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Let's say that there is a population bell curve of the variable "propensity to enjoy being a programmer". One curve for men, and one curve for women. In some dy

Let's say that there is a population bell curve of the variable "propensity to enjoy being a programmer". One curve for men, and one curve for women. In some dystopian future, everyone takes a career aptitude test, and if an individual falls within the top 10% of the overall population, they get turned into a programmer by the government. This is assuming a perfectly-trained AI judges the variable, and that it controls against the underlying variables of societal bias in order to ensure that long-term human resources are properly allocated, and that long-term biases, informed by people's interactions with eachother, trend toward actual biological differences. It may well be the case that the gender split is 80% / 20% male to female (as is roughly the case today). It may not. However, the left-leaning zeitgeist opinion would seem to be that this outcome is impossible, and current observed differences are only due to systematic oppression. The right-leaning zeitgeist opinion would seem to be that this outcome would make sense. I tend to think that the left-leaning opinion on this is so wrapped up in double-think that it can't even understand itself- it tends to argue too much in favor of "biological differences would mean permanent, uncorrectable injustice, therefore it is impossible that biological differences exist."

dbt00 7y ago
> It may well be the case that the gender split is 80% / 20% male to female (as is roughly the case today) Ask the same question in 1965 and get the opposite result. There’s a lot of motivated reasoning by men that their innate characteristics are selected for computer programming. There’s a lot of hostile behavior by men towards women who are in computer science. You can view this like any other resource scarcity turf protection gambit. It’s impossible to separate any apparent belief in the natural order of male dominance of the field from this behavior, so to draw conclusions from it is extremely dangerous.
- reroute1 7y ago
  > There’s a lot of motivated reasoning by men that their innate characteristics are selected for computer programming. There’s a lot of hostile behavior by men towards women who are in computer science. You can view this like any other resource scarcity turf protection gambit. That is entirely your opinion. Framing biological differences as turf protection is laughable in my opinion.
  - tsimionescu 7y ago
    You're looking at a societal bias, and inferring a biological difference. In other societies, this bias is much reduced, which would not likely be the case if differences were truly biological. In particular, Eastern Europe of all places is relatively egalitarian in men-vs-women in programming.
    - NotAnEconomist 7y ago
      > In particular, Eastern Europe of all places is relatively egalitarian in men-vs-women in programming. Why doesn't that suggest the reverse -- that women only have equal rates of programming in societies where they feel the need to accumulate power, and when left to their own choices (eg, when they have more freedom to choose), they choose careers at a different rate? That is, what's your evidence that it's not Eastern Europe where we're witnessing societal pressures and other areas where we're witnessing biological variation? To me, it looks like when absent coercion (or a need to accumulate high prestige for safety), such as Western Europe or the US, women have a different distribution of preferences than men, and choose different career paths.
    - reroute1 7y ago
      I could just as easily say you are looking at a biological difference and inferring a societal bias. Just because it doesn't exist in the same proportion everywhere doesn't mean that the difference is not biologically based. There are endless confounding factors that would lead to variations in different locations. The fact that the overall difference stems from biological differences doesn't require universal equivalence of the effect. For example men on average have more muscle mass than women. If you found a random population of women that had proportionally higher muscle masses compared with their male peers, that doesn't discount the biological fact.
      - gamblor956 7y ago
        You're citing an actual biological difference in human biology to try and support an unsupported claim of a nonbiological difference... One that is refuted by the history of computer programming, which used to be a female-dominated field back when programming was significantly harder than it is today.
- pdonis 7y ago
  > Ask the same question in 1965 and get the opposite result. Really? Reference, please.
  - MayeulC 7y ago
    Well, any history book should do. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing Women were litterally employed as computers ca. WWII. When the transition was made to programmable machines, they were in majority the first ones to use, operate, program and design algorithms for them. The field was regarded as uninteresting, tedious, and not real engineering by their male counterparts.
  - delecti 7y ago
    Early programming was viewed as "women's work" because of the similarity between between the work and sewing [1]. I don't think it was quite 80:20 women:men in 1965, but it was certainly higher than 20:80. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_rope_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_rope_memory
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  > Ask the same question in 1965 To be fair, though, a LOT has changed about the nature of computer programming since 1965.
  - chmod775 7y ago
    > To be fair, though, a LOT has changed about the nature of computer programming since 1965. Has it though? The Von-Neumann-architecture was already a thing back then, programming languages (BASIC, Fortran, ...) already had many of the things you are still using today (such as for-loops) and any algorithm and data structure thought up back then is still perfectly usable today in most modern languages. Sure, the whole tooling and library situation is not comparable to back then, but the fundamentals haven't really changed. Consider these things: - Binary search trees (1960) - Linked lists (1955) - Quicksort (1959) - Hash tables (1953) Looking back I rather have to say I am not impressed with advances in practical computer programming since then. The only major change was the introduction of type systems and OO imho, though these were technically a thing already back then too on an academic level.
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    True, programming is much easier now that you can use words to code, and have programs do all of the actual work of turning that code into usable machine code for you.
  - fzeroracer 7y ago
    Probably the biggest change was the introduction of personal computers, which were primarily marketed towards boys at the time. It should come at no surprise that the result of a huge marketing apparatus appealing solely to one gender would create a generation or two of predominately male programmers. When you examine the fundamental nature of programming though, not much has changed. In fact things have become significantly easier over time.
sgslo 7y ago
> in favor of "biological differences would mean permanent, uncorrectable injustice, therefore it is impossible that biological differences exist." That's because the issue of men vs women in programming really is an all-or-nothing topic. Either you believe that a female is capable of being an equivalently skilled programmer to a male, or you don't. Referencing biological differences always cascades to a question about the innate ability of a female to program. The best example I can point to is the infamous internal Google manifesto on male vs female programmers. If you read that text, it appears reasonable enough: the author thinks that there are biological differences, and these differences might lead to differences in programming strengths. But it is a wolf in sheep's clothing; as soon as you believe that there are differences, it follows that one set of differences must be advantageous to the other. I can understand that there are biological differences between females and males, but I absolutely and vehemently choose to believe that there is no inherent difference in ability - females are 100% as capable as males when it comes to programming. Full stop. Yes, this is double think. But I'd rather be a hypocrite than hold a secret belief that my biological sex makes me a better engineer.
- Excel_Wizard 7y ago
  It's really strange of you to admit this double-think. You are admitting to yourself that you hold two contradictory opinions simultaneously. I think the best thing to do (which you might be arguing for but cutting corners?) is to understand that population-level trends exist but to still judge individuals as individuals, not as members of their groups. I also disagree about the quote below: >That's because the issue of men vs women in programming really is an all-or-nothing topic. Either you believe that a female is capable of being an equivalently skilled programmer to a male, or you don't. When populations are on bell curves, this statement is nonsensical. Imagining the statement "Either you believe that a female is capable of being an equivalently skilled competitive wrestler to a male, or you don't" would be similar.
- JeremySecond 7y ago
  > I can understand that there are biological differences between females and males, but I absolutely and vehemently choose to believe that there is no inherent difference in ability - females are 100% as capable as males when it comes to programming. Why stop at gender? Why not believe there is no inherent difference in ability between any two persons? After all, if a difference in ability is un-just, it doesn't matter if it originates from gender, race, or pure genetic chance.
jackpirate 7y ago
Your response doesn't at all address gbrown's example of how a misapplied algorithm can exacerbate a systemic inequality. Specifically, you provide an example of gbrown's points 1 and 2 while ignoring point 3, which is the crux of the issue.
- Excel_Wizard 7y ago
  The detail "This is assuming a perfectly-trained AI judges the variable, and that it controls against the underlying variables of societal bias in order to ensure that long-term human resources are properly allocated, and that long-term biases, informed by people's interactions with eachother, trend toward actual biological differences" should address that concern.
  - gbrown 7y ago
    "Assume a perfect and impossible thing, which is not precisely defined enough to formally reason about, but which nevertheless by construction supports my point, and you'll see that I'm clearly correct." "controls against...." doesn't mean anything here - you're using the language of modeling, and attempting to discuss a concrete issue, but not connecting the two. Is your goal just to get an accurate prediction based on the status quo? Congrats, you've got a model that still requires nuance and understanding in application.
    - Excel_Wizard 7y ago
      Well, to create a well-enough formalized method of control for the AI- As part of a 1,000,000 year long project, 1,000,000 groups of 1,000 human babies (with different groups having different gender ratios) are installed on remote habitable planets and raised from birth by genderless robots, tabula rasa. They grow up and form languages and societies that last for 1,000,000 years. Robots are used to observe their choices and outcomes. The distribution of cultural traits is gathered as data, and cultures which create good outcomes for individuals in accordance with their preferences and for society as a whole are noted as benefit-maximizing. Additionally, the degree to which each society deviates from mean gender-bias characteristics is noted, and the degree to which these gender-bias expectations mold the choices of each individual to a degree greater than mean gender-bias is noted. This data is used to train the "sorting hat" robot which will be used in the example in my original post.
gbrown 7y ago
Blame the "left leaning zeitgeist" all you want, I've seen no such evidence. What I have seen is a Hacker News thread full of people misunderstanding statistics and machine learning, advocating for bad models, and obsessing about biological explanations for the crazy gender disparity in tech. Whatever real, fundamental differences exist, it's preposterous to assert that our current situation is entirely biological in nature - especially when the toxicity is on such full and self-assured display.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- iknowalot 7y ago
  The thing is most of these people who dont see flaws in the model were raised by women, probably have sisters, and probably have girlfriends or wives. Wait until they start applying these models and ignorance takes flight against groups that they don't associate with, Muslims (most Americans don't personally know one), blacks (most Americans don't have a solid grasp of their history in this country and the resulting outcomes they now suffer), etc....
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- stevenhuang 7y ago
  > it's preposterous to assert that our current situation is entirely biological in nature Careful on misframing the thought experiment: no such assertion was made. The assertion through this thought experiment was that biological nature has an effect, no more no less. The degree to which the effect matters is uncertain, but it is reasonable to expect it does play a role. The reason biological explanation is mentioned at all is because many seem determined to think that no such effect is possible, full-stop. If you agree that biological differences has a non-zero effect on preference, then there shouldn't be anything to disagree with here.
  - gbrown 7y ago
    I disagree with your reading entirely: "It may well be the case that the gender split is 80% / 20%" That's a preposterous hypothetical. You're also incorrect in your implication - the existence of minor (and as yet unsubstantiated) fundamental differences in propensity to pursue technology in no way precludes the (well established) social biases and inequities that result in the same. Neither would it prevent these issues from being reflected in statistical models. Thought experiments about magical perfect AIs are completely and totally irrelevant to this real problem which everyone who uses models should be aware of. To get on my cranky, gatekeeping high horse, I find it super frustrating to see people who call themselves data scientists misunderstanding this problem. I teach this in introductory statistics to non-technical audiences. I'd hope for better from engineers and computer scientists.
knolax 7y ago
Your example assumes that the AI isn't taking your 80/20 split and integrating that back into the test. Even if your ever so nebulous "biological differences" exist, you have already acknowledged that an objective measure of programming ability can be measured independent of gender, what TFA and "the left" are talking about is the distortion of that objective measure by lazily applying that correlation back into the measuring system, eg. making a 80/20 into a 90/10 split, then a 95/5 split, which in your example would be a waste of society's resources and would earn whoever made the AI a death sentence for incompetence.
sbov 7y ago
And if the algorithm came out with the reverse result - an 80 female/20 male split, then the right-leaning opinion would call the outcome impossible (tech does have a strong left-wing bias!). I'm not sure your theoretical example proves anything except most people won't believe reality even if it smacks them in the face.
alasdair_ 7y ago
>However, the left-leaning zeitgeist opinion would seem to be that this outcome is impossible, and current observed differences are only due to systematic oppression. Almost no one thinks this way and it's definitely not a popular enough opinion to qualify as a common spirit of our times, left-leaning or otherwise. You are arguing against a very weak straw-man.
- stevenhuang 7y ago
  > Almost no one thinks this way You would hope. But don't you remember the huge backlash from Demore's memo? Many people (or at least a very very vocal population) do think this way, unfortunately. So no, not a strawman.

dbt00 7y ago

> It may well be the case that the gender split is 80% / 20% male to female (as is roughly the case today) Ask the same question in 1965 and get the opposite result. There’s a lot of motivated reasoning by men that their innate characteristics are selected for computer programming. There’s a lot of hostile behavior by men towards women who are in computer science. You can view this like any other resource scarcity turf protection gambit. It’s impossible to separate any apparent belief in the natural order of male dominance of the field from this behavior, so to draw conclusions from it is extremely dangerous.

reroute1 7y ago
> There’s a lot of motivated reasoning by men that their innate characteristics are selected for computer programming. There’s a lot of hostile behavior by men towards women who are in computer science. You can view this like any other resource scarcity turf protection gambit. That is entirely your opinion. Framing biological differences as turf protection is laughable in my opinion.
- tsimionescu 7y ago
  You're looking at a societal bias, and inferring a biological difference. In other societies, this bias is much reduced, which would not likely be the case if differences were truly biological. In particular, Eastern Europe of all places is relatively egalitarian in men-vs-women in programming.
  - NotAnEconomist 7y ago
    > In particular, Eastern Europe of all places is relatively egalitarian in men-vs-women in programming. Why doesn't that suggest the reverse -- that women only have equal rates of programming in societies where they feel the need to accumulate power, and when left to their own choices (eg, when they have more freedom to choose), they choose careers at a different rate? That is, what's your evidence that it's not Eastern Europe where we're witnessing societal pressures and other areas where we're witnessing biological variation? To me, it looks like when absent coercion (or a need to accumulate high prestige for safety), such as Western Europe or the US, women have a different distribution of preferences than men, and choose different career paths.
  - reroute1 7y ago
    I could just as easily say you are looking at a biological difference and inferring a societal bias. Just because it doesn't exist in the same proportion everywhere doesn't mean that the difference is not biologically based. There are endless confounding factors that would lead to variations in different locations. The fact that the overall difference stems from biological differences doesn't require universal equivalence of the effect. For example men on average have more muscle mass than women. If you found a random population of women that had proportionally higher muscle masses compared with their male peers, that doesn't discount the biological fact.
    - gamblor956 7y ago
      You're citing an actual biological difference in human biology to try and support an unsupported claim of a nonbiological difference... One that is refuted by the history of computer programming, which used to be a female-dominated field back when programming was significantly harder than it is today.
pdonis 7y ago
> Ask the same question in 1965 and get the opposite result. Really? Reference, please.
- MayeulC 7y ago
  Well, any history book should do. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing Women were litterally employed as computers ca. WWII. When the transition was made to programmable machines, they were in majority the first ones to use, operate, program and design algorithms for them. The field was regarded as uninteresting, tedious, and not real engineering by their male counterparts.
- delecti 7y ago
  Early programming was viewed as "women's work" because of the similarity between between the work and sewing [1]. I don't think it was quite 80:20 women:men in 1965, but it was certainly higher than 20:80. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_rope_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_rope_memory
commandlinefan 7y ago
> Ask the same question in 1965 To be fair, though, a LOT has changed about the nature of computer programming since 1965.
- chmod775 7y ago
  > To be fair, though, a LOT has changed about the nature of computer programming since 1965. Has it though? The Von-Neumann-architecture was already a thing back then, programming languages (BASIC, Fortran, ...) already had many of the things you are still using today (such as for-loops) and any algorithm and data structure thought up back then is still perfectly usable today in most modern languages. Sure, the whole tooling and library situation is not comparable to back then, but the fundamentals haven't really changed. Consider these things: - Binary search trees (1960) - Linked lists (1955) - Quicksort (1959) - Hash tables (1953) Looking back I rather have to say I am not impressed with advances in practical computer programming since then. The only major change was the introduction of type systems and OO imho, though these were technically a thing already back then too on an academic level.
- gamblor956 7y ago
  True, programming is much easier now that you can use words to code, and have programs do all of the actual work of turning that code into usable machine code for you.
- fzeroracer 7y ago
  Probably the biggest change was the introduction of personal computers, which were primarily marketed towards boys at the time. It should come at no surprise that the result of a huge marketing apparatus appealing solely to one gender would create a generation or two of predominately male programmers. When you examine the fundamental nature of programming though, not much has changed. In fact things have become significantly easier over time.

sgslo 7y ago

> in favor of "biological differences would mean permanent, uncorrectable injustice, therefore it is impossible that biological differences exist." That's because the issue of men vs women in programming really is an all-or-nothing topic. Either you believe that a female is capable of being an equivalently skilled programmer to a male, or you don't. Referencing biological differences always cascades to a question about the innate ability of a female to program. The best example I can point to is the infamous internal Google manifesto on male vs female programmers. If you read that text, it appears reasonable enough: the author thinks that there are biological differences, and these differences might lead to differences in programming strengths. But it is a wolf in sheep's clothing; as soon as you believe that there are differences, it follows that one set of differences must be advantageous to the other. I can understand that there are biological differences between females and males, but I absolutely and vehemently choose to believe that there is no inherent difference in ability - females are 100% as capable as males when it comes to programming. Full stop. Yes, this is double think. But I'd rather be a hypocrite than hold a secret belief that my biological sex makes me a better engineer.

Excel_Wizard 7y ago
It's really strange of you to admit this double-think. You are admitting to yourself that you hold two contradictory opinions simultaneously. I think the best thing to do (which you might be arguing for but cutting corners?) is to understand that population-level trends exist but to still judge individuals as individuals, not as members of their groups. I also disagree about the quote below: >That's because the issue of men vs women in programming really is an all-or-nothing topic. Either you believe that a female is capable of being an equivalently skilled programmer to a male, or you don't. When populations are on bell curves, this statement is nonsensical. Imagining the statement "Either you believe that a female is capable of being an equivalently skilled competitive wrestler to a male, or you don't" would be similar.
JeremySecond 7y ago
> I can understand that there are biological differences between females and males, but I absolutely and vehemently choose to believe that there is no inherent difference in ability - females are 100% as capable as males when it comes to programming. Why stop at gender? Why not believe there is no inherent difference in ability between any two persons? After all, if a difference in ability is un-just, it doesn't matter if it originates from gender, race, or pure genetic chance.

jackpirate 7y ago

Your response doesn't at all address gbrown's example of how a misapplied algorithm can exacerbate a systemic inequality. Specifically, you provide an example of gbrown's points 1 and 2 while ignoring point 3, which is the crux of the issue.

Excel_Wizard 7y ago
The detail "This is assuming a perfectly-trained AI judges the variable, and that it controls against the underlying variables of societal bias in order to ensure that long-term human resources are properly allocated, and that long-term biases, informed by people's interactions with eachother, trend toward actual biological differences" should address that concern.
- gbrown 7y ago
  "Assume a perfect and impossible thing, which is not precisely defined enough to formally reason about, but which nevertheless by construction supports my point, and you'll see that I'm clearly correct." "controls against...." doesn't mean anything here - you're using the language of modeling, and attempting to discuss a concrete issue, but not connecting the two. Is your goal just to get an accurate prediction based on the status quo? Congrats, you've got a model that still requires nuance and understanding in application.
  - Excel_Wizard 7y ago
    Well, to create a well-enough formalized method of control for the AI- As part of a 1,000,000 year long project, 1,000,000 groups of 1,000 human babies (with different groups having different gender ratios) are installed on remote habitable planets and raised from birth by genderless robots, tabula rasa. They grow up and form languages and societies that last for 1,000,000 years. Robots are used to observe their choices and outcomes. The distribution of cultural traits is gathered as data, and cultures which create good outcomes for individuals in accordance with their preferences and for society as a whole are noted as benefit-maximizing. Additionally, the degree to which each society deviates from mean gender-bias characteristics is noted, and the degree to which these gender-bias expectations mold the choices of each individual to a degree greater than mean gender-bias is noted. This data is used to train the "sorting hat" robot which will be used in the example in my original post.

gbrown 7y ago

Blame the "left leaning zeitgeist" all you want, I've seen no such evidence. What I have seen is a Hacker News thread full of people misunderstanding statistics and machine learning, advocating for bad models, and obsessing about biological explanations for the crazy gender disparity in tech. Whatever real, fundamental differences exist, it's preposterous to assert that our current situation is entirely biological in nature - especially when the toxicity is on such full and self-assured display.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
iknowalot 7y ago
The thing is most of these people who dont see flaws in the model were raised by women, probably have sisters, and probably have girlfriends or wives. Wait until they start applying these models and ignorance takes flight against groups that they don't associate with, Muslims (most Americans don't personally know one), blacks (most Americans don't have a solid grasp of their history in this country and the resulting outcomes they now suffer), etc....
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
stevenhuang 7y ago
> it's preposterous to assert that our current situation is entirely biological in nature Careful on misframing the thought experiment: no such assertion was made. The assertion through this thought experiment was that biological nature has an effect, no more no less. The degree to which the effect matters is uncertain, but it is reasonable to expect it does play a role. The reason biological explanation is mentioned at all is because many seem determined to think that no such effect is possible, full-stop. If you agree that biological differences has a non-zero effect on preference, then there shouldn't be anything to disagree with here.
- gbrown 7y ago
  I disagree with your reading entirely: "It may well be the case that the gender split is 80% / 20%" That's a preposterous hypothetical. You're also incorrect in your implication - the existence of minor (and as yet unsubstantiated) fundamental differences in propensity to pursue technology in no way precludes the (well established) social biases and inequities that result in the same. Neither would it prevent these issues from being reflected in statistical models. Thought experiments about magical perfect AIs are completely and totally irrelevant to this real problem which everyone who uses models should be aware of. To get on my cranky, gatekeeping high horse, I find it super frustrating to see people who call themselves data scientists misunderstanding this problem. I teach this in introductory statistics to non-technical audiences. I'd hope for better from engineers and computer scientists.

knolax 7y ago

Your example assumes that the AI isn't taking your 80/20 split and integrating that back into the test. Even if your ever so nebulous "biological differences" exist, you have already acknowledged that an objective measure of programming ability can be measured independent of gender, what TFA and "the left" are talking about is the distortion of that objective measure by lazily applying that correlation back into the measuring system, eg. making a 80/20 into a 90/10 split, then a 95/5 split, which in your example would be a waste of society's resources and would earn whoever made the AI a death sentence for incompetence.

sbov 7y ago

And if the algorithm came out with the reverse result - an 80 female/20 male split, then the right-leaning opinion would call the outcome impossible (tech does have a strong left-wing bias!). I'm not sure your theoretical example proves anything except most people won't believe reality even if it smacks them in the face.

alasdair_ 7y ago

>However, the left-leaning zeitgeist opinion would seem to be that this outcome is impossible, and current observed differences are only due to systematic oppression. Almost no one thinks this way and it's definitely not a popular enough opinion to qualify as a common spirit of our times, left-leaning or otherwise. You are arguing against a very weak straw-man.

stevenhuang 7y ago
> Almost no one thinks this way You would hope. But don't you remember the huge backlash from Demore's memo? Many people (or at least a very very vocal population) do think this way, unfortunately. So no, not a strawman.