Monday 4 September 2017

The Google Memo: The Economist On Nothing | Quillette, Patrick Lee Miller

My favourite Google doodle. This one is not by Google!
I thought I'd done with James Damore's "Google memo", but no. I've just read an outstanding piece of analysis by the philosopher Patrick Lee Miller in the online journal Quilette: The Google Memo: The Economist On Nothing.
He takes on a recent Economist pretension in which its editors pretend to be Google founder Larry Page ("Larry Page") writing a stern note to Damore on why he deserved to be fired.
In fact the opposite is the case as professor Miller shows -- and as plenty of other comment has made clear.
I was shocked and depressed by Google CEO Sundar Pichai's decision to fire Damore. Shocked because it seemed a precipitate move; surely Pichai could have waited a bit for more measured consideration.  And depressed because he had so quickly given in to the anti-science bullies of the SJW crowd. And Google is supposed to be about science, analysis, careful consideration of facts not opinion.  Absent some legal issue we don't know about that forced the firing, Pichai's firing of Damore was gutless. Gutless.
Oh, and there's another reason I was shocked and depressed: we own Google stock. I didn't like to think that one of our prime holdings was breaking bad.  Has Pichai forgotten their original mission: "Don't be evil"?
Miller's is a long post, but is well worth the time. It's elegantly written and so tight in its logic, as one would expect, I expect, from a philosopher.