8 ms·

The underlying assumption is that, if you average over a large enough population, there should be no underlying consistent difference between subsets selected o

by lutorm 9y ago

The underlying assumption is that, if you average over a large enough population, there should be no underlying consistent difference between subsets selected on gender, race, or class, so a difference of outcome is presumed to be a result of difference of opportunity. The underlying assumption is definitely an assumption, but it seems like a good zeroth-order assumption to me.

wpietri 9y ago
An especially good assumption given that assuming otherwise has been proven wrong time and time again. Pretty much every advance for women was argued against on the basis that women were somehow not biologically capable. That argument has been consistently wrong since women's suffrage, but that doesn't stop chowderheads from hauling it out anew, apparently unaware of its rich history of failure.
- topmonk 9y ago
  Interesting tint on your glasses there...
- jasonx1e 9y ago
  Except this isn't true; there are many cases where inequality of outcome is not a cause of inequality of opportunity - unless you're telling me the system actively encourages men to die on the job - so much so that 93% of all occupational deaths are male.[0] CollegeBoard testing statistics demonstrate that in high school, 2-3 times as many boys take the AP Calculus BC, AP Physics, AP Computer Science exam than girls.[1][2] And as you probably know, AP exams don't discriminate against gender or race - they just need you to pay the testing fee (or the reduced fee if you qualify). UC Berkeley's EECS major has a department ratio of 4:1 M/F across all 4 class years (CalAnswers - any alumni can check this if they don't believe me), and because of California law the UC system is not allowed to consider gender as part of admissions.[3] Differences in gender makeup of engineering and computer science come down to fewer girls choosing to pursue the field, and not because the system is inherently biased. Given these factors, if we are seeing 50/50 gender outcomes in tech at this moment in time, it is the result of a system that undermines the meritocracy by discriminating against males. [0]https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cfch0006.pdf https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cfch0006.pdf [1]https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/research/2016/Program-Summary-Report-2016.pdf https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/re... [2]http://i.imgur.com/ZalZhtF.png http://i.imgur.com/ZalZhtF.png [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_209 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_209
  - wpietri 9y ago
    Oh, gosh! Of course it's an anonymous dude showing up to try to preserve the argument that women are biologically inferior. With an account that's doesn't appear to care about much besides arguing against diversity. What a surprise. We aren't of course seeing 50/50 outcomes in tech. As I said elsewhere in this thread, we are steadily approaching them in law and medicine. This is despite that fact that goofs like you made effectively identical arguments for decades about it just not being in women's nature to study those topics, to do that work. That ended up not being true. When the barriers in law and medicine were diminished, representation ended up pretty quickly moving toward 50/50. If you talk to women in tech you'll quickly discover that they face similar barriers. Prof. Ellen Spertus wrote this in 1991: http://www.spertus.com/ellen/Gender/pap/pap.html http://www.spertus.com/ellen/Gender/pap/pap.html Talking with her recently, she mentioned that she believes the problems are the same or worse. We have seen this pattern over and over for many topics for the last 100 years. Dudes say women can't or intrinsically don't want to. When we reduce the discrimination, they can and do want to. It turns out what women don't want is to deal with discrimination. Like, I'm sure, yours.
    - jasonx1e 9y ago
      Anonymous? My user can easily be googled... >> to try to preserve the argument that women are biologically inferior You clearly didn't read, because I made the argument that women are less INTERESTED, not that they are biologically inferior. Get rid of that chip on your shoulder. This is why conservatives aren't willing to discuss these issues. Because the moment I call you out on using bullshit arguments you call me a sexist despite not having once made a single comment on the abilities of females. I used evidence proving that even at the high school level (where there are practically 0 bars for entry), girls constitute a significantly smaller part of the classroom than boys in CS/Physics/Calc 2, and then gave an example of a university system that legally was not allowed to consider gender as part of admissions having similar gender representation - because as it turns out most universities practice gender based affirmative action in STEM, and thus girls are overrepresented at schools like MIT and Stanford. It turns out that the 3:1, 4:1 ratios of the AP exams and Berkeley EECS department happen to be consistent with the hiring makeup of tech companies. >> we are steadily approaching them in law and medicine. The same stats I listed earlier show near equal representation in AP tests for AP History (World, European, and US), Government, Chemistry, and Biology. Some of these even skew towards majority female. So 50/50 representation is to be expected. Again, at this point in time, equal representation in tech would only be a product of discrimination against males. Perhaps it won't be the case in the future as there are more outreach efforts now than ever to get girls to pursue science. But I specifically worded my response the way I did for a reason.
hexane360 9y ago
And even if the assumption is wrong, you have to decide how wrong it is. Enough to show 45-55 splits in career choice? 25-75? 10-90?
fareesh 9y ago
Right - like I said, fighting equality of opportunity is worthy and must be pursued relentlessly. What seems to be happening (the impression I get) is something analogous to this: I have a game released on two mobile platforms - android and iOS. The iOS players are disproportionately scoring better than the android players. Some are suggesting that the server is bugged/programmed to give iOS players better scores. I reject this. Some are saying that the android user experience has conditioned those players to be satisfied with a low score. I reject this. Some are saying iOS players are superior because they bought an apple product. I reject this. My opinion that it is likely that the android release has a lot of performance issues which impede the player's ability to get a high score on that platform. I test this out by doing things like getting an android player to play on an iOS device, and checking if their performance improves. I do the reverse and check accordingly too. I do various tests on fps, input lag, etc. If my experiment fails to show anything conclusive, I should be open to re-evaluating some of the things I rejected, but I refuse to do it out of zealous belief in my hypothesis. The answer must be optimization, I insist. If my experiment succeeds, I should tweak the android code till the disparity goes away. Instead, I just hardcode +500 to the android scores and pat myself on the back. There seem to be cases where the diversity disparity is "solved by hardcoding", and other cases where the data doesn't support the hypothesis, but there is an ardent refusal to accept it, as if it would be blasphemous to suggest otherwise. These are pretty much the only things I take issue with.
- lutorm 9y ago
  If my experiment fails to show anything conclusive, I should be open to re-evaluating some of the things I rejected, but I refuse to do it out of zealous belief in my hypothesis. You are arguing a straw man. The "experiments" in this case are showing ample evidence of biases, so as long as those biases exist the underlying hypothesis can by definition not be falsified.
  - fareesh 9y ago
    Perhaps I am not very well read on the subject. My argument was rooted in the attitude I came across when this story was trending (linked at the end of this comment). This research might have been disproved later on, I never followed up on the story. What I was referring to was the readiness with which some were willing to stop pursuing this sort of trial. My intent wasn't to strawman - if this is in fact non-existent then I concede that point. http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888 http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-t...

by lutorm 9y ago

wpietri 9y ago

An especially good assumption given that assuming otherwise has been proven wrong time and time again. Pretty much every advance for women was argued against on the basis that women were somehow not biologically capable. That argument has been consistently wrong since women's suffrage, but that doesn't stop chowderheads from hauling it out anew, apparently unaware of its rich history of failure.

topmonk 9y ago
Interesting tint on your glasses there...
jasonx1e 9y ago
Except this isn't true; there are many cases where inequality of outcome is not a cause of inequality of opportunity - unless you're telling me the system actively encourages men to die on the job - so much so that 93% of all occupational deaths are male.[0] CollegeBoard testing statistics demonstrate that in high school, 2-3 times as many boys take the AP Calculus BC, AP Physics, AP Computer Science exam than girls.[1][2] And as you probably know, AP exams don't discriminate against gender or race - they just need you to pay the testing fee (or the reduced fee if you qualify). UC Berkeley's EECS major has a department ratio of 4:1 M/F across all 4 class years (CalAnswers - any alumni can check this if they don't believe me), and because of California law the UC system is not allowed to consider gender as part of admissions.[3] Differences in gender makeup of engineering and computer science come down to fewer girls choosing to pursue the field, and not because the system is inherently biased. Given these factors, if we are seeing 50/50 gender outcomes in tech at this moment in time, it is the result of a system that undermines the meritocracy by discriminating against males. [0]https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cfch0006.pdf https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cfch0006.pdf [1]https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/research/2016/Program-Summary-Report-2016.pdf https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/re... [2]http://i.imgur.com/ZalZhtF.png http://i.imgur.com/ZalZhtF.png [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_209 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_209
- wpietri 9y ago
  Oh, gosh! Of course it's an anonymous dude showing up to try to preserve the argument that women are biologically inferior. With an account that's doesn't appear to care about much besides arguing against diversity. What a surprise. We aren't of course seeing 50/50 outcomes in tech. As I said elsewhere in this thread, we are steadily approaching them in law and medicine. This is despite that fact that goofs like you made effectively identical arguments for decades about it just not being in women's nature to study those topics, to do that work. That ended up not being true. When the barriers in law and medicine were diminished, representation ended up pretty quickly moving toward 50/50. If you talk to women in tech you'll quickly discover that they face similar barriers. Prof. Ellen Spertus wrote this in 1991: http://www.spertus.com/ellen/Gender/pap/pap.html http://www.spertus.com/ellen/Gender/pap/pap.html Talking with her recently, she mentioned that she believes the problems are the same or worse. We have seen this pattern over and over for many topics for the last 100 years. Dudes say women can't or intrinsically don't want to. When we reduce the discrimination, they can and do want to. It turns out what women don't want is to deal with discrimination. Like, I'm sure, yours.
  - jasonx1e 9y ago
    Anonymous? My user can easily be googled... >> to try to preserve the argument that women are biologically inferior You clearly didn't read, because I made the argument that women are less INTERESTED, not that they are biologically inferior. Get rid of that chip on your shoulder. This is why conservatives aren't willing to discuss these issues. Because the moment I call you out on using bullshit arguments you call me a sexist despite not having once made a single comment on the abilities of females. I used evidence proving that even at the high school level (where there are practically 0 bars for entry), girls constitute a significantly smaller part of the classroom than boys in CS/Physics/Calc 2, and then gave an example of a university system that legally was not allowed to consider gender as part of admissions having similar gender representation - because as it turns out most universities practice gender based affirmative action in STEM, and thus girls are overrepresented at schools like MIT and Stanford. It turns out that the 3:1, 4:1 ratios of the AP exams and Berkeley EECS department happen to be consistent with the hiring makeup of tech companies. >> we are steadily approaching them in law and medicine. The same stats I listed earlier show near equal representation in AP tests for AP History (World, European, and US), Government, Chemistry, and Biology. Some of these even skew towards majority female. So 50/50 representation is to be expected. Again, at this point in time, equal representation in tech would only be a product of discrimination against males. Perhaps it won't be the case in the future as there are more outreach efforts now than ever to get girls to pursue science. But I specifically worded my response the way I did for a reason.

hexane360 9y ago

And even if the assumption is wrong, you have to decide how wrong it is. Enough to show 45-55 splits in career choice? 25-75? 10-90?

fareesh 9y ago

Right - like I said, fighting equality of opportunity is worthy and must be pursued relentlessly. What seems to be happening (the impression I get) is something analogous to this: I have a game released on two mobile platforms - android and iOS. The iOS players are disproportionately scoring better than the android players. Some are suggesting that the server is bugged/programmed to give iOS players better scores. I reject this. Some are saying that the android user experience has conditioned those players to be satisfied with a low score. I reject this. Some are saying iOS players are superior because they bought an apple product. I reject this. My opinion that it is likely that the android release has a lot of performance issues which impede the player's ability to get a high score on that platform. I test this out by doing things like getting an android player to play on an iOS device, and checking if their performance improves. I do the reverse and check accordingly too. I do various tests on fps, input lag, etc. If my experiment fails to show anything conclusive, I should be open to re-evaluating some of the things I rejected, but I refuse to do it out of zealous belief in my hypothesis. The answer must be optimization, I insist. If my experiment succeeds, I should tweak the android code till the disparity goes away. Instead, I just hardcode +500 to the android scores and pat myself on the back. There seem to be cases where the diversity disparity is "solved by hardcoding", and other cases where the data doesn't support the hypothesis, but there is an ardent refusal to accept it, as if it would be blasphemous to suggest otherwise. These are pretty much the only things I take issue with.

lutorm 9y ago
If my experiment fails to show anything conclusive, I should be open to re-evaluating some of the things I rejected, but I refuse to do it out of zealous belief in my hypothesis. You are arguing a straw man. The "experiments" in this case are showing ample evidence of biases, so as long as those biases exist the underlying hypothesis can by definition not be falsified.
- fareesh 9y ago
  Perhaps I am not very well read on the subject. My argument was rooted in the attitude I came across when this story was trending (linked at the end of this comment). This research might have been disproved later on, I never followed up on the story. What I was referring to was the readiness with which some were willing to stop pursuing this sort of trial. My intent wasn't to strawman - if this is in fact non-existent then I concede that point. http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888 http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-t...