I want a world where our physical bodies don't matter very much, or matter much less than they do today. I especially want a world where we don't care about ethnicity or gender.

But if, in 2015 October, I found myself worried about whether a woman would excel at programming, I would forgive myself somewhat, because in 20 years of obsessive playing with computers, I have never met a woman who I thought was as good as I am at computer bullshit. I have asked other people who I consider very good at computer bullshit whether they had met any really skilled women, and they also said no.

I believe such women exist. I believe there are women who are much better at computer bullshit than I am. I just think they're very rare.

If we have some notion whose roots seem to go very deep, is it possible that our brains are just telling us it's a good bet?

This is not to try to argue that we don't still have to strive to consider every case individually and to treat people fairly.