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‘I believed I didn't have the right kind of brain for science’

theguardian.com

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Re: ‘I believed I didn't have the right kind of brain for science’

#31

Post by jakubp »

lruor wrote: post #19
areoform wrote: post #13

It is hard to do the things you love when you aren't wanted. Setting aside the statistics for a moment, imagine being a teenage girl and overhearing boys talk about how girls are dumb. Brainless machines of no consequence. That women can't code or contribute much in fields like math. "They just don't have the brain for it." These moments stay with you and they impede you at moments when you need to be free. They push…

>imagine being a teenage girl and overhearing boys talk about how girls are dumb What do you think girls think and say of boys? This is just stupid (and incorrect) victimism, directed at a gender, when the other one acts the same. Someone using that argument is either 1) completely unaware of the experiences of the other gender or 2) being dishonest.

Not sure what culture you are from, but in Poland at least I have almost never heard girls (or anyone!) say anything particularly bad of that sort to boys, but I sure have heard said a lot to girls.

There's definitely still a strong 'boyish' culture where boys can say almost anything they like and it's OK, but girls (for whatever reason) won't. It's not about who's better - it's about what we let people get away with.

Also it's not about thinking. Thinking is the ultimate change you want, but we can't see and know what people around us think, but we can still try to enact standards of reasonable, gentle (non-violent if you will) communication.

Re: ‘I believed I didn't have the right kind of brain for science’

#32

Post by 0815test »

jakubp wrote: post #16
Doubl wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone gets knocked down and women are just as good at doing the knocking down.

The point is we've identified gender is used to knock people down a lot, that this particular angle seems to have little basis in fact, and so are trying to make people aware to stop this particular angle. If we find more systematic ways in which people are getting knocked down, we should probably work on those, too.

> gender is used to knock people down a lot

"Toxic masculinity" says hi. It's definitely a two-way street!

Re: ‘I believed I didn't have the right kind of brain for science’

#33

Post by jakubp »

Doubl wrote: post #18
jakubp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is we've identified gender is used to knock people down a lot, that this particular angle seems to have little basis in fact, and so are trying to make people aware to stop this particular angle. If we find more systematic ways in which people are getting knocked down, we should probably work on those, too.

The cure today, which is the enforcement of a set of beliefs on pain of shunning or job loss, is worse than the disease. For example the Connie St Louis fiasco

Not familiar with Connie St Louis. I see a twitter channel by that name. What happened? Curious to read a bit more, any pointers?

Re: ‘I believed I didn't have the right kind of brain for science’

#34

Post by treerock »

eecc wrote: post #24
okasaki wrote: post #7

What a banal way to advertise your book.

There, that’s one of those “knock down” the article is about. There’s this point I heard someone made about internet toxicity: “it used to be that if you didn’t have anything positive to say you’d just shit up and move on; if anything to avoid a bitter quarrel in person. On the internet, the lack of any immediate personal consequence removed this restraint, allowing the worst thoughts to pour out, and drown whatever…

> it used to be that if you didn’t have anything positive to say you’d just shut up and move on

While that's an attitude I've learned to follow ("If you'd don't have anything nice to say, don't say it." as my maw would put it) I'm not sure it's actually that healthy. It shuts down all possibility of (negative) criticism for fear of causing offense, or bad feeling.

Re: ‘I believed I didn't have the right kind of brain for science’

#35

Post by 0815test »

eecc wrote: post #20

I need to finish the article but let me leave a “reaction post” here just for starters... that Strumia guy - the misogynist Italian physicist - is a tool. The prototypical socially disabled person that compensates for their ineptitude by digging themselves into a trench of books. I’m male, but having studied engineering I had the displeasure to bump into examples a couple times; and it left marks.

That Strumia guy was mostly "compensating" for his sour grapes, actually. He actually brought up an internal controversy about tenure promotion or something similar, that he was involved in, as an example of gender bias for his CERN "talk", and people fell for it. Master troll.

Re: ‘I believed I didn't have the right kind of brain for science’

#38

Post by jodrellblank »

ifianassa wrote: post #30

I too never thought I was smart enough - in my case, for computers. Nothing to do with my gender. My father bought me my first computer at 10. But, others said that I can't learn programming if I don't know maths, and I was crap at maths. So I didn't learn to program. Not until I went to university, to study computer science, of all things. I was good at language, so I treated programming as a language problem. I lea…

Not until I went to university, to study computer science, of all things. I was good at language, so I treated programming as a language problem.

Just today I was reading this blog post from someone who loved math, went into programming, and claims that programming isn't math, it's language, and that the image comes from early programmers being mathematicians and the industry hasn't moved on from that image yet:

http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2014/07/15/programming-is-not-m...

People with a math background did fine, of course, but people with a heavy language background often did better. I saw this curious effect again when I started working with high schoolers, with a similar curriculum. Bilingual kids often took to programming more easily than monolingual kids.

(Has that been discussed or investigated?)

Re: ‘I believed I didn't have the right kind of brain for science’

#39

Post by Veen »

Buge wrote: post #9
Donald wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvard offers undergraduates remedial classes through their extension school. In fact, you may be surprised to hear that so many admits have issues with writing that they offer a non-extension remedial writing class (Expos10.) These are just undergrads - students come from a variety of educational backgrounds and are admitted for various reasons, of which legacy is just one possibility.

I think there are 2 things that make math different than writing in this case. 1. I expect the main reason for needing remedial writing would be English as a second language people. That is, smart people who got a good education, but that education wasn't primarily English. That doesn't really apply to math. 2. I expect standardized tests can more easily test math than writing due to the nature of solving math proble…

As someone who makes a living ghost writing and copywriting in the technology space, I assure you that many smart people with an excellent technical education struggle to construct coherent sentences when writing.

Re: ‘I believed I didn't have the right kind of brain for science’

#40

Post by chungleong »

throwaway2019Z wrote: post #22
vecter wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people who go to Harvard aren't great at math. After all, there are so many other fields of study outside of STEM.

Most people who go to Harvard have to get very high scores on the SAT/ACT, which include math sections that are of, at least, remedial math difficulty.

Her father is a television screenwriter. From what I've heard, test prep services in Hollywood can work miracles.
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