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On one hand, in this political climate it's really stupid to say something like that. On the other, someone has to be the first person to say it. (Not that I n

• peteretep 8y ago
  > On the other, someone has to be the first person to say it. I don’t understand this point. Please could you expand on what you mean?
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • ktjfi 8y ago
    I mean, if you want to say something as controversial as that, and you decide to wait until more people say it first, you may have to wait a lifetime. (Once again, I haven't looked at the data, so I don't necessarily agree with what he said.)
    • digdigdag 8y ago
      His evidence is based on predetermined assumptions. He does not even have the scientific background to even tackle this area of study. It's not even that he said something controversial. He made crude errors in his research that would have made a respectable sociologist laugh him out the door.
      • merpnderp 8y ago
        What makes you claim his research has been reviewed? The article makes it sound like it was never peer reviewed and the people debunking it are doing so merely from his claims, not his methods and data.
      • scottlocklin 8y ago
        Citations needed: the subject requires basic statistics to make assertions on. Pretty sure he was qualified to do so. Also pretty sure psychometric researchers say exactly what Strumia said as any fool with google or wikipedia could determine. His only crime is having the temerity to stand up to imbeciles who insist on conspiracy theories to explain the comparative lack of female achievement in physics.
  • rjf72 8y ago
    The tale of The Emperor's New Clothes [1] would be appropriate. In society in general we've decided to take as an assumption that everybody is identically capable in everything and thus that any and all differences must then be attributable to some form of discrimination, bias, or prejudice. And this is something that is pleasant to believe in large part because not believing it has led to dystopic outcomes in the past, including but not limited to government driven eugenics. So it's something that we want to believe. And also stating you do not believe it is a great way to have people judge you for some secret ist of some sort or another. At the same time this view is contradicted by reality. In times past this reality would have been mostly just empirical, but in modern times we also have genetic and other factors strongly contradicting any notion of inherent equality. So what to do? In my opinion the most important thing here is to ensure as much equality of opportunity as reasonably possible. And this is an effort that should never relent. However, at the same time, it also has to be acknowledged that the lack of equality of result does not inherently mean there's a problem. Ultimately it's the typical problem. Trying to create utopia is often a great path to dystopia. Enforced equality of result for all is rather a key point in Brave New World. Of course this does not mean that discrimination does not exist. But the standard for assumption of such needs to start growing beyond wild induction from dubious toy experiments, or from works that start with absolute equality as an assumption. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes
    • geofft 8y ago
      > In my opinion the most important thing here is to ensure as much equality of opportunity as reasonably possible. And this is an effort that should never relent. Cool, so you agree that a scientist who attacks his colleagues imperils equality of opportunity, then?
      • rjf72 8y ago
        Well intentioned ideologies do not inherently produce a non-negative outcome. Negative outcomes are very much a possibility, particularly when views are flawed. And so at some point any ideology that is not extremely well supported by data should be challenged, even if that ideology is the nicest most well intentioned one in the world. Google's recent pay study is one little microcosm that demonstrates this. Under fire for the widely perceived belief that females are underpaid for doing the same work as males, Google engaged in substantial data crunching and analysis to correct any inequities. It turns out they were underpaying their male employees. Why might this be? We already answered this. There is a widely held belief that females are underpaid for doing the same work as males. This may be true in some instances, but it's certainly nothing like a universal truth. But you can see even on these forums that many Google employees do treat it as something approaching a universal truth, many even refusing to belief it was false following Google's analyses. And so when a manager has discretionary funds to distribute, whom is he going to prefer? People, generally, want to do the right thing. And so in the pursuit of equality, you end up creating inequality. These sort of paradoxical outcomes are not uncommon. Declaring that a view is not well supported by evidence, even when that view is nice, is not 'attacking'.
• tyingq 8y ago
  This wasn't an errant comment, it was a quite a lot of effort. I imagine he knew full well what the potential consequences were. Feels like a deliberate move.
• avip 8y ago
  You can't be "the first" and repeat something already stated by Darwin. It's called variability hypothesis and is a much discussed, with strong evidence I think, issue.