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Girls Who Code

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Re: Girls Who Code

#381

Post by johnbm »

codahale wrote: post #379
johnbm wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I believe you call derailing. Like the other person, I'm also still waiting for substantive points to be made rather than shaming and cherry picking.

I'm not here for debate club, Johnonymous. Like I said before, I'm here for the pearl-clutching.

No indeed, that would mean not being a self righteous prick. You know what the effect of people like Kane was in the skeptic community? Female conference attendance dropped from 40% to 10% in a single year.

Enjoy your self defeating efforts.

Re: Girls Who Code

#382

Post by [deleted] »

codahale wrote: post #379
johnbm wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I believe you call derailing. Like the other person, I'm also still waiting for substantive points to be made rather than shaming and cherry picking.

I'm not here for debate club, Johnonymous. Like I said before, I'm here for the pearl-clutching.

[deleted]

Re: Girls Who Code

#383

Post by reefoctopus »

glesica wrote: post #221
yummyfajitas wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But IBM, and many of the big corporations in the USA, followed very liberal policies that promoted diversity in the work place. A meritocracy based on raw intelligence and skill (measured by standardized testing) is not exactly what people mean today when they discuss "promoting diversity". In fact, nowadays people typically criticize such practices as inhibiting diversity [1]. As for culture fit, it's a complicated…

> A meritocracy based on raw intelligence and skill (measured by standardized testing) is not exactly what people mean today when they discuss "promoting diversity". Well sure, but largely because the standardized tests are all biased against women and/or minorities. [1] Aside from that, what exactly is a "meritocracy"? What does that mean? You have to define it pretty carefully. HN is full of posts about making soci…

>Well sure, but largely because the standardized tests are all biased against women and/or minorities

I can't tell whether or not you are being sarcastic.

Re: Girls Who Code

#384

Post by [deleted] »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #99
crassus wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Party line" is an interesting choice of words. There's definitely some unhealthy groupthink going on that's gaining in power. It's never been easier to have something said taken out of context and have your reputation dragged through the mud by people who are professional social justice warriors and not much else (I doubt Nitasha Tiku could program "hello world") Maybe it's due to the rise of twitter and the ease of…

Shanley Kane and her circle and sympathizers are spearheading this. Many of them show up in every HN thread about charged topics. I fully expect defense of them to show up in reply. It is part of my core being to be respectful to everyone, to listen to all sides, to feel empathy; however, when I am presented with a popular group in my industry that does none of those things, I am not sure how to react. What's depress…

[deleted]

Re: Girls Who Code

#385

Post by yummyfajitas »

glesica wrote: post #377
yummyfajitas wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The few links provided by your google search do not back up your claim of bias - they repeat the same vague assertion as you but provide no evidence. If you have evidence of this claim please be more specific about presenting it. I also didn't claim any startups use IQ tests. The point I was making is that what lkrubner described as "very liberal policies that promoted diversity in the work place" (namely, assessing…

If "objective" and "merit" are defined as "upper-middle class white men" then don't talk about IQ tests, just say what you mean. My point is that you can couch what goes on in whatever language you like, but if you don't care about social justice, then just say so and stop pretending that what you are doing is actually the "real" social justice or is somehow "natural" (for some weird, pseudo-genetic definition of "na…

"Objective" means "different people applying the procedure will get the same answer". This is a property held by standardized tests and carefully defined interview processes. "Merit" is defined as "what will make me the most money".

I don't know why you believe I'm pretending to do "social justice". I'm not. I'm trying to make money, just like IBM in the mainframe era. Hiring based on coding ability is profitable because a software business is about turning code into money, it has nothing to do with "historical oppression".

Incidentally, I'm opposed to "social justice". Social justice is based on the premise that certain subsets of humanity [1] deserve special rights (mostly statistical equality), but the other 2^{6 billion} subsets of humanity do not.

If that's a moral axiom I don't share it. If it's derived from some other moral principle, I have not heard a coherent derivation [2].

(To fully grasp the philosophical issue I have, explain why you care about "women and minorities", but not "children of murder victims and people who's SSN ends with 3847".)

[1] Typically women, lgbt, blacks, hispanics, but not asians.

[2] The closest I've ever heard is basically "everybody cares about race/gender/lgbt so we do too".

Re: Girls Who Code

#386

Post by jmagoon »

mistermann wrote: post #380
jmagoon wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't, and I never made that claim because it's insane. I object to the idea that "feminist activists" "didn't push to get more women into tech until tech was a higher paying, lower risk endeavor." There's a claim "women are more risk averse", and another claim "feminist activists exist", both of which are feasibly true, that do not lead to general conclusion that "feminist activists did not push to get more women…

I must be confused or misinterpreted you. "And who are these "feminist activist" strawmen(straw-women?) you have set up?" I took that to mean (generally) that the idea that there is such a thing as a legitimate feminist activist is nonsense - that in reality any reference to one is as part of a straw man argument. Not what you were saying?

What I meant was that he was characterizing all feminist activists as wanting or doing X (X being unsupported, anyways), which seems to me to be an unfair generalization and an easy to knock down, stereotypical villain.

I should have clarified in the original post, apologies.

Re: Girls Who Code

#387

Post by jdunck »

Sssnake wrote: post #370
jdunck wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because software is eating the world. Because entrepreneurship creates jobs. Because software is the new means of production. Because people different than you have problems which are different than yours. Because dog-fooding is a great way to make something people want. Lots more reasons, but chew on those.

Only 1 and 3 are relevant, and I don't believe either of them are true. The rest of those apply equally to all sorts of other skilled trades.

Thanks for showing your confirmation bias. Keep asking questions you don't want to think about.

Re: Girls Who Code

#388

Post by Sssnake »

jdunck wrote: post #387
Sssnake wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only 1 and 3 are relevant, and I don't believe either of them are true. The rest of those apply equally to all sorts of other skilled trades.

Thanks for showing your confirmation bias. Keep asking questions you don't want to think about.

If you don't have any interest in engaging in a good faith discussion that don't reply. This isn't reddit, shitposting isn't rewarded here.

Re: Girls Who Code

#389

Post by erichocean »

glesica wrote: post #246
theorique wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well sure, but largely because the standardized tests are all biased against women and/or minorities. IQ tests - which are pretty well normed across cultures if you use the right ones - tend to turn up the same patterns over and over. IQ tests (or their proxies) are useful ways of testing general cognitive fitness and ability and anticipating on-the-job performance and learning (see, e.g., http://www.udel.edu/educ/go…

So then why don't startups hire based on the results of IQ tests, isn't this a meritocracy? You actually made my overall point stronger, because you demonstrated that this community clearly doesn't define "merit" to be "raw intelligence". It is a much, much more nuanced concept and it includes, I suspect, a large number of characteristics that are heavily influenced by gender, culture, and class. When we say "merit"…

So then why don't startups hire based on the results of IQ tests, isn't this a meritocracy?

That specifically is illegal in the United States.

Corporations are forced to use proxies instead, such as SAT or ACT scores, or things keyed to that, like college admissions.

Re: Girls Who Code

#390

Post by erichocean »

dragonwriter wrote: post #212
crassus wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind, too, that female unemployment is lower than male unemployment. Your average female in the labor force has more options than your average male.

> Keep in mind, too, that female unemployment is lower than male unemployment. Your average female in the labor force has more options than your average male. A society which views it as more acceptable for women to opt-out of the labor force may distort this: when employment becomes less scarce, women may be more likely to opt-out of the labor force -- since unemployment measures (actively looking for work) / (emplo…

when employment becomes less scarce, women may be more likely to opt-out of the labor force

We've been in that situation for 5 years in the US. What you're describing did not happen—declines in labor participation among men still exceed women by a significant amount.

One explanation I've heard is that since women earn less, but do "the same" work, it's cheaper to keep them on vs. men. I have no idea if that's correct or not, or if it is, explains the difference.

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