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Absolutely not. He pretends that women tend towards being good mommies because of some ridiculously over-simplistic "natural impulse" or similar crap. This appr

by 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.

by wazoox 16y ago

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.