3 ms·
My guess is because the people who found the Higgs boson, landed the lander on the comet, etc. are for all intents and purposes not well known: there wasn't a l
by jsgo 8y ago
My guess is because the people who found the Higgs boson, landed the lander on the comet, etc. are for all intents and purposes not well known: there wasn't a lot of fanfare for them so much as the discovery. As such, people are oddly upset about her getting praise for this.
I look at it two ways: one, what she did was not insignificant. Whether she received more praise than someone discovering something else that happened to be a guy, not a concern that is going to cause me to lose sleep at night nor is it something she should be punished for. Two, if her story getting bubbled up inspires girls (or anyone, I suppose) to get involved in or at least more interested in the sciences, hell, I'd say we're all better for it.
- saalweachter 8y agoI mean, even if you believe that all gender (and minority in general) issues have been solved in the sciences, as of [pick arbitrary date between 1980 and 2019], and there is no longer any dismissal, harassment, or discouragement of women pursuing a career in the sciences, I think we as a society can handle another forty, fifty years of rubbing every "see? Women can too do science as well as the menfolk" achievement in the metaphorical face of the centuries of dismissing women as by-and-large sub-intelligent creatures not temperamentally suited to any serious intellectual work. Even if it is completely unnecessary nowadays, because women are no longer dismissed, individually or collectively, as not contributing to science, because women are no longer harassed, sexually or misogynistically, when they try to pursue a career in science, I still think it's fair to let people glory for awhile longer in achieving what people once thought they wouldn't, even if most of the disbelievers are centuries dead and hardly any of them are still alive and posting on the internet.
- free_everybody 8y agoThis might be the best comment I’ve ever seen on HN
- circlefavshape 8y agoI recently had a percussionist in a band I was in assert that "women don't have the brains to be mechanical engineers", and he honestly seemed to be serious. These people still exist edit: I realise the post I'm responding to is sarcastic, but not everyone who thinks women are intellectually inferior to men is a troll
- black-tea 8y agoHow many female mechanical engineers do you know? What about simply women who vaguely understand or are interested in how a car works? How many women have you been with? Even though I'm probably "one of those people", I still understand that exceptions exist. I think it's perfectly possible that a woman could design some original piece of technology or solve difficult mechanical problems. I just think it's very unlikely because most of them are not interested in doing it.
- jsgo 8y agoI don't disagree with anything you said here.