Oh my God.
In 1996 or around that time, a friend who was a CS major at one of the major US universities mentioned in a passing that he was seeing a lot of Business School types in CS labs trying to do coding exercises. It changed within 2 years in his view. He thought it was a sign that tech industry was going to take off.
Beware the Pretty People
41–50 of 117 posts
Re: Beware the Pretty People
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Discriminatory behavior (sexist, racist, etc.) often persists, in my experience, because the perpetrators don't realize what they are doing. It's not that they think, 'I want to exclude women from tech jobs'; they blindly follow old patterns of hiring and other behavior. Humans naturally are very egocentric and have to work to see things from others' perspectives. When they do, they change; most people don't want to…
>Here's an intellectual way to approach the problem: Stepping back from our society, in some meritocratic system why would 38% of a population[1] produce 90%[2] of the winners? And is it coincidence that the 38% group has controlled power, wealth, and privelege for hundreds of years, and still does in most other situations (governnment, non-tech business, etc.)? That is actually the least intellectual way you could a…
[deleted]
Re: Beware the Pretty People
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Discriminatory behavior (sexist, racist, etc.) often persists, in my experience, because the perpetrators don't realize what they are doing. It's not that they think, 'I want to exclude women from tech jobs'; they blindly follow old patterns of hiring and other behavior. Humans naturally are very egocentric and have to work to see things from others' perspectives. When they do, they change; most people don't want to…
>Here's an intellectual way to approach the problem: Stepping back from our society, in some meritocratic system why would 38% of a population[1] produce 90%[2] of the winners? And is it coincidence that the 38% group has controlled power, wealth, and privelege for hundreds of years, and still does in most other situations (governnment, non-tech business, etc.)? That is actually the least intellectual way you could a…
"I think that's enough to critique your original way of phrasing the problem."
Then I don't think much of your thinking.
Making up scenarios that are trivially refuted by a moment's thought is silly. How about
4) Aliens come down every night and surgically remove the bits of women's brains that are used in programming tasks.
There, now I've really addressed the issue. See why 'making stuff up' isn't actually some mark of intellectual superiority?
Or how about
1) How many jobs that are known for attracting socially adjusted, good looking men can you name where most of the winners are women?
2) How many high social status, well varied jobs can you name where most of the winners are women?
3) You defeat your point in your own parentheses.
You've addressed nothing. You've made up some nonsense and pretended to be smarter than the person you're responding to, but you've directly avoided addressing the actual point.
Re: Beware the Pretty People
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is an important thread connecting the two: In the context of diversity in tech, nerds are a subculture dominated by White males. This culture has a misogynistic dark side... This is a popular and powerful attack line used by "pretty people" seeking power in tech. It's used to demonize the old guard. When the old guard tries to intellectually dispute it, as is their custom, one can then attack their person direc…
Discriminatory behavior (sexist, racist, etc.) often persists, in my experience, because the perpetrators don't realize what they are doing. It's not that they think, 'I want to exclude women from tech jobs'; they blindly follow old patterns of hiring and other behavior. Humans naturally are very egocentric and have to work to see things from others' perspectives. When they do, they change; most people don't want to…
Do you want to take this percentage game further? Let's talk about Jews.
If a system is truly meritocratic, how is it that 0.2% of the population of a particular demographic has 20% of the Nobel prizes?
Do you think, by your standards, there is some sort of a Jewish "discriminatory behavior" at play here?
I'm sure you see by now that playing this percentage game quickly gets very discriminatory itself. I think a certain percentage of a population (may that be white nerds or jews) can be over-represented not because of discrimination but because of other factors like affinity to particular subjects or being unwanted in other places (e.g white nerds might not have the social savvy to do banker schmooze jobs).
Re: Beware the Pretty People
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Discriminatory behavior (sexist, racist, etc.) often persists, in my experience, because the perpetrators don't realize what they are doing. It's not that they think, 'I want to exclude women from tech jobs'; they blindly follow old patterns of hiring and other behavior. Humans naturally are very egocentric and have to work to see things from others' perspectives. When they do, they change; most people don't want to…
I wasn't defending any particular practice as being perfectly meritocratic. If you want to argue that a blind code test (or whatever) is more meritocratic than github code review, be my guest. The point I'm making is somewhat different. The pretty people and the social justice types oppose the idea of meritocracy itself. ...in some meritocratic system why would 38% of a population[1] produce 90%[2] of the winners? An…
> But that's where the "pretty people" will just call me a racist/sexist
Not at all. There is little doubt that 'merit' defined as an capability or skill of an individual is not uniform. The point is that 'merit' is systemically produced. It is a function of money, aspiration, parental ambition, education, culturation, in-group bias, and many other factors. Another way to phrase this is 'privilege', though that word is considered some kind of anathema by people who don't like to see their elevated status and capabilities as somehow a function of their environment.
Absolutely Asian males are more privileged in terms of their ability to access tech jobs. Immigrant populations can have privileges in this way. Hindu families that are second or third generation immigrants to the UK from the Indian subcontinent are over-represented in medicine, for example. Is that because Indian people just make better doctors? Or is it because children of Indian descent are cultured and supported and mentored into medicine?
Anyone who actually understands the last 20 years of social science, far from 'stopping intellectual discussion' are more likely to recognize that you've simply not found out or understood the issue. Which can, of course, be a sign of racism or sexism, if one is willingly ignorant. But can just be naivete or a Dunning Kruger effect.
Re: Beware the Pretty People
#46Funny how the nerd stereotype is used in different contexts. In the context of diversity in tech, nerds are a subculture dominated by White males. This culture has a misogynistic dark side, and it is important to show that you don't have to conform to this subculture to succeed in tech. However, in the context of the corporatization of tech, suddenly the nerds are the good guys. And funnily enough, nerd culture was a…
There is an important thread connecting the two: In the context of diversity in tech, nerds are a subculture dominated by White males. This culture has a misogynistic dark side... This is a popular and powerful attack line used by "pretty people" seeking power in tech. It's used to demonize the old guard. When the old guard tries to intellectually dispute it, as is their custom, one can then attack their person direc…
> This is a popular and powerful attack line used by "pretty people" seeking power in tech.
I think that you're just falling into the same stereotyping game. Talking about all of this in such generalities is useless. Nothing is specific enough to be actionable or really be "proven" or "disproven." It just devolves into people shouting at each other.
Re: Beware the Pretty People
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Discriminatory behavior (sexist, racist, etc.) often persists, in my experience, because the perpetrators don't realize what they are doing. It's not that they think, 'I want to exclude women from tech jobs'; they blindly follow old patterns of hiring and other behavior. Humans naturally are very egocentric and have to work to see things from others' perspectives. When they do, they change; most people don't want to…
I wasn't defending any particular practice as being perfectly meritocratic. If you want to argue that a blind code test (or whatever) is more meritocratic than github code review, be my guest. The point I'm making is somewhat different. The pretty people and the social justice types oppose the idea of meritocracy itself. ...in some meritocratic system why would 38% of a population[1] produce 90%[2] of the winners? An…
> An alternate hypothesis is that merit is not uniformly distributed and Asian males simply have more of it. But that's where the "pretty people" will just call me a racist/sexist "creep" who can't get laid, and intellectual discussion stops.
I think that you yourself are falling into the stereotyping trap here. There are people that would take offence at what you said, but there are also people on the other side of your discussion that would argue that those Asian males gained though skills through privileges that are not evenly distributed in society.
Re: Beware the Pretty People
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Discriminatory behavior (sexist, racist, etc.) often persists, in my experience, because the perpetrators don't realize what they are doing. It's not that they think, 'I want to exclude women from tech jobs'; they blindly follow old patterns of hiring and other behavior. Humans naturally are very egocentric and have to work to see things from others' perspectives. When they do, they change; most people don't want to…
Do you want to take this percentage game further? Let's talk about Jews. If a system is truly meritocratic, how is it that 0.2% of the population of a particular demographic has 20% of the Nobel prizes? Do you think, by your standards, there is some sort of a Jewish "discriminatory behavior" at play here? I'm sure you see by now that playing this percentage game quickly gets very discriminatory itself. I think a cert…
> Do you think, by your standards, there is some
> sort of a Jewish "discriminatory behavior" at
> play here?
Yes. No doubt. Jewish men have certain forms of privilege, which makes it easier for some of them to access elite scientific institutions.
They also have several axes in which they lack privilege. Those axes are less significant in the earning of a Nobel prize.
You seem to think you've discovered intersectionality and it is a huge surprise. Or that people who are interested in a more just society would somehow recoil from identifying power differentials favouring groups that also suffer forms of oppression. That is the opposite of my experience dealing with the people who actually write and research on this topic.
Re: Beware the Pretty People
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Here's an intellectual way to approach the problem: Stepping back from our society, in some meritocratic system why would 38% of a population[1] produce 90%[2] of the winners? And is it coincidence that the 38% group has controlled power, wealth, and privelege for hundreds of years, and still does in most other situations (governnment, non-tech business, etc.)? That is actually the least intellectual way you could a…
"I think that's enough to critique your original way of phrasing the problem." Then I don't think much of your thinking. Making up scenarios that are trivially refuted by a moment's thought is silly. How about 4) Aliens come down every night and surgically remove the bits of women's brains that are used in programming tasks. There, now I've really addressed the issue. See why 'making stuff up' isn't actually some mar…
1) How many jobs that are known for attracting socially adjusted, good looking men can you name where most of the winners are women?
2) How many high social status, well varied jobs can you name where most of the winners are women?
Law is both high status and favors people who are attractive and have good social skills. According to [1], women are 34% of the law industry compared with 12.33% of software engineers [2].
3) You defeat your point in your own parentheses.
Not really, because there is still a gender gap in math and physics, and so this just means (3) does not explain all of the gender gap in CS.
EDIT: I'm not going to reply to any comment that isn't a reply to this. You don't have to agree with the way that the delay before you can respond to a post grows exponentially as thread depth increases, but threads are unreadable if you try to circumvent it.
[1] http://www.americanbar.org/groups/women/resources/statistics...
[2] http://qz.com/143967/the-tech-industrys-woman-problem-statis...
Re: Beware the Pretty People
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wasn't defending any particular practice as being perfectly meritocratic. If you want to argue that a blind code test (or whatever) is more meritocratic than github code review, be my guest. The point I'm making is somewhat different. The pretty people and the social justice types oppose the idea of meritocracy itself. ...in some meritocratic system why would 38% of a population[1] produce 90%[2] of the winners? An…
> But that's where the "pretty people" will just call me a racist/sexist Not at all. There is little doubt that 'merit' defined as an capability or skill of an individual is not uniform. The point is that 'merit' is systemically produced. It is a function of money, aspiration, parental ambition, education, culturation, in-group bias, and many other factors. Another way to phrase this is 'privilege', though that word…
If you want to define "privilege" as pretty much anything which causes merit to be non-uniformly distributed, then the fact that Asian males are overrepresented due to privilege is tautologically true.
Similarly, water is wet.
All you've really said is "I assign the word 'privilege' to whatever the cause is for Asian males performing well in tech." That's not really relevant to this discussion.
[edit: Sago, I think you've gotten off track. hackeruser was using the term "privilege" differently than you, treating it somewhat analogously to wealth and power and orthogonal to merit. When you use the word to describe anything that might cause disparities in merit, you are describing something far different than him.]