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The article I linked lists some of the issues. Essentially the study could be measuring for a number of things instead of gender aptitude for "liking things ins

The article I linked lists some of the issues. Essentially the study could be measuring for a number of things instead of gender aptitude for "liking things instead of people." But that's besides the point, even if the study was correct jumping from "newborn males are slightly more likely to stare at a mobile longer" to "that means adult women are less interested in computer sciences" is preposterous. Even further, jumping from that to "hence trying to be more inclusive in hiring is discrimination against males" is just the kind of shit I'd expect from alt-right writers, not engineers. But then again, Damore was very quick to jump on that train, so maybe he had a ticket already.

JamesBarney 9y ago
I searched this whole thread and can't find any comment you made that links to an article. Would you mind posting it? I'd love to have my mind changed. Most of my friends are liberal and think this science is bunk, but from what I've read there is a lot of evidence that women are more interested in things than people, and a moderate amount of evidence that at least some of this preference is biological.
- dguaraglia 9y ago
  Here's the article I linked containing some criticism of the methodology: http://www.thetutorking.com/2014/08/criticisms-of-connellan-baron-cohen.html http://www.thetutorking.com/2014/08/criticisms-of-connellan-.... This paper came up barely a decade ago. Studies showing the influence of gender stereotypes on behavior go back decades. To clarify, I'm not saying that there's 0 possibility that there are differences between sexes, just that trying to rationalize the current gender imbalance in engineering as "girls being girls and boys being boys" is a bit disingenuous, considering different countries perform differently. This article has some interesting data to mull over: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/there-are-only-3-countries-where-girls-feel-more-comfortable-with-math-than-boys/284272/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/th... There's no "right answer" right now, and yet there's a lot of people around here defending Damore's memo as if all the premises were completely accurate.
  - JamesBarney 9y ago
    Yeah I haven't looked into the empathizing vs systemazing but it seems like bullshit on some pretty shakey ground. The idea that that women are more into people than men, who are more into things is much more well established. With large cross-cultural studies and meta-analysis showing one the largest effect sizes in social science. Gender Differences in Personality and Interests: When, Where, and Why? http://sci-hub.cc/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x http://sci-hub.cc/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x Gendered Occupational Interests: Prenatal Androgen Effects on Psychological Orientation to Things Versus People https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/
  - JamesBarney 9y ago
    The Atlantic mentions a couple of studies that show that % of women in CS is very variable between countries. But the % of women in CS doesn't seem to correlate very highly with my intuition about sexism. For instance I would never think that Mexico or Poland was a far less sexist place than Norway. Nor does it seem to correlate well with female student's math anxiety. Mexico and the U.S. seem to be very similar in terms of the math anxiety gap, but very far apart in term of number of female CS majors. You could look at the charts and see support for the hypothesis that "there is variability in the % of women in CS therefore the difference is cultural" but you could also look at it and say "look across every cultural in the world women choose CS less often than men". We also don't know why, it could be gender stereotypes about what field women go into, or it could be emphasis on passion vs income. With countries that place greater emphasis on community and income having larger numbers of women in CS, with countries that place greater emphasis on passion and interests having a lower number of women in CS.

JamesBarney 9y ago

I searched this whole thread and can't find any comment you made that links to an article. Would you mind posting it? I'd love to have my mind changed. Most of my friends are liberal and think this science is bunk, but from what I've read there is a lot of evidence that women are more interested in things than people, and a moderate amount of evidence that at least some of this preference is biological.

dguaraglia 9y ago
Here's the article I linked containing some criticism of the methodology: http://www.thetutorking.com/2014/08/criticisms-of-connellan-baron-cohen.html http://www.thetutorking.com/2014/08/criticisms-of-connellan-.... This paper came up barely a decade ago. Studies showing the influence of gender stereotypes on behavior go back decades. To clarify, I'm not saying that there's 0 possibility that there are differences between sexes, just that trying to rationalize the current gender imbalance in engineering as "girls being girls and boys being boys" is a bit disingenuous, considering different countries perform differently. This article has some interesting data to mull over: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/there-are-only-3-countries-where-girls-feel-more-comfortable-with-math-than-boys/284272/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/th... There's no "right answer" right now, and yet there's a lot of people around here defending Damore's memo as if all the premises were completely accurate.
- JamesBarney 9y ago
  Yeah I haven't looked into the empathizing vs systemazing but it seems like bullshit on some pretty shakey ground. The idea that that women are more into people than men, who are more into things is much more well established. With large cross-cultural studies and meta-analysis showing one the largest effect sizes in social science. Gender Differences in Personality and Interests: When, Where, and Why? http://sci-hub.cc/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x http://sci-hub.cc/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x Gendered Occupational Interests: Prenatal Androgen Effects on Psychological Orientation to Things Versus People https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/
- JamesBarney 9y ago
  The Atlantic mentions a couple of studies that show that % of women in CS is very variable between countries. But the % of women in CS doesn't seem to correlate very highly with my intuition about sexism. For instance I would never think that Mexico or Poland was a far less sexist place than Norway. Nor does it seem to correlate well with female student's math anxiety. Mexico and the U.S. seem to be very similar in terms of the math anxiety gap, but very far apart in term of number of female CS majors. You could look at the charts and see support for the hypothesis that "there is variability in the % of women in CS therefore the difference is cultural" but you could also look at it and say "look across every cultural in the world women choose CS less often than men". We also don't know why, it could be gender stereotypes about what field women go into, or it could be emphasis on passion vs income. With countries that place greater emphasis on community and income having larger numbers of women in CS, with countries that place greater emphasis on passion and interests having a lower number of women in CS.