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> No, sorry, I'm not going to play Calvinball. You directly challenged a statement I made upthread Could you clarify? In every one of my replies to you in this

> No, sorry, I'm not going to play Calvinball. You directly challenged a statement I made upthread Could you clarify? In every one of my replies to you in this thread, the part I quoted came directly from the post (of yours) to which I replied. And where did I directly challenge any of your statements? I think you have me mixed up with someone else who responded to you.

tptacek 9y ago
You claimed that my statement about greater female participation in what turns out to be most of the rest of the stem fields was "so broad as to be meaningless". I responded in greater detail. You re-rebutted Rayiner's original comment without acknowledging mine. Acknowledge it or rebut it; don't pretend you didn't see it.
- rhapsodic 9y ago
  > You claimed that my statement about greater female participation in what turns out to be most of the rest of the stem fields was "so broad as to be meaningless". I responded in greater detail. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that you thought naming a handful of other STEM fields along with a rough participation ratio made your premise any more meaningful. You seem to think that, from the fact that women participate in other STEM fields at a greater rate than CS, you can infer the reason they aren't well-represented in software development. To you, it's "obvious" that "the field is hostile to them." And others who share your view have defined "the field" so broadly as to include boys in jr. high school computer clubs. Well, to me at least, it's "obvious" that your logic there is faulty.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    I think you missed some subtext. That list of fields characterizes pretty much the whole of "STEM". It's not a "handful of other fields".
    - rhapsodic 9y ago
      > I think you missed some subtext. That list of fields characterizes pretty much the whole of "STEM". It's not a "handful of other fields". Even a full accounting of all STEM fields would not make your logic any less faulty.
      - tptacek 9y ago
        Are you acknowledging that I have effectively provided that accounting? You should, but it's not clear to me that you have.
        rhapsodic 9y ago
        > Are you acknowledging that I have effectively provided that accounting? You should, but it's not clear to me that you have. Well, I think its noteworthy that you distinguished statistics from mathematics, but apparently felt automotive engineering (which I specifically asked about) to fall under ME, and you didn't comment on mining engineering, which does not fall under EE/ME. But for some reason, you seem to think it's meaningful, so I'll acknowledge that for the purposes of this discussion, you have indeed effectively provided that accounting. And I stand by my earlier response, to wit, that even a full accounting of all STEM fields would not make your logic any less faulty.
        tptacek 9y ago
        Thank you. Now, to avoid what would otherwise be a special-pleading argument on behalf of CS, you'd have to explain what innate preference would lead women to avoid CS despite: * The fact that the other STEM fields are usually more intellectually rigorous than CS. * The fact that some of those STEM fields are in fact the intellectual foundation for CS (Daniel Bernstein has an old quote about how mathematics is fundamentally the "easiest" of the STEM fields, and has as a result advanced much further into the frontiers of human knowledge than the other field, which creates the impression that it is more forbidding than it actually is). * The fact that almost all of these fields are dominated by computers; in fact, I know professors in bio fields who do more hardcore programming than the typical CS grad does (to wit: they're sometimes forced to write things in C, even in 2017). * The fact that many of the STEM fields that feature significant female participation are more "things"-oriented than CS, which, as it is practiced in the industry, is largely abstractions wrapped around human social interactions. * The fact that the rest of STEM, in which women excel, feature large amounts of long-term solo investigative work, while CS as practiced in the industry is universally a team pursuit which has been recognized at least since Fred Brooks as being overwhelmingly about communications and coordination skills. If you'd like to broaden the analysis outside of STEM --- for instance, to observe how much other professions impinge on personal lives, make demands of home life, have poorer work-life balance, have utterly inflexible hours and workplace location requirements, and require short-notice travel, and still have nearly 50/50 participation of men and women, we can do that too. It seems plainly obvious to me that there's not much of an argument for an innate female aversion to computer science that wouldn't contradict these observations. When you have to gerrymander an argument around inconvenient facts like that, we call the result "special pleading". Can you make a clear argument that won't be that thing?

tptacek 9y ago

You claimed that my statement about greater female participation in what turns out to be most of the rest of the stem fields was "so broad as to be meaningless". I responded in greater detail. You re-rebutted Rayiner's original comment without acknowledging mine. Acknowledge it or rebut it; don't pretend you didn't see it.

rhapsodic 9y ago
> You claimed that my statement about greater female participation in what turns out to be most of the rest of the stem fields was "so broad as to be meaningless". I responded in greater detail. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that you thought naming a handful of other STEM fields along with a rough participation ratio made your premise any more meaningful. You seem to think that, from the fact that women participate in other STEM fields at a greater rate than CS, you can infer the reason they aren't well-represented in software development. To you, it's "obvious" that "the field is hostile to them." And others who share your view have defined "the field" so broadly as to include boys in jr. high school computer clubs. Well, to me at least, it's "obvious" that your logic there is faulty.
- tptacek 9y ago
  I think you missed some subtext. That list of fields characterizes pretty much the whole of "STEM". It's not a "handful of other fields".
  - rhapsodic 9y ago
    > I think you missed some subtext. That list of fields characterizes pretty much the whole of "STEM". It's not a "handful of other fields". Even a full accounting of all STEM fields would not make your logic any less faulty.
    - tptacek 9y ago
      Are you acknowledging that I have effectively provided that accounting? You should, but it's not clear to me that you have.
      - rhapsodic 9y ago
        > Are you acknowledging that I have effectively provided that accounting? You should, but it's not clear to me that you have. Well, I think its noteworthy that you distinguished statistics from mathematics, but apparently felt automotive engineering (which I specifically asked about) to fall under ME, and you didn't comment on mining engineering, which does not fall under EE/ME. But for some reason, you seem to think it's meaningful, so I'll acknowledge that for the purposes of this discussion, you have indeed effectively provided that accounting. And I stand by my earlier response, to wit, that even a full accounting of all STEM fields would not make your logic any less faulty.
        tptacek 9y ago
        Thank you. Now, to avoid what would otherwise be a special-pleading argument on behalf of CS, you'd have to explain what innate preference would lead women to avoid CS despite: * The fact that the other STEM fields are usually more intellectually rigorous than CS. * The fact that some of those STEM fields are in fact the intellectual foundation for CS (Daniel Bernstein has an old quote about how mathematics is fundamentally the "easiest" of the STEM fields, and has as a result advanced much further into the frontiers of human knowledge than the other field, which creates the impression that it is more forbidding than it actually is). * The fact that almost all of these fields are dominated by computers; in fact, I know professors in bio fields who do more hardcore programming than the typical CS grad does (to wit: they're sometimes forced to write things in C, even in 2017). * The fact that many of the STEM fields that feature significant female participation are more "things"-oriented than CS, which, as it is practiced in the industry, is largely abstractions wrapped around human social interactions. * The fact that the rest of STEM, in which women excel, feature large amounts of long-term solo investigative work, while CS as practiced in the industry is universally a team pursuit which has been recognized at least since Fred Brooks as being overwhelmingly about communications and coordination skills. If you'd like to broaden the analysis outside of STEM --- for instance, to observe how much other professions impinge on personal lives, make demands of home life, have poorer work-life balance, have utterly inflexible hours and workplace location requirements, and require short-notice travel, and still have nearly 50/50 participation of men and women, we can do that too. It seems plainly obvious to me that there's not much of an argument for an innate female aversion to computer science that wouldn't contradict these observations. When you have to gerrymander an argument around inconvenient facts like that, we call the result "special pleading". Can you make a clear argument that won't be that thing?