Smearing Free Thought in Silicon Valley
Every repugnant conclusion has always come coated in a veneer of rationality. No racist, sexist, islamophobe or any other kind of bigot has ever called themselves by these appellations or expressed their opinions without being able to bring in piles of dubious evidence to back up their opinions.<p>Let&#x27;s take the example of the Men&#x27;s Rights Movement discussed in the article. While there are of course many factions within the MRM, the very existence of something that arose specifically to counteract the rise of feminism is a slap in the face to the struggles brought forth by women. With the same veneer of rationality, its purpose is to drown out women&#x27;s concerns by raising the voices of men to a raucous cry.<p>This is not to say that men do not experience problems, but the MRM is almost exclusively a reaction to feminism. It&#x27;s an age-old divisionary tactic, of pitting an oppressed group against an even more oppressed group. The English American colonists considered the genocided Native Americans to be one of their biggest oppressors, the war-torn Germans took to blaming the Jews who have already been persecuted for centuries. It&#x27;s easier to find a weaker target than to look for the deeper causes of oppression.<p>The problem with Damore is not that his stats are wrong, but their veneer of rationality. Disagreeing with his repugnant conclusions (such as, eliminating Google&#x27;s diversity programmes), is not because we hate scientific discourse, but because his veneer of rationality is just that: a veneer. The causes and explanations are far more complicated than what he cites or could cite in the space of 11 pages, and in the meantime it&#x27;s far better to err in the side of caution and offer an advantage to the underrepresented group.