James Damore details his August 7th termination from Google after distributing a memo on biological gender differences, alleging the company illegally discriminated against conservatives through ideological blacklists and forced diversity training. He contrasts Google's shifting "do no evil" motto with alleged algorithmic bias against right-wing creators, while Rubin questions the validity of pay disparity claims and highlights the dangers of mob mentality within tech culture. Ultimately, the conversation exposes how progressive dogma may be systematically suppressing scientific facts and alienating merit-based individuals, suggesting a broader crisis of free speech in centralized platforms. [Automatically generated summary]
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 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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 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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 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?
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?
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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!