Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance • Hacker News Board

Re: Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

#71

Post by yummyfajitas » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 7:45 PM UTC

MartinCron wrote: post #56

yummyfajitas wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...there's nothing wrong with being extra critical of rhetoric that's historically dubious. Yes there is. It biases our thinking. Here is a non-controversial example of this: "Millikan measured the charge on an electron...got an answer which we now know not to be quite right...It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of an electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time,…

Good point, but that narrative feels a lot like a specific example of sloppy science and poor measurement. I'm going to stand by the notion that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, even if that may create a small bias toward conventional thinking.

What's an "extraordinary claim"? And also, why do claims that are "historically dubious" automatically fall into the category of "extraordinary"?

In Bayesian terms, it sounds like you are merely stating that you assign a very small prior to the "natural reasons" hypothesis. I.e., you are claiming that before looking at the evidence, you believe "natural reasons" has a 1 in 1 million (or some similarly large number) chance of being true. Is this correct?

Re: Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

#72

Post by warmfuzzykitten » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 7:45 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #3

I hate to pick apart Fowler -- probably a good way for folks to call me an idiot -- but I have to. here are (roughly) 50% women in the world, so we should expect the ratio for women in computing to be 50% - unless there's real evidence that some other ratio is natural.[2] So far there's no such evidence. But, er, doesn't the observation that the actual ratio is different evidence constitute "evidence"? Aside from dir…

Not just angry-old-guy, but angry-obtuse-old-guy. The facts are not in question, just the reasons and the result. The fact that there are fewer women in computing than there are in the general population does not imply that women are ill-suited for the profession or even that there is a correlation between women's capabilities/inclinations and their representation in computing, because the facts about abilities/inclination have not been established. Fowler, in fact, said he doesn't know what the reason is. And by the way, the word is 'audacity', not 'audaciousness'. Use in a sentence: I am struck by the audacity of ranting on at length arguing with things Fowler didn't actually say.

Re: Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

#73

Post by _b8r0 » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 7:50 PM UTC

MartinCron wrote: post #44

nsxwolf wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only wasted potential if you're sure that a career in technology is superior to any other career or goal in life. That's certainly not true. I'd be curious to see the reaction of you telling a woman who is satisfied with her life that she's wasted her potential.

It's less about individual goals than about the mismatch between talent and opportunity. There are people out there who could make meaningful contribution to this profession. There is a demand for people who could make a meaningful contribution to this profession. There are artificial barriers, based on gender/race/class/whatever that make it marginally harder for some people to contribute. A more concrete example: T…

> There are artificial barriers, based on gender/race/class/whatever that make it marginally harder for some people to contribute.

Can you provide an example of the barriers of which you speak? I find that a lot of the time I'm told about how people with qualities distinct from mine should be cut some slack or given extra incentives to get into industry to correct some sort of imbalance, and that the imbalance is somehow evidence of barriers that we can't see, and that incentivising these groups (and in effect putting barriers up against people like me) is the way forward.

To me, discrimination is discrimination, regardless. I don't take issue with any qualities of anyone - the right person for the job is the right person for the job. Perhaps historically barriers meant that the right person for the job was a white male (bearing in mind societal pressures, the availability of education and options etc.) and the prevalence of white males is a hangover, if so like all hangovers it will die down.

What I do know is that in my profession (technical infosec) there's a hard time finding talent, but that's because your average graduate student won't cut it. So we're stuck in a pool where you have a subset of CS grads, with some security interest and experience, subset of which have a particular mindset and abilities, and in turn a subset of which won't run away at the prospect of learning a staggering amount of information about systems, programs and all kinds of stuff are what you're after. Then on top of that I get told that because there's a skew further up the chain that I should incentivise particular groups to 'correct an imbalance' I have no direct control over.

Re: Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

#74

Post by prodigal_erik » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 7:54 PM UTC

MartinCron wrote: post #44

nsxwolf wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only wasted potential if you're sure that a career in technology is superior to any other career or goal in life. That's certainly not true. I'd be curious to see the reaction of you telling a woman who is satisfied with her life that she's wasted her potential.

It's less about individual goals than about the mismatch between talent and opportunity. There are people out there who could make meaningful contribution to this profession. There is a demand for people who could make a meaningful contribution to this profession. There are artificial barriers, based on gender/race/class/whatever that make it marginally harder for some people to contribute. A more concrete example: T…

Writing correct software is so close to impossible that we would actually be be better off without a large majority of the people who are already charging big money for utter crap. I don't see how we can expect more meaningful contributions from anyone who isn't irrestibly drawn to this Sisyphean work.

Re: Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

#75

Post by theprogrammer » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 7:57 PM UTC

Diversity is a good thing. That's been stated as axiomatic on these discussions and it's probably true.

But what kind of diversity will have the greatest effect? I posit that there are far greater kinds of diversity that will have a bigger impact than gender: language, culture, education.

I would also be interested in studies in why girls aren't as interested in science and computing as boys. When I started no one around me knew what a computer was. I'm kind of puzzled why I was interested at the age of 11. I was also discouraged from doing it at school, but it didn't stop me.

I take issue with te while geek thing. It may be true of some devs, but most I know don't fit into that stereotype, they have a wide range of other interests. I wish people would drop it.

Re: Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

#76

Post by blirp » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 7:57 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #3

I hate to pick apart Fowler -- probably a good way for folks to call me an idiot -- but I have to. here are (roughly) 50% women in the world, so we should expect the ratio for women in computing to be 50% - unless there's real evidence that some other ratio is natural.[2] So far there's no such evidence. But, er, doesn't the observation that the actual ratio is different evidence constitute "evidence"? Aside from dir…

Why are you arguing this at all? What made you so angry at Fowlers article that you actually had to attempt to debunk it?

Do you think having more women in our profession would actually be a bad thing?

Re: Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

#77

Post by daniel_solano » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 7:59 PM UTC

This footnote drew my interest:

Although female programmers are rare now, that wasn't the case in the 70's. That shift is another argument against the natural balance hypothesis.

I am too young to know, but is this the experience of others as well?

Again, this is based purely on anecdotal experience, but I wonder if women programmers tend to concentrate into particular industries (for whatever reason). My wife was a programmer at a contractor for a large government agency, and it struck me that there was a higher concentration of women there than in other industries or in the start-up scene.

If this is generally the case, I am not sure to what extent this would support any given hypothesis.

Re: Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

#78

Post by yummyfajitas » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 8:05 PM UTC

keithflower wrote: post #70

yummyfajitas wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only does he make the logical fallacies you suggest, but he also ignores plenty of evidence that there might be natural causes: For instance, there is plenty of evidence women are less likely to be very good (or very bad) at math: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/321/5888/494.summary http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21038941 There is also evidence women are more risk averse, making them less likely to work in…

The January 2012 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society presents a comprehensive review article disagreeing that there is "plenty of evidence" women are less likely to be very good at math based on "natural causes" (whatever the hell that kind of nonsense phrase is supposed to mean), and provides plenty of evidence that any disparity is due to attitudes toward women and other sociocultural factors:…

Did you read the article?

It agrees completely with the data I cited. It shows a variance ratio of 1.1-1.2 across many countries (though not all).

Interestingly, it also shows very little correlation between gender equity and gender disparities in math performance. The strongest correlation it shows is that gender equity is positively correlated with math performance disparities! Gender equity seems to increase [1] math performance of both boys and girls, but it increases boy's scores more.

[1] Of course, the article only shows correlation, not causation, but I didn't feel like rephrasing what I wrote.

Re: Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

#79

Post by robobenjie » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 8:06 PM UTC

dgabriel wrote: post #55

mhartl wrote: post #43

Although it's easy to become accustomed to it, it's pretty obvious the child care world has some serious issues in diversity. By this I mean that it has some notable differences in proportions of people compared to the general population. One of the most obvious differences is the low proportion of men, which is true all over the world. In the US, where I spend a good chunk of my time, the over-representation of Lati…

Your rewrite is completely valid. Were you expecting it to be absurd? It's not. The same interesting questions arise. I'm sure you can come up with reasons why men may choose not to make their living caring for children, even though they'd prefer to do so. Is this not a problem we should attempt to fix?

In fact, my wife works in Early Childhood education at the Laboratory School at Stanford, and they do think and worry about exactly those kinds of things.

Re: Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

#80

Post by anigbrowl » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 8:09 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #3

I hate to pick apart Fowler -- probably a good way for folks to call me an idiot -- but I have to. here are (roughly) 50% women in the world, so we should expect the ratio for women in computing to be 50% - unless there's real evidence that some other ratio is natural.[2] So far there's no such evidence. But, er, doesn't the observation that the actual ratio is different evidence constitute "evidence"? Aside from dir…

But, er, doesn't the observation that the actual ratio is different evidence constitute "evidence"?

No. That tells you there's a difference, but absolutely nothing about the causes. You may not know of an artificial causal effect that inhibits greater participation in software by women, but not knowing about it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist (unless you have falsified all available hypotheses, naturally).