Comment by forgottenpass | Hacker News Reader

Comment by forgottenpass | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one here that finds more issue with the open secret embedded throughout this article? The article is written from an assumption that we're powerless to overcome the desire to brand ourselves by the outward facing image of our chosen interests.

I should be careful not to state I'm not taking the position covered by the well-worn pre-rebuttal in the article. I'm not scoffing at this phenomenon. It's real and I'm wondering: why aren't we trying to make kids immune to it?

Instead all I see is people that want to exploit it and steer people into selecting careers such that the superficial representation found on a spreadsheet makes the commentariat happy.

e: It just comes across as working to makes your metrics look good, without reaching the underlying goals the metrics are less-than-perfect at measuring. If there really are societal issues keeping people that would have otherwise entered a "tech field" out, shouldn't fixing it be about helping everyone overcome the obstacles in achieving that step of self-actualization? Instead I just see social engineering designed to balance the gender ratio.

Well I'd say changing human behavior is harder than changing perceptions. And most of the article (outside of the behavioral bit about the sexism she experienced, which is unfortunately a harder problem) is therefore focused on perceptions, which seems very justifiable given this bit:

"As Dr. Cheryan points out, stereotypes are only partly true, and women who actually take classes in computer science don’t hold the same prejudices as women who get their ideas from pop culture."

So the male nerd culture aspects inside the system aren't as offputting as however the current popular stereotypes make them out to be. Sounds like there are some lower hanging fruit than changing people's desires.

(As to why we'd want to fix it in the first place... I don't know many tech companies right now that are satisfied with the size and depth of the talent pool. Getting more education to more people to become potential candidates could only help with that, and increased demand for a major tends to increase department size, so I don't think it's a zero-sum game with males losing out here. More people with at least a cursory or exploratory level of education in science could eventually lead to better policy around it, etc, too.)

The basic dogma of the modern activist is that reality follows language and culture, which implies that if activists can only adequately police language and fiction, real life will eventually match their desires. The world doesn't work that way, and activists efforts in this area are doomed to produce only frustration and an inevitable backlash, the beginnings of which we're now seeing.

Can you be more specific about how to make kids immune to this phenomenon? It's not clear to me which notion in the article you're responding to.

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