you. | ||
| And so they're sort of pushing it. | ||
| And it's only because they could sue and get the government involved that they're able to push this agenda. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And if people want to know how bananas this whole thing is, I mentioned to you right before we started, I got an email from a friend of mine who's a somewhat public person who will not be named right this moment, because I don't think he wants to go public with this stuff, who's in Hollywood and he's a straight white man. | ||
| And basically has been told by almost everyone in the industry, we're not gonna hire you anymore. | ||
| Like they're flat out saying it to him at this point. | ||
| And this is a guy who has a pretty great resume and is just screwed because of this lunacy. | ||
| All right, super chat, great episode, Dave. | ||
| Shout out to the new subreddit called Stop Being Evil. | ||
| It's dedicated to exposing Google's censorship and other creepy behavior. | ||
| I did an AMA on my subreddit. | ||
| I didn't really know how to do it, so I figured I could do it on this one. | ||
| You have your own subreddit. | ||
| Is that what you did the original reddit? | ||
| Again, I was off the grid when you did the- Yeah, I did an AMA on my subreddit. | ||
| I didn't really know how to do it, so I figured I could do it on this one. | ||
| Because there were some right-wing people that wanted me to do it on there, | ||
| and I didn't want it to be political, really. | ||
| I just wanted it to be sort of neutral. | ||
| But, you know, you should come over. | ||
| They're pretty friendly. | ||
| I saw your subreddit and they seemed sort of angry. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Well, I don't even want to get into that. | ||
| That wasn't my own thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. | |
| It seems that the best way to decentralize the power of large companies such as Google could be accomplished by the removal of patent thoughts. | ||
| This is another interesting one for a libertarian. | ||
| Yeah, patents can definitely cause a centralization of power, because you only just gain more and more power as you gain these patents, and they're used as tools by the extremely wealthy companies to attack competitors. | ||
| So it creates a barrier to entry, definitely. | ||
| I love this question, and I can't believe I didn't ask it. | ||
| What top-level companies, if any, are doing things right in terms of diversity opinion? | ||
| Do you see some companies doing it right? | ||
| Because I'll promote the hell out of them, and I'll try to work with them, and I'll try to do stuff with them if so. | ||
| There's some companies that have talked to me, and it seems like they're doing the right thing, but I don't know if I should make them public just because they talked to me in private. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Which, think how sort of unfortunate that is, but maybe you could tell me privately after, I'll keep it between us. | ||
| But hopefully that shows a little, see that's the thing with this It's interesting to hear James keep using we to refer to Google. | ||
| Being involuntarily separated from a company you care about is difficult to get past. | ||
| Now you have an interesting opportunity to help promote them | ||
| but you don't even know if they want that help from you or from me or whoever. | ||
| And that's such a, it's such a shitty situation. | ||
| It's interesting to hear James keep using we to refer to Google. | ||
| Being involuntarily separated from a company you care about is difficult to get past. | ||
| I think that's pretty clear there. | ||
| It's still, I feel like they're part of my family or I'm part of their family. | ||
| I I definitely see myself saying we a lot, too. | ||
| I believe this is what they call the black sheep of the family. | ||
| With the amount of information that Google manages, do you think that they or some automated process could attempt some form of subtle manipulation, like generating echo chambers, shadow banding, and even some form of really subtle blackmail? | ||
| I think your answer is yes to this, that we just kind of don't know. | ||
| Yeah, although I don't know if they're so far as targeting specific users and deciding, oh, this is someone that we don't like, therefore we're going to show them weird stuff. | ||
| But a lot of social networks try to find what your preferences are just algorithmically and will show you things that you like. | ||
| So it's not unique to YouTube, for example, to show you videos that you like. | ||
| Facebook is also creating its own echo chamber. | ||
| So it's a problem in general. | ||
| Fair enough. | ||
| You mentioned the other day that the Google image search ads | ||
| are technically sexist. | ||
| Do you know of anything else similar in Google slash YouTube search and ads? | ||
| Can you explain that further? | ||
| I don't remember saying that the ads were sexist. | ||
| I mean, I think we... | ||
| Or do you know what this person's referring to? | ||
| I didn't hear it. | ||
| We look at demographics of the user, and we try to infer that. | ||
| And we use that to maybe show them different ads. | ||
| So in that way, it might be sexist. | ||
| And we also look at different companies like Instagram and Pinterest, which were competitors to image search. | ||
| And we saw, hey, the majority of those users are women. | ||
| And the reason was that women are more open to aesthetics, which is another thing that I mentioned. | ||
| And so we definitely use some of these things when we're designing products, but we may not be able, or we may not be so open about discussing them in our diversity programs. | ||
| This is a total sidebar, it's not on here, but as you know, I was just off the grid for a month and I truly, I felt like a million bucks. | ||
| I thought I cleared my mind in so many ways. | ||
| I felt my train of thought was better. | ||
| My attention span was better. | ||
| I was more attentive to people and my dog. | ||
| Just as a general thing, do you feel we're just too inundated with this stuff at this point? | ||
| As humans and what our brains have evolved to be, what they biologically are, do you think just staring at this thing all day might be a problem? | ||
| Yeah, I think we're definitely too addicted to being connected and more just person-to-person interactions and maybe interacting with nature can definitely improve your general happiness. | ||
| Fair enough. | ||
| Alright, I'm going to keep doing work in the yard out there. | ||
| Okay, we did that one. | ||
| I have people telling me that enforcing immigration laws is racist. | ||
| I don't understand that level of delusion. | ||
| The left seems to have lost its mind. | ||
| How can I begin deprogramming the religion of the left? | ||
| So obviously this is going to my wheelhouse. | ||
| I talk about this a lot. | ||
| What do you think is a tactic if you see someone that's buying all of this stuff? | ||
| Yeah, it's really hard. | ||
| I think some of Jonathan Haidt's work is really good in explaining the ideology behind the left and right, and showing that they disagree, but it's not because conservatives are just racist, sexist bigots. | ||
| It's they have different morals that they're operating on, and those cause them to see issues differently. | ||
| And at least showing that you have a different point of view and it's not just a bigoted point of view, that there's morals of having a law and order or something like that is not necessarily bigoted. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Well, I think we already got this, but do you have any insight into what's driving the demonetization of so many YouTube videos now, or did you work in a completely separate area of Google? | ||
| So we could just answer that in the context of your work. | ||
| People hear software engineer, what in the world does that even mean at a place like Google? | ||
| There's a gajillion products. | ||
| Yeah, so I was a coder for image and video search, and so we interacted with YouTube actually, and I interned at YouTube. | ||
| So I interacted with them a little bit, and And there were company-wide meetings, so everyone at Google knew some aspects of it. | ||
| Their demonetization thing, I think that really ramped up in the controversy last year, where there were some advertisers that were just angry about particular videos having their ads. | ||
| So that was the excuse for them to start doing a lot of this demonetization. | ||
| I don't know how much of it is a rational response to that and how much of it is just ideologically driven at this point. | ||
| Do you think they were waiting for an excuse that even though they knew it was gonna hurt the bottom line, which as I said before, could be an issue with shareholders in terms of stock, do you think they were just waiting in a way? | ||
| Like they got the call from whoever those, I think AT&T or whoever canceled the bulk ads, and they were like, ah, we're losing money, but yay, because we can finally move on this That's interesting. | ||
| that we care about. | ||
| Yeah, it's possible. | ||
| And you mentioned that this is hurting their bottom line, but they've actually stated when they went public | ||
| that we'll do certain things that we see as right, but will hurt our bottom line. | ||
| So they're definitely open to stuff like that. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| Listen, I don't have enough information on what, as I've said, the fiduciary responsibility | ||
| of a company is to its shareholders. | ||
| But I think there's just something interesting to explore there. | ||
| It is very obvious that that is not what I'm an expert in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| In your opinion, should Google as a company be split up similar to Standard Oil was split up in the early 20th century? | ||
| I think we've kind of bounced around that if you've got anything else. | ||
| Let me know. | ||
| Oh, have you done, do you know about the reasoning behind altering the search results for American inventors? | ||
| The image results are all people of color and women, and I don't recognize 90% of them, and Benjamin Franklin shows up only on the first few pages. | ||
| So a bunch of people have sent this to me. | ||
| Is it American inventors? | ||
| Is that the phrase? | ||
| Yeah, if you just search American inventors, when you're within America, then it shows just a lot of these minority inventors | ||
| and not some of the more famous ones. | ||
| Even though if you do the same search in a different country, | ||
| or sometimes in a different language, it'll show some of the more famous ones. | ||
| I think someone- What does that mean? | ||
| I mean, really, now, so give me some insight into how in the world does that happen? | ||
| No one has a problem with my, not no one, but I certainly don't have a problem, and the average person, and 99% of Americans, don't have a problem with a minority inventor or a female inventor. | ||
| But if you're searching inventors, you wanna know who the big shots are. | ||
| In this case, I guess most of them happen to be white, at least within the context of American whatever. | ||
| So what is this? | ||
| Yeah, I think a lot of it just is someone complained about, oh, this wasn't diverse enough, and therefore we need to change it. | ||
| And so they fiddled with it a little bit, and now it's how it is. | ||
| So it's basically an endless hostage situation, I think, is sort of what you described before. | ||
| That because these words of racist and bigot have taken such meaning that everyone then that's about to be subjected to it will be like, yeah, I'll screw with the algorithm, no problem. | ||
| We'll put Benjamin Franklin on the 18th page. | ||
| Everyone will forget about him. | ||
| That's scary. | ||
| Well, I think you've also answered this, but what motivated you to make such a public position on a heated topic like this? | ||
| What made you want to be the test case? | ||
| You're a braver man than I, cheers. | ||
| I mean, I never meant for the document itself to be public, but once it was, I felt like I sort of had a responsibility to, you know, at least show that I'm not some sort of Nazi white supremacist and... How did that get part of the link? | ||
| Now, I understand it, but for the average person watching this, how does that, where you write this and then suddenly you're being called alt-right and a white supremacist and all that, how do you even see how they do that trick? | ||
| Yeah, I think that they just, There's not really any logic behind it. | ||
| It's just they want to smear my name and they say, oh yeah, he didn't say this, but he implied it in some way. | ||
| And yeah, I, they just do it to hurt people in general of people whose opinions they disagree with. | ||
| All right, you know what, I think we'll do two here. | ||
| Two more, I think. | ||
| You've been very focused in here, and I think two more is fair, because I think a lot of, you know, there's a ton of support for you, obviously, here, and all that stuff, so here we go. | ||
| So, this is the best interview I've seen with James Damore, and I've seen them all. | ||
| Terrific job, fascinating content. | ||
| Okay, thank you. | ||
| I'll still do two more. | ||
| Do you have a favorite book or blog that you might want to send people to, or tell people to read? | ||
| At least about this, the Blank Slate by Steven Pinker was pretty good. | ||
| I think we're getting them on the show. | ||
| We've been working on it. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Yeah, that'd be great. | ||
| We're trying, we're trying. | ||
| In your opinion, do you think there will be practical ramifications for not promoting or hiring based on merit, meaning that the actual Google software will be negatively affected? | ||
| This is a really complex question, but I think it's a good one. | ||
| Yeah, definitely that could happen. | ||
| And especially as things get more and more complicated within Google, you get bigger and bigger systems, you need the best people. | ||
| So basically you have these interdependent systems, and if you're not hiring based on merit alone, That one system failing starts other systems to start failing. | ||
| I mean, it really could be the collapse of something massive. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And, you know, a lot of what they do is alienate some of the really system-oriented people, like basically people on the autism spectrum. | ||
| And those are the people most skilled at really analyzing these systems and discovering the rules behind them. | ||
| And, but those are also the people that don't really understand social situations as well. | ||
| And that's who they're punishing with a lot of this unconscious bias type stuff. | ||
| Which is particularly fascinating because there's a lot of people that are on the spectrum in Silicon Valley. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So it's really this like, it's a double-edged sword, but it's also like a really confounding thing for these people who just want to do good work. | ||
| I mean, to do the thing that they're really focused on and really passionate about. | ||
| Yeah, that's something. | ||
| All right, well, I'll ask the last question. | ||
| It will come from me, but thank you guys for submitting all the questions. | ||
| It's pretty obvious to me, you're gonna find a job, you're gonna do well, all that good stuff, but I have a feeling somebody might be out there watching this right now going, I wanna help this guy. | ||
| Sure, we can send him to your Twitter and all that stuff, but you wanna give any kind of sell a job for somebody that's out there looking for somebody with your skillset or anything? | ||
| I'm really putting you on the spot. | ||
| Yeah, I'm still trying to figure out what exactly I want to do. | ||
| If they want to support the lawsuit, there is the WeSearcher that I have. | ||
| I'm still personally trying to figure it out. | ||
| But if anyone really wants to discuss things, just send me a message. | ||
| Because I'm always willing to have one-on-one conversations with anyone. | ||
| All right, well, listen, if you've proven anything to me here is that you're a humble guy, your intentions are good. | ||
| It seems to me that if you were provided with evidence that some of the things that you've said here were wrong or misinformed or whatever, that you'd be happy to continue that discussion. | ||
| And if you remain a public figure, I'd be happy to do this again. | ||
| And if you don't, I'd be happy to go for coffee or for lunch. | ||
| And I wish you luck with everything you're doing. | ||
| Yeah, thanks. | ||
| All right, well, thanks to James Damore. | ||
| You can find him on the Twitter. | ||
| Did you have the blue check before this whole thing happened? | ||
| Yeah, I got it. | ||
| Before this whole thing. | ||
| Oh, no, no. | ||
| I didn't have Twitter at all before this. | ||
| I still don't really know how to use it. | ||
| He wasn't even on Twitter before this, people. | ||
| He's got the blue check, and his handle's quite appropriate. | ||
| It's Fired4, the number four truth. | ||
| So I thank James, and I will be on Tucker Carlson tonight, probably discussing some of this stuff, and discussing the YouTube situation and all that. | ||
| And again, as I will say to Tucker tonight, and it's sort of what James said to me, he was talking about these things because he wanted the company to be better. | ||
| That's what I want YouTube to be, and more transparent and all that good stuff. | ||
| So anyway, thanks for watching this, and we are live tomorrow. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| We were gonna do Blair White tomorrow, but I believe we are... We're doing it on Tuesday! | ||
| There you go, I got a team back there. | ||
| I'm not making this stuff up. |
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