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It seems that you are offended by some of his ideas. If this is the case, you will not give any of them the consideration they deserve. Perhaps this is his faul

by jimmyk 16y ago

It seems that you are offended by some of his ideas. If this is the case, you will not give any of them the consideration they deserve. Perhaps this is his fault but it is not easy to write about touchy subjects in a way that will be non-offensive. As it happens, his ideas are well in line with expert opinions on the topic of moral development from infancy to adulthood and deserve to be considered in a more candid manner. The statement you made about what he was implying demonstrated what I mean. You're offended by what he wrote, so you are trying to find things to object to. He never said it was impossible for a woman to be a good mommy and an astronaut. He said that women would tend towards being good mommies.

wazoox 16y ago
Absolutely not. He pretends that women tend towards being good mommies because of some ridiculously over-simplistic "natural impulse" or similar crap. This approach is altogether stupid, complacent and wrong. 1° generally human behaviour can't be described as simply as bacteria behaviour in a petri dish. 2° there is a general trend recently in using some pseudo-scientific discourse as a comfortable vehicle to shocking ideas, basically pretending there is some science behind the differences between men/women, blacks/whites, etc. This is UTTER BULLSHIT. There is NOT the slightest fucking speckle of science backing this. 3° there is a more profound philosophical error that is trying to justify a scandalous state of matters because "nature makes it this way". Let me tell you one thing, nature sucks. Living in the "good ol' natural way" is being eaten alive by wolves and dying young, and painfully with that. Nature is a very bad excuse; everything that civilisation is about is precisely doing things in unnatural ways because you know, nature is nice as long as you aren't really part of it.
- jimmyk 16y ago
  1: This is a social science, not a hard science. 2: Your ignorance of the science does not invalidate its existence. As an example of research that has been done, look up some of the works of Carol Gilligan. There are many others, but it's not my field. 3. And here you are promoting ignorance. Yes, nature is bad, but if you want to change it, you must understand it. If you have no understanding of why women are less likely to go to computer science, have fun solving the problem.
  - wazoox 16y ago
    1. indeed. And he repeatedly babbles with authority. 2. I've seen some science on these subjects. Unfortunately it always was heavily politically connoted, and the data was terrible ( no, it's not statistically valid to draw a linear regression from a vague random looking cloud of points). 3. I'm not promoting ignorance; I'm getting sick of right-wing morons, be it the anti-science style of the social darwinist style.
- HilbertSpace 16y ago
  You are missing it, failing to 'get it', running off in unnecessary directions, and flailing away at irrelevancies. It's simple, dirt simple: Here the shortest clear explanation: "The hand the rocks the cradle rules the world.". If you don't like that one, take all the woman in the US at, say, 18. Put each woman into either (A) REALLY wants to have children and be a good mommy and is concentrating on finding a suitable husband and (B) women with less overt interest in being a mommy. Then, track (A) and (B) over a few generations and see what happens. Is there any doubt in your mind? The women in (A) will have the strong limbs on the tree, and the women in (B) will have weak, sick, or dead limbs on the tree. Then over time, the fraction of women in (A) will increase, and the fraction of women in (B) will decrease. In particular, genes that put women into (A) will increase. Just what is it about this 'thought experiment' you find difficult to understand? Here is what should be your first question: Q. If this thought experiment is correct, then why do we have any women in (B) now? A. I should leave the answer as an exercise. Here's one piece of historical evidence: Supposedly in year 1800 could take all the women in the US of Western European descent, track their descendants, and by year 1850 discover that their population (of say, just the women) had increased by a factor of four. We're talking 50 years with nearly all the women pregnant nearly all the time. So, (A) or (B) didn't matter: Due to very strong social, economic, and practical pressures, the women got married, and then the babies 'just came'. Since then, more and more, (A) and (B) mattered a LOT. So, now women in (B) have the option of concentrating less on motherhood and do and, thus, are pulling their genes out of the gene pool. In a few more generations, what stands to be left is women in (A). The effect of (B) is already strong and easy to see: In the more industrialized countries, women of Western European descent are having way less than 2.1 children per woman and, thus, are dying out. So, as women in (B) die out, the population can continue to shrink. When about all that is left is women in (A), then the population will stand to increase again. Come back in 100 years and find a LOT of REALLY eager women in (A)! Your next question should be: Q. But women in (B) should have reproductive advantage because of their better ability to contribute to the economic strength of the home. A. Good point, but so far it's not working. I suspect that somehow it won't work well enough before the women in (B) die out. Complicated it's NOT.
  - wazoox 16y ago
    Don't bother, the main premise of Idiocracy is true, and we're doomed anyway, because it obeys exactly the same logic as you do.
capstone 16y ago
I appreciate the point you are trying to make however @HilbertSpace did say that it's impossible for a woman to be successful at both motherhood and a career: With feminism, some girls believed "Women can and do things, too", charged into male careers, and paid a very high price in lack of children, busted marriages, and sometimes even their lives. It's not nice to try to fool Mother Nature. Further, what on earth are you talking about when you say that his post is in line with expert opinions on the subject? A few random quotes... It's not nice to try to fool Mother Nature. To get girls to major in computer science, you are dealing with forces you cannot possibly understand. Having women pursuing computer careers will stick like water on a duck's back -- not a chance. There can be a reason for a girl in college to take some courses in computer science: Look for a husband! I am all for a balanced discussion but seriously, is this not a little nutty?
- jimmyk 16y ago
  As I said and Hilbert said in other places, this is about trends and tendencies. Not specific cases. As this discussion is about why women don't pursue careers in computer science as often as men, it is appropriate to speak in generalities. The quotes you're picking sound bad, but they're not. "There can be a reason for a girl in college to take some courses in computer science: Look for a husband!" He's not saying the only reason any girl should ever take computer science classes is to find a husband. He's saying that a girl following typical gender roles will actually use that reason as opposed to the other good reasons for doing so. "Further, what on earth are you talking about when you say that his post is in line with expert opinions on the subject?" Look into the subject of moral development. There are conflicting views on the subject, but at least one of the views (promoted by Carol Gilligan) is very similar to what Hilbert has been saying.
peteforde 16y ago
As it happens, "as it happens" is a way to lead into an assertion that tends to provoke casual acceptance. It's not all that different from "wouldn't you agree that", a mock-question that's often accompanied by a nodding motion; the combination frequently illicits a nod even from someone that disagrees. Of course many of the commenters are offended by some of the ideas expressed here; that doesn't make the ideas more correct. It's not a question of finding things to disagree with, because inherently the commenters' shortcoming isn't that they are hoping to reveal a logical flaw in the argument, but that they were tricked into debating a troll in the first place. Wouldn't you agree that people with outmoded or poorly researched ideals can do a lot more damage if they are clever enough to embed their ideas in layers of empirical-sounding academia-speak? I'd take it a step further, but I don't want to be "that guy" who invokes Godwin's law. :)

by jimmyk 16y ago

wazoox 16y ago

Absolutely not. He pretends that women tend towards being good mommies because of some ridiculously over-simplistic "natural impulse" or similar crap. This approach is altogether stupid, complacent and wrong. 1° generally human behaviour can't be described as simply as bacteria behaviour in a petri dish. 2° there is a general trend recently in using some pseudo-scientific discourse as a comfortable vehicle to shocking ideas, basically pretending there is some science behind the differences between men/women, blacks/whites, etc. This is UTTER BULLSHIT. There is NOT the slightest fucking speckle of science backing this. 3° there is a more profound philosophical error that is trying to justify a scandalous state of matters because "nature makes it this way". Let me tell you one thing, nature sucks. Living in the "good ol' natural way" is being eaten alive by wolves and dying young, and painfully with that. Nature is a very bad excuse; everything that civilisation is about is precisely doing things in unnatural ways because you know, nature is nice as long as you aren't really part of it.

jimmyk 16y ago
1: This is a social science, not a hard science. 2: Your ignorance of the science does not invalidate its existence. As an example of research that has been done, look up some of the works of Carol Gilligan. There are many others, but it's not my field. 3. And here you are promoting ignorance. Yes, nature is bad, but if you want to change it, you must understand it. If you have no understanding of why women are less likely to go to computer science, have fun solving the problem.
- wazoox 16y ago
  1. indeed. And he repeatedly babbles with authority. 2. I've seen some science on these subjects. Unfortunately it always was heavily politically connoted, and the data was terrible ( no, it's not statistically valid to draw a linear regression from a vague random looking cloud of points). 3. I'm not promoting ignorance; I'm getting sick of right-wing morons, be it the anti-science style of the social darwinist style.
HilbertSpace 16y ago
You are missing it, failing to 'get it', running off in unnecessary directions, and flailing away at irrelevancies. It's simple, dirt simple: Here the shortest clear explanation: "The hand the rocks the cradle rules the world.". If you don't like that one, take all the woman in the US at, say, 18. Put each woman into either (A) REALLY wants to have children and be a good mommy and is concentrating on finding a suitable husband and (B) women with less overt interest in being a mommy. Then, track (A) and (B) over a few generations and see what happens. Is there any doubt in your mind? The women in (A) will have the strong limbs on the tree, and the women in (B) will have weak, sick, or dead limbs on the tree. Then over time, the fraction of women in (A) will increase, and the fraction of women in (B) will decrease. In particular, genes that put women into (A) will increase. Just what is it about this 'thought experiment' you find difficult to understand? Here is what should be your first question: Q. If this thought experiment is correct, then why do we have any women in (B) now? A. I should leave the answer as an exercise. Here's one piece of historical evidence: Supposedly in year 1800 could take all the women in the US of Western European descent, track their descendants, and by year 1850 discover that their population (of say, just the women) had increased by a factor of four. We're talking 50 years with nearly all the women pregnant nearly all the time. So, (A) or (B) didn't matter: Due to very strong social, economic, and practical pressures, the women got married, and then the babies 'just came'. Since then, more and more, (A) and (B) mattered a LOT. So, now women in (B) have the option of concentrating less on motherhood and do and, thus, are pulling their genes out of the gene pool. In a few more generations, what stands to be left is women in (A). The effect of (B) is already strong and easy to see: In the more industrialized countries, women of Western European descent are having way less than 2.1 children per woman and, thus, are dying out. So, as women in (B) die out, the population can continue to shrink. When about all that is left is women in (A), then the population will stand to increase again. Come back in 100 years and find a LOT of REALLY eager women in (A)! Your next question should be: Q. But women in (B) should have reproductive advantage because of their better ability to contribute to the economic strength of the home. A. Good point, but so far it's not working. I suspect that somehow it won't work well enough before the women in (B) die out. Complicated it's NOT.
- wazoox 16y ago
  Don't bother, the main premise of Idiocracy is true, and we're doomed anyway, because it obeys exactly the same logic as you do.

capstone 16y ago

I appreciate the point you are trying to make however @HilbertSpace did say that it's impossible for a woman to be successful at both motherhood and a career: With feminism, some girls believed "Women can and do things, too", charged into male careers, and paid a very high price in lack of children, busted marriages, and sometimes even their lives. It's not nice to try to fool Mother Nature. Further, what on earth are you talking about when you say that his post is in line with expert opinions on the subject? A few random quotes... It's not nice to try to fool Mother Nature. To get girls to major in computer science, you are dealing with forces you cannot possibly understand. Having women pursuing computer careers will stick like water on a duck's back -- not a chance. There can be a reason for a girl in college to take some courses in computer science: Look for a husband! I am all for a balanced discussion but seriously, is this not a little nutty?

jimmyk 16y ago
As I said and Hilbert said in other places, this is about trends and tendencies. Not specific cases. As this discussion is about why women don't pursue careers in computer science as often as men, it is appropriate to speak in generalities. The quotes you're picking sound bad, but they're not. "There can be a reason for a girl in college to take some courses in computer science: Look for a husband!" He's not saying the only reason any girl should ever take computer science classes is to find a husband. He's saying that a girl following typical gender roles will actually use that reason as opposed to the other good reasons for doing so. "Further, what on earth are you talking about when you say that his post is in line with expert opinions on the subject?" Look into the subject of moral development. There are conflicting views on the subject, but at least one of the views (promoted by Carol Gilligan) is very similar to what Hilbert has been saying.

peteforde 16y ago

As it happens, "as it happens" is a way to lead into an assertion that tends to provoke casual acceptance. It's not all that different from "wouldn't you agree that", a mock-question that's often accompanied by a nodding motion; the combination frequently illicits a nod even from someone that disagrees. Of course many of the commenters are offended by some of the ideas expressed here; that doesn't make the ideas more correct. It's not a question of finding things to disagree with, because inherently the commenters' shortcoming isn't that they are hoping to reveal a logical flaw in the argument, but that they were tricked into debating a troll in the first place. Wouldn't you agree that people with outmoded or poorly researched ideals can do a lot more damage if they are clever enough to embed their ideas in layers of empirical-sounding academia-speak? I'd take it a step further, but I don't want to be "that guy" who invokes Godwin's law. :)