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How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

bloomberg.com

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Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#101

Post by mpweiher »

danharaj wrote: post #100
mpweiher wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His claim was that biological factors "could" explain the gap, at least in part, in that you can't rule out that possibility categorically. I don't recall him claiming that biological factors were the more important factors, never mind the only ones.

If you don't consider evidence you are aware of in an argument, it means you don't think that evidence is necessary to consider. He wants his argument to be considered rigorously in which case it is appropriate to make inferences about what he didn't consider as well as what he did. It's a quiet truth that most disagreements between people have a crucial basis in the implicit nature of how we weigh and consider infor…

Wow. Just wow.

So basically, you are saying that you can judge him and what he writes not by what he writes, but whatever you want to arbitrarily insert into his writing.

Even the inquisition had higher standards than that.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#102

Post by funion »

k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

This is just one anecdote, but I'd like to share my personal experience. Fitting in with the typical boys who took computer classes in high school was really difficult and unpleasant. I'd been using computers and writing code longer than anyone there thanks to parental encouragement, but as a girl that didn't matter.

Girls in the class got picked on all the time. I got nicknamed "secretary" and singled out every class by the other nerds, getting told to go be a secretary because I could type fast, should input their code for them instead of writing my own, etc etc. People pulled classic bully moves like pulling my chair away when I went to sit down. I felt more bullied by them than I ever did by other kids. In my personal experience, the socially awkward computer boys were actively unwelcoming to girls, and awkwardness did not preclude meanness.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#103

Post by [deleted] »

k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

[deleted]

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#104

Post by danharaj »

mpweiher wrote: post #101
danharaj wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't consider evidence you are aware of in an argument, it means you don't think that evidence is necessary to consider. He wants his argument to be considered rigorously in which case it is appropriate to make inferences about what he didn't consider as well as what he did. It's a quiet truth that most disagreements between people have a crucial basis in the implicit nature of how we weigh and consider infor…

Wow. Just wow. So basically, you are saying that you can judge him and what he writes not by what he writes, but whatever you want to arbitrarily insert into his writing. Even the inquisition had higher standards than that.

Honest question in good faith: have you ever read a serious, rigorous exchange of criticism in any field like philosophy or politics? Because what I described is literally par for the course in critical thinking. If Damore and his ilk want to participate in an honest critical debate then their arguments are sure as fuck going to be analyzed the same way everyone's arguments are analyzed in every serious intellectually rigorous setting.

Your refusal to take this idea seriously is a microcosm of what's rotten in this whole discourse (or am I not allowed to draw a connection between what you wrote and literally anything else?).

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#105

Post by abalone »

belorn wrote: post #98
abalone wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> men are exceptional pushed/forced/heavy incentivize by society towards high paying jobs This is a very curious way of explaining how men end up with most of the money and power. They're forced to do it! A perhaps plausible alternative theory: once jobs become high paying, men campaign to recast it as "men's work". This theory is supported by the true history of our profession, succinctly reviewed by this article.

"Forced" in the same sense that we say that women are forced to care about their physical appearance. If we had an article claiming that men are being crowded out of the beauty industry, both as workers and customers, I would question the article if it did not take outside influence into account. The alternative theory that women are crowding out men and making it "women's work" would sound exceptional, and require e…

Your premise is supremely flawed. Men actually dominate the beauty industry's top ranks.[1] This perfectly supports the theory that men put up obstacles to women around higher-paying jobs.

Also note that the Bloomberg article is well supported. It provides data on changing attitudes as programming became a higher-value profession. It cites studies on programmer psychology. It details the specific discriminatory mechanisms by which men shifted the composition from mostly-female to mostly-male. It is worth reading all the way through with an open mind.

[1] https://jezebel.com/men-dominate-tampon-and-cosmetics-indust...

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#106

Post by rhapsodic »

abalone wrote: post #77

This is an important and well-written article that succinctly exposes the history and mechanisms of sexism in the industry. How once software became a valued profession a complex of obstacles at the cultural and professional level were put in place to change its composition from primarily women to men. It is also a damning indictment of the HN community. It is clear this post has suffered a campaign of down voting. E…

> It is also a damning indictment of the HN community. It is clear this post has suffered a campaign of down voting. Every comment that is positive toward the article, even just summarizing its content, has been downvoted. By the time I finished reading it it had disappeared off the front page entirely.

I don't know for sure, obviously, but based on the patterns I've casually observed on HN in the past, I suspect this article was flagged not because it promotes a male-blaming POV, but because the anti-male-blaming types seem to be winning the arguments in the comments.

And on topics as polarizing as this one, I suspect that every comment, on either side, gets some number of downvotes and upvotes. It's the countering effect of the upvotes that keep them from getting killed.

Personally, I upvote a lot more than I downvote, and I routinely upvote posts I disagree with if it appears they were made in good faith and some thought was put into them, but are nonetheless suffering a lot of downvotes.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#107

Post by pron »

deepnotderp wrote: post #81
pron wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both are conservative publications, which is fine, but: There are certainly some researchers, like those in the first article, who agree with Damore's position, but they are by far the minority; if you're interested in the subject, I suggest you at least read some research written by the majority opinion. The second link is written by a non-expert, and therefore does not constitute a scholarly opinion at all. I occas…

http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3389 Scott Aaronson considers it to be valid. Being conservative doesn't negate its arguments.

Scott Aaronson is not an expert on this matter, either, and, as far as I know, he hasn’t even seriously studied the subject as an amateur.

I didn’t say that being conservative negates the argument in the first article (and the second is irrelevant regardless of Alexander’s conservatism); I just pointed it out to note that the publication picked scientists who reflect their views rather than attempted to neutrally present the current state of affairs in the relevant social scholarship.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#108

Post by mpweiher »

danharaj wrote: post #104
mpweiher wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Just wow. So basically, you are saying that you can judge him and what he writes not by what he writes, but whatever you want to arbitrarily insert into his writing. Even the inquisition had higher standards than that.

Honest question in good faith: have you ever read a serious, rigorous exchange of criticism in any field like philosophy or politics? Because what I described is literally par for the course in critical thinking. If Damore and his ilk want to participate in an honest critical debate then their arguments are sure as fuck going to be analyzed the same way everyone's arguments are analyzed in every serious intellectuall…

He wasn't participating in a rigorous exchange of criticism in philosophy or politics.

>Because what I described is literally par for the course in critical thinking.

No, what you described is completely arbitrary.

> his ilk

Right, "rigorous" and "critical" debate. No pure ad-hominems to see here. Move along.

> every serious intellectually rigorous setting.

Er, no.

Just making shit up and attributing it to your opponent is the opposite of "intellectually" rigorous. It maybe ideologically rigorous, but that's about it.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#109

Post by pron »

mpweiher wrote: post #92
pron wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both are conservative publications, which is fine, but: There are certainly some researchers, like those in the first article, who agree with Damore's position, but they are by far the minority; if you're interested in the subject, I suggest you at least read some research written by the majority opinion. The second link is written by a non-expert, and therefore does not constitute a scholarly opinion at all. I occas…

Hmm...where is this "majority opinion"? So far I haven't seen a single article opposing him that didn't (have to) resort to crass misrepresentation of what he actually wrote, when it even bothered at all. If you have to lie about your opponent, you're probably not in the right.

He's not an opponent; he's just some random guy on the internet, who, by his own admission, has no idea what he's talking about, because he writes about a subject he has not studied nor shown interest in studying. Many of the people arguing against him or for him are other random guys on the internet, and your entire opinion on this very important matter, which has occupied hundreds of researchers for decades and affects the lives of many people is based on some online debates you've read between various random guys on the internet. Do you see how ridiculous this is? It's like forming an opinion about Bell's theorem by listening to debates among fourth-graders who've heard the term "quantum mechanics" on Rick and Morty.

He's famous only because his office shenanigans caused such a massive PR shitstorm for his employer, that the CEO of Google had to cut short his family vacation to deal with the mess this low-level employee had caused.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#110

Post by pron »

deepnotderp wrote: post #86
pron wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what I see, so I guess both our views on what the media and "outrage engine" are doing are very much shaped by our political views.

https://www.google.com/search?q=sexist+google+memo&source=ln...

What am I supposed to see here? (Are you, by any chance, be confusing the word "sexism" with the word "misogyny"?)
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