At this moment you probably already heard about the "racist memo from a Google employee" that went viral.
To summarize, James Damore, now a former Google employee, wrote a memo describing the current situation on diversity inside Google.
The memo was very polite, fully backed by evidence and pointing to articles and other scientific literature supporting his positions. He wanted to point out how the current diversity culture at Google (and I could risk saying it is the same in most of IT companies) was biased and not backed by actual science.
He argues that Google was ignoring a vast number of studies on differences of distribution of personality traits among the sexes, and that is why the programs targeting diversity on Google are not effective.
The memo was edited by Gizmodo, removing all the sources and charts, but you can find it uncensored here.
The most important thing about this memo is that James asks for a more open environment for different political views, this way employees with conservative, libertarians, classical liberals or any other political orientation but liberal won't be afraid of retaliation, for example, being fired.
And guess what? Yes, he was fired, confirming his point that Google is not an open environment for a diversity of ideas.
Before that, Danielle Brown wrote a response, stating how Google value diversity of political views, except if it is not a liberal one, in the best of Henry Ford tradition. She ignored all the evidence he mentioned. You can find the full response here
The reactions to the memo are, in most cases, completely out of proportion, calling the guy sexist, racist, bigot. Some of the responses have even stated they will leave the company if Google doesn't take action (read: firing him).
This shows how taboo is to discuss this kind of subject in the current cultural scenario, it needs to change.
Some scientists came to support the guy and they have written a nice article explaining why most, if not all, points raised by the former Google employee are valid and backed by real science
Then he also received job offers from gab.ai and Wikileaks, showing that there is some support to voice different opinions.
There's something crumbling about this culture of social justice warriors. In some regards, it reminds the way religions used to organize and protect their taboos, ignoring evidence and science in favor of an agenda. If we can't open discuss a theme, we are creating a non-free society, a society that is afraid to express itself, and it is not healthy in any sense.
Google used to have the mantra "Don't be evil", this was supposed to mean an open environment that everyone feels welcome.
When you silence your employees who are just expressing their concerns in a polite way you are not following your mantra, you are being evil.
