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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

#181

Post by notlob »

tptacek wrote: post #168
jabot wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was with you until you wrote: > But that has nothing to do with why Google has so few women engineers. Uh. What? As far as I can tell, it has _everything_ to do with that. These two things are so closely related i cannot fathom how you can make such a statement... Also... You make the same point twice. To paraphrase you: a) "academic CS is less intellectually rigorous and less hard to succeed in than chem/etc -- bu…

This is an essay that knocks down two extrinsic causes for gender disparity in STEM and then suggests, using Finland as an example, that the cause of disparity is probably intrinsic. It may be the case that some intrinsic difference between men an women keeps the field of chemical engineering at 40-60 women/men, or mathematics at 35-65. But those fields are cognitively more demanding than commercial software developm…

What does “cognitively more demanding“ mean?

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#182

Post by [deleted] »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #133
arkh wrote: post #118

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…

To some extent. By 1500 the Spanish were in the Americas, the European powers were forming colonies on the African coast, the Russians were dominating Siberia. By 1900 European powers dominated almost everything, including China who were bulled into war by the British. If you were a subject of any of those colonial powers, you certainly were at a disadvantage to your foreign masters. This isn't even considering gende…

[deleted]

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#183

Post by qwr23qwer »

tptacek wrote: post #152

Once again: compared to other STEM fields, women participate less in CS than any other field except physics. By double digits percentage more in mathematics PhDs. Statistics is almost 50/50. Several rigorous earth sciences fields --- chem and biochem, for instance --- have 50% or greater female participation. One thing all these fields have in common is that they are more intellectually rigorous and harder to succeed…

Maybe women just see CS for what it is - 'simly not that hard, wiring form fields to databases', and think, let others tap away at the keyboards, I'll be a surgeon or whatever.

So, if that were the case, would you say that it's fair to now force these would be neuro surgeons, doctors, lawyers, microbiologists, etc.. to 'wire fields to databases', because in 2018 some people believe that has a somewhat high status in (mostly american) society?

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#184

Post by kirillkh »

tptacek wrote: post #168
jabot wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was with you until you wrote: > But that has nothing to do with why Google has so few women engineers. Uh. What? As far as I can tell, it has _everything_ to do with that. These two things are so closely related i cannot fathom how you can make such a statement... Also... You make the same point twice. To paraphrase you: a) "academic CS is less intellectually rigorous and less hard to succeed in than chem/etc -- bu…

This is an essay that knocks down two extrinsic causes for gender disparity in STEM and then suggests, using Finland as an example, that the cause of disparity is probably intrinsic. It may be the case that some intrinsic difference between men an women keeps the field of chemical engineering at 40-60 women/men, or mathematics at 35-65. But those fields are cognitively more demanding than commercial software developm…

Not sure how from

> those fields are cognitively more demanding than commercial software development or, for that matter, undergraduate computer science

... you arrive at

> No cognitive ability or innate affinity explains the degree of disparity in computer science as practiced in industry.

Even if software development is "cognitively less demanding" in every sense (though I'm not convinced there is just one universal kind of cognitive ability), it may still be that women do not possess the "innate affinity" for it - namely, they do not like working in it, preferring other fields instead. To my understanding, there is nothing to contradict this explanation, and it makes perfect sense.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#185

Post by jabot »

tptacek wrote: post #168
jabot wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was with you until you wrote: > But that has nothing to do with why Google has so few women engineers. Uh. What? As far as I can tell, it has _everything_ to do with that. These two things are so closely related i cannot fathom how you can make such a statement... Also... You make the same point twice. To paraphrase you: a) "academic CS is less intellectually rigorous and less hard to succeed in than chem/etc -- bu…

This is an essay that knocks down two extrinsic causes for gender disparity in STEM and then suggests, using Finland as an example, that the cause of disparity is probably intrinsic. It may be the case that some intrinsic difference between men an women keeps the field of chemical engineering at 40-60 women/men, or mathematics at 35-65. But those fields are cognitively more demanding than commercial software developm…

Ok, I see your point now.

And I think you are right. CS is not that special imho, and the gender imbalance should be more similar to e.g. maths.

> The term for an argument gerrymandered around the data to the degree "CS participation disparity is innate" is is special pleading.

I'm curious, though... Do you have any kind of research that would back your point up? Anything that would refute this "special pleading"?

I mean... I think you are right, but then again I (and you?) are CS experts and not experts at chemical engineering. Could it be that we underestimate the difficulties in CS, and overestimate these in chemical engineering?

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#186

Post by ac2018-02-14 »

Whenever this comes up, I like to mention this video [0]. The video speaks for itself, but generally it advances the position that human behavior and preferences are a distribution, and the distributions for women are in some cases different from the distributions for men (in the sense that summary statistics like mean and variance differ), but there is always significant overlap. The position that men and women are indistinguishable behaviorally and in their preferences is not taken seriously.

A notable point advanced in the video is that there is a difference in the summary statistics (not the entire distributions) which indicate men prioritize status and family different from women (with men more likely to prioritize status at the expense of family, the opposite of women). Another notable difference (again in the summary statistics, not the entire distribution) is that men prefer careers that are thing-centered over people-centered.

I wish statistics were better understood by the general population.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#187

Post by yorwba »

tptacek wrote: post #179
SiempreViernes wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and after all those words about how even in advanced gender equality countries differences persist they offer the following qualitative reason for it: > The sex difference in interest in people extends to a more general interest in living things, which would explain why women who are interested in science are much more likely to pursue a career in biology or veterinary medicine than computer science. Right, so…

Not to mention that there's nothing touchy-feely about biochem, which is chem except you take orgo almost immediately. But the prefix "bio" in it allows them to dismiss it.

For the proposed mechanism to work there doesn't need to be anything actually "touchy-feely" about biochem, it's enough if the prefix "bio" makes it appear as such in the minds of men and women who consider going into it as opposed to some other field.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#188

Post by marrs »

bjl wrote: post #162
collyw wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"charismatically-challenged unfortunates like Damore" Maybe I am on the autistic spectrum, or ots teh fact I studied science but i thought that Damore's memo was fairly well written. First time I went through it he made a couple of points where I though to myself "that sounds controversial", but then in every case he had backed it up with some study validating it to some extent. It was certainly a lot better written…

I mean, he explicitly references anti-Semitic conspiracy theories as his source at multiple points. That alone is enough to completely undermine his credibility, leaving aside the myriad other problems with his memo.

Is this the "anti-semitism" to which you refer?

Quote: Communism promised to be both morally and economically superior to capitalism, but every attempt became morally corrupt and an economic failure. As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy.”

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#189

Post by awinder »

traverseda wrote: post #174
awinder wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the alternative to credentialism is idiots like Damore rabble-rousing other total idiots, sign me up for credentialism.

I mean the well credentialed seem to be doing more than their fair share of rabble rousing. Also like half or more of social psychology research can't be replicated, so clearly that particular credential is not highly correlated with being correct...

Yep, that’s right. The well informed lead society, not the idiots. If you wanna go back to the dark ages make your point, but mine is that a biology major working for a technology company making commentary on psychology is a slam dunk case of someone who should just shut up. Certainly not someone who should be egged on.

BTW: the original comment was based on his job. Google didn’t hire him to make comments like that, they hired him to code. That’s all I meant, don’t shit where you eat, if you’re hired to code do that job and focus on that. I don’t know what this generations problem is with not being able to keep it together in a professional workplace, but the problem is this generation, not the rules.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#190

Post by UncleMeat »

thedevil wrote: post #149
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…

> actually jewish-marxists plots Where did you see the word "Jewish". I didn't see it when I read the text, it's not in the relevant footnote, and I did a search and didn't find it. Regarding the Marxist part: I'm not an expert on this but I believe it's called "critical theory" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory .

"Cultural marxism" and "marxism" are different things. One was a conspiracy theory with anti-semitic roots and one is a framework of academic inquiry. Guess which one damore mentions.
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