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Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

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Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#81

Post by jabot »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #69
jabot wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a narrow sense you are probably right. In a more general sense, consider the "laws of physics". People believe in them not because of their consequences, but because they explain reality (and quite well). So people believe in gravity because it has worked for them in the past, and because it has been verified. Also... _not_ believing in gravity will not make much of a difference for your life (as long as you don't…

The laws of Physics don't explain reality, they model it to our best approximation. >and because it has been verified. // That may be true for you but is essentially an appeal to authority. Most scientists claim to be falsificationists and the current agreed Scientific Method is one of Popperian falsification. Your comment on cliffs belies an ignorance of epistemology - people didn't used to have a gravitational theo…

That was not the point I was trying to make, sorry.

GP said:

>> People can hold beliefs because they have certain consequences.

> Nearly all beliefs are of this type. I believe the Earth orbits the Sun because it's helps me predict the seasons.

I think there are a lot of beliefs that are held not because they have beneficial consequences, but for other reasons.

Religion as a belief is held by most people because they have been brought up with it. (converts nonwithstanding)

Scientific theories are believed (i.e. held true, used for explanations of reality) because they predict stuff that actually happens and can not be falsified.

Both of these are not believed primarily because their belief has actual consequences IMHO.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#82

Post by dragandj »

rayiner wrote: post #72
psyc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lest we forget, it isn't only charismatically-challenged unfortunates like Damore who get thrown under a tank for daring to speak 'out of turn' wrt the social justice narrative. Just two hours ago, I happened to re-read the various vicious hit pieces written about Paul Graham several years ago, after he had the gall to speak his mind about representation. These are the times. Everywhere I look online, it's men vs. wo…

Damore’s screed was also rife with fallacies and unsupported generalizations, let’s not forget that. It drives me nuts that his lack of “charisma” (rather than his lack of logical reasoning skills or writing ability) is what people are saying got him fired. If he’d written a manifesto that sloppy on a technical topic people would’ve ripped him to shreds.

His logical reasoning skills seemed to be quite all right for Google when he passed their (challenging) hiring process. How the hell he managed to lose that while working there?

As for his writing ability, it may not be at the level of Mark Twain, but it seems quite eloquent to me...

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#83

Post by roenxi »

bitL wrote: post #66
natch wrote: post #9

it’s fine and valid to research whether people encounter improper bias in their careers, which is clearly often the case. But their discussion is incomplete without at least recognition of another possible partial cause of gender disparity in tech, the fact that many sexist anti-STEM cues are given to children at a much earlier stage, way before careers are even on the horizon. These cues are delivered by parents, te…

Many girls decide at around age 12 that a better life strategy is for them to get a husband that will do all the heavy lifting. This obviously worked for thousands of years and is likely a result of evolution and specialization. I always admire when I meet an independent woman that rejected this conditioning but it's very rare :( Maybe there should be a better approach to early-teenage girls to help them to make a di…

> likely a result of evolution and specialization

Economically speaking, I suspect this is more to do with the superior position of women, as a class, in setting the standards of what an acceptable relationship looks like.

If husbands are willing to do heavy lifting, wives would be economically irrational to do their own heavy lifting. I'm pretty suspicious that the deal offered to a housewife comes with better quality of life outcomes than the deal offered to most engineers. I've always assumed it is linked to the relative excess of young men to the number of young women (something like 107:100 or close to [1]).

It makes sense to me that the group with most power in establishing a relationship would choose not to be an engineer if they could be, say, mind the house.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#84

Post by anon12345690 »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #80
anon12345690 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Screed? It was a simple memo, something that he meant for a few people and had shared internally for months before it became so widely misunderstood. He didn't say anything outright false, only that men and women are different and have different interests, so forcing 50/50 wont be a good outcome. Also, Google even agrees with him: https://twitter.com/JamesADamore/status/958138574171287552 "Did I read this right? Susa…

Nothing outright false, but that was the major problem with it. Just because you aren't obviously wrong and you safecheck yourself with facts doesn't mean you are actually correct in your assessment. He didn't say anything outright false, only that men and women are different and have different interests, so forcing 50/50 wont be a good outcome I agree with OP that this difference in interests is probably socialized.…

Facts are used as evidence, which he what he did. There's nothing wrong with that. If you have a better explanation then let's hear it but all you said was that you believe it's "probably socialized" based on what exactly?

This article explains in great detail how that is not the case in any significance and there are even examples where men and women have been socialized oppositely and still end up choosing typical gender interests.

> argument seemed to be based upon some inherent difference between the sexes

Yes, men and women are different.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#85

Post by rayiner »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #78
rayiner wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damore’s screed was also rife with fallacies and unsupported generalizations, let’s not forget that. It drives me nuts that his lack of “charisma” (rather than his lack of logical reasoning skills or writing ability) is what people are saying got him fired. If he’d written a manifesto that sloppy on a technical topic people would’ve ripped him to shreds.

I've heard this asserted several times, but nobody's said which of his sources they disagree with. Could you link to a source you disagree with and the basis for your disagreement?

E.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15022997.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#86

Post by hnhg »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #78
rayiner wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damore’s screed was also rife with fallacies and unsupported generalizations, let’s not forget that. It drives me nuts that his lack of “charisma” (rather than his lack of logical reasoning skills or writing ability) is what people are saying got him fired. If he’d written a manifesto that sloppy on a technical topic people would’ve ripped him to shreds.

I've heard this asserted several times, but nobody's said which of his sources they disagree with. Could you link to a source you disagree with and the basis for your disagreement?

https://www.economist.com/news/international/21726276-last-w...

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#87

Post by psyc »

rayiner wrote: post #72
psyc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lest we forget, it isn't only charismatically-challenged unfortunates like Damore who get thrown under a tank for daring to speak 'out of turn' wrt the social justice narrative. Just two hours ago, I happened to re-read the various vicious hit pieces written about Paul Graham several years ago, after he had the gall to speak his mind about representation. These are the times. Everywhere I look online, it's men vs. wo…

Damore’s screed was also rife with fallacies and unsupported generalizations, let’s not forget that. It drives me nuts that his lack of “charisma” (rather than his lack of logical reasoning skills or writing ability) is what people are saying got him fired. If he’d written a manifesto that sloppy on a technical topic people would’ve ripped him to shreds.

So it's normal and ok if being wrong got him fired? No matter, as that isn't what got him fired. He was fired because it's good optics in this climate. And I'm asserting the climate isn't good.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#88

Post by Pyxl101 »

rayiner wrote: post #72
psyc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lest we forget, it isn't only charismatically-challenged unfortunates like Damore who get thrown under a tank for daring to speak 'out of turn' wrt the social justice narrative. Just two hours ago, I happened to re-read the various vicious hit pieces written about Paul Graham several years ago, after he had the gall to speak his mind about representation. These are the times. Everywhere I look online, it's men vs. wo…

Damore’s screed was also rife with fallacies and unsupported generalizations, let’s not forget that. It drives me nuts that his lack of “charisma” (rather than his lack of logical reasoning skills or writing ability) is what people are saying got him fired. If he’d written a manifesto that sloppy on a technical topic people would’ve ripped him to shreds.

> Damore’s screed was also rife with fallacies and unsupported generalizations, let’s not forget that

Was it really rife with fallacies? Lee Jussim (professor of social psychology at Rutgers University) wrote:

> The author of the Google essay on issues related to diversity gets nearly all of the science and its implications exactly right.

Geoffrey Miller (evolutionary psychology professor at University of New Mexico) wrote:

> For what it’s worth, I think that almost all of the Google memo’s empirical claims are scientifically accurate.

Debra W Soh (PhD in sexual neuroscience):

> Within the field of neuroscience, sex differences between women and men—when it comes to brain structure and function and associated differences in personality and occupational preferences—are understood to be true, because the evidence for them (thousands of studies) is strong. This is not information that’s considered controversial or up for debate; if you tried to argue otherwise, or for purely social influences, you’d be laughed at.

http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...

It doesn't seem reasonable to characterize this memo as rife with fallacies or unsupported generalizations when multiple scientists are willing to go on the record saying the memo's science is generally correct. I have not seen similar in-depth rebuttals from other scientists claiming it's wrong. (If anyone knows of one I'd be glad to read it. I have seen brief quotes from scientists in articles written by reporters, but nothing with depth or analysis.)

EDIT: I wish I understood why I've been downvoted so that I could improve my comments in the future. Would anyone be willing to explain the downvote?

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#89

Post by cosmic_ape »

People talk about research involving indicators such as "ability" and social factors. But have anyone asked the boys and girls before college, or before starting a graduate degree why and how they make their choices? It seems to me that doing it on scale, like 1000 participants, in a given fixed country, would clear the picture.

In a way, they are voting with their choices, and all we need is a focus group.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#90

Post by anon12345690 »

cosmic_ape wrote: post #89

People talk about research involving indicators such as "ability" and social factors. But have anyone asked the boys and girls before college, or before starting a graduate degree why and how they make their choices? It seems to me that doing it on scale, like 1000 participants, in a given fixed country, would clear the picture. In a way, they are voting with their choices, and all we need is a focus group.

From the article:

"It should be noted, though, that the largest study to date included nearly 1000 children (9-14 years old) and found no effects.9 This latter study is of particular interest, because it included adolescents, whereas most other stereotype threat studies were carried out with university students. If stereotype threat discourages girls from pursuing math-intensive STEM coursework and careers, its effect should be evident in high-school. The fact that a large and well-designed study could not find any effect, in our opinion, suggests either the effect does not exist or it is unmeasurably small."

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