8 ms·

You are here trying to persuade me, at least I assume that is the goal, you could just be here trolling I guess. To try to persuade by claiming you are as bad a

You are here trying to persuade me, at least I assume that is the goal, you could just be here trolling I guess. To try to persuade by claiming you are as bad as everyone else seems, unpersuasive? You seem to think there are two sides: for or against. I have the ability to be against EVERYONE, don't I? Neither side can be convincing, or one side can. As it stands, you are just as unconvincing as the other side, which is hardly a great position! So, seeing as you have a strong opinion, as evidenced by about 400,000,000,000 posts in this thread, do you have any evidence to support your ideas and refute what you seem to think is a bad piece? Or should I continue to be unpersuaded by both sides?

interpol_p 9y ago
Fair enough. I'll do some homework. Here [1] is an article on how cultural gender inequality leads to poorer maths results for women, and fixing that cultural inequality fixes the maths results. This was commonly attributed to differences in biological traits in the past, that was wrong. Here [2] is another article where spatial abilities relate to societal roles. Another area commonly attributed to biological differences (and which the author of the manifesto still seems to believe). I've linked to Arstechnica articles because they are good summaries and reference the sources. Notice that the trend here is that we misattributed something to biological differences and then science showed us that things were more fluid than we initially thought. That attribution to biological differences propagated extremely harmful beliefs that still seem to resonate, though. [1] https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/06/why-judy-cant-add-gender-inequality-and-the-math-gap/ https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/06/why-judy-cant-... [2] https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/08/gender-gap-in-spatial-reasoning-mia-in-matrilineal-society/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/08/gender-gap-in-spatia...
- josephg 9y ago
  Alright, I'll bite. But, I've never heard of any research suggesting women have a different cognitive capacity than men. I read some research a number of years ago suggesting cross-culturally women had better language skills than men, but I don't know if this is still considered to be true. I can't remember reading anything in the manifesto which suggested women are less capable as software engineers. The essay did suggest women were less interested in programming than men (obviously true - see enrolment figures) and that at least some of the effect size is due to biological factors (probably true - see below). --- None of these links suggest any capacity difference. Only that there is a biologically influenced gender difference in interests. Here's an essay contextualising and summarising the historical specifics of male and female gender roles in society: http://www.denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm http://www.denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm Here's a study of how prenatal androgen effects psychological thing vs people orientation, and how it influences career choice: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/ A summary of studies looking at big 5 personality distributions and other effects. Of note is the long section describing blindspots in current research: "Gender Differences in Personality and Interests: When, Where and Why?" http://sci-hub.cc/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x http://sci-hub.cc/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x Here's a Dutch documentary where they send a camera crew around asking different researchers about gender differences: https://youtu.be/cVaTc15plVs?t=30m49s https://youtu.be/cVaTc15plVs?t=30m49s The full documentary is great. Their conclusion is that biological factors result in an overlapping but different distribution of personalities between men and women. These differences result in statistically different career preferences. A talk by researcher Steven Pinker on the subject, where he argues that biological differences result in at least some of the effect size in STEM interests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw&t=1057s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw&t=1057s This is part of a debate on the subject. (Not linked) Prof Elizabeth Spelke responds, but I found her argument to be much less convincing than Pinker. Watch both, make up your own mind.
  - interpol_p 9y ago
    > I can't remember reading anything in the manifesto which suggested women are less capable as software engineers. It does suggest this: > “I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes,” Preferences and abilities. If men are in the majority of leadership, senior, and CEO roles, what is the author suggesting about the abilities of women?
    - ukj 9y ago
      He is suggesting that it's a difficult problem in a complex system and that it's likely that we don't understand all the factors at play? And that we need different perspectives in order to engage in the kind of constructive skepticism which ultimately leads to better understanding? Making assertions, on the other hand... that suggests that we already know the answers; and that further scrutiny is not required. The arrogance!
    - nopatternhere 9y ago
      > what is the author suggesting about the abilities of women? And we get to the heart of all this - the belief that a comment on preferences is questioning some group's ability. I find that deeply misguided, and I believe it places measurable, tangible elements THAT DO NOT MATTER (i.e. money and status) over important things that can't be measured (i.e. LOVE). The rich man who is without love - and yes, I mean man, see Ebenezer Scrooge - is a meme in literature that is well worn. We are told time and again that money isn't everything, that there are more important things in life than money, status and achievement... And it is true - there are more important things! Money is everything if you are starving, but once money is no longer the only issue in your life, and you are choosing between spending your time in the pursuit of more money and other things, there are many things better than more money to spend time on. Health is better than money. MENTAL health is better than money. Love and connections with others is FAR better than more money. The general principle here is achievement and working more vs connection with fellow humans. The best illustration of this is would you rather work 16 hour days in a law firm making a million a year but have no social life, or have friends, family and a life, but a lower paid job making above the median wage? And the evidence is in aggregate, more men choose the former, and more women choose the later. The idea women that women are lesser if they have different preferences and choose connection over money/achievement... well it is absolutely misguided. That is the preference that differs between men and women IN THE AGGREGATE, i.e. out of all people, there are more men choose achievement over connection than there are women that make that choice. How does that make women anything other than smarter than men, in aggregate? How is a life full of connections with humans worse than one with achievement and money? I'm a man, and I have run a mile from long hours my entire life - because I want a life defined by more than just work and money. I accept that comes with reduced pay, as I am sure I could squeeze in an extra 10-20 hours of paid work a week - but that is a choice I make knowingly, consciously, and actively. To assume that women make the WRONG choices, or that honest assessments of womens' choices on aggregates implies they are less capable is, IMHO, patronising to women who make much more nuanced decisions than men about life beyond "what will pay me the most".
- orangecat 9y ago
  Here [1] is an article on how cultural gender inequality leads to poorer maths results for women, and fixing that cultural inequality fixes the maths results. That is an interesting study which demonstrates the opposite of what you seem to think it does. Here's the PDF: https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/sapienza/htm/science.pdf https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/sapienza/htm/sc.... It shows that the as cultural inequality decreases, the relative performance of girls rises in both math where they end up about equal to boys, and reading where they end up even further ahead. Take the sum of the gap values in the first chart; they're all between 40 and 60 except for Iceland which is over 70. (Edit: no, I'm bad at math. Iceland's relative gap is about 50 as well). So if you point to the more equal math scores as proof that there are no innate differences between boys and girls, you now have to explain why the reading scores become even more unequal with increased gender equality. Is it just that Norway and Sweden are hotbeds of discrimination against boys?
- fatso83 9y ago
  Finally some meat to the discussion. This thread is one of the few to actually dig into the matter. Kudos.
- fatso83 9y ago
  Finally some meat to the discussion. This thread is one of the few to actually dig into the matter. Kudos.

interpol_p 9y ago

Fair enough. I'll do some homework. Here [1] is an article on how cultural gender inequality leads to poorer maths results for women, and fixing that cultural inequality fixes the maths results. This was commonly attributed to differences in biological traits in the past, that was wrong. Here [2] is another article where spatial abilities relate to societal roles. Another area commonly attributed to biological differences (and which the author of the manifesto still seems to believe). I've linked to Arstechnica articles because they are good summaries and reference the sources. Notice that the trend here is that we misattributed something to biological differences and then science showed us that things were more fluid than we initially thought. That attribution to biological differences propagated extremely harmful beliefs that still seem to resonate, though. [1] https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/06/why-judy-cant-add-gender-inequality-and-the-math-gap/ https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/06/why-judy-cant-... [2] https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/08/gender-gap-in-spatial-reasoning-mia-in-matrilineal-society/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/08/gender-gap-in-spatia...

josephg 9y ago
Alright, I'll bite. But, I've never heard of any research suggesting women have a different cognitive capacity than men. I read some research a number of years ago suggesting cross-culturally women had better language skills than men, but I don't know if this is still considered to be true. I can't remember reading anything in the manifesto which suggested women are less capable as software engineers. The essay did suggest women were less interested in programming than men (obviously true - see enrolment figures) and that at least some of the effect size is due to biological factors (probably true - see below). --- None of these links suggest any capacity difference. Only that there is a biologically influenced gender difference in interests. Here's an essay contextualising and summarising the historical specifics of male and female gender roles in society: http://www.denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm http://www.denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm Here's a study of how prenatal androgen effects psychological thing vs people orientation, and how it influences career choice: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/ A summary of studies looking at big 5 personality distributions and other effects. Of note is the long section describing blindspots in current research: "Gender Differences in Personality and Interests: When, Where and Why?" http://sci-hub.cc/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x http://sci-hub.cc/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x Here's a Dutch documentary where they send a camera crew around asking different researchers about gender differences: https://youtu.be/cVaTc15plVs?t=30m49s https://youtu.be/cVaTc15plVs?t=30m49s The full documentary is great. Their conclusion is that biological factors result in an overlapping but different distribution of personalities between men and women. These differences result in statistically different career preferences. A talk by researcher Steven Pinker on the subject, where he argues that biological differences result in at least some of the effect size in STEM interests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw&t=1057s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw&t=1057s This is part of a debate on the subject. (Not linked) Prof Elizabeth Spelke responds, but I found her argument to be much less convincing than Pinker. Watch both, make up your own mind.
- interpol_p 9y ago
  > I can't remember reading anything in the manifesto which suggested women are less capable as software engineers. It does suggest this: > “I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes,” Preferences and abilities. If men are in the majority of leadership, senior, and CEO roles, what is the author suggesting about the abilities of women?
  - ukj 9y ago
    He is suggesting that it's a difficult problem in a complex system and that it's likely that we don't understand all the factors at play? And that we need different perspectives in order to engage in the kind of constructive skepticism which ultimately leads to better understanding? Making assertions, on the other hand... that suggests that we already know the answers; and that further scrutiny is not required. The arrogance!
  - nopatternhere 9y ago
    > what is the author suggesting about the abilities of women? And we get to the heart of all this - the belief that a comment on preferences is questioning some group's ability. I find that deeply misguided, and I believe it places measurable, tangible elements THAT DO NOT MATTER (i.e. money and status) over important things that can't be measured (i.e. LOVE). The rich man who is without love - and yes, I mean man, see Ebenezer Scrooge - is a meme in literature that is well worn. We are told time and again that money isn't everything, that there are more important things in life than money, status and achievement... And it is true - there are more important things! Money is everything if you are starving, but once money is no longer the only issue in your life, and you are choosing between spending your time in the pursuit of more money and other things, there are many things better than more money to spend time on. Health is better than money. MENTAL health is better than money. Love and connections with others is FAR better than more money. The general principle here is achievement and working more vs connection with fellow humans. The best illustration of this is would you rather work 16 hour days in a law firm making a million a year but have no social life, or have friends, family and a life, but a lower paid job making above the median wage? And the evidence is in aggregate, more men choose the former, and more women choose the later. The idea women that women are lesser if they have different preferences and choose connection over money/achievement... well it is absolutely misguided. That is the preference that differs between men and women IN THE AGGREGATE, i.e. out of all people, there are more men choose achievement over connection than there are women that make that choice. How does that make women anything other than smarter than men, in aggregate? How is a life full of connections with humans worse than one with achievement and money? I'm a man, and I have run a mile from long hours my entire life - because I want a life defined by more than just work and money. I accept that comes with reduced pay, as I am sure I could squeeze in an extra 10-20 hours of paid work a week - but that is a choice I make knowingly, consciously, and actively. To assume that women make the WRONG choices, or that honest assessments of womens' choices on aggregates implies they are less capable is, IMHO, patronising to women who make much more nuanced decisions than men about life beyond "what will pay me the most".
orangecat 9y ago
Here [1] is an article on how cultural gender inequality leads to poorer maths results for women, and fixing that cultural inequality fixes the maths results. That is an interesting study which demonstrates the opposite of what you seem to think it does. Here's the PDF: https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/sapienza/htm/science.pdf https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/sapienza/htm/sc.... It shows that the as cultural inequality decreases, the relative performance of girls rises in both math where they end up about equal to boys, and reading where they end up even further ahead. Take the sum of the gap values in the first chart; they're all between 40 and 60 except for Iceland which is over 70. (Edit: no, I'm bad at math. Iceland's relative gap is about 50 as well). So if you point to the more equal math scores as proof that there are no innate differences between boys and girls, you now have to explain why the reading scores become even more unequal with increased gender equality. Is it just that Norway and Sweden are hotbeds of discrimination against boys?
fatso83 9y ago
Finally some meat to the discussion. This thread is one of the few to actually dig into the matter. Kudos.
fatso83 9y ago
Finally some meat to the discussion. This thread is one of the few to actually dig into the matter. Kudos.