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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

#191

Post by moduspol »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #139
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.

Maybe he was fired not just because he made the company look bad, but also because he insulted about 30% of his co-workers, and on top of that kept trying to get his memo read by as many people as possible within Google. Banging on about a controversial subject that can cause upset and disruption in a work environment. Does that sound very professional, or something that a smart person would do? And do you really wan…

> he insulted about 30% of his co-workers

He didn't insult anyone, although some amount of his coworkers did feel insulted.

The difference between these two things is significant.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#192

Post by novia »

Hi everyone. I'm a woman with a math degree who just completed a computer programming certificate. I've wanted to study math my whole life, and I wasn't exposed to programming as a field of study until college.

I just wanted to state that, for the record, having these sorts of discussions on hacker news is extremely distressing to me. I've worked hard to get the accreditations that I have, and I usually enjoy the things I read on this website. But just imagine for a moment how all this appears to an aspiring programmer when she wakes up in the morning and checks her favorite technical content aggregator.

Like, yeah, none of you are saying that ALL women are less capable than ALL men, but what I'm reading here is the subtext. When I pursue a career in this field, how will my coworkers perceive me? Will I be treated with respect? Or will I be seated next to someone who is convinced that there is a gender war going on, and thereby offended by my very presence?

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#193

Post by merpnderp »

drewbuschhorn wrote: post #120
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…

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?

If you look at the actual issues in US culture you’ll see if the left that has drifted further left. As an example you don’t have to go far back to see Nancy Pelosi advocating keeping immigrants out, Hillary taking a moderate stance on abortion or even Obama being to the right of Trump on some social issues like marriage equality.

I’m for all of those things but there is zero doubt society has moved left fast.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#194

Post by pc86 »

collyw wrote: post #150
traverseda wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most men I know are pretty heavily in favour of equality. That might change if we treat equality as a war against men, instead of something we all work towards. Adapting behavior is reasonable, but there's men also need to be able to have a voice, or you're going to get some major pushback. Hopefully we can keep this kind of war at a low simmer when trump is up for re-election. More specifically, that means making su…

"Equality" is the sticking point. Equality of opportunity (meritocracy) or equality of outcome (sounds like a nasty place where people are selected on things like race, or gender)?

Strict equality of outcome means quotas, and that if the distribution of races, sexes, genders, sexual orientations, etc doesn't exactly match the entire population (or exceed it for certain disenfranchised groups) then something is horribly wrong and needs to be fixed. Very few people are in favor of that.

That being said, you can't have a strict equality of opportunity without acknowledging which people didn't have that opportunity. I think it's much easier to fix this problem if you focus on the person (e.g. Sandra couldn't afford college) rather than the group (Sandra's black and statistically less likely to have been able to afford college).

The problem is people use these bullshit heuristics that happen to suit their mental model of how they want their neighborhood/workplace/world to look ("We don't have a black woman in accounting, what's wrong with that hiring manager?" or "Everyone on the database team is Indian why can't they hire a white guy?") rather than just trying to be fair while still acknowledging systemic issues people have had because of the groups they may belong to.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#195

Post by arkh »

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…

Garbage disposal is not what people usually call a cognitively demanding field. The gender imbalance is still worse than CS.

What those two have in common are shitty working conditions. Yes, coding is done sitting in climate controlled offices. But it is mostly shit: shit doc, shit managers, shit clients, shit hours, shit tools. Only dumbfucks who don't mind shit conditions for more money would do it.

I'm sure if you checked the gender balance in government coding jobs and in gamedev you'd discover how it is more about working conditions than sexism.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#196

Post by edna314 »

jabot wrote: post #172
edna314 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wo…

> 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? Only if human properties are statistically independent. If they are not, then a policy that depends on equality of outcome will screw someone over. This has happened before, e.g. in medicinal research. Turns out, generalizing to the general population from a medicinal tria…

> If they are not, then a policy that depends on equality of outcome will screw someone over.

It means that someone would get less outcome than he or she would have gotten without the policy, true.

> This has happened before, e.g. in medicinal research. Turns out, generalizing to the general population from a medicinal trial that consists only of men results in worse treatment for women.

Wages or positions in companies are fundamentally different to medicine. We can decide how our companies look like. We can't decide how our body works.

> It seems to me that you argue from a POV that basic human properties are statistically independent. Now... Why do you think that is so?

I think you got me wrong here. I tried to argue from a POV of a reasonable being. I assumed that this is independent from any basic physical properties or even being "human". It's fine if you disagree with that, but I will have a hard time continuing the discussion. In hindsight this assumption although already implies that properties must be "statistically independent". Thanks for pointing that out I think I've learned something.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#197

Post by throwaway8075 »

arkh wrote: post #119
awinder wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He did himself. Got ripped to shreds in a forum with folks that I'd expect to be somewhat sympathetic with his cause.

He then reworked the doc a bit to be less overtly offensive (the published version is one of these later ones), still got shot down in a friendly way by the sympathetic part of the Google population for bullshit reasoning. Eventually it got wider circulation - not sure by whom, but he certainly didn't object to that.

At some point, when managers and friendly inclined folks tell you to shut up at work, you do. If you decide to pursue the topic further, don't whine when people disassociate themselves from you - not for the content of your speech, but for your conduct and the disruption that comes with it.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#198

Post by UncleMeat »

yoz-y wrote: post #39
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

I do not like the typical example of this which is razors. If pink razors are 50% more expensive then you can just buy the blue ones no? They are literally same except for the color.

They can, but there is marketing force that fights against this. How many women have only ever looked in the women's aisle for razors and not seen the price differences? These things can appear in aggregate even if individuals could behave a different way.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#199

Post by bloak »

donkeyd wrote: post #124
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.

I would expect immigrants to more frequently choose careers that require fewer linguistic skills, such as engineering or music, rather than law or advertising, say.

Some of my engineer colleagues are very hard to understand on the phone because of their language. It's hard to imagine them getting anywhere as a lawyer, for example.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#200

Post by pc86 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #143
traverseda wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most men I know are pretty heavily in favour of equality. That might change if we treat equality as a war against men, instead of something we all work towards. Adapting behavior is reasonable, but there's men also need to be able to have a voice, or you're going to get some major pushback. Hopefully we can keep this kind of war at a low simmer when trump is up for re-election. More specifically, that means making su…

Yes, we shouldn't treat equality as a a "war against men". I think we all learned our lesson from the "War against Christmas" when after early victories the Christians somehow caught on to our plan to distribute plain red cups in Starbucks and be considerate of those who celebrate other holidays around the same time. With the element of surprise gone we had no nope of crushing them under our athiest/muslim/jewish/hin…

I can count at least three points in the guidelines[0] this comment violates.

> Be civil...Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. (could be multiple but is the same paragraph so assuming combined as 1 point)

> Assume good faith.

> Please don't use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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