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Yeah, there is. "Women are worse" implies that there's a gendered difference after applying the "is an engineer" filter. "Fewer women gain entry into the class

Yeah, there is. "Women are worse" implies that there's a gendered difference after applying the "is an engineer" filter. "Fewer women gain entry into the class of engineers" doesn't imply anything about ability afterwards. And for what it's worth, James Damore explicitly called out this distinction, saying that he was not making a claim about any sort of skill differential between male engineer and female engineers. Like, male and female high jumpers that make it over a certain height of bar are approximately as good at jumping. There's more men in that category. This all might be playing semantics, but I think there's a real thing here to disentangle, and it'd be nice to say one without implying the other.

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
>Yeah, there is. "Women are worse" implies that there's a gendered difference after applying the "is an engineer" filter. ...No it doesn't. That's just something you're adding to preserve the distinction. >Like, male and female high jumpers that make it over a certain height of bar are approximately as good at jumping. There's more men in that category. This all might be playing semantics, but I think there's a real thing here to disentangle, and it'd be nice to say one without implying the other. Yes yes but the problem comes with Damore's reasoning for why there are more men in that category - biological determination of better programming ability.
- ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  >Yes yes but the problem comes with Damore's reasoning for why there are more men in that category - biological determination of better programming ability. Whether or not the representation gap is biological is an important factual matter that should be discussed on the merits. It'd do women no good to try to get their best sprint times up to men's by fixing society to be more accepting of female sprinters. There are real biological differences between the sexes, and trying to fix downstream effects of them by making up sociological causes and attacking them is very quixotic.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    You think sociological explanations for why women are under-represented in tech are made up?
    - ThrustVectoring 9y ago
      I didn't say that, and I don't have an opinion on that. I used sprinting as an example for a reason; the reason why women are under-represented among top sprint times is clearly biological, and I was hoping to point at the impossibility of fixing it through changing the sociological structure of track-and-field to be more accepting to women. I think a sociological explanation for any biological phenomena has to be made up. This is why we need to have an honest discussion about the merits of biological explanations, so that we can figure out the root causes and spend our efforts effectively.
pnw_hazor 9y ago
And he made a few suggestions that he thought may improve the situation by taking into account the differences between men and women and their respective motivations.

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago

>Yeah, there is. "Women are worse" implies that there's a gendered difference after applying the "is an engineer" filter. ...No it doesn't. That's just something you're adding to preserve the distinction. >Like, male and female high jumpers that make it over a certain height of bar are approximately as good at jumping. There's more men in that category. This all might be playing semantics, but I think there's a real thing here to disentangle, and it'd be nice to say one without implying the other. Yes yes but the problem comes with Damore's reasoning for why there are more men in that category - biological determination of better programming ability.

ThrustVectoring 9y ago
>Yes yes but the problem comes with Damore's reasoning for why there are more men in that category - biological determination of better programming ability. Whether or not the representation gap is biological is an important factual matter that should be discussed on the merits. It'd do women no good to try to get their best sprint times up to men's by fixing society to be more accepting of female sprinters. There are real biological differences between the sexes, and trying to fix downstream effects of them by making up sociological causes and attacking them is very quixotic.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  You think sociological explanations for why women are under-represented in tech are made up?
  - ThrustVectoring 9y ago
    I didn't say that, and I don't have an opinion on that. I used sprinting as an example for a reason; the reason why women are under-represented among top sprint times is clearly biological, and I was hoping to point at the impossibility of fixing it through changing the sociological structure of track-and-field to be more accepting to women. I think a sociological explanation for any biological phenomena has to be made up. This is why we need to have an honest discussion about the merits of biological explanations, so that we can figure out the root causes and spend our efforts effectively.

pnw_hazor 9y ago

And he made a few suggestions that he thought may improve the situation by taking into account the differences between men and women and their respective motivations.