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I really didn't want to comment on this topic, but who can pass up a chance at self-immolation ? Being left-leaning, I've been doing a lot of looking into some
by TimJYoung 9y ago
I really didn't want to comment on this topic, but who can pass up a chance at self-immolation ?
Being left-leaning, I've been doing a lot of looking into some of the ideas floating around amongst the right-leaning crowd since the election. Based upon that, I would say that yes, that is an unreasonable reading.
My understanding (subject to being completely off-base, of course) is that the argument is about biological differences related to interests and aspirations, not intelligence and capabilities. In other words, the early developmental stages cause differences in the brain among men and women that affect, in very general terms, what both may end up aspiring to in terms of career choices and hobbies/interests.
Women (again, speaking generally) could easily do any knowledge-based job performed by men, but you're going to have problems finding the numbers that you need if you want to hit a solid 50/50 distribution in certain types of fields. I think this is why certain fields have had very little trouble reaching either parity or female dominance after the women's equality movement started, while other fields struggle to this day. For example, I've read that SV has no problem with the distribution amongst the non-tech fields and that they slightly favor women, but in terms of engineering and tech, the distribution still lags by quite a bit. This would imply that SV is doing everything in its power to hire and promote women, and that there is something else going on that is the cause of what we're seeing. However, it could also imply that tech and engineering are all filled with men that are actively hostile to women to such a degree that women, even women extremely interested in such fields, simply avoid them. I suspect that, like all things in life, it's a mix of both.
- KirinDave 9y agoI think it's a bit of a popular straw man that a 50/50 split is desired. It's more along the lines of, "There are no obvious artificial disadvantages for people in these groups, and if that happens then the resulting distribution will almost certainly change." If you look at the published #s right now, they're... very striking. It makes the hypothesis that it's just the preference of women and people of various minorities quite an aggressive hypothesis, in a bayesian sense.