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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

#111

Post by tscs37 »

edna314 wrote: post #95

I don't get it. Why is equality of outcome not a desirable goal, especially in science and technology? These authors only try to disprove theories which potentially explain the inequality and then conclude that there is no injustice. This is logically flawed in my opinion. In order to justify the inequality they would need to come up with a plausible theory why the inequality is inevitable and then support it with so…

Equality of Chance is more desirable than Equality of Outcome as it values the decisions of a neutral individual more than the later.

Of course, for Equality of Chance to be properly implemented you need to do away with as many barriers to it as possible but you should be willing to accept that no matter what you do, there won't be a perfect 50/50.

From all evidence we have, there is strong evidence that male and female humans grow up differently independent of their social surroundings, for example, we found that the brains of newborns can be easily distinguished into female and male as little as 1 month after birth, before any social factors have had much chance to get deep into development.

From that I find it easier to believe that there will be some statistical biases in one direction or another (like how will have, on average, a bit more height) outside of the purely physical domain.

I would rather see some evidence that despite all the physical, hormonal and developmental differences in male and female humans, there is absolutely no statistically significant difference in the brain and/or mind.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#112

Post by awinder »

psyc wrote: post #87
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.

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.

Yes, because he was wrong about something that he had no business or expertise or business position to even be discussing, and because he did it in a very loud way.

Damore got what he wanted, he wanted to be a martyr, probably because that was all he was ever going to be good for. He’s the truest of snowflakes, stop giving idiots this platform and maybe they’ll go away.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#113

Post by BlackFly »

rayiner wrote: post #65
scarmig wrote: post #26

This reminds me of something I was thinking about earlier today. It's well known that men generally are stagnating economically, while women are catching up. In many metro areas, single women out earn single men. And so I came across this paper[0], which had some interesting research about that. And what struck me was this: there's an explicit assumption that men have worse socio-emotional skills than women, and that…

> starting from the assumption that men are disproportionately represented among the upper levels of spatial and mathematical abstraction skills, there'd be an uproar I’ve mentioned it repeatedly on HN and have never so much as gotten a rise out of anyone. (I should also point out that the SAT folks publish a detailed report on SAT gender differences each year and nobody blinks an eye.) The problem is that it doesn’t…

> Men outrepresent women about 2:1 among perfect SAT Math scores. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that this represents a real difference in mathematical ability. Even if programming ability were 100% correlated with mathematical ability, you’d expect a much higher ratio than you see in practice.

That doesn't follow for reasons explained in the article. Choice of whether to go into sciences over humanities isn't correlated with just science ability in school, it is correlated with relative ability between science and reading. The 2:1 ratio tells you precisely nothing about expected ratios of entrance into science programs until you compare it with the performance ratio on the English portion (assuming here, I don't know anything about SATs) of the SATs.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#114

Post by ZeroGravitas »

anon12345690 wrote: post #109
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does suggesting that feminism, the civil rights and the LGBT movement are actually jewish-marxists plots to destroy American capitalism in a memo about diversity you distribute at work count as "being wrong"? I mean it is wrong of course. It doesn't even make sense. Which gender Tim Cook prefers to see naked seems unrelated to running an efficient supply chain for one of the largest corporations on the planet. But ge…

I've never seen anyone interpret any of that. Also has nothing to do with civil rights but was talking about men and women liking different things, so forcing them in equal ratios does more harm than good. What exactly didnt make sense to you with that?

You should read the memo. Apparently lots of people just skimmed it, or read a summary. Your sibling comment quotes the exact footnote text where he references the popular anti-semitic conspiracy theory about "cultural marxism"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School#Cultural_Marx...

"The Southern Poverty Law Center has reported that William S. Lind in 2002 gave a speech to a Holocaust denial conference on the topic of Cultural Marxism. In this speech Lind noted that all the members of The Frankfurt School were "to a man, Jewish", but it is reported that Lind claims not to question whether the Holocaust occurred and suggests he was present in an official capacity for The Free Congress Foundation "to work with a wide variety of groups on an issue-by-issue basis""

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#115

Post by prepend »

barry-cotter wrote: post #64
imartin2k wrote: post #17

It’s important to investigate this topic from various perspectives, and the text contains a couple of important points (which of course are not new to anyone who’s been following this debate). However, right at the beginning, this is really a bad argument: “There is particular concern about the lack of women in prestigious STEM fields, such as Ph.D.-level faculty positions, but surprisingly there is no concern about…

Can someone with vouching powers vouch for SidiousL? He appears to have been shadowbanned for no discernible reason.

How can you tell if someone is shadowbanned? I thought shadowbanned people can’t have their comments seen by others.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#116

Post by megaman22 »

psyc wrote: post #31
gambiting wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Also women have more expenses than men (ping tax, daycare...). What's ping tax? How is daycare more expensive for women? Surely, a man raising a child on their own will pay exactly the same amount of money for daycare? In a normal case, where partners raise children together, they surely pay for daycare from a shared budget, not just from the woman's salary(that would be just bizarre). >> If woman gets high paying…

"Pink tax": the idea that goods marketed to women are priced higher than equivalents marketed to men. https://www.google.com/search?q=pink+tax

I'm not entirely sure that the same goods marketed at women as men are meaningfully more expensive for one group or the other. But it is undeniable that there are entire classes of products marketed and produced for female audiences and considered essential that males can disregard completely. One easy example is health and beauty products, and another fashion and accessories.

For example, my shower routine involves a bar of Ivory soap and basic shampoo. For my sister, my mother, my female friends and romantic interests, add conditioners, body washes, face scrubs, and all the associated paraphernalia, which easily triples the cost in dollars, not to mention time and hot water.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#117

Post by cousin_it »

jabot wrote: post #10
cousin_it wrote: post #3

This is a "culture war" topic, let's prepare for the shitshow in the comments. I'd like to offer some advice to make things go a bit more smoothly. There's a widespread view that all beliefs are political, you can't be apolitical, and anyone arguing for a belief opposing yours must be an enemy. To me, that view is pretty much a type error. Beliefs are value-neutral. Only arguments for or against beliefs can be politi…

As a counter-point: People can hold beliefs because they have certain consequences. Simple example: "all people are created equal". This is a belief that is (probably) frequently held because it has assumed beneficial consequences for society. So if people choose to believe in something because that has certain consequences - then a belief can be political. EDIT: To expand on this a little... It seems to me that you…

Yes, beliefs are chosen for consequences. And the optimal way to choose a belief based on consequences is to choose the truth.

For example, my decision whether to take an umbrella today must be based on my honest best guess whether it'll rain today (and the relative utilities of various outcomes). If I shift my best guess one inch away from what's warranted by evidence, to obey social pressure or something, then acting-as-if the new belief was true will predictably lead to lower expected utility for me. That holds always, no matter how controversial the belief.

When social pressure is weak, it mostly makes people lie about their beliefs, while still acting-as-if their best guess was true. When social pressure gets strong, people start acting-as-if false things were true, and get lower utility. No amount of pressure can change the fact that actions based on accurate beliefs lead to higher expected utility. That's why I'm not a fan of social pressure on beliefs. For both individuals and societies, the best consequences are achieved by believing what is true.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#118

Post by arkh »

awinder wrote: post #110
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…

This “war” has been going on for centuries. The difference is that white men were totally dominating it until recent times, and a lot of them really don’t like that they may need to adapt behavior. African Americans had a right side of the street to walk on within the last 2 generations, for risk of being lynched. You better believe they’ve been parsing every word out of their mouths, not for fear of being labeled a…

> This “war” has been going on for centuries. The difference is that white men were totally dominating it until recent times, and a lot of them really don’t like that they may need to adapt behavior. African Americans had a right side of the street to walk on within the last 2 generations, for risk of being lynched. You better believe they’ve been parsing every word out of their mouths, not for fear of being labeled a mean word, but for fear of being killed, or having their families killed.

That's US-centric. Until a century ago the majority of humans did not have a lot of freedom. Living under some autocratic ruler. The skin color or gender was irrelevant: only who you were the child of. A Chinese noblewoman had a lot more freedom than a English farmer.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#119

Post by arkh »

awinder wrote: post #112
psyc wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, because he was wrong about something that he had no business or expertise or business position to even be discussing, and because he did it in a very loud way. Damore got what he wanted, he wanted to be a martyr, probably because that was all he was ever going to be good for. He’s the truest of snowflakes, stop giving idiots this platform and maybe they’ll go away.

> he did it in a very loud way

From what I remember he did not. Someone at Google publicized a document written by Damore on a Google forum.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#120

Post by drewbuschhorn »

psyc wrote: post #36
scarmig wrote: post #26

This reminds me of something I was thinking about earlier today. It's well known that men generally are stagnating economically, while women are catching up. In many metro areas, single women out earn single men. And so I came across this paper[0], which had some interesting research about that. And what struck me was this: there's an explicit assumption that men have worse socio-emotional skills than women, and that…

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…

I've seen this sentiment from former fans of left leaning fiction, and I have to ask: are you sure it's not the culture that's stayed the same and you who drifted right?
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