As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men • Hacker News Board

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#171

Post by YinglingLight » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 1:27 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #126

PeterisP wrote: post #21

Equality of opportunities and equality of outcomes are incompatible as long as the source groups differ in any meaningful way, even "just" in preferences, which is a very big factor in choice of profession. In order to get equality of outcomes, you would need to enforce inequality of opportunities.

Why would you want equality of outcomes anyway? It goes against individual Freedom. As long as opportunities are as equal as they can be, the rest is just the reflection of what individuals want to focus on and achieve. Equality of outcomes will force some people to do what they dont want to, which is undesirable on many levels.

>Why would you want equality of outcomes anyway? It goes against individual Freedom.

"An interesting article in The Atlantic talks about studies showing that liberals think in terms of fairness while conservatives think in terms of morality. So if you want to persuade someone on the other team, you need to speak in their language. We almost never do that. That’s why you rarely see people change their opinions.

....If your aim is to persuade, you have to speak the language of the other. Talking about fairness to a conservative, or morality to a liberal, fails at the starting gate. The other side just can’t hear what you are saying."

http://blog.dilbert.com/2017/02/15/how-to-persuade-the-other...

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#172

Post by arandr0x » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 1:37 PM UTC

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #80

js8 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people care so much whether preferences are biological or cultural. (Well, I understand it if we assume they are being dishonest, so assuming that something is not biological allows them to claim that it can be changed to whatever they think is morally superior. The debate whether being gay is cultural is a good example.) If I am given a true freedom to choose, to decide according to my prefere…

It honestly changes the way we work with something. Biological differences aren't things we can easily change right now. Skin color or the shape of one's fingernails or the length of one's legs. Some biological things have real world things that go with it. Skin color, for example, could put you at greater risk of skin cancer or a greater risk of low vitamin D. One simply accepts and lives with these things and works…

But, in some other cases where something is most likely a biological difference, but changing the culture could meaningfully change the outcome for a sub-population, we do tend to choose to resolve the biology part. For example, we medicate for ADHD and back pain, when we could presumably build a society where people don't have to work as information traders while sitting at a desk all day if they want good money.

Regardless of whether the differences are biological or not, the real question is are the outcomes they lead to meaningfully bad or debilitating; are women more vulnerable as a result of them (I think they are but I suppose it's debatable). And if they are, should we change the value society assigns these choices so that people who make them have better outcomes, or should we change the people who make the choices (either through force or education or medication). If we are choosing to change the people (I guess we are), then if we find out or even guess that the root cause may be biological, our responsibility is not to shrug and go "well, guess 50% of the population can keep being depressed and poor, it's their choice", it's to find a biological solution people could choose to take to make themselves more suited to society's reward system. Isn't it?

(Obviously the women who already do like programming don't need anything special except for their work environment to stop being more terrible than men's through e.g. harassment by their VPs.)

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#173

Post by dsfyu404ed » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 1:40 PM UTC

torben-friis wrote: post #37

I wonder how it adjusts for culturally pushed gender differences. Women could have the same opportunities as men but be expected to have different tastes, be subjected to different experiences growing up, etc. which could affect their choices in latter life.

If someone legitimately has a preference then what does it matter whether their preferences are the result of "cultural norms" or personal taste?

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#174

Post by vidarh » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 1:42 PM UTC

js8 wrote: post #97

defertoreptar wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It matters when you want to evaluate whether a group has gotten a bad deal in society. For example, if girls tend to prefer playing with dolls instead of toy cars, is it nature or nurture? If nature, then maybe there's a biological basis for why less women go into stem. If nurture, then maybe it's society's norms and expectations that explains why women more often go into people-oriented jobs like teaching and nursin…

"It matters when you want to evaluate whether a group has gotten a bad deal in society." I am not sure why would I want to do that. As a leftist (being pro-equality), I don't really want there to be anybody who got a bad deal in society. But why should it matter which group are they part of? It seems chauvinistic to me.

If you don't want there to be anybody who got a bad deal in society, first you need to understand whether or not where they are now is where they want to be or somewhere they ended because other options were closed to them.

If you don't know if they got a bad deal, you don't even know if there's anything to fix, much less how.

But you can't just ask people that, because people make a whole lot of choices based on what is seen as achievable for them not just by themselves but by society around them irrespective of their personal traits.

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#175

Post by 0x445442 » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 1:42 PM UTC

faceplanted wrote: post #115

grenoire wrote: post #31

This follows a series of validation studies (incl. e.g. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617741719 ) from this year especially. The results seem to consistently show the same 'paradoxical' outcome. J. Peterson came to my campus last week and I think he mentioned this one specific study, and also noted several other ones, which brought the one I linked to my attention. It really isn't the only one, a…

Is Jordan Peterson any better in person than he seems in his book? I read it after a friend recommended it and he seemed completely insufferable and possibly mildly autistic based on what seemed like a real lack of understanding of the internal lives of others. Lots of people seem to like him, but I can't bring myself to watch him speak in person since everything I see just traversing the internet is framed as him "d…

> a real lack of understanding of the internal lives of others.

He had a successful clinical psychology practice for years. I'm not sure that's possible if your suspicion is true.

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#176

Post by Mon29Oct » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 1:43 PM UTC

This has been observed since Scandinavian countries pushed very female-friendly work laws, only to have differences in gender preferences more marked than ever. The book The Nordic Gender Equality Paradox submits two pieces of explanation to it, which are that 1/ One of the reforms was to offer sumptuous parent leave, encouraging parents to distance themselves from work for a significant duration, but which made the mothers gain less experience than the fathers who usually don't take the leave and 2/ Those reforms incurred strong taxes and diminished spending power, more especially making child care less affordable, again distancing mothers from work.

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#177

Post by js8 » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 1:46 PM UTC

ramblerman wrote: post #150

js8 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand, of course, that it makes the difference when you want to change things. But my main question is, why do you want to change things, even in case where everybody is free to choose? I am not really sure I buy into "treating boys and girls the same" either. I think what's more important is to give them options (perhaps against their will, to get them outside the comfort zone). It seems to me that schools al…

> I think what's more important is to give them options (perhaps against their will, to get them outside the comfort zone) How do you justify the against their will part with your earlier sentiment that you don't understand why people care if its biology or cultural. If its biological, forcing them outside of their biological comfort zone seems particularly cruel.

First of all, we shouldn't treat adults and children the same. Children (and teens) should be sometimes pushed out of their comfort zone, at least for short periods of time. Because sometimes they find it is actually something they will enjoy.

In adults, it's different. They should be offered the option and decide for themselves. It is still good thing to do from time to time.

In any case, you need to be sensible as a parent. You shouldn't push children out of their "biological" comfort zone. For example, if a kid is afraid of spiders it is not sensible to push him to have one as a pet. It might be sensible to go to a zoo to see one (among other interesting animals), though.

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#178

Post by adwn » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 1:46 PM UTC

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #109

js8 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not really sure what you're trying to say. Can you give an example, perhaps? In particular, can you give an illustrative example which explains the difference between "free to choose" and "actually free to choose"?

Do you think there is something innate that changed genetically about women that led to them being much less likely to be computer programmers now than they were in the 1970s, but much more likely to be biologists? If not, there is probably some other factor at work leading to these changing "preferences," even though as far as I know women have had no legal barriers to working in either field throughout that period.…

> Do you think there is something innate that changed genetically about women that led to them being much less likely to be computer programmers now than they were in the 1970s [...]

Wait – I thought back then (1950s/60s/maybe 70s), "programming" refered to something more akin to data input, i.e., someone designed a program, and the "programmer" entered that program into the computer's memory, using punch cards or whatever [1]. Later, this activity and the designing of a program was merged and done by a single person, as it is known today.

If this is true, then the mystery is not why women's preferences changed since the 1970s, but why their preferences seem to be different from men's, back then and today.

[1] You can still find this terminology in the hardware world. For example, storing the bitstream into an FPGA's SRAM or flash cells is called "programming the FPGA", and the little box which is sometimes necessary to do this, is called a "programmer" – which is kind of funny if you think about it.

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#179

Post by aleeds » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 1:47 PM UTC

taneq wrote: post #140

Tomminn wrote: post #47

The strongest correlations seem related to the wealth of the country. One reading of this finding is that more effort is directed toward gender performance in rich countries. This could be due to a number of factors. I wouldn't discount the difference in the quantity of media consumed by both countries.

That's what spun me out when I first traveled in Asia. Backpacking through Thailand there was (as far as I could see) pretty equal representation in almost all different job roles, from street vendors to travel agents to IT. (Come to think of it, tuk-tuk drivers and taxi drivers were universally male, though...) After years of being told that all women loved tech and only shied away from it because it was full of hor…

Consider that "women dealing with horrible misogynistic neckbeards" and "women that get no special treatment" are in fact, compatible.

For women every day, those negative experiences are the difference from men that keep them from being in the industry.

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#180

Post by sctb » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 1:50 PM UTC

JimGuns wrote: post #152

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