I can actually. Women are expected to make up 50% of the labor force in fields like programming. When this does not occur, its "proof" of sexism and as such programs are created to help end the perceived sexism. Resources are given to girls that are not given to boys in school and beyond. When studies come out showing that the biological differences drive mental abilities giving advantages or disadvantages to men and or women, its dismissed because men and women are equal.
I can actually. Women are expected to make up 50% of the labor force in fields like programming. When this does not occur, its "proof" of sexism and as such programs are created to help end the perceived sexism. Resources are given to girls that are not given to boys in school and beyond. When studies come out showing that the biological differences drive mental abilities giving advantages or disadvantages to men and or women, its dismissed because men and women are equal.
zinfamous
No Lifer
- Jul 12, 2006
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No it isn't. You're confusing popular rejection of a dickhead for the validity and/or appropriateness of the argument that he made based on the information that he related.
But it isn't even that: women and men are different, yes, but that doesn't mean his personal conclusions about work skills are in any way valid. I just don't understand why that numbskull became such a hero for virgin gamersgaters. Wait, yeah I do....
So men and women are different and have different strengths and weaknesses, but its invalid that women and or men might be better or worse a some jobs?
Also, what did he say that was not backed by data? Perhaps he did not link it in his document, but I do not remember anything that he said that was outside of what is and has been observed for years through studies.
zinfamous
No Lifer
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He was bitching and whining about hiring practices as it related to some non-related scientific studies that he felt were necessary to share. What he and you are doing are inferring conclusions and applications of data that don't really infer the things you want them to infer.
Understand?
woolfe9998
Lifer
- Apr 8, 2013
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The differences in standardized test scores between men and women in STEM are not very high, so differential abilities in programming and engineering cannot account for such a large gap. The actual reason most often given for the gender gap in programming is that women are discouraged from entering the field because it is perceived as men's work, not that they are being actively discriminated against.
There's some evidence that differential preferences between males and females may have roots in biology. For example, young boys show a preference for playing with mechanical toys, while young girls tend to display a preference for playing with plush toys. I have no problem accepting these scientific conclusions. It's logical to extrapolate from these findings that you'll see more male engineers.
What I do have a problem with is when society adds a layer of subtle or not so subtle coercion on top of biology. It may be true that biologically, women are on average more "nurturing" than men and this makes them overall more suited for nursing, but I doubt this biological difference accounts for the 90/10 f/m split in this field. It's more likely that men avoid nursing because they don't want to be stigmatized as feminine, or worse, *gasp* homosexual. (See "Meet the Parents" for a pop culture example of this, wherein the Ben Stiller character is mercilessly ridiculed for being a male nurse.) Similarly, I doubt that biological differences in programming ability and/or interest account for the 15/85 f/m split we see there either.
I'm not interested in achieving 50/50 in every profession. It's fine if it ultimately falls wherever biology points us. But biology is not the sole determining factor in these outcomes. If it was, we wouldn't have seen almost no women in high paid professions until a half century ago. And pretending that the social forces which caused such vastly uneven splits in the past have totally disappeared is being rather naïve. I think your concern is backwards. Biological differences are fine, but we don't need to stigmatize groups as being bad at, or uninterested in, certain professions because all that does is discourage talented individuals from achieving their maximum potential. I'm not interested in forcing women into professions they don't want to go into either, but I don't see that happening much anyway.
I thought so. You were on the wrong end of that debate too. You reasoned like an engineer devoid of emotional perspective.
So what did he say that was an inference that was not backed by the data? I feel like this was the same question I already asked, but I don't see where you answered the question other than restating your original claim that he said something not backed by data.
If you limit yourself to standardized test scores then sure, but life does not do this and I don't see why you would either. Also, back up that claim that women are discouraged from entering the field and show how its anywhere close to being the majority of the problem. Bet you cant, but lets see.
B b b bullshit. There is not some evidence that these preferences and traits are rooted in biology, there is massive and overwhelming evidence.
More likely eh, back that up. Show me some sort of evidence that its more likely that men are worried about being labeled as the majority factor. I have no trouble accepting that on the margins that might be true, but I know of no such study that backs up what you are saying. Its also not my experience. That seems completely pulled out of your ass, which is likely why it seems so shitty.
When did I ever come close to saying that historically women were not significantly limited and harmed by sexism? I can state that I do believe that for the vast majority of human history, women were seen as inferior to men which is untrue.
I think the problem I am having is that you are undervaluing biology. I accept that nurture is a huge factor here, but biology is almost equally important which is backed by data. Strangely, this thread is about people being anti science, and yet all I see are people disagreeing with data because they don't like it. Alternate facts it would seem.
zinfamous
No Lifer
- Jul 12, 2006
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He used a population-based metric to infer wrongdoings and evil goings-ons at his workplace, to criticize the hiring of specific individuals, and further inferring capacities on these individuals based on population-tested performance. The dill-hole rather hilariously exposed his own personal failings in terms of his lack of capacity to work in stressful situations and rather than improve himself, spent god knows how many hours scouring for some tangential studies to hijack as evidence for a pseudo-scientific argument (his argument; not the data--before this statement confuses you and others) that his failures weren't really his, but rather "others" that shouldn't have "the biological destiny that he so clearly deserved."
It's really that fucking simple, and it is no surprise that a bunch of tunnel-visioned, math-blinded engineers latched onto his juvenile adventure into biology and ecology and assumed that "Gee! science data, yay! I know what I'm talking about and more importantly: how to use it!" because they know dick about life science and decided he was also their champion here to martyr himself over their failures when dealing with real life individuals in a life setting. He didn't know how to use this research, and neither did/do his hangers-ons.
TLDR:
Decent science, used by a pretend-scientist that just fucking doesn't know what science is, to defend his own failings, is championed by legions of similarly insecure, dickless scientists .
Understand?
I mean, that's it. I shouldn't have to go further, but I imagine that I will. Are you going to fucking stop pretending that you understand this fully already, or are you going to try to start learning, now? I'm ready when you are.
zinfamous
No Lifer
- Jul 12, 2006
- 111,889
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In the first place you are not logical. That is an assumption you make. More about that in a minute.
It is not the only tool you have, that's another assumption, and were it the only tool you have and even if you used it properly it would still not be the only tool you have. There would be no point in my pointing out to you how your associative reasoning isn't really logical if you didn't have a capacity to do differently, or so I believe.
In this present argument and going back to what I recall your position in the Google thingi to be, you maintained that the person who was fired for his comments about women was fired unjustly because what he said was backed up by scientific evidence. As I tried to explain in that thread Google was seeking to create a work atmosphere that was supportive of women who were not only competent, but pursuing careers in tech, jobs not traditionally filled by women. Google's aim was to have a more gender diversified work force. That is the context you failed to factor into your reasoning when you focused like a laser on just a small range of the issue, that women generally do not go into tech as a career. That is all well and good but if a company sets out to hire more women in tech, women who are also qualified in the field and want to be in it also, then some pin head engineer who brings irrelevancies to the table on a Google network that purports to suggest that Google is barking up a barren tree, he is going to get his ass fired and had he anything but a pin head engineering brain he would have seen it coming.
In short you focus on just one aspect of the situation, that yes men and women seek out tech jobs in different numbers, but that has nothing at all to do with how a company may wish to do its hiring by trying to create a healthy unbiased working place for women who are capable and choose to work in it. Furthermore, such pin head notions are the just the same kind of rational used by racists to show, say by crime rates, how blacks are inferior. It's probably not a good idea to hire them because, well you know, they may steal from the company and take up a space a really good white guy should have. We at seeing also an amazing array of men who somehow imagine that women's secret desire is to look at them masturbate. There is simply a colossal amount of gender bias in our society and it's all based on some hair brained notion that women are different. De-emphasizing the differences between men and women in the work place will not lead to women being tested for testicular cancer. The very absurdity of your example should have told you something.
You are like a dog with a bone. Once you chomp down of some simple fact like men and women have differences, you lose a larger perspective. Ask yourself how Google was able to get away with such a grave injustice with so many liberals and rational thinkers agreeing with it. Assume you could be myopic and wrong at times. Consider that it is typically males that do what you do.
I read about some research that was being done on Asperger's folk using electro stimulation of parts of the brain they typically don't normally light up in with the results in cognitive functionality that was previously missing. Maybe one day we will all be able to go to the local clinic and get a brain tune-up. Meanwhile, I am working on a ray gun that kills Amygdala cells
No, the wrongdoing was that people within the company were telling him how they hired women over men because they were women. Perhaps you should reread that document. I think you might be mis-remembering what he said in the document.
https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320
I understand if you dont want to, but I believe you may not be remembering things the way they were.
In the first place you are not logical. That is an assumption you make. More about that in a minute.
It is not the only tool you have, that's another assumption, and were it the only tool you have and even if you used it properly it would still not be the only tool you have. There would be no point in my pointing out to you how your associative reasoning isn't really logical if you didn't have a capacity to do differently, or so I believe.
In this present argument and going back to what I recall your position in the Google thingi to be, you maintained that the person who was fired for his comments about women was fired unjustly because what he said was backed up by scientific evidence. As I tried to explain in that thread Google was seeking to create a work atmosphere that was supportive of women who were not only competent, but pursuing careers in tech, jobs not traditionally filled by women. Google's aim was to have a more gender diversified work force. That is the context you failed to factor into your reasoning when you focused like a laser on just a small range of the issue, that women generally do not go into tech as a career. That is all well and good but if a company sets out to hire more women in tech, women who are also qualified in the field and want to be in it also, then some pin head engineer who brings irrelevancies to the table on a Google network that purports to suggest that Google is barking up a barren tree, he is going to get his ass fired and had he anything but a pin head engineering brain he would have seen it coming.
In short you focus on just one aspect of the situation, that yes men and women seek out tech jobs in different numbers, but that has nothing at all to do with how a company may wish to do its hiring by trying to create a healthy unbiased working place for women who are capable and choose to work in it. Furthermore, such pin head notions are the just the same kind of rational used by racists to show, say by crime rates, how blacks are inferior. It's probably not a good idea to hire them because, well you know, they may steal from the company and take up a space a really good white guy should have. We at seeing also an amazing array of men who somehow imagine that women's secret desire is to look at them masturbate. There is simply a colossal amount of gender bias in our society and it's all based on some hair brained notion that women are different. De-emphasizing the differences between men and women in the work place will not lead to women being tested for testicular cancer. The very absurdity of your example should have told you something.
You are like a dog with a bone. Once you chomp down of some simple fact like men and women have differences, you lose a larger perspective. Ask yourself how Google was able to get away with such a grave injustice with so many liberals and rational thinkers agreeing with it. Assume you could be myopic and wrong at times. Consider that it is typically males that do what you do.
I do not believe you are understanding what I am saying and are going off of false assumptions.
woolfe9998
Lifer
- Apr 8, 2013
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How about you try backing up a single thing you've said in this thread with your own evidence? You made assertions here before I did, and provided no links or anything to back them up. But you're happy to DEMAND that I back up my counter-claims.
However, I'll be the bigger person and pony up right here:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...omen-in-tech-the-truth-behind-the-google-memo
That is kind of a checkmate to the idea that biology is the only factor here, or even the main factor. If it was, the gender gap would be reasonably consistent from one culture to the next. I have zero doubt that biological inclinations play a role here. I'm just not sure it's the massive role suggested by the 15/85 split. There's clearly more going on here than that.
But that isn't all. It's also unstable over time. Women getting CS degrees has been cut in half since the 1980's:
https://www.usnews.com/news/data-mi...ce-gender-gap-widens-despite-increase-in-jobs
Which is something else really hard to explain with biology, since our biology was the same 30 years ago as it is today.
Show me the "massive" evidence. Remember, I already said there was some. So now it's your burden to show that the claim of "some" is "bullshit" by proving that the evidence is "massive." Go ahead. This ought to be good, since what is "massive" is rather a matter of opinion which you've unfortunately framed as fact.
I don't know what you mean by "majority factor" here. And no, I'm sure I can't easily find a study which says men don't want to go into traditionally female professions for fear of being stigmatized. It's common sense to anyone living in this world. Then again, I am under no obligation to produce evidence of any sort here, because you haven't done so yourself.
I never said you claimed that. My point was that historically, there was a huge gap for women at least part of which must have come from society since the gap isn't as large anymore, and, of course, it makes no sense to assume those societal factors suddenly all disappeared. I didn't think you were denying the history. I thought you were denying or minimizing the role of society in the present. It isn't uncommon for people to claim, sure we were once racist and sexist, but we've gotten over it now. If that's not what you're saying, good.
I'm not undervaluing biology one bit. Biology is a major factor in human behavior.
I just don't see any reason to over-emphasize small differences in biologically pre-disposed abilities in an area like programming or engineering. And not only for reasons of gender equality. But because telling women they aren't as good as men in these areas may discourage some people who are talented in those areas from going into them. That isn't good for society, especially if we're talking about these particular professions where we're likely to have an indefinite labor shortage going into the future and where it's important to our economy that we continue to innovate. It's better that we just take people as individuals and not bother with such generalizations. The biological lean isn't that strong anyway. It's not like we need to warn women away from these professions because they are somehow doomed to failure.
I honestly don't understand what you're even trying to do here. No one is denying any scientific findings. We may disagree about how big of a deal those findings are. The thread is about science denial and you seem blithely unconcerned with half the population denying a scientific finding supported by 97% of the researchers in that area. But you're worried over people not emphasizing enough what you view as critically important biological differences between the genders in certain professions? Give me a break.
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zinfamous
No Lifer
- Jul 12, 2006
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Did you read the document? Again, he's making million-years evolutionary arguments to describe modern workplace dynamics. "Social Darwinism" is and only ever has been junk science. Nothing more, nothing less. If you don't understand that, then this discussion goes nowhere else. and if you do, well, I guess the same?
LoL--did you catch those "footnotes"? He uses them to elaborate his own internal ideas with even more...lack of citations. The thing he has here opens up OK, I think, there are real complaints and a real attempt to address whatever HR seminar sent him on a tizzy, but by page 6 and what can only be beer number 5, this nutter jumps the rails and crashes head-first into Fallacy Mountain. It doesn't get any prettier after that.
https://www.researchgate.net/public...volutionary_and_Social-Environmental_Theories
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/36/15268.full.pdf
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1041608010001639
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25042764
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17000015
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17544382
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24297904
https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/1808658/120946_Kret_de_Gelder_sexdiffs_neuropsychologia_2012.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19906974
http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/PAID2011.pdf
http://www.bradley.edu/dotAsset/165918.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/public...in_Sweden_The_stability_of_gender_differences
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28771393
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17074984
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21893061
There is far more. Just about any study that looks at men and women finds measurable difference. Also, Wendy Hall is a prof. of computer science and is giving her opinion. She is not someone that studies the field of gender differences. Had you fully read your article and gone to the link you would have seen that. What you should have used was the part from prof. Gina Rippon who is a neuroscientist. You did not read it because it was too long, but she gave far more support to your position. That said, even her position is that there are differences, but that those differences do not fully account for the differences, which is true.
As for those small differences, you need to understand human behavior. Having a small aptitude early on pushes people at each step that leads to a position. You end up taking different classes, different training and eventually by the time you get out into the job market, that small benefit has put you down a path that is very different. So even though the difference might be small, the long term effect means the changes from that are quite large.
Did you read the document? Again, he's making million-years evolutionary arguments to describe modern workplace dynamics. "Social Darwinism" is and only ever has been junk science. Nothing more, nothing less. If you don't understand that, then this discussion goes nowhere else. and if you do, well, I guess the same?
LoL--did you catch those "footnotes"? He uses them to elaborate his own internal ideas with even more...lack of citations. The thing he has here opens up OK, I think, there are real complaints and a real attempt to address whatever HR seminar sent him on a tizzy, but by page 6 and what can only be beer number 5, this nutter jumps the rails and crashes head-first into Fallacy Mountain. It doesn't get any prettier after that.
Are you talking about "Men's Higher Drive for Status" and or "Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap"?
zinfamous
No Lifer
- Jul 12, 2006
- 111,889
- 31,410
- 146
This is why engineer-minded, self-described "pure logicians" make horrible managers and administrators. Citation salad here not only doesn't support what you think it does, it really doesn't speak to an individual workplace personnel environment. You demand other's understand human behavior, but I think you are having serious issues with that yourself.
Math and logic are incredibly useful, but if you've ever spent a day working with living systems from a scientific perspective (clearly you haven't), then you'd understand that the math really isn't ever going to be as perfect as it is for mechanical objects and with physical constants. It's both as simple and as complicated as it needs to be to understand why you seem to be so determined to shove that square peg into the round hole. You may be a smart guy for your one thing, but you are showing yourself (like google dillhole), to be an intractable fool when you bravely venture out of your wheelhouse.
He asked for the mountain of evidence. What else would I do other than cite the sources for the evidence?
I am not saying that individuals should not be judged as an individual. And, these things only measure groups and not individuals. The point of the memo was to explain why we may not see parity in the work place for both biological and cultural reasons. He, perhaps flawed, tried to explain these things and give what he saw as solutions. I found no malice in what he said, and lots of science to back up his perspective. The reaction was to say that men and women are so close that they can be labeled as the same which is untrue.
As for living systems, I have actually been researching slime mold as its pretty amazing. I was actually going to pm you pretty soon about it, because I know you are far more knowledgeable about that field compared to me.
Atreus21
Lifer
- Aug 21, 2007
- 12,001
- 571
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"Mens' minds are ruled not by facts, but by general impressions." As you say, not a new revelation.
Truth and falsehood alike will have difficulty convincing someone to an unfamiliar worldview. I think anyone who knows human nature knows this.
One of the greatest impediments to the discovery of truth is the assumption that we already know it.
Atreus21
Lifer
- Aug 21, 2007
- 12,001
- 571
- 126
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