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Why do you need a woman? I don't understand why we all talk about the gender problem in engineering, then continue it by isolating female students from male te

Why do you need a woman? I don't understand why we all talk about the gender problem in engineering, then continue it by isolating female students from male teachers. There is no isolation between male students and female teachers, or same gender students and teachers. If we want to move towards equality, why carefully structure inequality in?

splintercell 13y ago
I believe the idea behind this would be that a woman can guide her more and talk to her about the potential problems she faced. Consider it like getting an advice on getting into a good college from someone who got in using Affirmative Action vs someone who didn't.
- smtddr 13y ago
  >>Consider it like getting an advice on getting into a good college from someone who got in using Affirmative Action vs someone who didn't. A better analogy would be considering someone getting into a good college because of their connections & wealthy parents vs someone who didn't.
  - JohnHaugeland 13y ago
    "A better analogy would be considering someone getting into a good college because of their connections & wealthy parents vs someone who didn't." In that case, isn't it absolutely imperative to start making those connections, by not demographically binning mentors? Connections don't just spring out of nowhere.
    - smtddr 13y ago
      >>Connections don't just spring out of nowhere. I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole here because I know where this is leading to from past experience on HN, but.... I think in the tech-scene(probably society in general) some of those connections are easier made(and sometimes come as default) depending on gender/race.
      - JohnHaugeland 13y ago
        I am confused. You don't want to make those connections early by arrangement, because they would be more difficult to make later on voluntarily?
GuiA 13y ago
Because chances are, she's not isolated from male teachers, and even if she is, the need to offer a relatable role model is more important to inspire and motivate her than the need to not isolate her from male teachers. Over the past 8 years, I've taught programming to people from ages 6 to 50, of all genders and cultural backgrounds. Female students have generally related more to my female colleagues, just like black students generally relate more to my black colleagues. Which is perfectly fine, and why you want a diverse set of educators in the first place.
- JohnHaugeland 13y ago
  "the need to offer a relatable role model is more important" My point being that I don't actually believe that people need to be the same gender (or skin color or etc) to be relatable as role models. I think making role models less demographically binned would be an important and positive step. . "Female students have generally related more to my female colleagues" Do you have any reason to believe that this isn't because every time they're getting started someone carefully creates that situation, as is being created here? Measurements are frequently measurements of effects, rather than of causes. . "Which is perfectly fine" How can you be sure that refusing demographic cross pollination by intent is not a negative thing?
  - pron 13y ago
    I understand you personally feel this way, but research has shown that this is not the case, and I think it makes sense. It has been proven that our society is full of gender and racial biases, and to fight them we need to accept this fact so we can have a sensible plan of attack. Apparently we can't just make those biases disappear by wishing them away. It is easier to dismantle them by first fighting the symptoms. If you just tell people to ignore their biases, you will ask them to ignore their personal day-to-day experience, and that's asking a lot. It's hard for people to believe one thing if what they see around them goes against that belief. To change beliefs we must first change the experience.
- belorn 13y ago
  By adding such discrimination in ones search for role models, one deprive children a chance to meet any of the potential Richard Feynmans, Carl Sagans and Randy Pauschs that exists here in the HN community. All for what? a social experiment to fight biases with "positive discrimination"? The hope removing half of every possible role model is worth getting a female role model over a male role model? In the end its the parent that decide and it might be worth if there is already plenty of male role models, so long one is aware of the costs.
arbutus 13y ago
It's important to be able to see people who look like your potential future self. There's more to it than just seeing neat work - everyone needs role models. Kids are very perceptive. This girl sounds lucky to have parents who encourage her in STEM topics, but that doesn't shield her from media/misguided school teachers/councillors/other kids telling her these things aren't for her. Having a female role model is a powerful thing.
- JohnHaugeland 13y ago
  I'm a man and I modelled my professional self on a woman, so I have some difficulty with this. I believe that choosing to limit one's role models by gender is a problem.
  - amputect 13y ago
    The average man in an engineering discipline can trivially meet other male engineers, and will be pretty much surrounded by them anywhere they work. This would be true at the grade-school level up through the pinnacle of their careers. This is not true for women. This guy's daughter might be the only girl in her class who feels comfortable expressing an interest in engineering. She might go on to be one of a tiny (and steadily decreasing) number of women in an overwhelmingly male university-level engineering program. Can you imagine how it might be nice to at some point be able to meet and learn from someone whose life experiences more closely match your own, and learn from the experiences that they have (or will have) in common?
    - JohnHaugeland 13y ago
      If the issue is how common the people are going to be by demographic in the workforce, then shouldn't we start early in making them comfortable with the people they're going to be around, as the ice breaking generation, by mentoring them with the common rather than the rare? I mean I genuinely do not understand why this is actually helpful. The lady engineers I talk to are either all pandering to me, or are as confused as I am. I don't understand why we're presuming that a girl can't have a good, positive male role model, just like I, a boy, had a good, positive female role model. . "She might go on to be one of a tiny (and steadily decreasing) number of women in an overwhelmingly male university-level engineering program." So, as we bucketted women out of the mainstream and told them they could only learn from people like themselves, their global participation began to drop. I mean really, the data you're recommending seems to suggest that what we're doing is destructive. It was not the case, in Elizabeth Cady Stanton's work, that the newly liberated woman was expected to learn only from other women. They're supposed to be equal. The supporting claims seem to be assertions of better-ness with no supporting data or logic other than an intuitive feeling that the child's recognition of similarity is somehow more important than the child's early exposure to diversity (something most data backed child rearing studies disagree with.) I do understand that your opinion is that a girl will have an emotional need to only learn from women. Do you have any data to defend this? This seems bizarre and offensive to me, as it does to the female engineer who spoke up elsewhere in this thread. I think that, just like men, women can learn from anyone, and should choose the best source, not the most similar source. You can't create an inclusive society by educating explicitly exclusively, in my viewpoint. I would love to see actual data, rather than beliefs or opinions, which suggest that learning from a demographically similar role model produces better results than learning from the best available role model, or that taking a role model from what you claim is an extreme minority, rather than building bonds and understanding with the majority, leads to more inclusion, despite that you also claim that inclusion is decreasing, despite that this sort of like-only mentorship is increasing. It seems like your own data contradicts you. Maybe I'm misunderstanding.
amputect 13y ago
> Why do you need a woman? Because role models are a great thing thing for a young person to have. Why is it a problem for him to want a female role model for a female child? Why do you think that "wanting his daughter to meet a female engineer" represents inequality? Do you think that it would somehow be more equal for women to only have male role models?
- JohnHaugeland 13y ago
  "Do you think that it would somehow be more equal for women to only have male role models?" You seem to be going to great effort to misunderstand me. By saying "I think young people should have access to everyone, not just people demographically like them," you seem to have heard "I think young women should only have access to people unlike them." A call for inclusion has been misrepresented as a call for exclusion. . "Why is it a problem for him to want a female role model for a female child?" For the same reason that it would be a problem to only want male role models for male children. It reinforces existing problems and stereotypes, prevents social connections across demographics, limits group knowledge cross pollination, and limits the students' access to whoever is the best mentor available in the case that that mentor does not match them demographically. . "Why do you think that "wanting his daughter to meet a female engineer" represents inequality?" Does this actually need to be explained?
  - amputect 13y ago
    It's absolutely trivial to meet male engineers. Many, if not most, of his daughters role models will end up being male engineers. The effort isn't to exclude men from being involved in her career choice / education, the effort is to include a woman in it.
    - JohnHaugeland 13y ago
      I had asked you several questions. Were those going to be responded to?
  - king_jester 13y ago
mynameisasdf 13y ago
Exactly what I was thinking. Its quite insulting to suggest that girls are so myopic they can't possibly be inspired unless they meet someone of the same gender. For the record, I'm a female engineer who moved to the USA from Ghana when I was a smaller. I can't stand this ridiculous patronizing attitude there is towards female engineers, as if we need "extra help" or something. Even worse are the feminists creating us-vs-them politicization of the issue. When I was learning to code, ride a bike, tie my shoes or something, I never thought "gosh I can't do that since none of the role models are female". In fact, if there are no role models of the same gender or race, its usually even more inspiring as you want to be the first one.
- JohnHaugeland 13y ago
  I am glad to know there are others who see it the way I do. I draw great inspiration from people who do not have my gender, my race, or several other role model limiting demographic factors. I feel very sad for people who are set up to not have the advantage of looking up to everyone of value. =========== Edit: why is this being downvoted? Is it disagreeable to say "I have learned from people unlike me?" Are we now saying it's bad to argue for inclusion? It's a polite, friendly comment, stating a positive opinion that says "I think people of every gender, race, etc are of value and should be available." I feel like people are using downvote to show personal frustration.
  - king_jester 13y ago
    The reason why you are being downvoted is that the notion of "I think people of every gender, race, etc are of value and should be available." doesn't really address the issue of why someone who is in a minority in STEM would seek out someone like themselves as a role model. People have value, but we can't deny that for some people finding someone like themselves in a particular field is very difficult. Those people certainly can and do learn from others, but finding someone that has faced the same issue and challenges as themselves is very helpful in not only exploring an issue, but also in counteracting stereotype threat.
    - 13y ago
etler 13y ago
We can pretend things are equal, but they're not. If a young girl is taken to a work place and all she sees is 20+ men working there (and chances are that is what she would see), that can definitely be discouraging. Unfortunately, women in engineering isn't common enough and personally observing a status quo of there being very few women can cause a problem in what a child sees as their possibilities.
LilyRowan 13y ago
Because this father feels his daughter would be more inspired by meeting an engineer who is a woman, and/or feels that a woman would be more interested in mentoring a girl, and/or would be more comfortable introducing his young daughter to adult women that he met on HN than to adult men he met on HN. Not every individual's parenting decision needs to be treated as an overall trend to be analyzed and correct.
- JohnHaugeland 13y ago
  That's why I was asking for his opinion, rather than a defense from a third party that mostly said "you shouldn't ask." Sometimes it's actually perfectly valid to politely ask someone why they think something.
Fomite 13y ago
So she has at least one mentor she can talk to directly about problems and hurdles she experiences because of her gender, and benefit from her experience?
niels_olson 13y ago
> Why do you need a woman? I don't. I don't need french onion soup either, but it's sure a nice treat on occasion. > isolating female students from male teachers Her current math teacher is male, her science teacher is a woman and former pilot of helicopter gunships. I'm her dad, and I help her with her math and science at home. One of our good friends in the neighborhood is a PhD biostatistician who is the CEO of her own research firm. But why ask for what's common? Within my social circle, half the guys are engineers. Heck, I can arrange for her to get a trip to SpaceX. I don't need the megaphone of Hacker News to get that. In fact, the mom of my son's best friends (twins) is an environmental engineer. So "female engineer in San Diego" is actually a tractable problem within my social circle. Finding women in each of the many STEM careers is quite another thing. And for that, I tossed it out to Hacker News. When I post things to Hacker News, I generally don't expect a big response. Most of my posts die in /new. This didn't, which I'm grateful for. > why carefully structure inequality in? Because equality is often an unstable equilibrium. So exerting a force opposed to the instantaneous natural tendency may be the right response at any given time. In fact, the system may have to be permanently pre-stressed to change from unstable to stable.
- JohnHaugeland 13y ago
  (I apologize if I currently seem defensive; I'm getting pretty massively downvoted for trying to understand you, by people who are telling me you mean something very different than what you seem to be saying; I'm glad you chose to respond. Thank you.) . "But why ask for what's common?" I didn't say ask for what's common. I asked why to ask for something uncommon. They're quite different and they aren't the range of possibilities. Another possibility entirely is to just not limit it. When talking about mentors, "because a mentorship is a many year relationship that can have a significant impact on a person's life, and I'm not sure why you would only search half the space available to you for the best person for the job." . "Because equality is often an unstable equilibrium." Not in the case of human gender. . "So exerting a force opposed to the instantaneous natural tendency may be the right response at any given time." I don't see any instantaneous natural tendency to select for male either, and I'm still looking for a supporting cause for that "may be" which isn't a vague reference to an unstable equilibrium. I'm not even sure what equilibrium you might mean, unless you mean how many people are in each gender, and expect that to change. . "In fact, the system may have to be permanently pre-stressed to change from unstable to stable." As that stress has been applied, beginning in the late 1970s, the division in gender in technical roles has increased dramatically. Indeed, it appears that since women's mentorship in tech has been steered towards other women, the number of women in tech has dropped dramatically. It's important to take a look at the data before taking a position on hypotheticals, in case the data suggests exactly the opposite of what the suspicion suggests. How would you respond if it turned out that giving a child a mentor of the opposite role, meaning they were used to a broader range of gender roles than otherwise, increased diversification? Would that change your mind about the right thing to do? . Lastly (and sorry it's out of order, but it's to me the dividing point): "So "female engineer in San Diego" is actually a tractable problem within my social circle." It's not clear to me what makes this the problem to solve, yet. I'm not arguing with you, or saying you're wrong; I don't understand the reaction I'm getting. I'm just trying to understand why you are cutting away the vast majority of the available mentors. If there are ninety Xs and ten Ys available, and if Xs and Ys are fundamentally equal quality, but if both groups have individual variation, then it is strongly statistically expected that the best available individual is an X, because of the variation of individuals and the larger sampling pool. People don't get several mentors. I don't understand why the choice is in any terms other than finding the single best available individual. I just want to understand the data driving your choices. I'm not arguing.
lutorm 13y ago
In Monte Carlo, there is something called "stratified" or "biased" sampling. It's used to overcome the problem that if you are trying to sample a highly nonuniform probability distribution, a "fair" sampling based on the frequency distribution won't tell you about the tails unless you use a lot of samples. Suppose that we are trying to sample a distribution that is, say, 90% male and 10% female. If we do that with a fair sampling, and take 5 samples, chances are that we will end up with no females in the sample. Someone observing the sampled distribution would draw the conclusion that there are no women in the population from which the samples are drawn. The solution is to not sample fairly, because to do so results in oversampling the common cases and undersampling the rare cases. Instead, you construct your sample such that it samples the rare cases with an artificially higher probability. You of course needs to take this into account when interpreting the samples, but that's fine. So for the topic at hand: if you want to expose someone to the widest possible range of viewpoints, sampling fairly is an inefficient thing to do. Instead, you need to split the samples into several strata, be they gender, cultural background, wealth, anything you can think of, and then make sure that all parts of those distributions are represented in your sample. Otherwise, with a limited number of samples, you'll never encounter the rare instances. In other words, you need to "carefully structure inequality in", as you say.

splintercell 13y ago

I believe the idea behind this would be that a woman can guide her more and talk to her about the potential problems she faced. Consider it like getting an advice on getting into a good college from someone who got in using Affirmative Action vs someone who didn't.

smtddr 13y ago
>>Consider it like getting an advice on getting into a good college from someone who got in using Affirmative Action vs someone who didn't. A better analogy would be considering someone getting into a good college because of their connections & wealthy parents vs someone who didn't.
- JohnHaugeland 13y ago
  "A better analogy would be considering someone getting into a good college because of their connections & wealthy parents vs someone who didn't." In that case, isn't it absolutely imperative to start making those connections, by not demographically binning mentors? Connections don't just spring out of nowhere.
  - smtddr 13y ago
    >>Connections don't just spring out of nowhere. I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole here because I know where this is leading to from past experience on HN, but.... I think in the tech-scene(probably society in general) some of those connections are easier made(and sometimes come as default) depending on gender/race.
    - JohnHaugeland 13y ago
      I am confused. You don't want to make those connections early by arrangement, because they would be more difficult to make later on voluntarily?

GuiA 13y ago

Because chances are, she's not isolated from male teachers, and even if she is, the need to offer a relatable role model is more important to inspire and motivate her than the need to not isolate her from male teachers. Over the past 8 years, I've taught programming to people from ages 6 to 50, of all genders and cultural backgrounds. Female students have generally related more to my female colleagues, just like black students generally relate more to my black colleagues. Which is perfectly fine, and why you want a diverse set of educators in the first place.

JohnHaugeland 13y ago
"the need to offer a relatable role model is more important" My point being that I don't actually believe that people need to be the same gender (or skin color or etc) to be relatable as role models. I think making role models less demographically binned would be an important and positive step. . "Female students have generally related more to my female colleagues" Do you have any reason to believe that this isn't because every time they're getting started someone carefully creates that situation, as is being created here? Measurements are frequently measurements of effects, rather than of causes. . "Which is perfectly fine" How can you be sure that refusing demographic cross pollination by intent is not a negative thing?
- pron 13y ago
  I understand you personally feel this way, but research has shown that this is not the case, and I think it makes sense. It has been proven that our society is full of gender and racial biases, and to fight them we need to accept this fact so we can have a sensible plan of attack. Apparently we can't just make those biases disappear by wishing them away. It is easier to dismantle them by first fighting the symptoms. If you just tell people to ignore their biases, you will ask them to ignore their personal day-to-day experience, and that's asking a lot. It's hard for people to believe one thing if what they see around them goes against that belief. To change beliefs we must first change the experience.
belorn 13y ago
By adding such discrimination in ones search for role models, one deprive children a chance to meet any of the potential Richard Feynmans, Carl Sagans and Randy Pauschs that exists here in the HN community. All for what? a social experiment to fight biases with "positive discrimination"? The hope removing half of every possible role model is worth getting a female role model over a male role model? In the end its the parent that decide and it might be worth if there is already plenty of male role models, so long one is aware of the costs.

arbutus 13y ago

It's important to be able to see people who look like your potential future self. There's more to it than just seeing neat work - everyone needs role models. Kids are very perceptive. This girl sounds lucky to have parents who encourage her in STEM topics, but that doesn't shield her from media/misguided school teachers/councillors/other kids telling her these things aren't for her. Having a female role model is a powerful thing.

JohnHaugeland 13y ago
I'm a man and I modelled my professional self on a woman, so I have some difficulty with this. I believe that choosing to limit one's role models by gender is a problem.
- amputect 13y ago
  The average man in an engineering discipline can trivially meet other male engineers, and will be pretty much surrounded by them anywhere they work. This would be true at the grade-school level up through the pinnacle of their careers. This is not true for women. This guy's daughter might be the only girl in her class who feels comfortable expressing an interest in engineering. She might go on to be one of a tiny (and steadily decreasing) number of women in an overwhelmingly male university-level engineering program. Can you imagine how it might be nice to at some point be able to meet and learn from someone whose life experiences more closely match your own, and learn from the experiences that they have (or will have) in common?
  - JohnHaugeland 13y ago
    If the issue is how common the people are going to be by demographic in the workforce, then shouldn't we start early in making them comfortable with the people they're going to be around, as the ice breaking generation, by mentoring them with the common rather than the rare? I mean I genuinely do not understand why this is actually helpful. The lady engineers I talk to are either all pandering to me, or are as confused as I am. I don't understand why we're presuming that a girl can't have a good, positive male role model, just like I, a boy, had a good, positive female role model. . "She might go on to be one of a tiny (and steadily decreasing) number of women in an overwhelmingly male university-level engineering program." So, as we bucketted women out of the mainstream and told them they could only learn from people like themselves, their global participation began to drop. I mean really, the data you're recommending seems to suggest that what we're doing is destructive. It was not the case, in Elizabeth Cady Stanton's work, that the newly liberated woman was expected to learn only from other women. They're supposed to be equal. The supporting claims seem to be assertions of better-ness with no supporting data or logic other than an intuitive feeling that the child's recognition of similarity is somehow more important than the child's early exposure to diversity (something most data backed child rearing studies disagree with.) I do understand that your opinion is that a girl will have an emotional need to only learn from women. Do you have any data to defend this? This seems bizarre and offensive to me, as it does to the female engineer who spoke up elsewhere in this thread. I think that, just like men, women can learn from anyone, and should choose the best source, not the most similar source. You can't create an inclusive society by educating explicitly exclusively, in my viewpoint. I would love to see actual data, rather than beliefs or opinions, which suggest that learning from a demographically similar role model produces better results than learning from the best available role model, or that taking a role model from what you claim is an extreme minority, rather than building bonds and understanding with the majority, leads to more inclusion, despite that you also claim that inclusion is decreasing, despite that this sort of like-only mentorship is increasing. It seems like your own data contradicts you. Maybe I'm misunderstanding.

amputect 13y ago

> Why do you need a woman? Because role models are a great thing thing for a young person to have. Why is it a problem for him to want a female role model for a female child? Why do you think that "wanting his daughter to meet a female engineer" represents inequality? Do you think that it would somehow be more equal for women to only have male role models?

JohnHaugeland 13y ago
"Do you think that it would somehow be more equal for women to only have male role models?" You seem to be going to great effort to misunderstand me. By saying "I think young people should have access to everyone, not just people demographically like them," you seem to have heard "I think young women should only have access to people unlike them." A call for inclusion has been misrepresented as a call for exclusion. . "Why is it a problem for him to want a female role model for a female child?" For the same reason that it would be a problem to only want male role models for male children. It reinforces existing problems and stereotypes, prevents social connections across demographics, limits group knowledge cross pollination, and limits the students' access to whoever is the best mentor available in the case that that mentor does not match them demographically. . "Why do you think that "wanting his daughter to meet a female engineer" represents inequality?" Does this actually need to be explained?
- amputect 13y ago
  It's absolutely trivial to meet male engineers. Many, if not most, of his daughters role models will end up being male engineers. The effort isn't to exclude men from being involved in her career choice / education, the effort is to include a woman in it.
  - JohnHaugeland 13y ago
    I had asked you several questions. Were those going to be responded to?
- king_jester 13y ago

mynameisasdf 13y ago

Exactly what I was thinking. Its quite insulting to suggest that girls are so myopic they can't possibly be inspired unless they meet someone of the same gender. For the record, I'm a female engineer who moved to the USA from Ghana when I was a smaller. I can't stand this ridiculous patronizing attitude there is towards female engineers, as if we need "extra help" or something. Even worse are the feminists creating us-vs-them politicization of the issue. When I was learning to code, ride a bike, tie my shoes or something, I never thought "gosh I can't do that since none of the role models are female". In fact, if there are no role models of the same gender or race, its usually even more inspiring as you want to be the first one.

JohnHaugeland 13y ago
I am glad to know there are others who see it the way I do. I draw great inspiration from people who do not have my gender, my race, or several other role model limiting demographic factors. I feel very sad for people who are set up to not have the advantage of looking up to everyone of value. =========== Edit: why is this being downvoted? Is it disagreeable to say "I have learned from people unlike me?" Are we now saying it's bad to argue for inclusion? It's a polite, friendly comment, stating a positive opinion that says "I think people of every gender, race, etc are of value and should be available." I feel like people are using downvote to show personal frustration.
- king_jester 13y ago
  The reason why you are being downvoted is that the notion of "I think people of every gender, race, etc are of value and should be available." doesn't really address the issue of why someone who is in a minority in STEM would seek out someone like themselves as a role model. People have value, but we can't deny that for some people finding someone like themselves in a particular field is very difficult. Those people certainly can and do learn from others, but finding someone that has faced the same issue and challenges as themselves is very helpful in not only exploring an issue, but also in counteracting stereotype threat.
  - 13y ago

etler 13y ago

We can pretend things are equal, but they're not. If a young girl is taken to a work place and all she sees is 20+ men working there (and chances are that is what she would see), that can definitely be discouraging. Unfortunately, women in engineering isn't common enough and personally observing a status quo of there being very few women can cause a problem in what a child sees as their possibilities.

LilyRowan 13y ago

Because this father feels his daughter would be more inspired by meeting an engineer who is a woman, and/or feels that a woman would be more interested in mentoring a girl, and/or would be more comfortable introducing his young daughter to adult women that he met on HN than to adult men he met on HN. Not every individual's parenting decision needs to be treated as an overall trend to be analyzed and correct.

JohnHaugeland 13y ago
That's why I was asking for his opinion, rather than a defense from a third party that mostly said "you shouldn't ask." Sometimes it's actually perfectly valid to politely ask someone why they think something.

Fomite 13y ago

So she has at least one mentor she can talk to directly about problems and hurdles she experiences because of her gender, and benefit from her experience?

niels_olson 13y ago

> Why do you need a woman? I don't. I don't need french onion soup either, but it's sure a nice treat on occasion. > isolating female students from male teachers Her current math teacher is male, her science teacher is a woman and former pilot of helicopter gunships. I'm her dad, and I help her with her math and science at home. One of our good friends in the neighborhood is a PhD biostatistician who is the CEO of her own research firm. But why ask for what's common? Within my social circle, half the guys are engineers. Heck, I can arrange for her to get a trip to SpaceX. I don't need the megaphone of Hacker News to get that. In fact, the mom of my son's best friends (twins) is an environmental engineer. So "female engineer in San Diego" is actually a tractable problem within my social circle. Finding women in each of the many STEM careers is quite another thing. And for that, I tossed it out to Hacker News. When I post things to Hacker News, I generally don't expect a big response. Most of my posts die in /new. This didn't, which I'm grateful for. > why carefully structure inequality in? Because equality is often an unstable equilibrium. So exerting a force opposed to the instantaneous natural tendency may be the right response at any given time. In fact, the system may have to be permanently pre-stressed to change from unstable to stable.

JohnHaugeland 13y ago
(I apologize if I currently seem defensive; I'm getting pretty massively downvoted for trying to understand you, by people who are telling me you mean something very different than what you seem to be saying; I'm glad you chose to respond. Thank you.) . "But why ask for what's common?" I didn't say ask for what's common. I asked why to ask for something uncommon. They're quite different and they aren't the range of possibilities. Another possibility entirely is to just not limit it. When talking about mentors, "because a mentorship is a many year relationship that can have a significant impact on a person's life, and I'm not sure why you would only search half the space available to you for the best person for the job." . "Because equality is often an unstable equilibrium." Not in the case of human gender. . "So exerting a force opposed to the instantaneous natural tendency may be the right response at any given time." I don't see any instantaneous natural tendency to select for male either, and I'm still looking for a supporting cause for that "may be" which isn't a vague reference to an unstable equilibrium. I'm not even sure what equilibrium you might mean, unless you mean how many people are in each gender, and expect that to change. . "In fact, the system may have to be permanently pre-stressed to change from unstable to stable." As that stress has been applied, beginning in the late 1970s, the division in gender in technical roles has increased dramatically. Indeed, it appears that since women's mentorship in tech has been steered towards other women, the number of women in tech has dropped dramatically. It's important to take a look at the data before taking a position on hypotheticals, in case the data suggests exactly the opposite of what the suspicion suggests. How would you respond if it turned out that giving a child a mentor of the opposite role, meaning they were used to a broader range of gender roles than otherwise, increased diversification? Would that change your mind about the right thing to do? . Lastly (and sorry it's out of order, but it's to me the dividing point): "So "female engineer in San Diego" is actually a tractable problem within my social circle." It's not clear to me what makes this the problem to solve, yet. I'm not arguing with you, or saying you're wrong; I don't understand the reaction I'm getting. I'm just trying to understand why you are cutting away the vast majority of the available mentors. If there are ninety Xs and ten Ys available, and if Xs and Ys are fundamentally equal quality, but if both groups have individual variation, then it is strongly statistically expected that the best available individual is an X, because of the variation of individuals and the larger sampling pool. People don't get several mentors. I don't understand why the choice is in any terms other than finding the single best available individual. I just want to understand the data driving your choices. I'm not arguing.

lutorm 13y ago

In Monte Carlo, there is something called "stratified" or "biased" sampling. It's used to overcome the problem that if you are trying to sample a highly nonuniform probability distribution, a "fair" sampling based on the frequency distribution won't tell you about the tails unless you use a lot of samples. Suppose that we are trying to sample a distribution that is, say, 90% male and 10% female. If we do that with a fair sampling, and take 5 samples, chances are that we will end up with no females in the sample. Someone observing the sampled distribution would draw the conclusion that there are no women in the population from which the samples are drawn. The solution is to not sample fairly, because to do so results in oversampling the common cases and undersampling the rare cases. Instead, you construct your sample such that it samples the rare cases with an artificially higher probability. You of course needs to take this into account when interpreting the samples, but that's fine. So for the topic at hand: if you want to expose someone to the widest possible range of viewpoints, sampling fairly is an inefficient thing to do. Instead, you need to split the samples into several strata, be they gender, cultural background, wealth, anything you can think of, and then make sure that all parts of those distributions are represented in your sample. Otherwise, with a limited number of samples, you'll never encounter the rare instances. In other words, you need to "carefully structure inequality in", as you say.