The Kolmogorov option

As Aristotle apparently said "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

If we can't even discuss certain topics, if we can't even think things through, then we've entered the realm of thought police.

Did we read the same manifesto? Because I don't recall that part at all.

I do recall him saying in several places that despite population-level differences in averages for certain personality traits, it was incorrect to take the average and apply it to individuals within that group due to the large overlap between different groups.

> It's a pretty solid rebuttal to any and all concerns that women are innately unsuited to computers rather than that our computer culture has driven them away.

And this article [0], has a pretty solid rebuttal as to that interpretation of that graph (among other things).

0: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...

Or at least not if we're talking about having public rational discussions about it. The validity and correct interpretation of evidence is extremely hard for a lay audience to judge.

Putting a climate scientist and a climate science denier on a podium to have a rational discussion is not likely to lead the audience to a more rational decision. Ditto for creationists.

Does this concrete case fall into this category? My initial guess would have been no, and that a more rational engagement would have been the better way to go about it.

But after reading parts of the memo, and skimming the rest, I am not sure any more. There is an overwhelming scientific consensus that most of the gender structure we see today is cultural. This is not in contradiction to the existence of innate differences. The problem of the memo isn't that it differs from this consensus, the problem is that it doesn't acknowledge it (and rather treats it as a misguided "extreme and authoritarian" ideology).

I believe there are many things in the academic consensus worth criticising, I also believe that there are many more things in the political consensus built around it to criticise. But that's not really what this memo does.

For example, it selectively cites a tiny corner of the research literature, conveniently ignoring the mountains of evidence that don't fit the stated thesis.

So while avoiding the Red Pill brigade, participate in team building and reinforcing relationships with the people you want to keep around you. So you have a safe area (a domain of your life, not a physical constraint) where you relate to people with protected attributes the way they wish to be related to (usually: with respect, openness and with no attention paid to protected attributes)

When dealing with people outside your safe areas, do not mention the protected attributes of those inside your safe areas.

Choose your battles. Don't try sacrificing yourself over a hill that nobody needs.

You can still discuss the nuances with people who are open to frank discussions about contentious issues. Just be prepared to have your own assumptions challenged by the people you think you are protecting.

Most of this discussion outrage is based on people on all sides not realising they start from different, inherently subjective premises, and then believe they can build a universally true objective claim on that card house.

EDIT: This is why I believe people in STEM fields would really benefit from spending some time learning about the qualitative sciences and the philosophy of science it builds on. Because unlike physics or maths it is not based on the often implicit notion of an objective external truth - it cannot be. In some ways it is much more challenging to do good science it in.

To me, appeals to "rational discussion" represent an unwillingness to accept that humans are messy, irrational creatures, and that rationality itself is but a tool, not an end-goal (and by extension, a denial of one's own irrationality). We're not modelling our society on Skinner-boxes for a reason.