Let’s Use Hard Science to Help Tech Companies Advance Women
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When programming is lucrative and viewed as high status, it becomes a target for feminists and they push for more female coders. When it's not high status anymore (when the funding environment contracts again), girls will stop enrolling in CS as much and feminists will stop targeting it as a powerful job that needs more women.
It's my opinion that most women probably don't want to be programmers/ICs deep down, but in a bubble environment many women will gravitate towards CS because it's where the action is in the economy, and affirmative action makes it an artificially attractive choice for them.
We're depicting programming and software as the way of the future in business in order to hype startups, so if most women don't really enjoy coding, that's very problematic for feminists. So there is huge resistance to the idea that most women aren't that into coding.
It's like James mentions in his memo, from a logical perspective it's completely arbitrary to want to move women into software because it's mostly men, just like it would be arbitrary to advocate for more female miners or waste managers. The key to understanding the reaction to his memo is to acknowledge that it's born out of a feminist anxiety that if software is run by men, and the future of business is software, the future of business is still going to be dominated by men. So in context, his memo is really challenging the idea that women prefer economic equality.
Why is this your opinion?
Have you spoken to a lot of women? Have you conducted any kind of surveys or polls? Or are you just making up whatever fits your biases?
> It's like James mentions in his memo, from a logical perspective it's completely arbitrary to want to move women into software because it's mostly men
The naivete of HN never fails.
It's perfectly rational for any business to want more women. Or minorities. Or even more children. Every business in the world wants the deepest and biggest talent pool possible.
And of course, this is the real issue. Once programming is demystified and women do enter the field in force it'll be pretty hard for deeply mediocre javascript monkeys to command six figure salaries, won't it?
All the fuss, all the whining -- it's completely self-serving. The idea that women can thrive in law, medicine and hard sciences but they can't master CSS is laughable.
But here's the thing: it's not mastermind feminists who are driving this. It's capitalism. People can whine about feminism and uppity women taking their jerbs -- this is absolutely nothing new. Still, despite pervasive discrimination, the market is going to produce that talent. There was a time when people thought programming was difficult. Only eleet hackers could thrive in Sillicon Valley. Now middle schoolers build Android Apps in a couple of days.
In the end businesses are going to search endlessly for more and better talent, people will gravitate to the jobs that produce the most stable income streams, and everybody is going to strive to keep the market open and fair. You can fight this or whine about fantasy feminist schemes or you can embrace a future where the field has been dramatically opened to all comers.
> But here's the thing: it's not mastermind feminists who are driving this. It's capitalism.
"Have you conducted any kind of surveys or polls? Or are you just making up whatever fits your biases?"
To be honest: It is probably a mix of the societal pressure from feminists, and you are right capitalism too. The hard thing is that this is not hard science, no one can know the real ratio of the two. For me it seems you're stating this like every societal changes root was better productivity ( communism, French revolution ? ).
> The idea that women can thrive in law, medicine and hard sciences but they can't master CSS is laughable. I don't see women thrive in math, physics, engineering science, but I might be wrong. Biology is a good counter example though.
To be honest I think it is perfectly possible that you are right in everything! But I'm also sure that there is no human being on this planet who could say that he understands this problem 100% while being fully rational, and not let the emotions punch trough here and there.
The point of my comment is that: I see one side as "There might be other factors" and the other is "There are no other factors". The second one is a much harder statement.
> Why is this your opinion?
It is my opinion as well, and I'll explain why. I suspected it based on anecdotal evidence from women I talked to (small sample), but in the recent discussions, I found this very convincing (as you can see from my comment there): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15025724
Shhhhh, we're not supposed to mention incentives.
Yes. But why most women don't want to be programmers? Damore pointed to some reasons, but they are not convincing. Society makes girls to belive that CS is not for girls. There are some differences caused by hormone levels, but I belive that differences caused by nurture is much more influential.
> So in context, his memo is really challenging the idea that women prefer economic equality.
Maybe. But the point is if this is so, than this preferences should be considered carefully and probably equalized.
Why does it matter so much for everybody, whether the preference is nature or nurture? I like garlic, and hate cauliflower, and my mother's preferences are exactly opposite. It is quite obviously a nurture thing. Does it mean, ipso facto, that I should change? Or she should change? There is nothing wrong with having preferences determined by nurture!
Because you cannot change nature, while nurture can be changed. If there are huge differences caused by nature, then it would be stupid to invest efforts to remove this differences by changing society. If there are huge differences caused by nurture, then changes to society can change nutrure and reduce differences.
> I like garlic, and hate cauliflower, and my mother's preferences are exactly opposite. It is quite obviously a nurture thing. Does it mean, ipso facto, that I should change?
No, it does not. Any improvement is a change, but not every change is an improvement. Changes is not the terminal goal but instrumental one. If there are reasons to make everyone to like garlic and to hate cauliflower, then we should consider to change nurture to change individual preferences. If there are no reasons than there are nothing to consider.
If your preferences lead to economic inequality, if this preferences make hard to you to find job you like, than you should change your preferences, or at least shouldn't allow them to propagate to your descendants.
> There is nothing wrong with having preferences determined by nurture!
I cannot agree more.
Except they can't, by definition (hence the word, "preference", as in prefer A to B). If you accept a less paid position A rather than better paid position B, because you prefer doing job A rather than job B, then it's a CHOICE. Why you should be forced to take position B for some higher societal goal of "equality"? That's completely insane, and I say that as a leftist who understands what is economic inequality (which is always, by definition, driven by either lack of choice or non-rational choices).
Moreover preferences is something that person could change. For example one can stop smoking, drinking, or start to love math. But not everyone is able to do it. It needs some psychological traits that not everyone possesses.
You seems to believe that person have free will from birth and have ability to consciously choose which preferences she would have as an adult. if you are than it is the second your mistake. If person nurtered in white supremacy environment from birth to twenty, it would be very hard for him to change his views later. It would be very hard to society to change his view later. Because as I said, not everyone is capable to change himself.
I do not know when person becomes able to think himself about his preferences and choose them consciously. Is it age of 12, 18, 21? I don't know, really. But I'm sure that at age of 12-16 when the love or hate to math can be nurtured, person is not ready to manage strategically his/her personality traits. No one at that age is ready.
And notice, than I didn't even tried for now to talk about how girls average attitude to math affects society in a way to make society more unequal for girls who like math. One of the reasons why I'm afraid to touch this topic is my bad English, it is hard to me to think such an ideas in English. I'm more stupid when I think in English. Therefore I need to think such a controversial ideas in one language and than translate to other. It is a pain and translation inevitable lose something. The other reason: before we start to discuss society we need to find some common understanding what person is.
> I say that as a leftist who understands what is economic inequality
If you was a PhD in social sciences I might want to get two days pause to rethink all my understaning of inequality and personality before continuing to argue. If you was a PhD in STEM I might just ignore that, because it didn't matter when we speak about society. But "leftist" or "democrat" or any other political attachment is not an evidence of deeper than average understanding. Even other way round: people who have political attachment tends to be believers and to have faith. Therefore there are more likelyhood that their views is not better then average.
It's your approach that's very patronizing. You are effectively saying that you know better than somebody else. I believe people should be considered to have free will (not saying they actually have it, by the way) and make their own choices in life (mostly - children and mentally ill are the exceptions).
I hear the same argument you present in other contexts. For example, muslim women should not be allowed to wear hijab because it's a sign of oppression. No, sometimes these women decided to do it, because they consider it as a part of their culture, and it has nothing to do with oppression. Unfortunately, some people choose to misinterpret it as a political choice, but that's an error those people make.
Or it was raised against gays - that what they do is immoral and therefore they should change their sexual behavior.
> I didn't even tried for now to talk about how girls average attitude to math affects society in a way to make society more unequal for girls who like math
Because that's a bad argument to begin with. The girls have some preferences, and make some choices, and whatever they are, those girls should not be held morally responsible for how society treats them as a result! That's blaming the victim. It's the same argument as the one against hijabs, which I mention above. It's important that they have the choice (also known as "non-discrimination"), and that's it. (Actually also important is that they can change their mind later, if they want.)
> If you was a PhD in social sciences I might want to get two days pause to rethink all my understaning of inequality and personality before continuing to argue.
Don't give me that! Again, it's very patronizing and undemocratic idea (coming from Plato, among other places), that people who don't have PhD in social science or what not cannot have a preference in social issues. Or that we cannot make an informed choice.
Yourself, you show not understanding even elementary philosophy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
Of course I am a democrat and leftist and I have an excellent idea why and what these terms mean.
> Therefore there are more likelihood that their views is not better then average.
Of course, my view is not better than average, and you should understand it by now. I don't have a better idea about life than a young woman who decides not to work in computing, or to wear a hijab. Unlike you, who would probably want to dictate them.
And you should totally read this after two days and rethink your position. Because your position is actually more conservative (patronizing) than mine.
Yes. I agree with it. It maybe tempting to change preferences of adults without asking them first, but it is unethical and therefore forbidden.
I'm not arguing to change preferences of adults. Its up to them. They can like everything that they want to like. But society has his rights, and it could demand to exclude sexism or racism from speech, if there are reasons for it. One can be racist, it is his free will, but he shouldn't speak about it publicly.
If society wants gender equality and too few women in STEM leads to inequality rise, than society can change it by foridding sexism talk, by changing education practices, by using media to educate adults and so on. Society can create environment where any sensible parent would try to make her daughters to like math and her sons to not being sexist.
> Again, it's very patronizing and undemocratic idea (coming from Plato, among other places), that people who don't have PhD in social science or what not cannot have a preference in social issues. Or that we cannot make an informed choice.
Stop thinking politics. Here and now we involved in discussion, not in democratic voting. Try to see the difference. You can speak what you want, but it is mine decision would I change my mind or I wouldn't. It is not your decision, and not decision of society. It is mine decision. You tried beautiful argument "I'm leftist", I answer you that such an argument has negative value for me, it devalues your opinion in my eyes.
> Yourself, you show not understanding even elementary philosophy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
Yes. I do not understand this problem. I have read those article before, and was unable to find some concrete example of such a problem. And, you know, I cannot understand abstractions without examples. Have never succeed with such a task.
Can you explain what mistake I've done on this concrete example without referring to some abstract ideas?
> Of course, my view is not better than average, and you should understand it by now. I don't have a better idea about life than a young woman who decides not to work in computing, or to wear a hijab.
If your view is not better that average then why do you bother youself explaining it? Are you think that I'm lower than average and didn't understand average views already? If so, do you really believe than you are better at explaining than others, and you can explain me some average ideas which I cannot understand?
> Unlike you, who would probably want to dictate them.
No. Maybe I failed to explain myself clearly, but I didn't say nothing like this.
> And you should totally read this after two days and rethink your position. Because your position is actually more conservative (patronizing) than mine.
One more time: its not more patronizing. But the idea is: I would not spend two days on thinking only because someone in internet believes that my views conservative or patronizing. I could spend two days if I have reasons to. For example if someone who is clearly knows better than me cannot agree with me. Or if I encounter some arguments which show me that my views is contradictory. But I will not spend two days thinking just because someone marked my opinion with some political labels.
But why should "society" want gender equality, if the individuals, that comprise it, don't?
Consider the following paraphrase:
"If society wants traditional family values, and people being gay lead to erosion of these values, then society can change it by forbidding homosexuality. Society can create environment where every sensible parent will want their kids not to be gay or lesbian."
This is often argued from conservative side, under assumption that homosexuality is all nurture. You argue the same way against women's preference against computer science, again, under assumption of nurture (which is quite likely to be wrong according to science).
So here is the is-ought fallacy of yours. This is a moral issue (what _ought_ be), regardless of the actual origin (nature or nurture) of the people's usual preferences, which are what _is_.
To be fair, I don't have a big problem if that "society decision" is a democratic vote (that is one person one vote) on the matter. But it's important to realize that this goes against moral preferences of many people, which are more liberal (including mine).
> "If society wants traditional family values, and people being gay lead to erosion of these values, then society can change it by forbidding homosexuality. Society can create environment where every sensible parent will want their kids not to be gay or lesbian."
> This is often argued from conservative side, under assumption that homosexuality is all nurture. You argue the same way against women's preference against computer science, again, under assumption of nurture (which is quite likely to be wrong according to science).
Um... It is just a little more complex.
Of course, it would be nice, if we was able to start with moral judgement, select terminal goal, and only then start to search for ways to reach that goal. But we are not omnipotent, and therefore while finding solutions for social problem we need to take into consideration possible ways to implement those solutions. It would be not very bright to select unrealistic goals. For example, if homosexuality is all nature, than it would be difficult to get rid of it, it would be either impossible or would need some kind of eugenics with artifically guided evolution, which is morally bad and no-no.
I didn't touch question "is equality good or bad". It is some kind of ethical question. I assume that equality between men and women is good and important fight now because it is the current consensus in society.
So, equality is the terminal goal. Equality is ought to be, right? Then we must find the best way to it. And for it we should know nature it or nurture, because if it nature than the terminal goal can be unreachable. For finding the best way to archieve equality we need to investigate causes of inequality, we need to know is this causes are nature or nurture ones, because without this knowledge we probably would try to do stupid things which will not work. And probably our investigations reveal that there are no acceptable way to archieve perfect equality, than we would need to find some compromise, to solve some kind of optimizational problem dealing with tradeoffs.
> To be fair, I don't have a big problem if that "society decision" is a democratic vote (that is one person one vote) on the matter. But it's important to realize that this goes against moral preferences of many people, which are more liberal (including mine).
Of couse such a facts we all should know, but there are historical examples when opinion of some big groups of democratic society didn't matter. For example, ~50 years ago there was a lot of white supremacist, but society decided that their views is their problem and shouldn't be considered while changing society.
Accepting or rejecting views of some group is moral judgement somewhere on the level of finding terminal goals for society. I'm not ready for such a judgements, moreover I'm not USA citizen and it is just not my problem. All my speculations based on assumption that equality is good and society is ready to do something about it.
My evidence is anecdotal, but it's strong. I first noticed this after months of teaching at a coding school, but I found, with cohort after cohort, women reliably outperform the men. Note they're dramatically underrepresented (15 to 1). The interesting thing is that whatever the reason for their underrepresentation—be it oppression or biology, or a mix of the two—these women self-select into an elite group by braving a predominantly male environment. Odds are they're good at programming.
My point is that if you belong to a minority in a competitive environment, it's important to consider the upsides too, in addition to the real and steep obstacles.
Remember reading about how what Damore wrote was "violence". Wonder what those who suffered from physical violence such as rape think when "violence" is used in such a context...
Then in general it seems like firing him was admitting defeat. Google could have responded by compiling a set of studies to disprove what they claimed were obviously wrong and misguided ideas. Surely they have enough people who know how to compile a research survey.
At the same time I bet Damore knew that this was going to lead to termination. He forced their hand publicly and they responded as any beaurocracy would be expected. There was basically 0 chance they would have said "oh thanks for the research and suggestions we will review and redesign some of our policies after you've publicly shamed us".
It seemed to them on the surface they won that battle but at the same time the admitted defeat too. It is a bit like someone responding to an argument where peer reviewed research is presented with "well, your mom is fat and you're stupid". That ends the argument, for sure, and the person saying it feels they've won the argument. But everyone else sees it as admitting defeat more or less.
The more interesting thing I found was that some "news" outlets like Gizmodo, chose to publish the letter but omitted the research. That seems strange. If one didn't know any better, they might assume they secretly agreed with the points made and did everything they could to promote them further. Few things work as well as deliberate and obvious censorship to make people pay attention.
I went to Harvey Mudd. What you are saying is flat out wrong. Harvey Mudd does not have "schools", it's a single 800 person college for godsake. Maybe you're confused about the claremont colleges as a whole? You apply to the claremont colleges individually, of which Harvey Mudd is one. That's it. You don't even know what you're majoring in until the end of your sophomore year, just like MIT.
The reason Mudd has so many female cs majors is actually quite simple: the president of the school is a computer scientist and personally talks to individual female students to try to push them towards computer science.
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/6sia2q/gend...
One other key factor that hasn't been mentioned yet: Harvey Mudd requires all first-year students to take their intro CS course
I've been arguing for a long time that simply forcing everyone to try CS (the way we force everyone to try math, English, history, etc) would go a long way towards closing these gaps. I think it's fantastic that they're doing that.
As someone who nearly went there (accepted but opted for one of their rivals), it's disappointing to see.
Ref: http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/08/02/540603927/a-colleg...
(That's now inaccessable (403 Forbidden), and the page that linked to it, "http://tsl.news/news/6611/", is failing with a Ngnix error (502 Bad Gateway).)
I got to read it before it went down, and it sounded like they'd reached the student workload levels associated with the first two years of any serious engineering school. Their restructured student body wasn't ready for that.
[1] https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/content_link/S4gumhMUSUdKB...
Also, the first two years at an engineering school is awful by definition. Generally by then you learn to a) prioritize, b) take the right combo of classes, or c) go somewhere else. I opted for a & b but many friends and smart people opted for c.
The science is out when it comes to determining a biological basis gender preferences for tech or leadership.
The whole idea that we have to dress up a topic in well-meaning white lies because feelings might get hurt is what has been making me less and less receptive to certain messages and points of view.
The way I understood it is that the paragraph talks about white lies, not that the paragraph itself tells white lies.
It seems unheartful and even cruel, but I see no way how society can solve its problems without ability to talk about those problems.
Funny thing, but when I think about Russia's law that can charge for hurting religious feelings, I see the reasons behind that. It is not that I agree with it, but it is a perfectly rational thing to make society more religious and more governable, to create a society of obedient slaves, by promoting The Orthodox National Idea, instead of The rotten Communist National Idea. I can hardly believe that it'll lead to a good end, but at least we can see, that those who behind this promoting think at least one step ahead.
When I think about feminists fighting science, I see no rationality in their behaviour, it is counter-productive way to deal with problems. Their behaviour seems for me as just emotional reaction where thinking used only to find clever rationalizations for emotions.
) I'm not totally agree with Damore, I belive that he misses some important points, so it is arguable is his opinion is the science, but the point is his loudest opponents just reject all science Damore referred to.
Every time I visit San Francisco, the heart of America's tech economy, I walk down Market Street and view dozens of adult human beings, many with traumatic brain injuries and psychological problems, living like animals, sleeping in tents, defecating directly on the ground and begging for help.
In the richest country in the world, at the very heart of the tech industry...let me repeat this again, we have scores of people living in abject poverty...exactly like animals.
After multiple viewings of this situation, I stopped looking at the homeless people and I started noticing the people walking past these individuals: Staring down at their phones, the residents of Silicon Valley have trained themselves to wear blinders to the abject, deplorable poverty of their fellow men. They are Tweeting, Facebooking, Instagramming, SnapChatting their lunch.
Solving easy problems. Making easy statements. Liking the right comments and the right posts, retweeting the appropriate social messages. So simple and easy! Click! Like! Done!
As I stood in line at one bodega, I noted the professional and skilled manner in which a white collar worker like myself standing in line completely failed to look at, respond to or acknowledge the presence of a drug addict who was begging him for change.
What a wonderful technique, I thought to myself. I had been doing it all wrong previously by even remotely acknowledging the homeless whenever they hassled me on the street. After observing this man's behavior, I adopted it. I learned: Just pretend they don't exist and they will go away.
So back to my main point:
Silicon Valley is a corrupt, horrible place that has decided it's #1 problem to be solved is the gender imbalance in software engineering. Instead of focusing on solving the clear, heart rending, abject poverty around them, the entire tech industry has collectively jammed it's head deep, far into it's own anal cavity and decided that the optimal use of all of it's social justice time should be on ensuring that highly privileged women who have attended universities and received educations which fairly guarantee that they will achieve salaries that only .01% of the entire globe will ever achieve are the most pressing concern of the moment.
Every single day I see nothing but a relentless circular pounding on this topic. Women must learn to code! Women must learn to code! Women must learn to code!
The other half of the issue is just as fun: Our #1 issue as an industry is that women who are in the very upper 0.5% of the world must earn slightly more money. About 3%-5% more money. Yes, THAT is the issue we must harp on constantly all day, every single day online.
And the people living like animals on the streets we are ignoring? Yeah, fuck them, lets teach girls to code.
That requires ensuring everybody that wants a job has one unless exempted by age or infirmity.
Having more jobs than people means that the workers have the upper hand in wage negotiations. They always have another option.
And if there is one thing business hates, it's having to compete - particularly for workers.
A society that cannot work out that healthcare should be based upon need, not ability to pay, is already moribund and dying on the inside.
Businesses would never let this happen though, they would just lobby the government to let them bring in more workers from other countries until they have the upper hand again. The third world has virtually an endless supply.
ftfy
Anyway, I'll be back in SF in a week or two. Please organize a group to address these poverty issues, post the time and place, and I'll donate some time.
Most of the homeless aren't intelligent enough to code. Since no profit can be made from them, it's not a priority.
This is what happens when capitalism goes unchecked. Profit is the largest priority in the world.
Not by making it seem special or different and accommodating.
Make it cool --make young girls as excited about working in STEM as they are about working in TV or Hollywood, being a Pharmacist or Lawyer.
Trying to fix things after that is not as productive and is more interventionist.
While saying that, don't dissuade boys from it. Just keep on trying to persuade girls more. Offer more classes to accommodate everyone interested.
I mean, if the soviets could mobilize their women to be top notch scientists by creating a pipeline from elementary school on, so can we.
I'd also mention that interacting with some homeless people can be dangerous and deadly. I've been attacked a few times while living in SF because I used to have a rule of engaging the homeless as normal people if they approached me, back when I had naive principles; I don't do that anymore, after being assaulted twice, once with a knife. While only a small percentage of the homeless are dangerous, that small percentage really do kill people (3 murders via homeless-on-local violence within a block of my place over the past few years), so anyone can go fuck themselves if you think I'm being heartless for not engaging anymore. Self preservation trumps compassion.
lol
That you're sick of hearing something because you don't want it to happen doesn't mean that others are obsessed with it. It only means you're oversensitive to the topic.