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Comment by microarchitect | Hacker News Reader

Sorry this is just sexist. And people like you who harbor and propagate sexist ideas like this are holding back our field.

Princeton's President Shirley Tilghman once said the following and I think it's a fitting quote that speaks directly to people like you.

"There are 25 years of good social science that demonstrate the many cultural practices that act collectively to discourage women from entering and continuing careers in science and engineering. The research is overwhelming, and it is there for anybody to see. On the other hand, the data that would suggest there are innate differences in the abilities of men and women to succeed in the natural sciences are nonexistent."

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If you believe this idea is false, why do you need to label it as a taboo thought-crime ("sexist")? (I didn't think that it was expressed in an aggressive or especially irrational way, in which cases some criticism might have been warranted).

If you believe this idea is false, why do you need to label it as a taboo thought-crime ("sexist")?

Expressing false ideas is not without cost. We have generation after generation of young women who are socially and culturally conditioned into believing that they're are unsuited for careers in science and engineering. The grandfather is another example of one the many insidious ways in which this happens. As a result, I believe it's completely unacceptable to speculate on these matters, especially when all you have to offer are some sexist opinions unsupported by data.

Furthermore, the labeling of the post as sexist is not a "taboo thought-crime", it's a statement of fact. The OP is clearly claiming that young men are better suited to succeed at programming today than women. What is this if not "a chauvinistic belief in the inferiority of women?" [1]

[1] (sexist) male chauvinist: a man with a chauvinistic belief in the inferiority of women

The OP is clearly claiming that young men are better suited to succeed at programming today than women. What is this if not "a chauvinistic belief in the inferiority of women?" [1]*

Actually I was claiming that young men are more likely to be interested in programming today than women. The culture of what it means to be a programmer has changed, and the idea of spending ten hours a day slinging Javascript around in order to query some database appeals to a fairly limited subset of the population, who tend overwhelmingly to be male. Whether this subset are the lucky few or the unlucky few is rather a matter of interpretation.

Like I said: Sudoku is fun when you do it for ten minutes a day. But doing it for a living would alienate the vast majority of people, and I'm fairly sure that the few who would be left to fill in those square for $120K a year would be mostly men.

ten hours a day slinging Javascript around in order to query some database appeals to a fairly limited subset of the population, who tend overwhelmingly to be male.

But doing it for a living would alienate the vast majority of people

As I said before these are just unsupported claims. And even if these claims were true, this doesn't mean that there is any genetic predisposition of any sort. In short, there's a lot of data to be gathered and analyzed before one confidently make such claims. In the absence of this data, claims like these are also known by the word prejudice.

I reiterate that I believe that your statements perpetuate cultural stereotypes that discourage women from entering careers in science and engineering.

I'd rather you didn't throw these unsupported claims out that IMHO serve no constructive purpose and simply muddy the water with apparently sexist views.

I presume that you will be around to cry foul every time someone claims women are better at dealing with interpersonal relations?

It's a debatable empirical question whether men or women have any innate advantage (or are statistically more likely to have an advantage) in any given field. If the evidence points one way, does that make reality sexist?

Young men are better suited to succeed at professional football today than women. What is this if not "a chauvinistic belief in the inferiority of women?" Simple answer: it's an objective fact.

I find it amazingly unlikely that men and women are identically suited to every type of work. Men and women have historically, on evolutionary time scales, focussed on different types of activities.

You say "I believe it's completely unacceptable to speculate on these matter". That is labeling something as an unacceptable thought. You're saying "I don't care what reality it, my morality trumps reality." You are advocating creating categories of taboo thought crime. I suggest you either reconsider the implications of you views, or admit that this is what you are advocating.

You're saying "I don't care what reality it, my morality trumps reality."

I said I'm against unsupported speculation, not against data. We have plenty of good reasons, supported by data, to believe that men make better professional footballers.

I am not aware of any peer-reviewed study that shows men are better suited to computer programming that women. What I said was that throwing around speculation in the absence of data was prejudice and I stand by this.

I also did not make the claim that men and women are equally suited to every type of activity. However, making the leap from "there might be some activities for which men are statistically better than women" to "computer programming is once such activity", especially in the absence of evidence in the form of rigorous peer-reviewed studies supporting your position, is sexism.

That is labeling something as an unacceptable thought.

You're free to think what you want. However, I suggest that you examine your thoughts closely and study whether there is any truth to them before posting them on a public forum. I'm asking for honesty not thought-policing.

> "I find it amazingly unlikely that men and women are identically suited to every type of work. Men and women have historically, on evolutionary time scales, focussed on different types of activities."

Vague statements with no justification or data; just as subjective as someone "feeling" the other way.

> "I suggest you either reconsider the implications of you views, or admit that this is what you are advocating."

False dichotomy. The parent has many options: to do neither, to clarify the context you stripped from the quote, or perhaps offer the data this discussion is lacking.

Here is a paper to jump-start the discussion about achievement gaps in general, which talks about ethnicity and gender:

http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/archive/nise/publications/Research_...

Now we can make substantiated claims and attack ideas, not each other.

Princeton's President Shirley Tilghman once said the following and I think it's a fitting quote that speaks directly to people like you.

A link to the research instead of a quote from someone asserting research exists would have been a stronger reply.

A relevant paper: http://www.pnas.org/content/108/8/3157.full

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