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Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

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Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#61

Please keep in mind that if really true, it is not a binary thing. It’s a distribution. There are going to be plenty of women who are more interested in things than the median man, and there are plenty of men who are more interested in people than the median woman.

When talking about populations, this should be implicitly assumed - just like that the experiment took place on Earth and the participants were breathing air. I don't know why this isn't burned into peoples brains with a big flashing neon sign, and why someone inevitably comes up with a counterargument of 'but not all X' when these things are discussed.

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#62
post #29

Still the problem here is we don't _really_ know whether this is genetic or shaped by our upbringing even when it comes to the most egalitarian societies. I'd like to see the same study done on the little left hunter-gatherers bands.

I don't know if it's really important to know for practice. Who care where it comes from if the effect is there and you have to live with it? It's not that effect being caused by upbringing makes it somehow unimportant, or unworthy of being there.

because if it's biological then you have to live with it (till you get scalable affordable bioengineering) whereas if it's social imprinting then you don't "have to live with it", for that it's going against our biological encoding. Your comment suggest that we should not question upbringing which I disagree with.

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#64
post #38

“women tended to be more interested in working with ideas (versus data) than men in all but two countries (the Philippines and Poland),” In Poland accounting is traditionally a female occupation. I know 0 male accountants and like 20 female ones.

Maybe general misanthropy in these countries supersedes the inbuilt bias :)

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#65

Still the problem here is we don't _really_ know whether this is genetic or shaped by our upbringing even when it comes to the most egalitarian societies. I'd like to see the same study done on the little left hunter-gatherers bands.

No. Why do female chimpanzees prefer to play with human dolls more than male chimpanzees if it's not a DEEP GENETIC DRIVE?

I don't understand what does this has to do with anything? how does that fit in things vs people? a doll is a thing after all? I'm not saying there's no deep genetic drive at all.

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#66

Please keep in mind that if really true, it is not a binary thing. It’s a distribution. There are going to be plenty of women who are more interested in things than the median man, and there are plenty of men who are more interested in people than the median woman.

I don't think anyone arguing in good faith would state otherwise. This is too obvious

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#67
post #30

Does this mean James Damore was right? Or is there something wrong with this research?

You don't need confirmations like that to say he was right. He was right, and we know that because his arguments were (relatively) well-built, so they are really worth considering.

Define "well-built".

His choice of wording is poor, and it's clear in most cases he assumes he's "right" - rather than posing a question and linking to supporting evidence for why he "might be right".

The way to start a good conversation isn't Authoritarian: "You're wrong, and I'm right. Now let me lecture you why."

It's Seneca style: "here's some things I noticed that are weird and don't add up, let's discuss, and - please - correct me if I'm wrong."

The memo could've maybe led to good discussion if he avoided prescriptions at the end - which he wasn't qualified to make - and withheld opinion. Among other things, his table of right/left is highly subjective and controversial and adds almost nothing to the discussion beside asking for trouble...

If you're aware that certain things are sacred, you should be aware that you need to navigate opposition to the narrative very carefully...

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#68
post #55
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bricklayer works with things. Daycare staff work with people. These are very clear-cut. Then there are a lot of points along that continuum -- nurses and HR reps work mostly with people. Economists a little of both. Software engineers and carpenters mostly with things. We may not agree on a complete ordering but we will get reasonably close to each other, I suppose.

Nurses work with people more than things? Im not sure how much face time a nurse gets in a day but Ive talked to a few and its a lot of paperwork… do accountants work with things?

I've spent at 10 days a few years ago working in a medical team in an hospital assisting nurses. They have a lot of workflow stuff to follow but that doesn't mean they chose this job for this reason and they mostly hate it. And they are still running left and right for patients all day. Plus their desktop is usually not hidden in an office but in a counter at the center of the service where they multitask between doing the paperwork and talking to patients/visitors/other members of the medical or technical teams

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#69
post #45
post #37

The definition of working with people vs. working with things doesn't seem obvious to me. As a software engineer I am working a lot with my computer. Therefore I must be working with things! But... I am just as much working with my soft skills. Scrum retros, talking to stakeholders, discussions on design with fellow engineers, testing with end-users. Some days I don't spend even a minute working with "things". I don'…

A bricklayer works with things. Daycare staff work with people. These are very clear-cut. Then there are a lot of points along that continuum -- nurses and HR reps work mostly with people. Economists a little of both. Software engineers and carpenters mostly with things. We may not agree on a complete ordering but we will get reasonably close to each other, I suppose.

You cannot not work with people, only the degree varies. And as soon as you are part of a larger organisation, and / or working on complex things, you work woth people as much as you work with things. Including brick layers.

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#70
post #58
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This cannot be the case. More than 5% of the male population is old, weak, and/or disabled that it can't possibly be true that 95% of all men have stronger arms than 95% of women. And if you include children I don't see how this could possibly be true. Unless you mean something else?

And if you include children I don't see how this could possibly be true. There are female children too. More than 5% of the male population is old, weak, and/or disabled There are old, weak, and disabled women as well. Additionally, if you think old men are weak I suspect you have never had to wrestle an eighty year old with dementia out of a bath tub. They are remarkably, irritatingly strong.

I would argue that one should discern strength when actually caring or not caring to injure someone else in the process.
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