5 ms·

I'm of the opinion that the very act of trying to artificially create equal outcome, is itself sexism. Currently we have both biased opportunity and biased outc

by bArray 9y ago

I'm of the opinion that the very act of trying to artificially create equal outcome, is itself sexism. Currently we have both biased opportunity and biased outcome aimed at artificially drawing more women into tech. I cringe every time I see a tech woman's award. "Applaud X for her achievement in creating Y, that wasn't good enough for the main award but it's the best women can do". Society is sick, somehow (almost) everybody fell asleep at the wheel and forgot that equal opportunity trumps equal outcome. It drives people from all backgrounds to work harder and means we don't end up presenting "okay" as the best that's out there. We don't artificially add 10% to men's Olympic times, why should be being doing the equivalent in employment? Can't we just hire the best person for the job, not for quotas? And lastly, where are the people complaining about unfair treatment of Asians in the US, or women only companies? These shouts of discrimination are extremely polarized.

coldtea 9y ago
>I'm of the opinion that the very act of trying to artificially create equal outcome, is itself sexism. The predominant view (with enough dominance to get someone fired from Google for challenging it) is that there are no differences between the sexes that can be considered legitimate at all (cultural, in preferences, evolutionary tendencies, etc.), and thus any non-equal outcome much inevitably be the result of suppression. I don't doubt oppression against women existed and exists (in various forms). I doubt: a) that it is an one way street (women have immense power over their children, including male children, and a particular role later in sexual selection, which is hardly a male-dominated "sport") that are not questioned at all in modern societies (e.g. not in the era of arranged marriages). It's assumed that "patriarchy" is bad, but not that "matriarchy" can be bad as well. b) that there are no legitimate, at least in the context of evolution and culture, differences in preferences between sexes that are not attributable to downright oppression or some "anti-woman" notion. Women are men, in essence, that just happen to lack penises, and men are women, in essence, that just happen to lack vaginas. Differences in development, body types, capabilities, evolutionary roles, hormonal content, etc., are not to be considered beyond this a priori fact.
- foldr 9y ago
  No, the predominant view is that there is no evidence that women are genetically predisposed to be worse at programming (on average) than men. The idea that women might be worse at programming for biological reasons is an entirely post-hoc hypothesis deriving from the current gender distribution in the field. As lots of other STEM fields have seen a sharp increase in the number of women over the past decades, while computer science and software engineering have not, the grounds for thinking that biological differences between men and women are relevant are extremely shaky, and really are nothing more than pseudoscientific rationalizations of the status quo. Please lets not have any more of this absurd straw man argument that men and women must be equally good at programming because men and women are exactly the same. No-one thinks this.
  - deecewan 9y ago
    I have no real knowledge on this, but what if women just don't, as a generalistic point of view, find programming as interesting? There are plenty of things I don't find that interesting, or enthralling enough to pursue a career in. Midwifery, primary-school teaching, gardening. Now, I'm not sure if that's just society having pushed me in that direction, or if I, as a human, just don't enjoy those. If it's the former, maybe it needs some work. If it's the latter, does 'equal outcome' really work? I don't see as big a push to equal out the playing fields in things such as janitorial work. This may be due to the fact that it's not as cognitive, which I understand. I think we need more women in tech to expand our (currently male) viewpoint. But I'm not sure that aggressively targetting people who may not be as interested, from either gender, is the way to do it.
    - foldr 9y ago
      >I have no real knowledge on this, but what if women just don't, as a generalistic point of view, find programming as interesting? If you have no reason to think that this is true, what is the point of speculating about it?
      - coldtea 9y ago
msluyter 9y ago
"somehow (almost) everybody fell asleep at the wheel and forgot that equal opportunity trumps equal outcome" It may be that as a lot of folks have argued (including Scott Alexander[1]) that women are simply less inclined to go into tech for innate reasons. (Not saying that's true, but it seems at least plausible.) But even if true, it may also be true that systemic bias is still a problem. IOW, what the Google memo and a lot of other folks seem unable to acknowledge is that these points aren't mutually exclusive. Ross Douthat -- not exactly a raging progressive -- makes this point well[2]: "The memo was sometimes tone deaf, clinical, insensitive (in, well, a stereotypically male sort of way), understating the ways in which self-selection and sexism can shape an industry. Even if more men than women are attracted to a particular field, a male-dominated profession can be distinctly unpleasant for the women who work in it, in ways that can justify special scrutiny, recruitment and redress." [1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/09/opinion/google-women-memo.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/09/opinion/google-women-memo...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- StavrosK 9y ago
  Certainly, systemic bias may still be a problem. The issue is that, unless you believe that men and women are exactly the same, and physical and psychological differences somehow stop at what interests they'll pick, the expected distribution of preferred professions wouldn't be 50-50. If there are innate differences in what men and women find fulfilling, you wouldn't expect to see equal participation in everything. Shooting for 50% quotas is then misguided, because all it means is that you're doing more work to find candidates that will pass your filter, as you're looking in a smaller pool on one of the two sides.
  - foldr 9y ago
    Men and women don’t have to be “exactly the same” to be equally good at programming. Germans and Spaniards are not “exactly the same” on average, but that doesn’t mean we automatically expect there to be more German programmers than Spanish programmers or vice versa. The question isn’t whether men and women are exactly the same, but whether they are, overall, on average, equally good at doing the relevant tasks. Even if men and women have different cognitive strengths and weaknesses (which I doubt that they do, to any significant extent), these might very well balance out. So for example, Federer and Nadal are very different, but about equally good.

by bArray 9y ago

coldtea 9y ago

>I'm of the opinion that the very act of trying to artificially create equal outcome, is itself sexism. The predominant view (with enough dominance to get someone fired from Google for challenging it) is that there are no differences between the sexes that can be considered legitimate at all (cultural, in preferences, evolutionary tendencies, etc.), and thus any non-equal outcome much inevitably be the result of suppression. I don't doubt oppression against women existed and exists (in various forms). I doubt: a) that it is an one way street (women have immense power over their children, including male children, and a particular role later in sexual selection, which is hardly a male-dominated "sport") that are not questioned at all in modern societies (e.g. not in the era of arranged marriages). It's assumed that "patriarchy" is bad, but not that "matriarchy" can be bad as well. b) that there are no legitimate, at least in the context of evolution and culture, differences in preferences between sexes that are not attributable to downright oppression or some "anti-woman" notion. Women are men, in essence, that just happen to lack penises, and men are women, in essence, that just happen to lack vaginas. Differences in development, body types, capabilities, evolutionary roles, hormonal content, etc., are not to be considered beyond this a priori fact.

foldr 9y ago
No, the predominant view is that there is no evidence that women are genetically predisposed to be worse at programming (on average) than men. The idea that women might be worse at programming for biological reasons is an entirely post-hoc hypothesis deriving from the current gender distribution in the field. As lots of other STEM fields have seen a sharp increase in the number of women over the past decades, while computer science and software engineering have not, the grounds for thinking that biological differences between men and women are relevant are extremely shaky, and really are nothing more than pseudoscientific rationalizations of the status quo. Please lets not have any more of this absurd straw man argument that men and women must be equally good at programming because men and women are exactly the same. No-one thinks this.
- deecewan 9y ago
  I have no real knowledge on this, but what if women just don't, as a generalistic point of view, find programming as interesting? There are plenty of things I don't find that interesting, or enthralling enough to pursue a career in. Midwifery, primary-school teaching, gardening. Now, I'm not sure if that's just society having pushed me in that direction, or if I, as a human, just don't enjoy those. If it's the former, maybe it needs some work. If it's the latter, does 'equal outcome' really work? I don't see as big a push to equal out the playing fields in things such as janitorial work. This may be due to the fact that it's not as cognitive, which I understand. I think we need more women in tech to expand our (currently male) viewpoint. But I'm not sure that aggressively targetting people who may not be as interested, from either gender, is the way to do it.
  - foldr 9y ago
    >I have no real knowledge on this, but what if women just don't, as a generalistic point of view, find programming as interesting? If you have no reason to think that this is true, what is the point of speculating about it?
    - coldtea 9y ago

msluyter 9y ago

"somehow (almost) everybody fell asleep at the wheel and forgot that equal opportunity trumps equal outcome" It may be that as a lot of folks have argued (including Scott Alexander[1]) that women are simply less inclined to go into tech for innate reasons. (Not saying that's true, but it seems at least plausible.) But even if true, it may also be true that systemic bias is still a problem. IOW, what the Google memo and a lot of other folks seem unable to acknowledge is that these points aren't mutually exclusive. Ross Douthat -- not exactly a raging progressive -- makes this point well[2]: "The memo was sometimes tone deaf, clinical, insensitive (in, well, a stereotypically male sort of way), understating the ways in which self-selection and sexism can shape an industry. Even if more men than women are attracted to a particular field, a male-dominated profession can be distinctly unpleasant for the women who work in it, in ways that can justify special scrutiny, recruitment and redress." [1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/09/opinion/google-women-memo.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/09/opinion/google-women-memo...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
StavrosK 9y ago
Certainly, systemic bias may still be a problem. The issue is that, unless you believe that men and women are exactly the same, and physical and psychological differences somehow stop at what interests they'll pick, the expected distribution of preferred professions wouldn't be 50-50. If there are innate differences in what men and women find fulfilling, you wouldn't expect to see equal participation in everything. Shooting for 50% quotas is then misguided, because all it means is that you're doing more work to find candidates that will pass your filter, as you're looking in a smaller pool on one of the two sides.
- foldr 9y ago
  Men and women don’t have to be “exactly the same” to be equally good at programming. Germans and Spaniards are not “exactly the same” on average, but that doesn’t mean we automatically expect there to be more German programmers than Spanish programmers or vice versa. The question isn’t whether men and women are exactly the same, but whether they are, overall, on average, equally good at doing the relevant tasks. Even if men and women have different cognitive strengths and weaknesses (which I doubt that they do, to any significant extent), these might very well balance out. So for example, Federer and Nadal are very different, but about equally good.