Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies • Hacker News Board

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#501

Post by notlob » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 2:50 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #499

notlob wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a misstatement of what the biochemistry coursework I am familiar with looks like. Biochem, when offered as an undergrad program, is offered through the biology department and has a number of standard biology department requirements that would be elective at best for chemistry undergrads. Biochem majors also take orgo following gen chem, just like chemistry majors. I don’t know what “touchy-feely” means in thi…

My son is in UIUC's biochem program. It's offered through the Chemistry department, has him in orgo next semester, and has a first year shared with chemical engineers.

At UIUC biochemistry is offered through Molecular and Cellular Biology. It's a good program but distinct from Chemistry. Next semester sounds like sophomore fall, which would be on schedule for chemistry majors as well as biochem majors at most programs I know of.

I have no idea what bringing up ChemE has to do with anything: undergrad ChemE has little to do with chemistry and a lot to do with continuum mechanics and steam tables. It's common for engineering students to do their natural sciences classwork (it isn't called "earth sciences", that is something else) together along with major students.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#502

Post by rphlx » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 4:17 AM UTC

> publication bias – the tendency for positive but not negative results to be published

Many years ago Feynman expressed concern and regret about the harm that causes to experimental physics. One can imagine it being a far bigger issue in some of the social sciences, where there is nothing nearly as consistently apolitical as Nature to gradually separate reality from comforting delusion.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#503

Post by edna314 » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 4:47 AM UTC

Veelox wrote: post #325

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…

>Why is equality of outcome not a desirable goal, especially in science and technology? I am going to try and describe this in a math/programming way. Say we have two functions randM() and randF() the first returns a Male Person, the second returns a Female Person. Person has an Ability and a Preference. We also have a function stemJob(Person p) that takes a Person and returns a Job with an Income, Prestige, and Sati…

Thanks for the effort!

I think it's a bit clearer now where the differences lie. For example the assumption avg(randM()) != avg(randF()), which should more precisely be avg(randM()) >> avg(randF()) to justify stemJob(randM()) >> stemJob(randF()).

There is another assumption here, that is that if you don't touch it, stemJob() is a fair function in the sense that stemJob(randM()) == stemJob(randF()) where randM() and randF() have the same Ability and Preference. I find that unlikely as, for example, there is evidence that people are more likely to hire candidates of the same sex.

What is interesting is that it boils down to the question whether or not you believe that avg(randM()) >> avg(randF()), or in words that in general men are much more capable then women in STEM and I asked for a theory supporting that claim in my original comment. If I understood correctly someone who supports equality of chance would agree that stemJob() must be unfair if it turns out that avg(randM()) ~ avg(randF()).

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#504

Post by cpach » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 4:53 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #262

Pyxl101 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for clarifying. Let’s not characterize programming as masculine or feminine (since that would begging the question and stereotyping). Let’s characterize it in terms of properties that have been scientifically studied. I would characterize programming as very far on the “Things” side of the axis that is “People vs Things”. See: Men and Things, Women and People: A Meta-Analysis of Sex Differences in Interests…

I would characterize law school as even more “thing” oriented than a STEM program (having done both). Law school is just pattern matching. You read cases to derive a set of abstract rules. Then on the test, you pattern match facts in a long hypothetical against the rules and write out how each element of each rule applies to the facts in the hypothetical. Whoever analyzes the most issues in 3 hours wins. Unlike STEM,…

Interesting! Regarding the second paragraph, is this true also for criminal law?

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#505

Post by edna314 » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 5:00 AM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #476

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…

> Why is equality of outcome not a desirable goal I guess it depends on how you go about it. If you needed 100 programmers, and there were exactly 100 programmers available, but 80 were men and 20 were women - but you insisted on equality of outcome, you'd hire 50 of the male programmers, all 20 of the female programmers, and be 30 programmers short, even though there were 30 perfectly capable programmers that would…

That would be indeed a problem in that special case, but I never argued that these quotas are a great idea in general. I just wanted to point out that the article dismisses gender equality as a bad idea with a equality of chance argument, which isn't explained, but the reader is expected to accept it as universally valid and always superior to equality of outcome. I was just questioning that.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#506

Post by edna314 » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 5:06 AM UTC

biofox wrote: post #395

edna314 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> idea of equality of outcome for its own sake It's not for its one sake. It's for peace in the society. > Should nursing training and culture be manipulated to be more appealing to people like me? I would only want that if it were beneficial for the nursing profession itself. Have you tried it? I think it's not really reasonable to assume that humans are made to do exactly one thing. It's more of a necessary convent…

I worded my comment poorly. You're right... the number in not artificial. And I agree with your point on humans being capable of many things. I want to live in a society where people can make a living doing things they enjoy and are good at. My concern is that quotas for outcomes (rather than things that more directly measure discrimination) might end up achieving the opposite: on one hand encouraging people into pos…

I never argued that quotas are great solution. But, I think once you realize that a solution to a problem is bad you should look for a different solution instead of declaring that there is no problem, which seems to be the easy way out.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#507

Post by sundarurfriend » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 6:51 AM UTC

lfischer wrote: post #238

arkh wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Assuming you’re right about programming being so horrible, how is programming any worse than other clerical jobs?

One difference is that most other clerical jobs don't depend as much on long-term focus and flow, and so allow much more work socialization and frequent casual chatter. That difference matters heavily to those for whom such socialization is important. It neutralizes the pain of confined spaces and boredom for such socially inclined people.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#508

Post by sundarurfriend » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 6:54 AM UTC

MistahKoala wrote: post #471

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Admittedly, I'm yet to read it (Pocketed it for later). Tut tut. You should always read the article before commenting, the manual before turning it on and the contract before signing it. But, you know- no pressure :P

What can I say, I'm a man! I attempt to build the Lego without the instructions, drive the car without the map, and play the board game without the rule book :D

> play the board game without the rule book

Nooooo! It's not a good board gaming session unless you spend 90 minutes poring over the rulebook and 19 minutes in gaming, well known fact. How can you do that if you don't have the rulebook with you!

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#509

Post by T2_t2 » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 7:54 AM UTC

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…

This is just a weird argument to me - the argument about ability. I don't think, in any western country - which for point of reference I'm taking as any country Israel or above on this list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)... - that ability plays much of a part. I'd say it is mostly preference.

Lets say I have a preference for MMs over Skittles - a 2:1 preference. How often will I eat each? Probably in that ratio over a lifetime, because I'll eat snacks lots of times.

Now lets say I have a 60:40 preference for Driving a car as a career over being a shop assistant. What is the chance that the I will be a driver? Given I can only choose one, in a less than ideal world, it will be influenced by lots of things beyond my personal preference, opportunity most of all. But in an ideal world, the chance I am a driver starts to approach 100%, because why would I choose the 40% option, when I have a better one?

Free societies enable lots of choice, and tiny differences, 60:40 or even 55:45, will start to skew towards 100:0 over time. This is likely to play out right to the bottom, where people with fewer options are still likely to choose based on preference, hence garbage collectors and manual labourers vs shop assistants / PAs.

The consequence of tiny differences in preference and the small instances per person are likely to lead to some radical results.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#510

Post by racer-v » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 8:12 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #413

belorn wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is strong evidence that women are kept out of STEM I might be boiling down your comment down to that one line, but it such a common line that I feel the need to point out some data. Here in Sweden about 12.5% of the population, men and women, work in a profession where the gender segregation is not higher than 150% dominance for a single gender. The other 87.5% of the population all work in a profession which…

The US is not Sweden. In the US, you die or your kids starve if you don’t have enough money. So when you see a statistic that women have the altitude to go into a high paying career disproportionately to their actual representation, it’s harder to dismiss that just by saying “oh they must prefer to do something else.” Beyond that, I’m not inclined to believe that Sweden really is more gender equal. It seems based on…

Are things in the US are that bad? Maybe you should focus on how to help people with lower-paying jobs not starve, rather than pushing to make sure that the scarce "living-wage" jobs are going to women instead of men.