Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's obvious you have chosen not to inform yourself about this particular situation before commenting. You didn't even read the BBC article which had a big bold, "The decision follows an investigation into comments, first reported by BBC News, made by Prof Strumia at a Cern workshop on gender equality." The trigger for all this was his presentation at a workshop dedicated to having CERN physicists making statements a…
yawn more redirection and shifting. He stepped out of his own area of expertise to push an agenda of misogyny. He acted unethically and must face the consequences that entails
CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia
161–170 of 299 posts
Re: CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia
#162I am reminded of Larry Summers, then the head of Harvard, who said something similar: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/jan/18/educationsge... I think that previously there was a distinct issue with not enough women going through the degree programs. If the degree programs are 80% men and 20% women, statistically the men will outperform the women in outlier achievements just because there will likely be more p…
I've been reading recently about a structural/sociocultural/technological phenomenon that's actually holding women back in a field where women tend to dominate in representation at the academic level, but are regularly outcompeted by men at the professional level. Piano playing. It all comes down to the shape of the instrument, and hand-span, which is unquestionably (and uncontroversially) larger in men than in women…
If you're going to make such a drastic change to the piano, at least cut the keyboard into two halves at middle c, then invert both halves.
Now when the right hand starts at what used to be middle c and plays a chromatic scale upward, it's going from high pitches to low pitches. E.g., middle c is now the highest sounding c on the instrument.
(For purposes of this thought experiment, suppose there are two middle c's. I'm describing the middle c to the left below...)
Mirroring that, when the left hand starts at what used to be its middle c and plays a chromatic scale downward in the lower half, it's going from low pitches to higher pitches. That is, what used to be middle c is the lowest sounding pitch.
Benefits:
* when the right hand plays a melody the strongest fingers-- thumb, index, and middle-- are most likely to be playing. The ring finger and pinky-- the weakest fingers-- would be relegated to inner voices most of the time.
* the bass notes-- the most important notes of the accompaniment-- are played with the strongest fingers of the left hand. Again, that's thumb, index, and middle. Ancillary notes, and inner voices of chords, are played with the weaker fingers-- ring and pinky (and possibly middle if thumb is playing the bass note).
That way you vastly improve the ergonomics of the instrument. Otherwise you're just normalizing a big, expensive instrument so that it is guaranteed to be equally uncomfortable for all sizes of hand.
Re: CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
yawn more redirection and shifting. He stepped out of his own area of expertise to push an agenda of misogyny. He acted unethically and must face the consequences that entails
Being upset and wanting him punished is a fine and valid view. But maybe you should've actually known anything about the situation being discussed before saying patently false and irrelevant things (about this particular situation).
Re: CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In birds, the variance for body size is larger in females. Do you have a reference for this? I would be surprised, as I thought the explanation for variance was not about chromosomes, but about investment... but I don't actually know if that's true, and birds (WW/WZ as you say) or reptiles (temperature) would be interesting examples.
I do! https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/evo.12224 This is observed not only in birds vs mammals but also in insects (some have heterogametic males like mammals and others (butterflies) have heterogamic females, like birds). Key figure: https://i.imgur.com/4E6FUXN.png
Is the fact that male song-birds, err, spend much more on fashion & makeup... also a pattern that correlates with heterogameticness?
Re: CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lol Firstly, the guy isn't qualified to make such a sweeping statement about the opposite sex. So before we even step into the problems with why it's a dumb idea to say such things, lets just make it clear that he's a physicist and not an anthropologist, biologist, or sociologist. We definitely care about his moral character, but it's also just flat out incredibly naive to discredit women in his field when they've be…
It is comments like yours that is currently fuelling the ‘diversity’ meme pushback. You are denying someone the right to express facts just because of its gender and divergent political opinion. The guy is a physicist, he is way more qualified than any sociologist to deal with statistics. Your position is not only ridiculous virtue signaling but you are also creating a scary world where the messenger is more importan…
"It's comments like yours..." followed by "ridiculous virtue signaling." And he's the one "fueling" shit?
When you throw accusations like that — demonstrably ignorant of what the term even means — you straight up forfeit any claim to being the aggrieved party.
This kind of accusation of "virtue signaling" implies that the thing being done to "signal" some "virtue" is done purely to send that signal. That makes it a morally empty act, because its only motivation is to advertise one's moral stance (which stance, by implication, is not acted upon in any way but that advertising); you are clearly and specifically saying that the behavior is otherwise void — that its only value is the perception of having the "virtue" in question it's intended to engender.
I'm sure that pattern of behavior exists, and might even be common. The readiness with which it's bandied about, however, is, in my nontrivial experience engaging online, more or less invariably intended to make the person holding the stance in question and their arguement appear weaker, by attributing to them a compromised motivation. It does not open discussion up; it shuts it down.
I genuinely wonder if you happened to read the article shared here, yesterday, "Our Culture of Contempt", or the discussion that ensued, because this is as stark an example of "motive attribution asymmetry" as any I've encountered in recent memory on HN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19339240
> The guy is a physicist, he is way more qualified than any sociologist to deal with statistics.
This is laughably wrong, in so many ways.
EDIT: Phrasing.
Re: CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
yawn more redirection and shifting. He stepped out of his own area of expertise to push an agenda of misogyny. He acted unethically and must face the consequences that entails
So saying that men are discriminated against is a misogynistic view?
In context of the rest of the his history? Yes
Re: CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia
#167Re: CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia
#168Re: CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not at all sure what your argument is here. Strumia clearly did mislead CERN and the workshop organizers, pretty clearly gave a presentation to troll the workshop, and clearly launched an attack on another scientist (present at the workshop) during his presentation. Is your argument that someone should have been able to give a contrarian presentation about gender disparities in physics at this workshop? I agree w…
Which illustrates the fundamental issue here. This was not something that came from within, this was forced from the outside namely the media, in this case, BBC which made it politically problematic for CERN. If a woman or man had launched an attack on the problems of being a woman in a male-dominated field nothing would have happened, in fact, he or she would have been applauded for speaking truth to power and celeb…
There doesn't seem to be any evidence of that. How do you imagine the BBC found out about it?
Re: CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
They had to apologize because some people were going to be offended, surely, it doesn't mean the presentation is intellectually offensive. 'PR' is different than 'Science'. 'Cultural Marxism' is just a popular term for Intersectionalism, and it's a real issue, particularly on campus. People should be able to talk about issues that are a little bit uncomfortable.
He misled CERN to get his talk into the workshop, didn't provide materials a priori, deliberately gave his talk an obscurantist title, and attacked the workshop (and specific individual scientists and organizers) during the presentation. It was a stunt; he played the workshop. Nobody is going to congratulate him for that.