Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

quillette.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 536 posts

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#121

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

anon12345690 wrote: post #101
aaron-lebo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you provide sources doesn't mean your sources are relevant to your argument or good sources. Go look at his memo. It is paragraph after paragraph with his beliefs on the matter and then a link to some source which you are supposed to check out. He often doesn't bother explaining how those sources are relevant. That's why it is bad. Just because you've got sources doesn't mean you are saying anything usef…

It's not a scientific paper, it was an internal memo shared with a few colleagues. Also that's how evidence works, you make a narrative and support it with references. What else would you do? No society has lasted tens of thousands of years and many were in complete isolation which already says something about how the same roles formed again and again. Also we see the same thing in animals.

>> It's not a scientific paper, it was an internal memo shared with a few colleagues. Also that's how evidence works, you make a narrative and support it with references. What else would you do?

You use references in scientific papers; not in everyday conversations. You do it when you want to refer to previous work that your own work is based on, not to win a debate and not to show that there is support for your beliefs.

The fact that Demore's memo was not a scientific paper, but was peppered with references to various scientific works he lacked the training to understand only serves to underline how silly it looked.

>> Also we see the same thing in animals.

We also see cannibalism (including sexual cannibalism), incest, fratricide and all sorts of nasty little things in animals (particularly insects). We see the same things in humans (except maybe for eating your mates after sex).

So, what?

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#122

Post by mantas »

bitL wrote: post #105
mantas wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Independent non-family women lead to less children. Thus society as a whole has motive to lead girls towards this specialization.

This could be the culprit - those women, that became independent removed themselves and their traits from genetic pool due to not having children or having fewer of them. That might also explain persistence of religions that emphasize sexual relationships for reproduction only and banning abortions, as it leads to higher probability of carrying on with one's genotype. So what we are observing could be some stochastic…

Indeed. I wonder wether civilisations after reaching certain step sort of goes into self-destruction mode.

Maybe deep down humans feel that they're at evolutionary dead end and decide to off themselves as a society? I could easily see why today's western society (and possibly others as well) may be far from optimal. Yet I'd prefer to try to fix it.

What is funniest, people advocating for "progress" etc frequently are those who have no children. Although old good "you're not grown up till you got kids" outlook is looked down nowadays, I can see why it'd make sense. If you don't have kids - you don't have skin in the long game. Nor experience what it's like to play in that mode. I wonder how the world would change if we'd only allow people with kids to vote and/or participate in politics.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#123

Post by nova22033 »

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…

>you're in real danger of being pilloried

OMG you're so brave. Standing up against means words from anonymous people...on the INTERNET!!!

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#124

Post by donkeyd »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #94

I'm a PhD student at a UK university. From what I've seen in my department (Engineering) there are about 3 women for every 5 men, both in staff and students, a not unreasonable ratio. However, I struggle to remember more than a couple of women who are British or from an English-speaking country. The majority come from India, China, the rest of Europe, the Middle East etc. I've also seen this in the six years I worked…

I'd never really paid attention to this, but now that you mention it, the Dutch company I work for has 4 female developers, 3 of which are Indian.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#125

Post by drewbuschhorn »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #88
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.

> 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)…

Fwiw: I think you're being down voted because the citations you mention have all become a part of the controversy rather than being external evidence. Each of the scientists you mentioned above have at times before this controversy shown a willingness to say things specifically to get limelight.

In culture war topics, the only real citations that can count are people above reproach, or people who are unknown but experts in their fields, which is a fine needle to thread. Also raw data, but few of us here would be qualified to understand the raw data.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#126

Post by ahartmetz »

bitL wrote: post #61
dmichulke wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I often read about these PC-related things in the US (and sometimes Canada). Much less so in Europe, although they start playing catch-up with their new hate speech laws. As a German I can (mostly) speak my mind about men vs women, the only minefield there is IMO (remotely) Nazi-related stuff, e.g., try to criticize Israel foreign policy or mass immigration.

Germany is usually roughly 5 years behind US in social trends or tech, so it's coming soon.

I think 5 years is too long especially for tech, and there are things that are and will stay different. Otherwise Germany would be almost exactly like the US now, which it isn't.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#127

Post by mantas »

gambiting wrote: post #35
psyc wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

Same thing works the other way around but I don't know if it has a name. I frequently see things like yoghurt/juice or shampoo/antiperspirant/shaving accessories to be priced higher if they are branded "for men". You can literally buy the same thing in pink colour and it's cheaper. The only case where I agree is that stupidly, UK government applies extra tax to sanitary items for women, while cosmetics for men do not…

Mind to give a link for that UK extra tax? I wonder how it's worded :)

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#128

Post by bjl »

anon12345690 wrote: post #84
aaron-lebo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You forget, he also explicitly referenced anti-Semitic conspiracy theories as well. That alone is grounds for being fired.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#129

Post by edna314 »

tscs37 wrote: post #111
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 fem…

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

More desirable to whom? To the one with the worse outcome equality of outcome will always be more desirable than equality of chance. Plus, from a probabilistic point of view, wouldn't equal chances mean that for large numbers of trials (people) the outcome would also be equal?

> 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.

You cannot even properly define what you mean by "brain and/or mind", which is why it's impossible to convince you that there actually is injustice if your opinion relies on that. But, for the moment suppose there is some convincing theory which explains naturally why less women are in STEM. Then why would we have to adjust our society to it, as it would benefit from less social tensions if there was equal outcome? Your point has to be much stronger to justify the inequality, as in everything would go downhill super fast if we had equal outcome. Otherwise there will always be social tensions and you have to learn to live with the "feminists".

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#130

Post by mlevental »

arkh wrote: post #118
awinder wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

what is your point? that in the rest of the world racism wasn't a thing or that racism is actually classicism? both of these things aren't true
Post reply on HN