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Let me first say that you are right that her comparison of 'cowboy' vs. 'good developer' is completely ridiculous. Talk about her prejudices showing in conjurin

Let me first say that you are right that her comparison of 'cowboy' vs. 'good developer' is completely ridiculous. Talk about her prejudices showing in conjuring up that straw man. I've never worked with any developer that fitted in the cowboy category, while most did their best to fit in the 'good developer' category. However: Can't you say that about any form of discrimination? She could, but that's not what she is saying. She's saying it about this form of reverse discrimination. You implicitly assume 'forms of discrimination' are interchangeable and you consequently draw a completely skewed analogy. 'Female students in CS' are the party being discriminated against, while 'white people' are not suffering from discrimination (when compared to 'black people'; we're comparing in general; I'm not saying individual 'white people' don't ever experience discrimination: I'm saying it happens much when compared to the amount of discrimination black people suffer). That's why your argument is wrong: we're trying to offset discrimination against women here and we're not trying to defend the continued discrimination against some other party (note: you have to look at the situation before this particular instance of reverse discrimination is instituted: this instance cannot be defended by itself). Let me repeat that: female students in CS are being discriminated against. Almost nobody is doing that on purpose, but research in discrimination against women is crystal clear on this. There are many cognitive biases in our culture that prevent women from entering CS and becoming successful in it. We need positive discrimination to offset those cultural biases. Someone complaining about the unfairness of 'women-only' grants fails to understand the deeprootedness of prejudice. This, BTW, is a trap sophisticated men keep falling into. We tend to think there isn't much discrimination against women: after all, aren't we being completely fair against our female colleagues? The answer is simply: no, we probably are not, even if we do our best. The aggregate result of even very small amounts of prejudice are still noticable.

philwelch 16y ago
Fallacious arguments don't suddenly become good arguments when they're used to justify good conclusions. Hence, when I say "X is a bad argument for conclusion Y", don't interpret that as "I disagree with conclusion Y". In reality, I just hate sloppy reasoning. When you say That's why your argument is wrong: we're trying to offset discrimination against women here and we're not trying to defend the continued discrimination against some other party you misunderstand my argument completely. You probably interpreted me as saying "reverse discrimination is morally equivalent to normal discrimination", but that's not what I said. I said that in particular, the argument that "you should be happy for the people benefitting from this discrimination" is a bad argument precisely because that argument does not distinguish between reverse discrimination and normal discrimination. "Can't you be happy for the people benefitting from this discrimination" is a fully general argument in favor of any kind of discrimination. As I edited my comment to say at some point (I think before you responded), there are good arguments for reverse discrimination, but that isn't one of them. You've even provided some good arguments! And if you're in favor of this form of reverse discrimination in particular, then you should be even more diligent than I am in criticizing fallacious arguments for your cause. When I say there are good arguments for reverse discrimination, that implies that there are moral differences between normal discrimination and reverse discrimination that a good argument will be able to pick out. If you say "reverse discrimination in favor of women is good because you should be happy for the women", that's a bad argument because the exact same logic justifies any sort of discrimination ever. If you say "reverse discrimination in favor of women is good because women are discriminated against and it needs to be balanced out", that logic can't be turned around to support ordinary discrimination at all. You can only make the case for reverse discrimination by pointing out how it differs from normal discrimination--asking "can't you be happy for the discriminated-for?" isn't an argument that does that. EDIT: Merged paragraphs which seemed to repeat each other.
- Confusion 16y ago
  Ah, I understand. Well, there you have a another trap, which I now fell into: mistaking the pointing out of a fallacious argument for support of the argument to which it was a response.
  - philwelch 16y ago
    Sorry if my response seemed overzealous. I run into this problem a lot.
yummyfajitas 16y ago
...female students in CS are being discriminated against. [...]but research in discrimination against women is crystal clear on this. [Citation needed.]
- Confusion 16y ago
  Well, there's the investigation linked in the article [1]. This [2] is a review of various types of unconscious prejudices that people entertain and you could well imagine what the consequences are for women. However, if you want experimental evidence, then Googling 'experiment gender discrimination' (leaving out 'for' or 'against' on purpose), yields plenty [3] of [4] studies [5] that support the common assertion that women are continuously being discriminated against. Admission to, and opportunities within, CS is simply no exception. I can't do any better than Googling it; that's what I did years ago when I was looking to verify that women really were being discriminated against, because I figured we would surely be past such barbaric behavior. Since then, I wised up on the fact that we're just not really that much in control of our behavior. I'm not a psychologist, but I do know how to find and apprehend research in such a domain. Meta-analysis studies are quite convenient :). [1] http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.html http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.html [2] http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~mrbworks/articles/1995_PsyRev.pdf http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~mrbworks/articles/1995_PsyRev.pd... [3] http://econ2.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ321/Orazem/darity_employment-disc.pdf http://econ2.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ321/Orazem/darity_... [4] http://economics.uchicago.edu/download/JLISTdisc.pdf http://economics.uchicago.edu/download/JLISTdisc.pdf [5] http://www.tamu.edu/classes/psyc/payne/ID/ID%2520articles/Heilman%25202001.pdf http://www.tamu.edu/classes/psyc/payne/ID/ID%2520articles/He...
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    Near as I can tell, [1] provides virtually no data beyond opinion polls, certainly none showing discrimination. [1] is also an advocacy piece written by people with a vested interest in finding discrimination, since it will get them more funding/chairs/office space/etc. [2] seems to be a review of psychology, but whatever data they have on discrimination seems to be buried deep within the article (I only skimmed it). I skimmed [3], but it seems to have virtually no data on women in computing at all, and what it has seems concerned primarily with the 90's or earlier. Then I gave up. I think you should read your sources before posting them. I don't see a single source which, e.g., shows women outperforming men at the same level, which would be fairly concrete proof of discrimination.

philwelch 16y ago

Fallacious arguments don't suddenly become good arguments when they're used to justify good conclusions. Hence, when I say "X is a bad argument for conclusion Y", don't interpret that as "I disagree with conclusion Y". In reality, I just hate sloppy reasoning. When you say That's why your argument is wrong: we're trying to offset discrimination against women here and we're not trying to defend the continued discrimination against some other party you misunderstand my argument completely. You probably interpreted me as saying "reverse discrimination is morally equivalent to normal discrimination", but that's not what I said. I said that in particular, the argument that "you should be happy for the people benefitting from this discrimination" is a bad argument precisely because that argument does not distinguish between reverse discrimination and normal discrimination. "Can't you be happy for the people benefitting from this discrimination" is a fully general argument in favor of any kind of discrimination. As I edited my comment to say at some point (I think before you responded), there are good arguments for reverse discrimination, but that isn't one of them. You've even provided some good arguments! And if you're in favor of this form of reverse discrimination in particular, then you should be even more diligent than I am in criticizing fallacious arguments for your cause. When I say there are good arguments for reverse discrimination, that implies that there are moral differences between normal discrimination and reverse discrimination that a good argument will be able to pick out. If you say "reverse discrimination in favor of women is good because you should be happy for the women", that's a bad argument because the exact same logic justifies any sort of discrimination ever. If you say "reverse discrimination in favor of women is good because women are discriminated against and it needs to be balanced out", that logic can't be turned around to support ordinary discrimination at all. You can only make the case for reverse discrimination by pointing out how it differs from normal discrimination--asking "can't you be happy for the discriminated-for?" isn't an argument that does that. EDIT: Merged paragraphs which seemed to repeat each other.

Confusion 16y ago
Ah, I understand. Well, there you have a another trap, which I now fell into: mistaking the pointing out of a fallacious argument for support of the argument to which it was a response.
- philwelch 16y ago
  Sorry if my response seemed overzealous. I run into this problem a lot.

yummyfajitas 16y ago

...female students in CS are being discriminated against. [...]but research in discrimination against women is crystal clear on this. [Citation needed.]

Confusion 16y ago
Well, there's the investigation linked in the article [1]. This [2] is a review of various types of unconscious prejudices that people entertain and you could well imagine what the consequences are for women. However, if you want experimental evidence, then Googling 'experiment gender discrimination' (leaving out 'for' or 'against' on purpose), yields plenty [3] of [4] studies [5] that support the common assertion that women are continuously being discriminated against. Admission to, and opportunities within, CS is simply no exception. I can't do any better than Googling it; that's what I did years ago when I was looking to verify that women really were being discriminated against, because I figured we would surely be past such barbaric behavior. Since then, I wised up on the fact that we're just not really that much in control of our behavior. I'm not a psychologist, but I do know how to find and apprehend research in such a domain. Meta-analysis studies are quite convenient :). [1] http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.html http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.html [2] http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~mrbworks/articles/1995_PsyRev.pdf http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~mrbworks/articles/1995_PsyRev.pd... [3] http://econ2.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ321/Orazem/darity_employment-disc.pdf http://econ2.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ321/Orazem/darity_... [4] http://economics.uchicago.edu/download/JLISTdisc.pdf http://economics.uchicago.edu/download/JLISTdisc.pdf [5] http://www.tamu.edu/classes/psyc/payne/ID/ID%2520articles/Heilman%25202001.pdf http://www.tamu.edu/classes/psyc/payne/ID/ID%2520articles/He...
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Near as I can tell, [1] provides virtually no data beyond opinion polls, certainly none showing discrimination. [1] is also an advocacy piece written by people with a vested interest in finding discrimination, since it will get them more funding/chairs/office space/etc. [2] seems to be a review of psychology, but whatever data they have on discrimination seems to be buried deep within the article (I only skimmed it). I skimmed [3], but it seems to have virtually no data on women in computing at all, and what it has seems concerned primarily with the 90's or earlier. Then I gave up. I think you should read your sources before posting them. I don't see a single source which, e.g., shows women outperforming men at the same level, which would be fairly concrete proof of discrimination.