Comment by wallace_f | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wallace_f | Hacker News Reader

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>it doesn't seem like

Unfortunately, in our political climate one side of this debate has people who can say, "it seems like" and that's it. "It seems like" [...] 'we have a huge problem of sexism and racism' and if you argue against that you're this evil monster, as you described:

>most people [don't] even give a shit about equality of opportunity, even those who pay lip service to it. I think most people don't want to be challenged on anything that makes them the slightest bit uncomfortable (like having unconscious biases or structural racism pointed out).

The fact is we already have things like state-sponsored racist entrance policies to our most prestigious educational programs. In law school, it can be several standard deviations worth of LSAT points-- that is a VERY big deal. Even pointing this out, though, means someone is going to flip this on its head and misconstrue it, calling me the evil monster you described.

As I said in another comment, you're never going to see equality of outcome. The NBA will never be dominated by people of Asian descent. Women will never be asking for equal "opportunity" working jobs in the north sea on offshore oil rigs. Women will always have longer lifespans and higher average IQs than men. Men will always have more statistical outliers existing in the "fat tails" of male distributions relative to distributions of women. People are different. It doesn't mean better, or worse. For example, I'm not that exceptionally good at maths, but my friend is -- he's not any better of a person than I, though, and no sane person would make that argument. There's nothing wrong with being different. Demanding that everyone be the same will end up with us in Harrison Bergeron's world, and in that long-run scenario everyone ends up losing except those who take joy in ruling over others.

I believe it important to ensure everyone has equal outcome with respect to human rights, civil rights, and human dignity. There is no good reason why we cannot provide everyone with these. I believe that's where attention should be focused, and we're getting off track by pretending everyone is the same and demanding that the only reason for anything else is that the NBA is racist against Asians! (or coding companies are racist/sexists against whomever it is that doesn't have coding jobs).

OK, I'll bite, why exactly do you believe women don't want the opportunity to work on oil rigs?

http://www.warrensiurek.com/blog/2015/04/5-women-claim-gende...

>The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed a claim on behalf of five women against an oil drilling company in another state. According to the complaint, the women applied for jobs to work as floor hands on the oil rigs, but they were turned down. The women allegedly all had the proper qualifications to be able to perform the functions of the job.

>The women were allegedly told that females were not hired on the rig because it was populated by all men and that women would not fit into the company's "man camp" mentality. The women also claim they were turned down because they were too attractive. If they were hired, they were purportedly told they would be a distraction to the men, who would be unable to get their work done.

No sane person genuinely believes just as many woman as men want to work on oil rigs, or that it's even close. That's a very surprising case, yet very American, lawsuit though.

If it's surprising to you that there are women who want to work on oil rigs, and want that badly enough to go through the trouble of making a case out of it, then you may need to update your beliefs about what it means to be a woman.

Nice moving the goal posts there, this is what I was replying to

"Women will never be asking for equal "opportunity" working jobs in the north sea on offshore oil rigs."

QED

I will not be engaging you further.

Use of the word 'never' opened me up to an 'exception to the rule' attack. It was not the most careful word choice, and so I stand corrected that there are 5 women who apparently wanted to work offshore. I'm not talking about 5 women. We're talking about trends. There are always exceptions.

OK, so convince me you're right. Ignoring your condescending, short-termpered, dismissive remark based on attacking some minutiae in what I said (that we can both agree doesn't change anything), we now have an example of one very American, money-making lawsuit, representing 5 people. Alright, so what substantial movement can you source to convince me that you are right that women are seeking equal representation working on oil rigs in the north sea? What about auto mechanics? Plubming? There's many entrepreneurial businesses such as those that require no hiring decision. Why are women so underrepresented there? The work is much less physically demanding or as dangerous as working on off shore oil rigs.

The first 5 women who are seeking jobs on an all-male oil rig perhaps have a form of bravery that is a couple standard deviations from the median.

But if they win their case and help to integrate oil rigs, it seems the next 5 women to seek a job on an oil rig will be easier to find. Fields that are not diverse are less attractive to diversity candidates, but that doesn't mean that diversity candidates wouldn't be interested in working in a more integrated environment.

>Unfortunately, in our political climate one side of this debate has people who can say, "it seems like" and that's it.

The joke is that everybody does that. Most people are just totally blind to their own side's issues.

Now watch as people begin commenting to say that their side isn't like that..,

> Women will always have longer lifespans and higher average IQs than men

Then why is it that on average they get paid less than men for the same job? Surely if they are inherently "smarter", they should be dominating the knowledge economy and earning more than men. The fact that they don't points to some greater opposing force that needs addressing.

What would you say about chess, go, leading physicists, e-sports, professional sports, scientific breakthroughs, notable inventions? Do we need Magnus Carlsen to step aside for a woman 3 standard deviations below him, or a woman from an underrepresented minority 5 standard deviations below him, as is done in law school admissions? What conspiracy exists among corporations, whose existence is based on nothing more than profit, that the real priority is the #1 motivation of corporations is actually to hire men over women? If women are underpaid as enormously as Cosmopolitan claims, an all-woman business would out-compete the marketplace with a fraction of the personnel costs. That's the way the marketplace works.

Every single person should be given every opportunity as every other, but we shouldn't continue this state-forced results based on people's personal politics about how they believe the world works.

Why do we have issues with providing everyone with healthcare, clean water, and safety... We're bombing seven countries, funding jihadists in Syria, creating a surveillance police state. Some US cities have murder rates higher than any country in Africa or the Middle East. We can't provide everyone with housing, and we can't successfully protect our environment. Give me a break. This issue is not about human welfare, dignity or equality. This is about people's personal politics and lawyers finding a way to cash in on laws that may have been well intentioned but since gone out of control.

Generally when you control for the number of hours worked, the pay gap mostly goes away. Women on average take much more time off to bear and raise children. The disagreement is mostly over whether this is an appropriate thing to control for. Some argue that we should take steps to ensure that taking time off for childcare doesn't hurt women's careers. Some argue that women feeling the need to take more time off is exactly the problem and we should change our culture so that childcare responsibilities are more equitably shared. I don't think you'd find anyone who has studied this issue who thinks the main source of the pay gap is still discrimination.

Men and women aren't equally incentivised to seek high paying jobs. Dating site statistics show a strong correlation to success for men and how much they earn, but not for women. Their correlation is with attributes like age and self-care.

The social ladder and ranking is also attached to the same incentives. A mans ranking is (mostly) based on his ability to support a family. A womans ranking is (mostly) based on her ability to raise a family. As sad and depressing that is, the message it sends on a cultural level is that no one wants to be near a poor male or infertile female. On the flip side, women are not punished by society for not focusing on maximizing earning potentials, and men aren't punished by society for not focusing self care and longer lifespans.

Going even darker when looking at incentives for earning and lifespans, we can look at the link between low income for men and suicide. About a factor of about 1000% according to some studies when comparing high vs low income. Suicide is also the most common cause of death for men at ages 15-50. The negative impact from unemployment (and low income jobs) effects men more, and a natural conclusion would be that the incentives to avoid it is thus stronger.

That ignores other factors unrelated to simple IQ. E.g. Women have to give birth to children, and are more likely to want to take care of them.

So yeah, sure, if you look at the scenario in simple isolation, then you could argue that there is a "greater opposing force".

maybe men on average get paid more because they need to be incentivized to take jobs because they're more likely to die on the job (20x more likely than women).

> Surely if they are inherently "smarter", they should be dominating the knowledge economy

Does the CEO have the highest IQ in the company? Is the president the most intelligent person in the country?

Well, certainly not as of tomorrow!

Great. Now I need a hug.

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