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There is bad with the good. The suggestion that men and women ARE different is taboo. The premise that the differences between them are social as opposed to lit

There is bad with the good. The suggestion that men and women ARE different is taboo. The premise that the differences between them are social as opposed to literal is a much easier way to force the same point (and IMO more correct but I respect I lack the science to be certain). This person lacks tact and the way they view the entire political sphere as just left/right is ultimately of concern. Way too simplistic outlook IMO.

ubernostrum 9y ago
It's perfectly all right to say that there are statistical differences between the average biological man and the average biological woman. The problem is to then assume a gigantic pile of facts not in evidence (that the differences observed are 100% biological with no cultural influence whatsoever, that they conclusively explain gender disparities in many fields, etc. etc.) and accuse anyone who disagrees with you of being one of those terrible mean lefties who will unperson you for speaking the truth. Generally, this type of person lasts up until the moment blind interviews become widespread.
- ebfd 9y ago
  The two positions in the debate are that sex differences are 100% environmental and 0% biological vs. <100% environmental and >0% biological. Nobody believes that they are 100% biological.
- darepublic 9y ago
  Blind interviews is a good idea that I think could/should satisfy parties on both sides. I mean it's really putting your ideas to the test. And either way you can take some comfort knowing that, if properly set up, the process will be fair. Now the correlation between a good interview and doing well on the job is another issue altogether.
  - mos_basik 9y ago
    May or may not be completely relevant, but seems like it's in the ballpark: a couple of months ago, a conference sponsored by GitHub was postponed because the authors of all the (blind) selected papers were male. HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480868 Reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/6f8u2s/githubs_electronconf_postponed_because_all_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/6f8u2s/githubs_...
  - brooklyn_ashey 9y ago
    Yes, I can attest to this too, harkening back to the classical orchestral auditions. This is why every player is put on probation for 6 months to a year. Their colleagues then vote them into the orchestra or they get voted out. This is the part that is about how they actually do their job. Getting voted out is pretty rare, but I have known a few people who have been voted out of top ten orchestras after the probation period. I can't tell you how tragic it is for everyone involved, especially the players who vote them out, because every single player knows how hard it is just to get to the point of sitting in their chair. Players who win auditions are extremely motivated to show up with their music memorized and perfect for every single rehearsal, sectional, and concert. They are on their first date behavior. So if they fail, there is usually a great reason that has to do with showing up unprepared or being rude to colleagues on a regular basis, or playing louder than the section all the time, or in some cases, showing up to work drunk or something ridiculous. But even when people have a substance abuse problem, the orchestra usually tries to help them first. So, perhaps there could be a probation period after tech interviews the same way we have them? (Actually, my friend told me that the Boston-based company, Wayfair, does this. Do any other companies do this? I think it makes sense for both parties. It's a drag when someone has had to relocate and they don't pass through to tenure, but those are the breaks, I guess.)
- remarkEon 9y ago
  Except he didn't say that the differences we observe are 100% due to biology. I'm actually pretty shocked at how much of this thread seems to deliberately mischaracterize what he wrote.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    Agreed. If anything, he was objecting to begging the question in the other direction. Most of the particulars are examples of nuances that (the author thinks) need to be studied instead of ignored.
  - Quarrelsome 9y ago
    > Except he didn't say that the differences we observe are 100% due to biology. He did, if he didn't intend to he used the wrong language. He had a section called: > Personality Differences Where to his credit he did say: "on average" but then he failed to distinguish these differences as cultural or social. Rather he prefixed that part of the article with a section that stated: > On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed.... I don't know how to read that otherwise. My understanding is that he IS saying that biologically women (on average) are less able to negotiate pay, prefer social work to STEM, etc. Now while those are perfectly fine things to consider stating them as fact is a bit of a leap. You have to prefix your work to make it less assertion and more speculation for people not to assume what I assumed.
    - renaudg 9y ago
      You have to consider that Gizmodo has acknowledged having stripped the essay of several hyperlinks, probably lending support to his claims. This comprehensive recap could be one of them : https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/why-brilliant-girls-tend-favor-non-stem-careers https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/wh...
      - Quarrelsome 9y ago
        Yes but that's still the soft science of sociology and the author of the OP should tread carefully before asserting this as literal fact. It remains a conclusion of incomplete results. Obviously better than complete speculation but still no stronger than the technology used by the culture this OP is rallying against.
- orangecat 9y ago
  that the differences observed are 100% biological with no cultural influence whatsoever From what I've seen it's exactly the opposite; any suggestion that differences might be less than 100% cultural marks you as a hateful racist misogynist. See Charles Murray for example. Generally, this type of person lasts up until the moment blind interviews become widespread. It actually is possible that someone might have the intellectual capacity to work at Google without being a progressive leftist.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    All available evidence strongly suggests that Charles Murray is in fact a racist†, so this isn't a good example. What you instead want to say is that there's limited tolerance for the "diversity viewpoint" that "whites" and Asians are intellectually superior to "blacks". There's an intellectually coherent argument to be made that our society is intolerant towards inquiries supporting racism. (It's not a good argument, but it will hold together logically). There are fewer good arguments that people are hyperventilating about what Charles Murray represents. † You can quibble with the terminology; if you believe "being tarred as a racist is even worse than being oppressed because of your race", you're welcome to replace "racist" with "racial supremacist".
    - ggreer 9y ago
      I realize this is getting off topic, but can you explain why you think that, "All available evidence strongly suggests that Charles Murray is in fact a racist"? I've read The Bell Curve and listened to a debate where Murray argued in favor of universal basic income. I came away from both thinking that he's been totally misrepresented. I just reviewed my notes for The Bell Curve to make sure I hadn't mis-remembered the content. Out of 22 chapters, two are on race. One begins with, "The first thing to remember is that the differences among individuals are far greater than the differences between groups." In other words: knowing someone's race tells you nothing about their intelligence. The chapters on race contain no expression of racial superiority or inferiority, nor any policies favoring discrimination. The only definition of racism that could apply is the view that there are some statistical differences between races, though the book doesn't weigh-in on how much is caused by genes vs environment. It also reiterates that these statistical differences cannot be used to infer anything about individuals. Supporting racism (in the sense of advocating for racial superiority or discrimination) is deeply unethical, so I'd very much like to know if Murray holds such views.
Hnrobert42 9y ago
Yeah. I was willing to give him a fair hearing until he listed a handful of differences between men and women that he ascribes to biology without any factual support. And therein lies the unconscious bias against which he is railing. To him, there is no question that men and women, on average, are fundamentally different in ways that affects their ability to and interest in work in tech. I agree with him that folks shame those his viewpoint into silence. I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing.
- TimTheTinker 9y ago
  Here's an article that provides some factual support for the author's viewpoint, with commentary (this was featured on HN a few weeks ago): https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/why-brilliant-girls-tend-favor-non-stem-careers https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/wh...
- danieltillett 9y ago
  Having personally experience the effects of different levels of testosterone I find it hard to believe any claim of the differences between men and woman at the population level not at least in part being biological.
  - grey-area 9y ago
    There is a long way between claiming there are no biological differences between men and women (of course there are), and the specific claims of differences in the article (which are remarkably specific and tailored to areas of male behaviour the author clearly valorises, e.g. status driven = good, empathy = bad).
    - agarden 9y ago
      I did not get "status driven = good, empathy = bad" from the article. In his section titled "Men's Higher Drive for Status", the author suggests that status-driven is bad: "We always ask why we don’t see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life. "Status is the primary metric that men are judged on[4], pushing many men into these higher paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail. Note, the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths." And then in a footnote: "Considering women spend more money than men and that salary represents how much the employees sacrifices (e.g. more hours, stress, and danger), we really need to rethink our stereotypes around power."
wsrGoWkWeJ3i7w 9y ago
>The premise that the differences between them are social as opposed to literal is a much easier way to force the same point It's much easier yes, but it then steers the direction into "well, if the difference between men and women's preference for CS is just social, can't we correct the 'gap' with affirmative action hires? Give women more chances!" and you end up in the same hole. We can't pussyfoot around it. Men and women ARE biologically different. Men prefer engineering and are better at it, no matter what culture you look at (the Iran numbers provided above are bogus.) How much more money could Google make if they start hiring based on skill alone? A whole lot.
humanrebar 9y ago
> The suggestion that men and women ARE different is taboo. Is it taboo? Or is it just taboo in this context? The premise is also shared by some arguments for trangender rights -- that gender identity is involuntary and biological at least to some degree.
- Quarrelsome 9y ago
  I think anything that tries to brush 50% with a hue that isn't literal biological fact is tenuous and gets people's backs up. e.g. > Men are more violent than women. I mean that's somewhat factual (i.e. considering crime rates) but the very mention of the phrase is tinged with ulterior motive so it becomes taboo. Basically you're better off sticking to literal difference, avoiding sociologically and focusing on differences being social or cultural because then you won't piss off up to 50% of people and people are more likely listen to you. e.g. > The way we bring up men and the societal pressures placed upon them makes them more violent than women. I think less people are gonna be mad about that and then you can use it as a stepping stone to make whatever point this was your platform for. Sure it might actually be less _correct_ then the other way of putting it (I don't know the science precisely enough to judge either way) but that's taboo for ya. Unless you're writing specific science about the biological differences between men and women it doesn't matter that you made the same point differently.
  - ithkuil 9y ago
    Well it does make a difference when you're talking about the countermeasures that society (or in this case a private company) should adopt to fix the problem. If you claim that the cause for male violence lies solely in the upbringing you might in the best case waste a lot of resources in the worst case cause a lot of psychological suffering so common in all our attempts to "fix" the "wrong" behaviour of kids (left-handed, homosexual, ...).
home_boi 9y ago
> The suggestion that men and women ARE different is taboo. This is the assumption being made by diversity hiring and diversity advocates. That some races/genders have different perspectives and viewpoints than others. It can quickly follow that some of these viewpoints may make a person more or less fit for certain careers.
- Quarrelsome 9y ago
  The difficulty is whether those differences are biological, social or cultural. Its hard to tease those differences apart with our current tools. I'll stick with the assumption that its the latter two just because its more convenient and diplomatic. Maybe the genetic data we mine in future generations will give us the real answers but I don't see any advantage in pressing the biological argument until then (as I'm not working directly in that field).
  - renaudg 9y ago
    We don't need to wait for genetic data mining, this has been widely studied already. Differences are visible within the first two days of birth : https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222673203_Sex_Differences_in_Human_Neonatal_Social_Perception https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222673203_Sex_Diffe... and are present in monkeys too : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/ I'll let you draw the conclusion.
    - Quarrelsome 9y ago
      Yes but to speculate that a baby's desire to look at a face more means they're less able to negotiate their pay is a bit of a leap (as opposed to that being social or cultural). Sure there are literal differences between gender but one still has to ask that if those differences are big enough to make a difference following the YEARS of nurture or not. I'll wait till the genetic data mining transitions this from speculation to fact thank you very much.
    - mcguire 9y ago

ubernostrum 9y ago

It's perfectly all right to say that there are statistical differences between the average biological man and the average biological woman. The problem is to then assume a gigantic pile of facts not in evidence (that the differences observed are 100% biological with no cultural influence whatsoever, that they conclusively explain gender disparities in many fields, etc. etc.) and accuse anyone who disagrees with you of being one of those terrible mean lefties who will unperson you for speaking the truth. Generally, this type of person lasts up until the moment blind interviews become widespread.

ebfd 9y ago
The two positions in the debate are that sex differences are 100% environmental and 0% biological vs. <100% environmental and >0% biological. Nobody believes that they are 100% biological.
darepublic 9y ago
Blind interviews is a good idea that I think could/should satisfy parties on both sides. I mean it's really putting your ideas to the test. And either way you can take some comfort knowing that, if properly set up, the process will be fair. Now the correlation between a good interview and doing well on the job is another issue altogether.
- mos_basik 9y ago
  May or may not be completely relevant, but seems like it's in the ballpark: a couple of months ago, a conference sponsored by GitHub was postponed because the authors of all the (blind) selected papers were male. HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480868 Reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/6f8u2s/githubs_electronconf_postponed_because_all_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/6f8u2s/githubs_...
- brooklyn_ashey 9y ago
  Yes, I can attest to this too, harkening back to the classical orchestral auditions. This is why every player is put on probation for 6 months to a year. Their colleagues then vote them into the orchestra or they get voted out. This is the part that is about how they actually do their job. Getting voted out is pretty rare, but I have known a few people who have been voted out of top ten orchestras after the probation period. I can't tell you how tragic it is for everyone involved, especially the players who vote them out, because every single player knows how hard it is just to get to the point of sitting in their chair. Players who win auditions are extremely motivated to show up with their music memorized and perfect for every single rehearsal, sectional, and concert. They are on their first date behavior. So if they fail, there is usually a great reason that has to do with showing up unprepared or being rude to colleagues on a regular basis, or playing louder than the section all the time, or in some cases, showing up to work drunk or something ridiculous. But even when people have a substance abuse problem, the orchestra usually tries to help them first. So, perhaps there could be a probation period after tech interviews the same way we have them? (Actually, my friend told me that the Boston-based company, Wayfair, does this. Do any other companies do this? I think it makes sense for both parties. It's a drag when someone has had to relocate and they don't pass through to tenure, but those are the breaks, I guess.)
remarkEon 9y ago
Except he didn't say that the differences we observe are 100% due to biology. I'm actually pretty shocked at how much of this thread seems to deliberately mischaracterize what he wrote.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  Agreed. If anything, he was objecting to begging the question in the other direction. Most of the particulars are examples of nuances that (the author thinks) need to be studied instead of ignored.
- Quarrelsome 9y ago
  > Except he didn't say that the differences we observe are 100% due to biology. He did, if he didn't intend to he used the wrong language. He had a section called: > Personality Differences Where to his credit he did say: "on average" but then he failed to distinguish these differences as cultural or social. Rather he prefixed that part of the article with a section that stated: > On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed.... I don't know how to read that otherwise. My understanding is that he IS saying that biologically women (on average) are less able to negotiate pay, prefer social work to STEM, etc. Now while those are perfectly fine things to consider stating them as fact is a bit of a leap. You have to prefix your work to make it less assertion and more speculation for people not to assume what I assumed.
  - renaudg 9y ago
    You have to consider that Gizmodo has acknowledged having stripped the essay of several hyperlinks, probably lending support to his claims. This comprehensive recap could be one of them : https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/why-brilliant-girls-tend-favor-non-stem-careers https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/wh...
    - Quarrelsome 9y ago
      Yes but that's still the soft science of sociology and the author of the OP should tread carefully before asserting this as literal fact. It remains a conclusion of incomplete results. Obviously better than complete speculation but still no stronger than the technology used by the culture this OP is rallying against.
orangecat 9y ago
that the differences observed are 100% biological with no cultural influence whatsoever From what I've seen it's exactly the opposite; any suggestion that differences might be less than 100% cultural marks you as a hateful racist misogynist. See Charles Murray for example. Generally, this type of person lasts up until the moment blind interviews become widespread. It actually is possible that someone might have the intellectual capacity to work at Google without being a progressive leftist.
- tptacek 9y ago
  All available evidence strongly suggests that Charles Murray is in fact a racist†, so this isn't a good example. What you instead want to say is that there's limited tolerance for the "diversity viewpoint" that "whites" and Asians are intellectually superior to "blacks". There's an intellectually coherent argument to be made that our society is intolerant towards inquiries supporting racism. (It's not a good argument, but it will hold together logically). There are fewer good arguments that people are hyperventilating about what Charles Murray represents. † You can quibble with the terminology; if you believe "being tarred as a racist is even worse than being oppressed because of your race", you're welcome to replace "racist" with "racial supremacist".
  - ggreer 9y ago
    I realize this is getting off topic, but can you explain why you think that, "All available evidence strongly suggests that Charles Murray is in fact a racist"? I've read The Bell Curve and listened to a debate where Murray argued in favor of universal basic income. I came away from both thinking that he's been totally misrepresented. I just reviewed my notes for The Bell Curve to make sure I hadn't mis-remembered the content. Out of 22 chapters, two are on race. One begins with, "The first thing to remember is that the differences among individuals are far greater than the differences between groups." In other words: knowing someone's race tells you nothing about their intelligence. The chapters on race contain no expression of racial superiority or inferiority, nor any policies favoring discrimination. The only definition of racism that could apply is the view that there are some statistical differences between races, though the book doesn't weigh-in on how much is caused by genes vs environment. It also reiterates that these statistical differences cannot be used to infer anything about individuals. Supporting racism (in the sense of advocating for racial superiority or discrimination) is deeply unethical, so I'd very much like to know if Murray holds such views.

Hnrobert42 9y ago

Yeah. I was willing to give him a fair hearing until he listed a handful of differences between men and women that he ascribes to biology without any factual support. And therein lies the unconscious bias against which he is railing. To him, there is no question that men and women, on average, are fundamentally different in ways that affects their ability to and interest in work in tech. I agree with him that folks shame those his viewpoint into silence. I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing.

TimTheTinker 9y ago
Here's an article that provides some factual support for the author's viewpoint, with commentary (this was featured on HN a few weeks ago): https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/why-brilliant-girls-tend-favor-non-stem-careers https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/wh...
danieltillett 9y ago
Having personally experience the effects of different levels of testosterone I find it hard to believe any claim of the differences between men and woman at the population level not at least in part being biological.
- grey-area 9y ago
  There is a long way between claiming there are no biological differences between men and women (of course there are), and the specific claims of differences in the article (which are remarkably specific and tailored to areas of male behaviour the author clearly valorises, e.g. status driven = good, empathy = bad).
  - agarden 9y ago
    I did not get "status driven = good, empathy = bad" from the article. In his section titled "Men's Higher Drive for Status", the author suggests that status-driven is bad: "We always ask why we don’t see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life. "Status is the primary metric that men are judged on[4], pushing many men into these higher paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail. Note, the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths." And then in a footnote: "Considering women spend more money than men and that salary represents how much the employees sacrifices (e.g. more hours, stress, and danger), we really need to rethink our stereotypes around power."

wsrGoWkWeJ3i7w 9y ago

>The premise that the differences between them are social as opposed to literal is a much easier way to force the same point It's much easier yes, but it then steers the direction into "well, if the difference between men and women's preference for CS is just social, can't we correct the 'gap' with affirmative action hires? Give women more chances!" and you end up in the same hole. We can't pussyfoot around it. Men and women ARE biologically different. Men prefer engineering and are better at it, no matter what culture you look at (the Iran numbers provided above are bogus.) How much more money could Google make if they start hiring based on skill alone? A whole lot.

humanrebar 9y ago

> The suggestion that men and women ARE different is taboo. Is it taboo? Or is it just taboo in this context? The premise is also shared by some arguments for trangender rights -- that gender identity is involuntary and biological at least to some degree.

Quarrelsome 9y ago
I think anything that tries to brush 50% with a hue that isn't literal biological fact is tenuous and gets people's backs up. e.g. > Men are more violent than women. I mean that's somewhat factual (i.e. considering crime rates) but the very mention of the phrase is tinged with ulterior motive so it becomes taboo. Basically you're better off sticking to literal difference, avoiding sociologically and focusing on differences being social or cultural because then you won't piss off up to 50% of people and people are more likely listen to you. e.g. > The way we bring up men and the societal pressures placed upon them makes them more violent than women. I think less people are gonna be mad about that and then you can use it as a stepping stone to make whatever point this was your platform for. Sure it might actually be less _correct_ then the other way of putting it (I don't know the science precisely enough to judge either way) but that's taboo for ya. Unless you're writing specific science about the biological differences between men and women it doesn't matter that you made the same point differently.
- ithkuil 9y ago
  Well it does make a difference when you're talking about the countermeasures that society (or in this case a private company) should adopt to fix the problem. If you claim that the cause for male violence lies solely in the upbringing you might in the best case waste a lot of resources in the worst case cause a lot of psychological suffering so common in all our attempts to "fix" the "wrong" behaviour of kids (left-handed, homosexual, ...).

home_boi 9y ago

> The suggestion that men and women ARE different is taboo. This is the assumption being made by diversity hiring and diversity advocates. That some races/genders have different perspectives and viewpoints than others. It can quickly follow that some of these viewpoints may make a person more or less fit for certain careers.

Quarrelsome 9y ago
The difficulty is whether those differences are biological, social or cultural. Its hard to tease those differences apart with our current tools. I'll stick with the assumption that its the latter two just because its more convenient and diplomatic. Maybe the genetic data we mine in future generations will give us the real answers but I don't see any advantage in pressing the biological argument until then (as I'm not working directly in that field).
- renaudg 9y ago
  We don't need to wait for genetic data mining, this has been widely studied already. Differences are visible within the first two days of birth : https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222673203_Sex_Differences_in_Human_Neonatal_Social_Perception https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222673203_Sex_Diffe... and are present in monkeys too : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/ I'll let you draw the conclusion.
  - Quarrelsome 9y ago
    Yes but to speculate that a baby's desire to look at a face more means they're less able to negotiate their pay is a bit of a leap (as opposed to that being social or cultural). Sure there are literal differences between gender but one still has to ask that if those differences are big enough to make a difference following the YEARS of nurture or not. I'll wait till the genetic data mining transitions this from speculation to fact thank you very much.
  - mcguire 9y ago