4 ms·

I feel badly for her, for you just mentioned her attractiveness when it has no relevance. Perhaps when we (being the male gender we) start considering females'

by mrtron 19y ago

I feel badly for her, for you just mentioned her attractiveness when it has no relevance. Perhaps when we (being the male gender we) start considering females' intelligence as the _only_ factor and not half of the equation things will change. Out of the 26 coworkers, you mentioned the physical attributes of the one female. Sorry to pick on your one quick post, but it is just very representative of our society's lingering gender gap.

Tichy 19y ago
I think it has some relevance, because it shows that being in IT does not imply unattractiveness. Talk about unattractiveness of male geeks is quite common, too. Also, I think it would be nonsense to deny our human attributes. Men are interested in women's looks, and vice versa. Actually, isn't it another complaint of successful women that to be successful, they had to become like men (a ka Margaret Thatcher)? So if a successful women is still attractive, it might be a good role model after all.
- curi 19y ago
  It isn't "human" it is "cultural". Still shouldn't deny it, but it can and will change. (And has changed a lot already!)
  - Tichy 19y ago
    So you mean in other cultures looks don't matter? Maybe if the parents set up the marriages? Do you have any references?
    - curi 19y ago
      I don't mean other existing cultures are different. (Although, there are differences.) I mean it is a matter of culture (ideas) not "humanity" (DNA). There are many reasons to believe this. Two are: - memes evolve orders of magnitude faster than genes, so once they existed, they responded to almost all selection pressures first. anything with complex social interactions that require intelligence couldn't have evolved before memes (ie, before we had intelligence). - people sometimes make changes to how they treat women, how they interpret appearances, to all sorts of related ways of thinking and behaviors. this points to culture because our ideas are designed to be changeable at runtime, and our DNA isn't.
      - Tichy 19y ago
        Sexual attraction seems kind of important to the survival of humans, though. Or at least it used to be (cloning and stuff like that might change that). Of course there are cultural aspects to how women are being treated. Granted, there could be cultures where people would not automatically remark on the attractiveness of a female colleague. For example, if all women are hidden behind veils, and infidelity can get you killed, maybe people are much more careful about what they say (just guessing, I don't know).
        curi 19y ago
        Before intelligence, there was no such thing as 'sexual attraction' in the current sense. There was only the exact same thing animals have: programs that behave in certain ways, based on certain inputs. Like a DARPA car steers left on certain input, an animal has sex on certain input. With the advent of intelligence, came the ability for high-level interpretation of sense input -- we might say that events took on meaning. From a survival point of view, the ability to reinterpret arousal chemicals, and other things, was no serious danger: any culture that did that would die out. (And even if it was dangerous for the species, evolution doesn't do advanced planning of that sort.) What we have today, and call sexual attraction, involves many layers of intelligent interpretation, which we (largely unintentionally) teach to the next generation -- ie, it is culture. If parents behaved differently, the meaning of sexual attraction would change. Edit: By analogy, DNA = assembly language. We program in higher level languages. (Imagine programming in 500 years though, so it's much further removed from assembly). At some level of abstraction, the original details of DNA/assembly are totally irrelevant to the level we normally think in.
        Tichy 19y ago
        I remain skeptic. Sure, there are cultural signals we learn to interpret (short dresses, suits, marriage rings,...), but on a basic level, for the most part, women will be attracted to men and vice versa? Diseases will be repellent, as will other attributes of unfitness? You think you can raise men to be gay? (I don't know). Surely there is a lot of research on that, but the final word is perhaps not out yet?
pchristensen 19y ago
Just ask 10 guys and 10 girls what they think the average IT/programmer girl looks like and you'll see why it was a useful observation. Both men and women put emphasis on women's looks.
- deleted 19y ago
  [deleted]
mattmaroon 19y ago
That will never happen. Read any book on evolutionary psychology to find out why.

by mrtron 19y ago

Tichy 19y ago

I think it has some relevance, because it shows that being in IT does not imply unattractiveness. Talk about unattractiveness of male geeks is quite common, too. Also, I think it would be nonsense to deny our human attributes. Men are interested in women's looks, and vice versa. Actually, isn't it another complaint of successful women that to be successful, they had to become like men (a ka Margaret Thatcher)? So if a successful women is still attractive, it might be a good role model after all.

curi 19y ago
It isn't "human" it is "cultural". Still shouldn't deny it, but it can and will change. (And has changed a lot already!)
- Tichy 19y ago
  So you mean in other cultures looks don't matter? Maybe if the parents set up the marriages? Do you have any references?
  - curi 19y ago
    I don't mean other existing cultures are different. (Although, there are differences.) I mean it is a matter of culture (ideas) not "humanity" (DNA). There are many reasons to believe this. Two are: - memes evolve orders of magnitude faster than genes, so once they existed, they responded to almost all selection pressures first. anything with complex social interactions that require intelligence couldn't have evolved before memes (ie, before we had intelligence). - people sometimes make changes to how they treat women, how they interpret appearances, to all sorts of related ways of thinking and behaviors. this points to culture because our ideas are designed to be changeable at runtime, and our DNA isn't.
    - Tichy 19y ago
      Sexual attraction seems kind of important to the survival of humans, though. Or at least it used to be (cloning and stuff like that might change that). Of course there are cultural aspects to how women are being treated. Granted, there could be cultures where people would not automatically remark on the attractiveness of a female colleague. For example, if all women are hidden behind veils, and infidelity can get you killed, maybe people are much more careful about what they say (just guessing, I don't know).
      - curi 19y ago
        Before intelligence, there was no such thing as 'sexual attraction' in the current sense. There was only the exact same thing animals have: programs that behave in certain ways, based on certain inputs. Like a DARPA car steers left on certain input, an animal has sex on certain input. With the advent of intelligence, came the ability for high-level interpretation of sense input -- we might say that events took on meaning. From a survival point of view, the ability to reinterpret arousal chemicals, and other things, was no serious danger: any culture that did that would die out. (And even if it was dangerous for the species, evolution doesn't do advanced planning of that sort.) What we have today, and call sexual attraction, involves many layers of intelligent interpretation, which we (largely unintentionally) teach to the next generation -- ie, it is culture. If parents behaved differently, the meaning of sexual attraction would change. Edit: By analogy, DNA = assembly language. We program in higher level languages. (Imagine programming in 500 years though, so it's much further removed from assembly). At some level of abstraction, the original details of DNA/assembly are totally irrelevant to the level we normally think in.
        Tichy 19y ago
        I remain skeptic. Sure, there are cultural signals we learn to interpret (short dresses, suits, marriage rings,...), but on a basic level, for the most part, women will be attracted to men and vice versa? Diseases will be repellent, as will other attributes of unfitness? You think you can raise men to be gay? (I don't know). Surely there is a lot of research on that, but the final word is perhaps not out yet?

pchristensen 19y ago

Just ask 10 guys and 10 girls what they think the average IT/programmer girl looks like and you'll see why it was a useful observation. Both men and women put emphasis on women's looks.

deleted 19y ago
[deleted]

mattmaroon 19y ago

That will never happen. Read any book on evolutionary psychology to find out why.