Sundar Pichai, epistemic ethics & Coase's Antidosis

Epistemic ethics is the notion that people who do a particular type of rigorous research should find common 'action guiding' principles on the basis of what they study. So a Geneticist who knows that there is no difference, at the DNA level, between an Iyer and an Iyengar should not behave as though Iyengars are superior to Iyers. Also she should let me take her out on a date. Who knows? Maybe I really am a handsome 24 year old who has been nominated for the Fields Medal. Why not take a chance?

Speaking of Iyengars, I notice that Google is now headed by one such youngster. Since Google does research, it follows that Pichai may be bound by the epistemic ethics relevant to the sort of research his company is involved in. Just recently, some guy wrote a memo about how women and minorities are getting special treatment in that Company and boo hoo it isn't fair.

Now, all right thinking people acknowledge that when you run a big company what you should do is to listen to each and every employee and gently lactate the milk of human kindness as you do so.  Pichai, of course, is not denying that he listened very carefully and lactated very profusely but the fact is he also fired the dude who was causing him a headache.

Did Pichai violate epistemic ethics?

Scott Aaronson, at Shtetl optimised, has lactated profusely and cogitated profoundly on this question.

He says-

'if James Damore deserves to be fired from Google, for treating evolutionary psychology as potentially relevant to social issues, then Steven Pinker deserves to be fired from Harvard for the same offense.

Yes, I realize that an employee of a private company is different from a tenured professor. But I don’t see why it’s relevant here. For if someone really believes that mooting the hypothesis of an evolutionary reason for average differences in cognitive styles between men and women, is enough by itself to create a hostile environment for women—well then, why should tenure be a bar to firing, any more than it is in cases of sexual harassment?

Was James Damore employed for the specific purpose of investigating evolutionary psychology? Is he an eminent man in that field? Would a janitor at Harvard, who made similar points to Damore, perhaps not as cogently, and not by means of an email memo, been sacked? I think so. The janitor is employed to mop the floors. Airing his views on evolutionary psychology might constitute a nuisance and it might alarm some students and faculty.

Scott might reply 'But, Pichai & Damore are both Science Nerds'

'They share an epistemic ethics.'

Why should Pichai get to fire Damore?

Ronald Coase developed a Theory of the Firm based on the notion that where transaction costs are high or markets are missing, it makes sense to aggregate certain sorts of activities under a distinct corporate personality rather than to just contract on the open market for specific goods and services as required.

According to this theory, Corporate decision making has a different information set and pay-off matrix from that of any individual. Further, the Chief Executive may be aware of particular cost schedules and other strategic considerations which are not 'common knowledge'. In this case, though all employees may have the same duty to the Corporation, they do not necessarily have the same duties to each other by virtue of their ex officio capacity. As a janitor I have a duty to the Company. However it is not a duty I can properly discharge by barging into the Board Room and explaining my theory of option pricing. There are exceptions to this rule. If I genuinely have important information then a Court may find that I had a duty to share that information even if that was not the specific purpose for which I was hired.

In this particular case, the CEO is empowered to say what is or is not the Company's interpretation of a specific course of conduct in relation to a possible breach of existing policy regarding safety in the workplace. Pichai was legally entitled to sack someone whom he thought had infringed that policy because he had the right to interpret his own Company's rule in this respect. The employee concerned had no such right. Because the law is clear on this point, Damore will face an uphill legal battle if he sues for damages.

However, even he had no legal right to do so, there may have been good commercial reasons for Pichai to sack the fellow pour encourager les autres. His Board would probably have approved. However, in that case Damore may be entitled to damages.

Of course, we all understand that a thing can be permitted by the law and advisable on commercial grounds and yet be unethical. In particular, it may be legal and profitable for a Scientist to endorse some pseudo-scientific rubbish so as to make money, but we would still feel this this to be a violation of epistemic ethics. We would say- 'This man may be doing good Science but he is a bad Scientist because he is undermining Scientific method and the hard won reputation for integrity of other toilers in this field.'

Perhaps, there is some genuine philosophical puzzle or aporia here?

Scott now presents a bizarre argument which staves off this possibility-

But the reductio needn’t stop there. It seems to me that, if Damore deserves to be fired, then so do the 56% of Googlers who said in a poll that they opposed his firing. For isn’t that 56% just as responsible for maintaining a hostile environment as Damore himself was? (And how would Google find out which employees opposed the firing? Well, if there’s any company on earth that could…) Furthermore, after those 56% of Googlers are fired, any of the remaining 44% who think the 56% shouldn’t have been fired should be fired as well! And so on iteratively, until only an ideologically reliable core remains, which might or might not be the empty set.

Under perfect information, no missing markets, no convexities etc; it would be true that people who oppose Damore's firing might be judged to have the same opprobrious quality. But in that case, there would be no Google because the Coasian conditions for the firm to exist would not be met.

It is rational for a person who does not want to be fired- perhaps because his transfer earnings are low- to not want anyone to be fired. Of course, in a perfect information world, nobody earns any economic rent and so it is not rational to object to being fired oneself or care about anyone else being fired.

Obviously, a perfect Arrow Debreu world with perfect forward markets for everything would also be one where there would be no Epistemics or Ethics or Epistemic Ethics. All knowledge would be available everywhere. No Choice would bear an externality or be other than regret minimizing ( which fulfills virtue ethics.)

Scott's foray into epistemic ethics turns out to be utterly worthless.

This raises the question-

Can Epistemic ethics exist in an imperfect Coasian world?

Sure.

Think of a epistemic duty as being like a liturgical requirement in ancient Athens.

Scott thinks Pichai had an epistemic duty to retain Damore.

By Antidosis, Pichai can say 'I'll swap places with a CEO ready to retain Damore provided I get a company equal to Google to manage.' Scott can put together such a Company and do the deal. 

Actually, Financial Markets allow something like Athenian Antidosis already. It may be that Damore has the right business model. Some VCs get together and make a hostile bid. Or maybe there is a Board Room coup. Or a Management buy out.

It seems the Coasian firm already has a way to do epistemic ethics.
Scott doesn't, but he has lactated very profusely on his blog.
That's something nobody can take away from him.