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What gender debate? Are you telling me that you take people seriously who continue the "girls are better than boys/ boys are better than girls" debate after, s
by lsc 16y ago
What gender debate? Are you telling me that you take people seriously who continue the "girls are better than boys/ boys are better than girls" debate after, say, the age of 13?
- philwelch 16y agoI don't take people seriously who continue the "Macs are better than PC's/PC's are better than Macs" debate after the age of 13, but I do take people seriously when they put together a case about why Macs are better suited for Ruby on Rails development, or why Windows is better for gaming, or why Linux is better for running webservers. Likewise, you're trivializing the serious cultural debates about, for instance, whether it's wise to send women into armed combat, or whether or not it's a problem for 90% of software developers to be men. It doesn't mean anyone is better than another, just that as a society maybe we should be comfortable with having more men than women in prison, in the Forbes 500, or in combat. Or maybe we shouldn't. Point is, that's a debate worth having.
- arethuza 16y agoMy usual approach for detecting technology fanboys is to ask them to name scenarios where their "enemy" technology would be appropriate to use - can be very very funny.
- johnthedebs 16y agoWell, no, but some people continue (begin?) to question whether women are treated fairly after that age. It's useful and interesting to know how and why things turned out the way they did.
- thibaut_barrere 16y agoI would say yes, based on wages differences (around 20% here).
- gwern 16y agoA tremendous amount of money rides on gender issues. Think just of all the academic programs instituted to address gender imbalances in STEM fields. Think of the expense of them continuing, forever, because they are trying to combat not transient mutable societal norms but Mother Nature. When public policy goes wrong, it's very expensive.