The power of role models • Hacker News Board

Re: The power of role models

#351

Post by camelite » Sun, Feb 26, 2017, 8:39 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #71

Oxitendwe wrote: post #24

>The best way to improve the representation of women in the field is not to recruit them, important though that is, but to promote them. To create role models. To push them into positions of influence. I find the idea that we should "push them into positions of influence" abhorrent. These are zero sum games, to give them a special advantage over any other demographic is to disadvantage another. This is antithetical t…

If you disagree with Pike's implied priors, do so directly; don't huff about how logic that starts from a different set of premises to yours ends at a bad place when you swap the premises out from under it. One very simple, coherent way to arrive at Pike's position without sacrificing the notion of merit is to accept the idea that it's very unlikely that computer technology is unique among the professions in being su…

Why is it very unlikely that computer technology is uniquely suited to men? Speaking from personal experience, my twin sister had perfectly equal opportunity to learn to program as me, and slightly higer mathematical aptitude, but she utterly lacked interest. Same story with my cousins. It's not an uncommon story. Why do you find it so unconvincing an explanation?

Re: The power of role models

#352

Post by camelite » Sun, Feb 26, 2017, 9:14 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #282

throwaway399 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nature of the work in all of these fields is different. My point is that women are not less qualified, but just less interested in a career of doing the kind of work software engineers do. It is very very different from applied math and statistics. Neuro/molecular/chem ~= biology and is similar to each other for the most part. women are underrepresented in almost all major engineering fields. It's not like the ma…

There was no set of comparable fields I could give where you wouldn't be able to provide some kind of distinction as if it was determinative, but at some point the argument gets so finicky that it becomes tautological. Science, but nothing biological, even if it requires organic chem and computational models. And not astronomy. Only physics, even though only a tiny minority of CS practitioners have physics training.…

> Again, this is what it means for an argument to be a special pleading: we're required to accept an obstacle course of criterion that ignores the simplest, most plausible comparisons.

On the contrary, if you look at lists of the representation gap between professions, computer programmers fit right into their surroundings. It requires special pleading to explain why programming is systematically discriminating against women, and not civil engineers, sound technicians, chemical engineers, industrial engineers, mechanical engineers, aerospace engineers, professionally active mathematicians, chemical engineers etc...

Re: The power of role models

#353

Post by camelite » Sun, Feb 26, 2017, 9:21 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #242

discombobulate wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Your parent comment was talking about engineering .

So engineering is different both from science and from actuaries (a math-intensive field with much better gender parity than computer technology), and from all the other lucrative professions. The pleading here seems to me to get more and more special with each iteration of the argument.

Yeah engineering is different from science. There's a reason people came up with a whole different word for it.

> a math-intensive field with much better gender parity than computer technology

Stop saying this. It's not better, it's different.

> The pleading here seems to me to get more and more special with each iteration of the argument.

It's not special. Look at the tables, practically all engineering professions are 80ish% male. If you want to damn computer programming as discriminatory just because lots of women take Maths for their GCSEs, are 35% of chemists and 50% of biologists, you have to do the same for ALL engineers.

Re: The power of role models

#354

Post by dang » Sun, Feb 26, 2017, 9:34 PM UTC

nielsabel wrote: post #307

dang wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This aggressive rant crosses the line on HN. If you can't contain your anger enough to post substantively and with respect for opposing views, you're not welcome to post here. It's not in your interest to do this anyhow, since it undercuts everything you're saying.

> This aggressive rant crosses the line on HN. If you can't contain your anger I'm not angry at all, really. Merely stating my perspective. > enough to post substantively and with respect for opposing views, you're not welcome to post here. It seems to me that my view is the opposing one. Balancing the different views, in my opinion, is the job of the (critical) reader. How is the reader supposed to do this if all op…

This is like peeing in a swimming pool and concluding people don't like your butterfly stroke.

Re: The power of role models

#355

Post by tptacek » Sun, Feb 26, 2017, 9:56 PM UTC

discombobulate wrote: post #347

tptacek wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, name calling doesn't make your argument any more credible. Second, you're still just avoiding the question. The idea that there is an intrinsic gender difference driving gender disparity in tech has a huge hurdle to clear, which is that the same disparity does not exist in other STEM fields . Even the STEM fields that have gender parity problems don't have it as bad as CS does. In order to compose a persuasive…

> First, name calling doesn't make your argument any more credible. It explains your position. Being meta isn't name-calling. Or if it is it's on the same level of Nietzsche saying philosophers derive philosophy from who they are. 2) You've listed three such subjects yourself: CS, engineering, physics. Not such a high hurdle when there are multiple elements in the set. Which you left out. Strawman. Or is it OK to be…

Paraphrasing:

"Computers are different from all the rest of science. That's why there's so few women in the field."

How are computers different from the rest of science?

"They just are!"

That's not an argument.

"You're a dishonest jerk!"

I think I understand where you're coming from now.

Re: The power of role models

#356

Post by camelite » Sun, Feb 26, 2017, 10:00 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #165

zigzigzag wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meritocracy paradoxically seems to lead to worse results overall An extreme opinion stated as if it's a fact. Can you show me the phalanx of companies systematically beating their competition by deliberately hiring incompetent but genetically "diverse" people?

No... You don't hire incompetent people. You hire competent people. The "competition" is the one that is hiring the incompetent people, by missing out on half of the talent. Focusing on diversity makes your company MORE competent, not less.

No. Focusing on competence AKA merit makes your company more competent. Focusing on something else necessarily hinders your ability to focus on competence.

Re: The power of role models

#357

Post by tptacek » Sun, Feb 26, 2017, 10:01 PM UTC

camelite wrote: post #351

tptacek wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you disagree with Pike's implied priors, do so directly; don't huff about how logic that starts from a different set of premises to yours ends at a bad place when you swap the premises out from under it. One very simple, coherent way to arrive at Pike's position without sacrificing the notion of merit is to accept the idea that it's very unlikely that computer technology is unique among the professions in being su…

Why is it very unlikely that computer technology is uniquely suited to men? Speaking from personal experience, my twin sister had perfectly equal opportunity to learn to program as me, and slightly higer mathematical aptitude, but she utterly lacked interest. Same story with my cousins. It's not an uncommon story. Why do you find it so unconvincing an explanation?

Because it's difficult to identify aspects of computer technology that are unique to the field and not present in other fields in which women have far better representation. It's simply difficult to come up with a simple explanation for why women would be just fine with graduate-level math, molecular biology, astronomy, or statistics work, but not with computers --- especially given the fact that computer work dominates most of those fields, too.

And the explanation would need to be simple, because it competes with another explanation, which is that computer technology is systemically biased against women, the way every other profession was before those professions took explicit steps to correct disparity.

Re: The power of role models

#358

Post by tptacek » Sun, Feb 26, 2017, 10:12 PM UTC

camelite wrote: post #352

tptacek wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no set of comparable fields I could give where you wouldn't be able to provide some kind of distinction as if it was determinative, but at some point the argument gets so finicky that it becomes tautological. Science, but nothing biological, even if it requires organic chem and computational models. And not astronomy. Only physics, even though only a tiny minority of CS practitioners have physics training.…

> Again, this is what it means for an argument to be a special pleading: we're required to accept an obstacle course of criterion that ignores the simplest, most plausible comparisons. On the contrary, if you look at lists of the representation gap between professions, computer programmers fit right into their surroundings. It requires special pleading to explain why programming is systematically discriminating again…

Something like 35% of mathematics PhDs produced annually are women, and that number is increasing --- it's up from 32% a few years ago. And math is one of the more male-dominated STEM fields.

Computer science, physics, and engineering are the three male bastions of STEM. Nothing else in STEM compares. Moreover, the rest of STEM is significantly and increasingly dependent on computer science, so a very large number of practicing scientists in non-CS, non-engineering fields are spending much of their working time programming computers. Somehow, we've led ourselves to believe that plugging form fields into database columns is serious men's only business, but working with computational models of molecular biology isn't.

It would not challenge my intuitions to find that women in STEM are doing more significant CS work than the overwhelming majority of professional computer programmers.

Re: The power of role models

#359

Post by tptacek » Sun, Feb 26, 2017, 10:21 PM UTC

camelite wrote: post #353

tptacek wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So engineering is different both from science and from actuaries (a math-intensive field with much better gender parity than computer technology), and from all the other lucrative professions. The pleading here seems to me to get more and more special with each iteration of the argument.

Yeah engineering is different from science. There's a reason people came up with a whole different word for it. > a math-intensive field with much better gender parity than computer technology Stop saying this. It's not better, it's different. > The pleading here seems to me to get more and more special with each iteration of the argument. It's not special. Look at the tables, practically all engineering professions…

Ok? And? It's also problematic that so few men working in nursing. What's your point?

Re: The power of role models

#360

Post by bsder » Sun, Feb 26, 2017, 10:53 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #301

bsder wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that every single one of these is a problem for MEN too ... Assignments just don't drop in your lap, you have to go get them. Praise doesn't just materialize, you have to make sure that the right people know what you did--sometimes with a baseball bat. Everybody fights to get "fast-tracked", although I don't really know what that means anymore outside of large companies. I knew lots of people at IBM, both male…

.... Being sexually harassed by your coworkers is a problem for men as well?

Why would you assume that it is not?

And same sex harassment is probably worse. Ever seen someone whip out his junk at a workplace? Happened 3 times in my life.

One of the primary differences is that a man rarely feels physically threatened in a situation. If I'm working at 8PM with a colleague and nobody is in the office, I'm probably not worried about my female colleague physically assaulting me. The reverse, however, is not true.