An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference • Hacker News Board

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#141

Post by diego » Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 1:18 AM UTC

brighteyes wrote: post #70

diego wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying he's right, but "we're all social animals" ignores the entire discipline of evolutionary psychology. Biology forced males and females of various species to evolve different strategies. For humans some of those strategies are obsolete, but it doesn't mean that they're gone from our brains. If you haven't, check out The Mating Mind by Geoffrey Miller or similar books.

Please don't refer to the Mating Mind here. It's borderline-crank material, and not regarded as serious by the vast majority in the field. Referring people to almost any book by Steven Pinker is much better. E.g. "How the Mind Works."

Curious why you think it's crank material (and why my comment warrants a downvote btw). I've read most Steven Pinker's books as well. Miller's is mostly a rehash of other people's research along with some speculation and opinion on his part, but he clearly states so. In any case, the reference does not invalidate my rebuttal of the parent comment.

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#142

Post by 3pt14159 » Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 1:19 AM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #123

3pt14159 wrote: post #88

Before you write a comment about why women are or aren't enrolled in STEM fields, please read the Wikipedia article on it. Every time someone says a generalization like "they just choose safer employment" or "high status something, something" without first reviewing a summary of the body of research into the matter, it's kinda pointless. It's like someone saying "here's why I think computers crash" but they've never…

You wouldn't read a book on HTML to know why computers crash. A book on advanced C, maybe.

You kinda missed the point. Someone reading a book on html night stumble upon a kinda sorta correct response.

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#143

Post by mrkurt » Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 1:21 AM UTC

jsprogrammer wrote: post #137

saturdayplace wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> YC is still stuck in a world of ideas based on controlling others through the creation of debt and claiming lifetime ownership of others' work. I don't understand this sentiment AT ALL. There is no debt involved, so I don't see any control exerted through those means. And sure, they buy non-controlling ownership of others' work, but that ownership is sold freely. Not to mention the other consideration that lands on…

>There is no debt involved Can you provide an executed contract to confirm? YC appears to have moved away from convertible notes (ie. debt) [1], but if you read closely it appears that PG said the reason was to avoid debt term limits and interest rate limits....so it's an even more extreme version of debt, just not 'debt' according to CA regulations. [1] http://blog.ycombinator.com/announcing-the-safe-a-replacemen...

YC itself didn't do convertible notes — other investors did. YC's investment as far back as 2011 was an equity mechanism (which I think was similar to the new Safe).

Other seed stage investors used convertible notes. These technically "debt", but only as a mechanism to keep from having to go through valuation exercises on Debt term limits and interest rate limits were bad for companies. It was not possible to have debt with, say, a 50 year term and a 0.1% interest rate. Instead, the debts had 5 year terms and non-negligible interest rates.

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#144

Post by wpietri » Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 1:27 AM UTC

crazy1van wrote: post #105

tzs wrote: post #102

She mentions her field of STEM (mechanical engineering) has a particularly low percentage of women among its members, and cites another site. On that site, there is this interesting list: 39% of chemists and material scientists are women; 27.9% of environmental scientists and geoscientists are women; 15.6% of chemical engineers are women; 12.1% of civil engineers are women; 8.3% of electrical and electronics engineer…

Maybe women on average just prefer some jobs more than others? Really, I'm sure there are millions of factors that enter into to those stats -- about one for every woman because everyone woman is unique with her own goals and tastes -- but I think the occam's razor for this topic is that men and women on average have different preferences. Would we be hunting for a root cause in social pressure or discrimination if w…

There are few things in discourse I hate more than this sort of "just", the kind of ignorance-encouraging, status-quo-supporting "just" that tells people to stop thinking.

Given that we have a millennia-long history of gender discrimination and given that women got the vote less than a century ago, this "just" is ridiculous.

Look at this graph:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-wom...

I guess in 1970 women "just" didn't like medicine or law. (That's certainly what people said then.) And now, using your helpful explanatory framework, they "just" do! It's unexplainable! Things just happen without relation to other things. Who could possibly know anything?

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#145

Post by tzs » Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 1:53 AM UTC

Retra wrote: post #139

crazy1van wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe women on average just prefer some jobs more than others? Really, I'm sure there are millions of factors that enter into to those stats -- about one for every woman because everyone woman is unique with her own goals and tastes -- but I think the occam's razor for this topic is that men and women on average have different preferences. Would we be hunting for a root cause in social pressure or discrimination if w…

>Would we be hunting for a root cause in social pressure or discrimination if we found women were a much higher chunk of the audience for Twilight and men were a higher percent of Avengers viewers? Why would you compare socio-economic inequalities to taste in media? That would be like comparing national budgets to a lemonade stand and asking why we don't put the same effort into managing a 12-year old's summer busine…

Why do we test drugs on mice when it is their effect on humans that we actually care about (almost no one actually cares about lowering high blood pressure or addressing erectile dysfunction in mice)?

Answer: because understanding what happens in mice might give us some insight into similar mechanisms in humans, and it is easier to do many tests and experiments on mice.

Same goes for media tastes. Factors that lead to gender difference in media preferences might also lead to gender differences in employment (either by affecting what jobs women seek, or affecting how employers perceive candidates), and it might be easier to gather data on media preferences.

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#146

Post by elmin » Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 2:11 AM UTC

jsprogrammer wrote: post #101

voltagex_ wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm still not quite sure if this is slavery or just tribal exculsivism. I don't know, maybe it's both? The fuck? It's a nice anecdote about winning some money for what is ostensibly a charity!

To be fair, I didn't hear the original anecdote. I'm only going off of the words in the post I responded to, but making people take an action to better your financial position is slavery. From the description, the people being coerced could presumably choose not to take the action, but would then be denied entry to the bar. That is explicit tribalism and creates a situation where you either join along with the groupt…

Asking people to do something before allowing them into your bar is not slavery. You don't need me to tell you that saying it is diminishes the great injustice that slavery is and was.

My reading of it wasn't even that the bouncer insisted they do it. More that he or she suggested it as they were entering. This is marketing, not servitude.

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#147

Post by clarebear » Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 2:34 AM UTC

tzs wrote: post #102

She mentions her field of STEM (mechanical engineering) has a particularly low percentage of women among its members, and cites another site. On that site, there is this interesting list: 39% of chemists and material scientists are women; 27.9% of environmental scientists and geoscientists are women; 15.6% of chemical engineers are women; 12.1% of civil engineers are women; 8.3% of electrical and electronics engineer…

I agree that (early) science is friendlier to women than (early) engineering. Another factor might be that, if all else is equal, pick the major that already has some women, so you have some peers.

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#148

Post by jsprogrammer » Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 2:45 AM UTC

elmin wrote: post #146

jsprogrammer wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I didn't hear the original anecdote. I'm only going off of the words in the post I responded to, but making people take an action to better your financial position is slavery. From the description, the people being coerced could presumably choose not to take the action, but would then be denied entry to the bar. That is explicit tribalism and creates a situation where you either join along with the groupt…

Asking people to do something before allowing them into your bar is not slavery. You don't need me to tell you that saying it is diminishes the great injustice that slavery is and was. My reading of it wasn't even that the bouncer insisted they do it. More that he or she suggested it as they were entering. This is marketing, not servitude.

Well, we can look at what was said (in the third-party retelling):

>Grace had the gutsy idea to ask the bouncer to make everyone who came into the bar have to vote for Watsi on the contest site on their smartphone

I agree that it might not be quite slavery (it would depend on exactly what happened), which is why I included tribal exclusivism, which it most certainly was (at least according to the above portrayal).

Edit: Anonymous down-voters are out, in-force, tonight!

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#149

Post by saraid216 » Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 2:45 AM UTC

pconner wrote: post #15

xtrumanx wrote: post #2

Not quite what I was expecting with a post that begins with "An Open Letter to...". I've been trained to expect any such letters would be someone's way to make their grievances about some entity public. Now I need to go reflect on why I feel disappointed it was so positive. Haha, only serious.

I like it. It's a nice change of pace. Not that there's anything wrong with negative open letters, but as you said, that seems to make up a majority of them.

Only a majority of the ones that (1) make the news and (2) are explicitly called "open letters". There are actually tons of public missives on the internet full of positivity.

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#150

Post by saraid216 » Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 3:08 AM UTC

crazy1van wrote: post #105

tzs wrote: post #102

She mentions her field of STEM (mechanical engineering) has a particularly low percentage of women among its members, and cites another site. On that site, there is this interesting list: 39% of chemists and material scientists are women; 27.9% of environmental scientists and geoscientists are women; 15.6% of chemical engineers are women; 12.1% of civil engineers are women; 8.3% of electrical and electronics engineer…

Maybe women on average just prefer some jobs more than others? Really, I'm sure there are millions of factors that enter into to those stats -- about one for every woman because everyone woman is unique with her own goals and tastes -- but I think the occam's razor for this topic is that men and women on average have different preferences. Would we be hunting for a root cause in social pressure or discrimination if w…

> Would we be hunting for a root cause in social pressure or discrimination if we found women were a much higher chunk of the audience for Twilight and men were a higher percent of Avengers viewers?

FYI, there is a root cause in social pressure for this.