5 ms·

> Unless some difference is proven to be biological Many differences have been proven to be biological. > unless something is proven to be impossible But wha

by debacle 12y ago

> Unless some difference is proven to be biological Many differences have been proven to be biological. > unless something is proven to be impossible But what is your goal? Is your goal just for that number? What if parity is not better? What if the problem of parity is that there is something intrinsic in women that they're just not stupid enough to work 80 hours a week for 3-5 years to have a chance at a few million dollar exit? What if women just tend to not have the same values as men do during the time when their career priorities are most important? It's much more important that a woman can become a CEO if she has the skills and desire than that 50% of CEOs are women. > equal representation for all groups in the seats of power I think you start to tread into different territory here. While I don't believe that half of the women on the board of a company need necessarily be women, I do believe that half(ish) of the women on any sort of government body should be women.

pron 12y ago
> Many differences have been proven to be biological. Absolutely none that are pertinent to the matter at hand. > What if the problem of parity is that there is something intrinsic in women that they're just not stupid enough to work 80 hours a week for 3-5 years to have a chance at a few million dollar exit? Sure. And what if it's impossible to find intelligence in the universe, create true AI and extend life? There are good signs that that's indeed the case. I guess you would argue we should stop pursuing those goals. > I do believe that half(ish) of the women on any sort of government body should be women. And don't you think Silicon Valley is a center of concentrated power?
- debacle 12y ago
  > And what if it's impossible to find intelligence in the universe, create true AI and extend life? These are scientific endeavors. If you want to try and get to the heart of why men are so much more prevalent than women in successful SV exits, be my guest, but that would be a scientific goal. Trying to force the model of what you think the world should be is not scientific, it's ideological - even if that ideology were to be backed up by science. In your case, it isn't.
  - pron 12y ago
    > These are scientific endeavors. They are absolutely not (well, except for ETI)! They are technological goals, some funded by private businesses with monetary interests (i.e., they are driven by values). And besides, what is it that you're saying? That in order to increase our knowledge of the universe we must stop at nothing, but when it comes to sharing power and improving the lives of disenfranchised groups we must stop... well, right here would be good?
- spacehome 12y ago
  >> Many differences have been proven to be biological. > Absolutely none that are pertinent to the matter at hand. Are you saying that a propensity for risk-taking is unrelated to gender or that it's not pertinent to entrepreneurship?
  - pron 12y ago
    I am saying that whatever biological differenced "proven" re propensity for risk taking have an effect size several orders of magnitude smaller than that among SV entrepreneurs, while cultural biases are shown to be of similar effect size (and greater). So no, the effect sizes found can have no more than negligible bearings on reality.
- minthd 12y ago
  There's good level of scientific evidence on differences in risk preference, the importance of status, thinking styles(abstract vs concrete), levels of attachment and child care abilities - at least between average males and females. Sorry for not linking papers,but a good start would be this debate[1] between pinker and spelke. And it's clear those things impact participation in startups. [1]http://edge.org/event/the-science-of-gender-and-science-pinker-vs-spelke-a-debate http://edge.org/event/the-science-of-gender-and-science-pink...
  - pron 12y ago
    You are both stretching the definition of "good scientific evidence" as well as completely misunderstanding the very nature of the science producing those studies. First, are you saying that whatever "differences in risk preference" found (for some definition of "good level evidence": I haven't seen the studies, but I'm sure they weren't done on, say, a sample of a ten-thousand people) account for the huge difference seen in SV startups? I mean, I don't know what the effect size was in the studies you were referring to, but I'm sure it was nowhere near that we see in SV. I call such an attitude "sciency" -- ascribing small-n studies with low effect size the scientific rigor of proof or strong evidence to reinforce existing biases. You will never seriously consider this level of evidence "good" if something important to you depended on it. Second, and much more importantly: even pretending those studies were conducted on a billion people and showed a 5x difference (or whatever it is among SV entrepreneurs), all it means is that this is how people behave now. Sociology doesn't purport to be physics, and those aren't laws of nature. I mean, you could have done literacy studies in the 1800s and shown that blacks are illiterate (with much more statistical rigor, BTW); what does that mean? You must remember that sociology (and often psychology) studies snapshots of society that are a result of forces that we have the power to change (and probably the moral obligation to). Sociology studies things so that we could change them. It doesn't claim (in fact, it claims the opposite) to uncover fixed laws of nature.
    - minthd 12y ago
      Read the link. It has GOOD scientific evidence, including talking about "a large meta-analysis involving 150 studies and 100,000 participants, in 14 out of 16 categories of risk-taking, men were over-represented. " And secondly i'm not saying they account for all the differences in SV, just that there are large biologically based differences.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
erroneousfunk 12y ago
I believe that ALL of the women on any sort of government body should be women! (sorry.)
moron4hire 12y ago
I don't think serious, objective feminists want to achieve 50/50 distribution. I think we want to achieve a world where women aren't automatically assumed as not technical. I think the idea is to get to a point where a woman doesn't have to feel uncomfortable about going to a conference lest some creeper molest her. That's pretty much it. Just... don't be a dick to women.
- pron 12y ago
  Not quite. The idea is that every source of social power would see close to proportional representation. The issue of power is crucial to the problems of sexism and racism, as unequal distribution is more prominent where power resides, and the assumption is that groups wouldn't want to voluntarily yield power over them to others. Being a dick to women is what misogynists do. Feminists want to do away with sexism, which is a set of systemic (usually unconscious) biases deeply engrained in culture. So the goal is to do away with sexism, and that, in turn, would probably result in a much more equal distribution.
trhway 12y ago
>I do believe that half(ish) of the women on any sort of government body should be women. yep. A real representative democracy is when for any government body of size N (city council, state House, etc...) and for any trait being present in more than 1/N share of the population governed by the body such trait must be possessed by a member of the body. If the trait is present in more than 2/N share of the population - then at least 2 member must possess it, etc...

by debacle 12y ago

pron 12y ago

> Many differences have been proven to be biological. Absolutely none that are pertinent to the matter at hand. > What if the problem of parity is that there is something intrinsic in women that they're just not stupid enough to work 80 hours a week for 3-5 years to have a chance at a few million dollar exit? Sure. And what if it's impossible to find intelligence in the universe, create true AI and extend life? There are good signs that that's indeed the case. I guess you would argue we should stop pursuing those goals. > I do believe that half(ish) of the women on any sort of government body should be women. And don't you think Silicon Valley is a center of concentrated power?

debacle 12y ago
> And what if it's impossible to find intelligence in the universe, create true AI and extend life? These are scientific endeavors. If you want to try and get to the heart of why men are so much more prevalent than women in successful SV exits, be my guest, but that would be a scientific goal. Trying to force the model of what you think the world should be is not scientific, it's ideological - even if that ideology were to be backed up by science. In your case, it isn't.
- pron 12y ago
  > These are scientific endeavors. They are absolutely not (well, except for ETI)! They are technological goals, some funded by private businesses with monetary interests (i.e., they are driven by values). And besides, what is it that you're saying? That in order to increase our knowledge of the universe we must stop at nothing, but when it comes to sharing power and improving the lives of disenfranchised groups we must stop... well, right here would be good?
spacehome 12y ago
>> Many differences have been proven to be biological. > Absolutely none that are pertinent to the matter at hand. Are you saying that a propensity for risk-taking is unrelated to gender or that it's not pertinent to entrepreneurship?
- pron 12y ago
  I am saying that whatever biological differenced "proven" re propensity for risk taking have an effect size several orders of magnitude smaller than that among SV entrepreneurs, while cultural biases are shown to be of similar effect size (and greater). So no, the effect sizes found can have no more than negligible bearings on reality.
minthd 12y ago
There's good level of scientific evidence on differences in risk preference, the importance of status, thinking styles(abstract vs concrete), levels of attachment and child care abilities - at least between average males and females. Sorry for not linking papers,but a good start would be this debate[1] between pinker and spelke. And it's clear those things impact participation in startups. [1]http://edge.org/event/the-science-of-gender-and-science-pinker-vs-spelke-a-debate http://edge.org/event/the-science-of-gender-and-science-pink...
- pron 12y ago
  You are both stretching the definition of "good scientific evidence" as well as completely misunderstanding the very nature of the science producing those studies. First, are you saying that whatever "differences in risk preference" found (for some definition of "good level evidence": I haven't seen the studies, but I'm sure they weren't done on, say, a sample of a ten-thousand people) account for the huge difference seen in SV startups? I mean, I don't know what the effect size was in the studies you were referring to, but I'm sure it was nowhere near that we see in SV. I call such an attitude "sciency" -- ascribing small-n studies with low effect size the scientific rigor of proof or strong evidence to reinforce existing biases. You will never seriously consider this level of evidence "good" if something important to you depended on it. Second, and much more importantly: even pretending those studies were conducted on a billion people and showed a 5x difference (or whatever it is among SV entrepreneurs), all it means is that this is how people behave now. Sociology doesn't purport to be physics, and those aren't laws of nature. I mean, you could have done literacy studies in the 1800s and shown that blacks are illiterate (with much more statistical rigor, BTW); what does that mean? You must remember that sociology (and often psychology) studies snapshots of society that are a result of forces that we have the power to change (and probably the moral obligation to). Sociology studies things so that we could change them. It doesn't claim (in fact, it claims the opposite) to uncover fixed laws of nature.
  - minthd 12y ago
    Read the link. It has GOOD scientific evidence, including talking about "a large meta-analysis involving 150 studies and 100,000 participants, in 14 out of 16 categories of risk-taking, men were over-represented. " And secondly i'm not saying they account for all the differences in SV, just that there are large biologically based differences.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

erroneousfunk 12y ago

I believe that ALL of the women on any sort of government body should be women! (sorry.)

moron4hire 12y ago

I don't think serious, objective feminists want to achieve 50/50 distribution. I think we want to achieve a world where women aren't automatically assumed as not technical. I think the idea is to get to a point where a woman doesn't have to feel uncomfortable about going to a conference lest some creeper molest her. That's pretty much it. Just... don't be a dick to women.

pron 12y ago
Not quite. The idea is that every source of social power would see close to proportional representation. The issue of power is crucial to the problems of sexism and racism, as unequal distribution is more prominent where power resides, and the assumption is that groups wouldn't want to voluntarily yield power over them to others. Being a dick to women is what misogynists do. Feminists want to do away with sexism, which is a set of systemic (usually unconscious) biases deeply engrained in culture. So the goal is to do away with sexism, and that, in turn, would probably result in a much more equal distribution.

trhway 12y ago

>I do believe that half(ish) of the women on any sort of government body should be women. yep. A real representative democracy is when for any government body of size N (city council, state House, etc...) and for any trait being present in more than 1/N share of the population governed by the body such trait must be possessed by a member of the body. If the trait is present in more than 2/N share of the population - then at least 2 member must possess it, etc...