New York Times once again demonstrates its alt-right philosophy by assuming a there are merely two gender ( https://apath.org/63-genders/ ), _in the first sentence_.
TIL, New York Times is alt-right
Google’s War Over the Sexes
51–60 of 91 posts
Re: Google’s War Over the Sexes
#52The most troubling thing about this whole issue for me is the weird fetish about "biology" on both sides of the debate. As Mr. Hume told us a few hundred years ago, nature simply is , and doesn't tell us what ought to be . As such I have trouble understanding why we are approaching the issue from this angle. Instead of obsessing about biology, we should care about how we want our workplaces to look. And I would welco…
While is does not imply ought, is limits the possible. I want to be a billionaire, but no matter my wish the fact of the matter is otherwise.
Re: Google’s War Over the Sexes
#53The most troubling thing about this whole issue for me is the weird fetish about "biology" on both sides of the debate. As Mr. Hume told us a few hundred years ago, nature simply is , and doesn't tell us what ought to be . As such I have trouble understanding why we are approaching the issue from this angle. Instead of obsessing about biology, we should care about how we want our workplaces to look. And I would welco…
> nature simply is, and doesn't tell us what ought to be A lot of studies have probe the opposite (recent studies, not old ones). > I have trouble understanding why we are approaching the issue from this angle. Because you have cases like Norway, one of the most genre equality countries, where the ratios or men/women in tech are even worse that less genre equality countries. And the most accepted theory for this is b…
> Because you have cases like Norway, one of the most genre equality countries, where the ratios or men/women in tech are even worse that less genre equality countries. And the most accepted theory for this is based on biology (actually other theories fall apart because they don't have any evidence).
This is nonsense. There is absolutely no scientific theory that explains how exposure to pre-natal testosterone translates into a gender imbalances in software engineering. There's also no "accepted" theory to explain why the percentage of female computer science graduates has fallen drastically since 1980. Women certainly haven't evolved in the last thirty years.
Here's the funny thing: we've all seen this movie before. The script goes like this:
1. An extreme gender imbalance is observed in a field say [science, medecine, law, advertising, banking]. People try to justify that explaining that the imbalance is "natural" because women don't want to be in the field because of X.
2. Corporations work to remove the real barriers -- systemic discrimination.
3. With the discrimination gone women go on to dominate the field.
The same thing is likely going to happen to software engineering. The reality is that we can observe this from a very young age: women are better at collaborative knowledge games. They study harder, they ask more questions, they seek out help, and they work better in groups. In other words, they're better students. And in many jobs where the primary task is collaborative knowledge production we've come to see women quickly become a majority.
When this happens to software engineering (which has only recently become a high-paying, high-status job with big perks in the last ~20 years) women will come and they will do what they do best. When that happens all those insisting on biology will look pretty damn foolish (just like they have in the past) but the real tragedy is the missed opportunity.
Re: Google’s War Over the Sexes
#54At last a balanced story on the topic. The discussions online on this topic have been mind numbing - quoting out of context, ad hominem attacks, every bad form of arguments listed in PG's essay[1]. Twitter is the worst. Almost makes me want to build a better debating platform. [1] - http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
>Almost makes me want to build a better debating platform.
I’ve thought about this for a long time. I think the trick is to realize that most people DON’T want to have a debate. It takes a lot of self-control, forethought, and careful speaking to actually sit down and rationally argue. Realizing you’re wrong is really hard and painful, and most people don’t intentionally seek it out.
If people wanted to have productive debate, that’s possible on virtually every communication platform (except Twitter due to its word count). Tumblr, Facebook, HN, Reddit — they all have public posts and a reply system. It’s all about the context and goals of the people debating. Do they genuinely want to learn, or are they here just to argue?
The best quality debate can be found in places where people actually want to change their mind (some subsets of the rationality community like LessWrong). My favorite layman’s version is /r/ChangeMyView which does a tolerable job. I think the goal should be to build a debating community, where the technology underlying it is only a small piece of the overall construction.
Re: Google’s War Over the Sexes
#55The most troubling thing about this whole issue for me is the weird fetish about "biology" on both sides of the debate. As Mr. Hume told us a few hundred years ago, nature simply is , and doesn't tell us what ought to be . As such I have trouble understanding why we are approaching the issue from this angle. Instead of obsessing about biology, we should care about how we want our workplaces to look. And I would welco…
> As Mr. Hume told us a few hundred years ago, nature simply is, and doesn't tell us what ought to be It unfortunately isn't that simple. About a century ago, one of the fathers of social psychology, no less, and an opinion leader at the time, offered the following quote: > In the most intelligent races, as among the Parisians, there are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas tha…
How on earth did educated men ever come to this sort of conclusion? Did they simply not come into contact with any women other than, say, a scullery maid or their sassy teenage daughter? I just can't understand it. Did these men have no respect for their wives?
Re: Google’s War Over the Sexes
#56Never heard of feminists pushing for quotas for dangerous or dirty jobs.
Have you ever looked? Here's what NOW's president said about women and selective service registration back in 1981:
by excluding women even from registration, the government held that “every man, regardless of any disability, must register, but that all women, regardless of competency, cannot,” a distinction which created the “myth that all men are more competent than all women.”
That's the biggest (as far as I know) women's interest group and they support women being a part of the draft. Here's some more resources:
http://www.explorethetrades.org/women-in-trades/
http://chicagowomenintrades2.org/
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-women-in-trades-04...
Health-care workers experience the most nonfatal workplace violence compared to other professions by a wide margin, with attacks on them accounting for almost 70 percent of all nonfatal workplace assaults causing days away from work in the U.S., according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
from: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/epidemic-of-viole...
Re: Google’s War Over the Sexes
#57What's interesting is if you read the comment section there is literally 0 comment that agrees with the author. Even the "NYT picks" are the comments bashing on this guy.
It just shows that NYT has turned itself into an opposite of Breitbart, instead of aspiring to become more unbiased news source. I'm actually surprised that they even let this guy write this piece on NYT.
Re: Google’s War Over the Sexes
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
> His repeated references to women as childbearers Pardon me, but this is in(s)ane. WHO ELSE BUT WOMEN BEARS CHILDREN? Apologies, but I had to get that out of my system.
You reminded me of that great scene in Life of Brian where Stan wants to be known as Loretta and wants the right to have babies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PObBA2wH5l0
It is indeed symbolic of the struggle with reality.
Re: Google’s War Over the Sexes
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
> nature simply is, and doesn't tell us what ought to be A lot of studies have probe the opposite (recent studies, not old ones). > I have trouble understanding why we are approaching the issue from this angle. Because you have cases like Norway, one of the most genre equality countries, where the ratios or men/women in tech are even worse that less genre equality countries. And the most accepted theory for this is b…
>A lot of studies have probe the opposite (recent studies, not old ones). You should familiarise yourself with the philosophical basis of the is/ought distinction. There is no good reason to assume that scientific inquiry, which tells us a fact about the world in any way tells us what we should want or should do. Scientific evidence is a tool to evaluate whether we are effectively pursuing our normative values. Scien…
You're completely right - science can't dictate what should be, only what is. But part of the problem, as I see it, is that there are far too many people who dismiss any science that says things are different from the way they think things should be.
On the flipside, there's far too many people who do the opposite and ignore what "should be" using "what is" as the excuse.
Re: Google’s War Over the Sexes
#60The most troubling thing about this whole issue for me is the weird fetish about "biology" on both sides of the debate. As Mr. Hume told us a few hundred years ago, nature simply is , and doesn't tell us what ought to be . As such I have trouble understanding why we are approaching the issue from this angle. Instead of obsessing about biology, we should care about how we want our workplaces to look. And I would welco…
Let me quote someone who has said it much better than I can: "But it is crucial to distinguish the moral proposition that people should not be discriminated against on account of their sex — which I take to be the core of feminism — and the empirical claim that males and females are biologically indistinguishable. They are not the same thing. Indeed, distinguishing them is essential to protecting the core of feminism…
>The nature and source of sex differences are also of practical importance. Most of us agree that there are aspects of the world, including gender disparities, that we want to change. But if we want to change the world we must first understand it, and that includes understanding the sources of sex differences. "
completely agree with Pinker's sentiment but it is very important to note that for him understanding nature is emancipatory.
For him understanding our natural limitations is a means to figure out how to overcome them. For people preoccupied in this debate scientific discovery about differences seems to be used in the way some mad 19th century eugenistics used it, as a quasi religious justification of the status quo.
This is exactly the wrong way to approach the topic, and precisely how the googler attempted to portray the existing evidence. This produced the outlash.