Hacker News Reader

Comment by dclowd9901 | Hacker News Reader

> which, according to several scientists, they are not

Good thing that's enough for a quorum. /s

There is absolutely no evidence that there is a biological imperative that prevents women from being as effective as men at software development. None. Zero. Zilch. Just about every disparity you can imagine can be categorically dismissed by upbringing and cultural side effects.

It doesn't even pass the sniff test: do you really think there's something inherent to the Y chromosome that allows better rote analysis?

View on HN

I'd just like to share, for those who didn't study psychology and don't know of the sex differences (ON AVERAGE) between men and women, it IS a scientifically established phenomenon, even at a few months of age (i.e. pre-culture).

Here's a really fun example: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/add_user.shtml [requires flash though]

Now I'm not going to say anything about engineering or anything like that. All I believe is that you can't rewrite science to align with your politics. Science has no political leaning.

Appreciate the addition to the conversation, but since it doesn't say anything about efficacy in engineering, I'm afraid it's just noise.

I don't think the author specifically claimed that men are better at engineering (if he did, I'd love if you could point me to where).

I think he said that biological mental differences on average are one possible component of why engineers tend to be men.

The memo didn't claim anything about efficacy in engineering, period.

It claimed some contribution of biology to career preference on average, which is absolutely supported by research :

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/

"We explored the contribution of sex hormones to career-related interests, in particular studying whether prenatal androgens affect interests through psychological orientation to Things versus People. We examined this question in individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), who have atypical exposure to androgens early in development, and their unaffected siblings (total N = 125 aged 9 to 26 years). Females with CAH had more interest in Things versus People than did unaffected females, and variations among females with CAH reflected variations in their degree of androgen exposure. Results provide strong support for hormonal influences on interest in occupations characterized by working with Things versus People."

Don't you think that, considering trying to get women into STEM fields is a pretty recent effort, jumping to the conclusion that "it must be because of biological reasons" that they are not interested and then we "shouldn't be doing anything"?

Would you have held the same opinion, had I said "well, there might be biological evidence that African-Americans are not interested in going through higher education, so we should not worry about trying to help poor black kids go through university" 40 years ago?

It's still a giant leap to say that women are less likely to choose roles in tech and leadership, as Damore did.

It's fair to claim that as a theory, but in many places in his memo, he speaks as if it is established scientific fact.

The existence of some differences is pretty well established. The relevance of those differences to software engineering is less so. As one example, here's a pretty thorough take-down of the Baron-Cohen experiment that Damore cites as part of his evidence.

https://www.recode.net/2017/8/11/16127992/google-engineer-me...

Then there's the fact that even in the presence of persistent individual differences greater diversity might be beneficial to the group as a whole. After all, if you're putting together a football team you might want more than one kind of player. Why should that same "different people for different roles" principle apply among software engineers at Google? People who harp on "the science" of Damore's memo should consider that there are plenty of scientific points involved other than the one about infant cognition.

Sure.

And I think what you're bringing up here is the debate I'd like to see.

I was lamenting that I'm not seeing that debate, but rather a blanket dismissal which seems disingenuous -- which I can only attribute to misguided, but well-meaning intentions.

I think the problem is the person at the center of the debate is not good with words.

He at times simultaneously says that he merely introduces the possibility that biological differences cause genders to choose different roles, and that biological differences cause less women to enter tech and leadership roles.

One statement sounds like unestablished scientific fact, and the other sounds like it's already been established.

Note that this is exactly what Trump does, and the more he speaks, the more people he activates on both sides of the debate.

Scientifically speaking, this feels pretty disingenuous. On the other hand, if you previously felt apathy was a problem in democracy, perhaps this is a cure.

> There is absolutely no evidence that there is a biological imperative that prevents women from being as effective as men at software development.

The memo doesn't make this claim.

Then in a pure meritocracy, why would they not succeed? Ergo the memo itself is a straw man.

Did you read the thing? It was very clearly about statistics. The message of the memo was not "women are biologically unfit for tech," it was, as a biological tendency, women are more likely to have traits which disincline them to have an interest in tech-related things, and therefore end up in tech.

To me this says very obviously that women can and are intellectually superior to men on individual cases. But we would not expect an even 50/50 distribution of tech interest among genders.

Feel free to refute that as a separate claim, but if your take from the memo was "all women are biologically inferior and cannot match or be better than men," then I would say you were not being intellectually honest when reading it.

It doesn't make that argument either. It makes the argument that since less women (will on aggregate) be interested in CS then men, less women will be in CS.

And that less women being interested in CS has _some_ basis in biological differences.

Whether you agree with that or not (the research does support it pretty strongly, but is certainly not settled), it is a reasonable argument.

The memo literally lists the biological/psychological traits of men and women that may have caused the gender gap in tech. (He tries to clarify that he is talking on a population level and not talking about individuals)

He is not talking about raw programming skills, but the tech environment. And then he goes on to point out how the tech environment could change so that more women would want to be a part of it, or to stay in it longer once they were in.

In other words, he was saying there is something in tech culture which is inherently less palatable for the average woman than the average man. He never claimed that the culture was good and the women were deficient. Instead he said the culture should change instead of artificially trying to fill it with equal ratio hires.

Can you cite where Damore explicitly states that? Or are you just regurgitating second hand information that was processed by a blogger that didn't read the memo?

> "There is absolutely no evidence that there is a biological imperative that prevents women from being as effective as men at software development."

straw man when applied to individuals

begging the question when applied to groups

twofer

Reply on news.ycombinator.com