How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution • Hacker News Board

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#161

Post by ubernostrum » Mon, Aug 21, 2017, 7:27 AM UTC

deepnotderp wrote: post #156

ubernostrum wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before we proceed, please provide a clear, coherent, short summary of what you personally believe Damore's argument is, and then agree to personally commit to that belief for the duration of debate. 99% of the problem of this debate is that his "memo" was so vague in places -- despite being so allegedly well-written! -- that we end up being able to attribute zero claims and zero positions to him, since any alleged po…

I'll bite. Damore says that there are possible non-bias reasons that women display less affinity towards the tech industry thus possibly partially explaining the difference in gender representation.

OK. So what do you believe is the logical course of action to take based on this? Since he mentioned diversity programs, presumably he thinks there is some logical link between his argument and some proposed course of action, though of course for any such proposed course someone will pop up and say that he didn't advocate that and obviously anyone claiming he did must never have read what he wrote.

Do you believe that, if this position were to be conceded for sake of argument, there would be any logical change to be made to, say, how Google approaches interviewing and hiring?

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#162

Post by mpweiher » Mon, Aug 21, 2017, 7:33 AM UTC

pron wrote: post #150

mpweiher wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read “The Blank Slate”. Read/watch the Pinker/Spelke debate. Etc. The science here is pretty unambiguous, yes, just not in the direction you think.

Oh, I have, because unlike you, I actually did study this subject seriously for some years.

And your take-away was obviously to copy the tactics he described in the book: ignore the actual science and the actual arguments put forward, because you know those show you to be clearly in the wrong.

Instead, weave around the facts, do advocacy and sell it as science, vilify your opponents etc.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#163

Post by pron » Mon, Aug 21, 2017, 9:13 AM UTC

deepnotderp wrote: post #151

pron wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? No! After researchers having established, with thorough researched that's available for all to see, that women have been marginalized from positions of power -- which includes the tech industry, where women participation, in the US, has been declining in the past three decades or so -- we feminists demand that the practice stop. That's all.

> we feminists demand that the practice stop. You literally just stated that you are interested in the tech industry because it is a "powerful" industry, and you feel that women have been historically marginalized from positions of power. Consequently, you feel that females are entitled to obtain these positions in order to "balance this power distribution". Am I correct?

No, you are certainly not correct, although right now I would be happy to balance the very unequal distribution of knowledge you and I have on this subject (although I am far from being an expert myself), because I feel like Richard Dawkins debating evolution with some Christian from Kansas who insists there is no evidence for evolution because that's what they read on a Christian website that scientifically debunks evolution. Seriously, you are so engaged with a topic that you clearly haven't even bothered to read a couple of Wikipedia articles about.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#164

Post by pron » Mon, Aug 21, 2017, 9:13 AM UTC

deepnotderp wrote: post #157

pron wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because, again, all I'm saying is look at the entire field, and you, like Damore, wave some specific research at me. I have read everything Pinker has to say on the subject, because that's how you do research.

And your takeaway from Pinker's research was?

The same as that of most researchers: that his conclusions are scientifically problematic, but regardless of their merit, they are ultimately irrelevant to the issue of sexism, which is far better established, seems to have a much bigger effect, and can and should be rectified regardless of other possible contributing factors. That there are other causes for cancer is irrelevant to the issue of whether the chemical plant should be allowed to dump waste in the river. Certainly, the possible existence of those other causes must not be used as an excuse to allow the plant to continue polluting.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#165

Post by pron » Mon, Aug 21, 2017, 9:14 AM UTC

deepnotderp wrote: post #154

ubernostrum wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Damore made some strongly-worded and poorly-cited claims in an attempt to pass off his "science" as somehow uncontroversial and irrefutable. The fact that multiple people have chimed in pointing out that A) it's very far from uncontroversial/irrefutable and B) his arguments are based on studies whose effect sizes would not produce the results we see , is a pretty convincing rebuttal. Also it's telling that "the…

>"Damore was absolutely right about everything ever and we should all stop diversity efforts since women are too hobbled by their genetic ladybrains to work in tech in large numbers anyway" Do you want to build a strawman? All we are resisting is being told we are sexist for not having a higher proportion of females in our industry despite having approximately the same proportion of which there are female graduates.

No one is asking the tech industry to hire more women engineers than there are graduates. It might just be nice to have a bit fewer women report such horrible experiences working in the industry, so that maybe we'll have more graduates, which everybody should agree is a good thing.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#166

Post by pron » Mon, Aug 21, 2017, 9:20 AM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #162

pron wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I have, because unlike you, I actually did study this subject seriously for some years.

And your take-away was obviously to copy the tactics he described in the book: ignore the actual science and the actual arguments put forward, because you know those show you to be clearly in the wrong. Instead, weave around the facts, do advocacy and sell it as science, vilify your opponents etc.

Quite the opposite, in fact. And I don't know what you base your opinions on, because clearly, you know so little about the subject, having read no more than a couple of popular, very one-sided books. I find it mind-boggling how someone can read just one side of a debate and believe that they "debunked" the other side. But I'm guessing you probably also read Joy Christian's book and believe that that Bell's theorem has been "thoroughly debunked", and that those who contest that notion ignore the "actual science" and "actual arguments", and "vilify" Christian in some crazy emotional witch-hunt.

I hope you realize, however, that it is those who least have the fact on their side, yet constantly demand to be acknowledged, who claim that there's some witch-hunt against them, and that the reason they are not taken as seriously as they think they should be is because people are afraid of the truth.

The main problem with Pinker, BTW, is not at all the merit of his claims about biological inclination, but that none of that has anything to do with the undisputed, completely noncontroversial, and far better established fact that women have been socially marginalized from positions of power for centuries. Like in my allegory of the polluting plant, even if there are indeed other causes for cancer, that has very little to do with the demand that the plant stop dumping chemical waste in the river. Waving science supporting the claim that there are other causes for cancer as an excuse to continue polluting shows a very basic misunderstanding of the issue. My goal is not to prove that there are no innate psychological differences between men and women; it is to end the marginalization of women that no doubt exists, regardless of whether or not those innate differences are real (what's funny is that even those who believe they are real, don't notice that the effect size they claim to find doesn't even come close to explaining the situation on the ground, nor that it is constantly changing).

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#167

Post by ubernostrum » Mon, Aug 21, 2017, 10:40 AM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #158

ubernostrum wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before we proceed, please provide a clear, coherent, short summary of what you personally believe Damore's argument is, and then agree to personally commit to that belief for the duration of debate. 99% of the problem of this debate is that his "memo" was so vague in places -- despite being so allegedly well-written! -- that we end up being able to attribute zero claims and zero positions to him, since any alleged po…

How about the reverse: you commit to what you believe the memo said, because all you've written so far makes me doubt you've even read it.

Oh, I've read the whole thing several times.

But suppose I were coming to it fresh, with no background whatsoever, and simply reading it through, and let's try to Socratically figure out what's going on in it. Since you're apparently very concerned with people misinterpreting it, perhaps you'd like to help.

So, first off: would you agree that the memo was intended by Damore to communicate some type of argument, reasoning from evidence, in support of some particular conclusion, and that he felt this was not merely idle speculation but something genuinely important in need of attention from many people?

I'm asking this because:

1. I'm attempting to be charitable, and assume that his choice of what to write was inspired by what he believed to be a logical argument structure, and to convince readers of something he himself believed to be the conclusion of that argument. In other words, I'm assuming that if something is in there, it's not a non sequitur -- it's in there because he believed it was relevant to or supported the argument he was making.

2. He chose a wide distribution channel within Google, and now appears to have chosen an even wider distribution channel outside of Google. My experience is that people generally don't do this for things they believe are idle or trivial, but rather for things they believe are genuinely important.

Do you agree so far?

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#168

Post by naasking » Mon, Aug 21, 2017, 12:03 PM UTC

lhnz wrote: post #75

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stereotype wasn't created be a shadowy group of men to exclude women. That is absurd. Why would sexists block women from programming, while letting them into plenty of other more high status jobs? Well, we should be careful with claims like that. Think of the gender of most of the secretaries at all the jobs we've had. And little things, like if you're in a relationship, how often do you do the laundry and dishes…

That is my point though: as sexism reduced women joined high status industries to take jobs that require high verbal intelligence. They didn't join programming despite it being a high growth industry: why? I'd source this but what I'm discussing is just a Google away and a bunch of studies are never going to convince anybody. Anyway, my point is that the narrative of the article goes against my lived experience. One…

Scott Alexander made this point for you and in great detail, with many citations: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#169

Post by naasking » Mon, Aug 21, 2017, 12:13 PM UTC

pron wrote: post #76

deepnotderp wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think number two is a very important point. My problem is that the entire media, including this article, is using it with ill intent to paint men as sexist.

But that's the point. The term "sexist" itself, at least in its scholarly meaning, does not imply intent. Sexism is a feature of a social structure where women are granted significantly less power than men. The prevailing hypothesis -- which has a lot of supporting evidence -- is that we are all sexist, men and women alike, merely by virtue of being socialized in a sexist society. When people first discovered microbe…

While that would be a nice narrative, I don't think it matches reality. If it did, the people outraged by apparent sexism would be trying to educate the sexists instead of getting them fired.

Certainly such people exist, but they're drowned out by the outrage machine that's trying to take away their livelihood.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#170

Post by naasking » Mon, Aug 21, 2017, 12:22 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #50

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…

First, that's not true. https://i.imgur.com/pkZPrOI.png . CS was a third women in the mid 1980s, dropping to under 20% today. Twenty years ago, the Space Shuttle's software team was quite gender balanced: https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff . Second, nerds can do a perfectly effective job pushing women out of the profession without being aggressive or having social power. We do a lot to gender th…

> CS was a third women in the mid 1980s, dropping to under 20% today

This is a profoundly misunderstood statistic.

1. Programming in those early days was considered more secretarial work,

2. the greater sexism in other jobs made CS more palatable, ie. women took what jobs they could, not necessarily the ones they wanted; this same trend is why Iran and other oppressive countries have such high female enrollment in STEM

3. Female enrollment gained slowly, but male STEM enrollment sky rocketed in the 80s. You can't point to a huge spurt of interest among men and use that to say that obviously those men somehow prevented the same growth in interest among women. There are clearly other factors in play.

All of this and more is fully documented by Scott Alexander: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...