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Before I go any further, just answer this one question. Is there literally any conceivable evidence that could convince you that you are wrong? That there are b

Before I go any further, just answer this one question. Is there literally any conceivable evidence that could convince you that you are wrong? That there are biological differences between men and women? This is a basic scientific question. It has nothing to do with politics. You accuse me of "having an agenda" just because I disagree with you. You accuse damore of being "alt right" and defend his firing, just because he believes a relatively uncontroversial scientific claim. You accuse me of "cherrypicking data" when I've done nothing of the sort. Yet apparently cherrypicking a few random countries with different stats to support your bizarre culture theory is fine. But as I've shown your model doesn't make any sense of the data either, which apparently isn't a problem for you. What even is your theory? Yeah, it's "culture", sure. But what predictions does that make? How can it be disproved? If I show, for example, that there's the same percentage of female computer science graduates as female tech workers, does that disprove it? Does your theory predict that? "But the sexism is happening before the industry then." Ok. So what about the same percentage of female high schoolers interested in computer science as female computer science majors. Does your theory predict that? "The sexism is happening before then." Well we can go back to middle school. Hell let's go back to early childhood, and we find boys and girls show strong preferences for different kinds of toys. That seems pretty damning for your theory to me. But that's far from the only evidence. Does your model predict neurological differences between male and female brains? That doesn't make any sense if all differences must be explained by culture. >Female participation in academic culture is way younger than that, with most of the earlier examples (like Marie Curie) being known as "weirdos" in their time because they didn't behave like "normal women" Exactly! 160 years ago women were excluded from many areas. There were no women doctors, few women at universities, no women lawyers, etc. Now, in 2017, we've reversed all that. There are more women getting university educations than men! They make up 51% of law students, 50% of medical students, 75% of psychology majors, etc, etc. And yet in engineering they make up 20%. And it's been that way, consistently, for decades. And shows no signs of changing even as culture continues to change. Think about this. It makes no sense to your theory. Why should culture change so quickly for every other area but engineering. (And also why the double standard of caring so much about gender ratios in engineering, and not any other area like psychology or university in general?)

dguaraglia 9y ago
> Is there literally any conceivable evidence that could convince you that you are wrong? Oh, for sure, if it was proven beyond reasonable doubt culture is not a factor in decision making. > That there are biological differences between men and women? This is not what I am arguing. There's a huge difference between "there are differences between men and women" and "they comprehensibly explain the current gender ratio in the Tech industry". > That seems pretty damning for your theory to me. Not really, because for the fifth time: my "theory" (call it: my anti-theory) is we don't know the extent of how potential gender differences might affect career selection, as long as we have a culture that has embedded strong gender identities even before the first career decision is made. Even if you think girls should play with toy ovens while boys play with toy guns, you can just discount the effect such boxing will have long term. ---- For the rest of your post, let me draw an analogy: Let's say that we are working out of the same office. At some point you are trying to load a website (say, Hacker News) and it doesn't load. You ask me if I know what might be going on: Me: "Yeah, the WiFi has been terrible today, we called the management company to come and fix it". You after trying to ping google.com, and getting about 50% packet loss: "I know what it is, it's the database they use to store the articles, it's broken and that's why Hacker News won't load". Me: "Wait, but the internet is really bad" You: "Yeah, but there's some connectivity, so it must be the database" Me: "Have you tried pinging the host?" You: "No, but I pinged google.com" Me: "Have you tried loading google.com?" You: "No, because I know it's the database" Me: "But... how? Nobody else can't connect to anything because the internet sucks. Even if the internet worked perfectly, there's a bunch of other stuff besides the database that could be broken." You: "Is there any piece of evidence that will convince you it's the database? Why are you so against it being the database? I know it's the database!" That's pretty much the conversation we've been having over the last few days. If a coworker of yours did that, you'd think twice before asking for their next time you have to debug something, wouldn't you?
- Houshalter 9y ago
  Weird analogy. But from my point of view you are the guy screaming about the database. Replace "database" with "culture". You can't even consider the possibility it's not the database. No amount of tests or other possible explanations seem to have any effect on you. You latch on to one tiny scrap of evidence that might point to a database issue. Say, the Russian site had a slightly better packet loss. And they have a different server over there, or something. Then you make it political. And start ranting about how I'm a "database heretic" that should be fired for daring to question the database theory.

dguaraglia 9y ago

> Is there literally any conceivable evidence that could convince you that you are wrong? Oh, for sure, if it was proven beyond reasonable doubt culture is not a factor in decision making. > That there are biological differences between men and women? This is not what I am arguing. There's a huge difference between "there are differences between men and women" and "they comprehensibly explain the current gender ratio in the Tech industry". > That seems pretty damning for your theory to me. Not really, because for the fifth time: my "theory" (call it: my anti-theory) is we don't know the extent of how potential gender differences might affect career selection, as long as we have a culture that has embedded strong gender identities even before the first career decision is made. Even if you think girls should play with toy ovens while boys play with toy guns, you can just discount the effect such boxing will have long term. ---- For the rest of your post, let me draw an analogy: Let's say that we are working out of the same office. At some point you are trying to load a website (say, Hacker News) and it doesn't load. You ask me if I know what might be going on: Me: "Yeah, the WiFi has been terrible today, we called the management company to come and fix it". You after trying to ping google.com, and getting about 50% packet loss: "I know what it is, it's the database they use to store the articles, it's broken and that's why Hacker News won't load". Me: "Wait, but the internet is really bad" You: "Yeah, but there's some connectivity, so it must be the database" Me: "Have you tried pinging the host?" You: "No, but I pinged google.com" Me: "Have you tried loading google.com?" You: "No, because I know it's the database" Me: "But... how? Nobody else can't connect to anything because the internet sucks. Even if the internet worked perfectly, there's a bunch of other stuff besides the database that could be broken." You: "Is there any piece of evidence that will convince you it's the database? Why are you so against it being the database? I know it's the database!" That's pretty much the conversation we've been having over the last few days. If a coworker of yours did that, you'd think twice before asking for their next time you have to debug something, wouldn't you?

Houshalter 9y ago
Weird analogy. But from my point of view you are the guy screaming about the database. Replace "database" with "culture". You can't even consider the possibility it's not the database. No amount of tests or other possible explanations seem to have any effect on you. You latch on to one tiny scrap of evidence that might point to a database issue. Say, the Russian site had a slightly better packet loss. And they have a different server over there, or something. Then you make it political. And start ranting about how I'm a "database heretic" that should be fired for daring to question the database theory.