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Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

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

#81

Post by MartinCron »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #63
MartinCron wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it so hard to imagine that maybe there are meaningful group variations within the human species? The worst things humans have ever done to each other have all centered around the notion of "meaningful group variations within the human species". Without hard science, it's a scary and dangerous place.

I was under the impression that communism was centered around the notion that people are all equal and highly malleable, not that there were intrinsic and immutable differences between human groups. But assuming you are actually referring to nationalists (who probably rank #2 on the list of "worst things humans have done to each other"), I'll just quote a blog post Bryan Caplan wrote today: We've learned so much from…

Wasn't referring to nationalists specifically. I was thinking of the broad ranger range of things like slavery, genocide, segregation, apartheid, etc.

If you think that communism is worse, that's fine by me. It doesn't change the fact that history is littered with cautionary examples of group-based determinism gone terribly wrong. It's naive to pretend otherwise.

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

#82

Post by brianprogrammer »

dudeguy999 wrote: post #49

Martin says that we are turning away qualified female candidates right now. That's not the case. Only one female candidate comes through my door for every 7 or 8 males. We are meritocrats like Martin and would be happy to hire females. But first they have to show up.

I don't believe he said anything close to that. Part of the reason posts like this get people fired up is that they assume that they are being accused of shutting women out unfairly. He left open the possibility that women (for example) select themselves out of programming careers for whatever reason.

Imagine if you threw a party and invited half men, and half women, but only the men showed up. Wouldn't you be displeased with those results and conclude that you need to do something different to make your party more appealing to women? I know I would.

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

#83

Post by anigbrowl »

youngnerd112 wrote: post #54
cturner wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was told I'd never be a programmer because I didn't get good marks in math and physics, that was sixteen years ago. Let's kill the myth. I can't see any reason why being genuinely good at math is more important to effective programming than being good at chemistry (layers and sequence), biology (complex systems) or languages (building meaning from abstract or incomplete signals). You do not need to be good at late…

Sorry to be so brutally honest....but personally with women rejecting me everywhere in a downright rude manner as an undesirable nerd it is hard not to have a bias against them! Agreed that perhaps not all women are like that...but for one that is nice there is at least a hundred shallow bitches around!

Then again, maybe it's you.

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

#84

Post by lancewalton »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #23
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 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…

> Our diversity may not be statistically identical to the general US population...

I think you've got an American bias there. :-)

I'm joking.

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

#85

Post by nsxwolf »

Also: This sentiment that women should be interested in programming jobs, but aren't because they've been damaged by the patriarchy in some way, and now it's up to (predominantly) men to fix this for them - strikes me as a bit sexist.

We could potentially take the Avatar/Dances With Wolves approach. A really awesome superstar male programmer could start dressing in drag and lead female programmers to victory. Or at least 50% representation.

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

#86

Post by ArbitraryLimits »

daniel_solano wrote: post #77

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…

Back in the day I think the popular perception of programmers was kind of an extension of a secretary (it's just typing on toggle panels instead of a typewriter, right?) so there were lots of women stuck in secretarial positions who tried it out.

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

#87

Post by bitops »

jdp23 wrote: post #30
bitops wrote: post #18

Amazing, but unsurprising, that the first slew of comments are all about tearing down the post.

As Martin says "Personally I find it troubling when software professionals, who ought to be good at logical thinking, can reach so easily for such circular logic."

I don't mind the downvotes, but I think my comment was misunderstood. Of course, whenever there is any type of gender-related article on HN, it gets pretty nasty pretty quickly. HN, for all the good things I can say about it, is firmly entrenched in the mindset that Martin is writing against.

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

#88

Post by anigbrowl »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #23
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 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…

This report also pushes the intolerance hypothesis, as well as women being less dedicated, being fearful of text interfaces, and preferring more collectivist environments: http://web.archive.org/web/20091007234852/http://opensource..... (Please go read the report before criticizing me for citing it. It's written by a woman who is allegedly a feminist.)

That is a misleading characterization of the paper, which aims at establishing an analytical framework rather than offering itself as a 'report,' within an existing analytical framework. For example, rather than suggesting that women are 'fearful' of text interfaces, the author observes that their continuing popularity in the FLOSS community exacerbates past educational disparities: 'Instead of deducting from biological sex difference, the phenomenon suggests a lingering deficiency of women’s IT education and women-unfriendly products and tools.' The writer goes on to posit that many staples of geek culture (eg long coding pushes) act as exclusionary factors for women who may have to juggle coding with other tasks such as child-rearing, and that women's contributions in areas such as documentation or design are seriously undervalued.

Your summary of the paper is so far off base that I find myself wondering if you inadvertently linked to the wrong document.

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

#89

Post by shallowwater »

[reads all the comments about how no one wants ladies in their field anyway]

And people wonder why the ladies don't want to hang out with you kids all day. Could it be that ladies are smart enough to figure out when and where they are unwelcome? UNPOSSIBLE

signed, a lady who is interested in programming

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

#90

Post by MartinCron »

_b8r0 wrote: post #73
MartinCron wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 som…

Can you provide an example of the barriers of which you speak?

Here's a real-world example: A workplace where most of the (all-male) development team is using the same "bikini babe" screensaver. It's a small thing to a guy, something you may not even notice. It's a small thing to plenty of women, too. Some other women may see that as an implicit message that they aren't taken seriously as anything but a sex object.

Sure, it's a small thing, but small things add up.

I don't want to say that you are the problem or that you should hire unqualified people to correct an imbalance. All I want is for people to be honest with themselves that this world isn't a pure meritocracy and that you may be (as I am) the beneficiary of privilege based on sex or race or class. Is that really controversial?

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