https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRT4vNEUIAEJgP3.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRT4vNAVAAAT8JP.jpg
They might be misguided or misinformed, but the underlying fact is that women are not as well represented in stem. Just because the reason it's more likely to be misogyny rather than any biological inclination, doesn't make it an outrageous statement in my opinion.
It completely neglects the actual history of the field of computing, even just the 20th century, where the field was filled with women.
It’s only once it became a prestigious field that women suddenly developed a “biological” inclination against it.
1) It was way before it became prestigious.
And
2) An explanation of this needs to account for a great and rapid shift in favor of women, as far as proportion-of-practitioners, that was happening at exactly the same time as the opposite shift in programming, in both law and medicine.
I don’t know what the actual reason is but “it got prestigious so women got pushed out” makes no sense to me, based on the timeline of events in full context. It was very much not prestigious in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, certainly far less so than law and medicine at that time (still isn’t as prestigious as those, outside tech circles—you can see it in people’s faces. It’s high-paid but lower-“class” than those, to this day)
Related, I think math went through a similar transition.
Something interesting that I think a lot of younger people don't appreciate: back in the day, unless your name was Hemingway, it was considered unmanly to touch a keyboard. Anything that involved a typewriter or anything else with a keyboard was distaff by definition, just so much secretarial work. Maybe a journalist's job, if you were feeling generous.
Sounds stupid as hell, and it was, but that's a big reason why women played an outsized part in the growth of computing. First as the 'calculators' in WWII, then as Baudot terminals started to take over, as keyboard operators.
Don't make the mistake of assuming they were all Grace Hoppers or Margaret Hamiltons or Adele Goldbergs, because that simply wasn't the case. Many of them might have been, though, in a less stereotype-driven world.
This is "controversial" in that it's a position that is not well supported by evidence and he has repeatedly used his platform in the past to make unsupported claims to the contrary.
He clearly has right leaning and libertarian views, and seems to be not very articulate or sensitive in how he discusses them so I can see why people might read into that more than they should maybe.
You can say whatever the hell you want. Or you could spend 3 minutes actually looking at public information to see if you're wrong.
You’re relying on blatant social media mischaracterizations over real actions.
He actually employs women at parity. You feel like this is unwelcoming.
One of those statements is data. The other is fanfic.
Now faced with evidence contrary to your beliefs, you're claiming you didn't say that. When presented with proof, It's ok to just admit that you were wrong.
Anyway, call it "defensive" all you want. It doesn't change the historical thread: You argued, at best, his views made the workplace unwelcoming; the data shows he hires women at parity. You're just backpedaling because the reality didn't match your narrative vibes.
Never forget that the social neglect is not exactly healthy, and programming isn't actually that prestigious and externally rewarding, except for maybe the compensation that you can currently earn in some places.
Adding that for example in math or other sciences, we are much closer to gender parity.
edit: speaking industry-wide. of course there are "not all men" type spaces in local communities.
There are a great number of studies of the social aspects of gender differences in work but I don't have a single authoritative source for you.
It is much easier to put in the hours of gaming when you're not repeatedly called for your rape or have someone trying to stalk you or similar aggressive behaviors towards people perceived as female in these spaces. I pretended to be a woman in gaming spaces for some time just to see if these women had a point and the level of harassment I experienced is way more than even my most unmoderated cod xbox days. It's a simple voice modulator in chat.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016726812...
Plus: Jon never said it's the "primary" factor, as you claim. He said it's a large factor, that doesn't apply at the individual level, but on average. Which is entirely factual and supported by copious amounts of research.
Just because people like you want to be offended by science, doesn't make it wrong, or controversial.
The very first sentence of the article you linked to says, "Occupational choices remain strongly segregated by gender, for reasons not yet fully understood."
So claiming that its for biological reasons is bullshit. You have no idea whether it is or not. And neither does Blow.
"not fully understood" -> "so we studied it" -> "here's what we found"
Besides that obvious point, the sentence you quoted says "not yet fully understood," not "we have no idea." Those aren't the same thing. We actually have substantial evidence pointing in a clear direction.
- The most egalitarian countries show the largest gaps, not the smallest. - Women exposed to elevated androgens in utero become more things-oriented despite being raised normally as girls. - Male and female monkeys show the same toy preferences we do. Nobody's socializing rhesus monkeys into gender roles. - A 1.28 standard deviation gap in every culture that emerges in infancy and grows as societies get freer is not what socialization looks like.
You're treating "not fully understood" as "both hypotheses are equally supported."
They aren't.
The evidence overwhelmingly favors a substantial biological component. Just because you don't like the implications of that, doesn't make it false.
Seethe harder.
Think harder kid.
You may believe that, but: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9898904/
That study found that when you test 14 monkeys alone in cages where they can’t actually move the toys, you don’t see the same sex differences as when 135 monkeys are tested in social groups with freely movable toys.
The authors themselves say the social context may be necessary for expression. That’s not evidence against biological contribution, but evidence that behavior requires context to manifest.
You don’t disprove hunger by noting that people don’t eat when there’s no food available.
Well, you "haven't read literature on the topic"[1] so maybe leave the speculation at the door or go out and read some literature to cite rather than presenting "ideas [you]'ve picked up that [you] can agree with" as "established"?
Knowing what does not explain something, doesn't tell you what does explain it.
So at that point you're not pointing to a specific confounder, you're basically saying "maybe there's something else." Sure, logically you can always say that. But if the evidence keeps stacking up in one direction and the only reply is "could be something," that's just refusing to update your view.
When the data consistently shows gaps widening as social strictures loosen, and your response is to blame an invisible, unmeasurable "conditioning," you aren't doing science at all. But you are insulating your belief from any possible counter-evidence.
Note that this outcome goes both ways. We can neither confirm that biology is the main driver nor confirm that it isn't. Life is not as certain as you want it to be.
All of the evidence is solidly on one side, so you’ve retreated to “we can neither confirm nor deny.”
I guess that’s progress?
You have to twist logic pretty fucking hard to find a reason for him to put 88 in his username. He's a guy who thinks he's way more clever than he is and gets upset when it gets pointed out to him.
But we live in a world where the least charitable interpretation of anything comes first, so shrug
Does that make a difference? You could levy the exact same argument about the other two in their respective countries in their respective times. Doesn’t make it OK.
Neither was slavery. Was that OK too? And to clarify (though it’s worrying this point needs to be made), I mean morally.
> throwing around certain bad words like fascist
Fascism has a very clear definition. It describes a particular set of behaviours and actions, all of which you can compare to reality and determine if it’s happening or not. It’s an objective word. If anyone is trying to “dismiss” anything, it’s the people pretending it’s subjective because they support its outcome.
Why is that? IMO it's because fascist slogans always tend to drift away from their actual meaning, towards things that are socially acceptable to say.
Back in Hitler's time, Hitler didn't give speeches about "Let's kill all the Jews" - he'd rather give speeches about "Let's clean up Germany" even though he clearly wanted to kill all the Jews. When Hitler says "Let's clean up Germany" and the crowd goes wild, you know they're going wild because they're wild about the idea of killing the Jews, not because they're wild about the idea of mopping the floor. At least I assume you would know that now, with the benefit of hindsight. You'd have to be living under a rock not to. And that's not a euphemism for "Let's kill all the Jews" specifically. It's a general euphemism for all the bad things he wanted to do with all the people. It's not like there's one euphemism for "Let's kill the Jews" and a different euphemism for "Let's gas the Jews" and a different euphemism for "Let's kill the gays". It's more like all the euphemisms point to all of the underlying true thoughts, all at once. One loose region of semantic space points to another loose region of semantic space.
You can see how Hitler could have started out saying what he actually meant, but to avoid scrutiny he'd drift towards more innocuous words, but anyone who's been following his whole campaign would know what was meant. It's a bit like Cockney rhyming slang - the pointer drifts until it has no surface-level relation to the pointee, but just because it's not surface-level obvious, doesn't mean it's unknowable (as people who pretend not to recognize the statements often claim).
And if I'm in Germany in 1932 and I'm following politics, and my friend says "I support cleaning up Germany" I'm going to do a double-take. I'm going to suspect he's not talking about mopping the floor and picking up litter. Though, if I'm in Germany in 1932 and I'm ignoring politics, I might reasonably assume that he is talking about those things and get quite confused why my other friend thinks he's a fascist.
In modern fascist dialogue, "men and women have differences" is a pointer to the semantic space containing statements like "women belong in the kitchen", which itself is pointer to the semantic space containing statements like "women should do what men tell them". You can see how this came about because saying "women should do what men tell them" would be unpopular, then fascists justified it with logic like "well women are biologically submissive and men are biologically dominant" and it over time it got watered down to stuff like "men are biologically different from women"
I of course get where you're coming from, but don't you think it is intellectually dishonest to try and police certain "obviously true statements"? Isn't it similar to banning kitchen knifes because they can be used to kill? Doesn't it put under suspicion a lot of people who are simply following their intellectual curiosity?
I would argue that the ideas you seem to be advertising can lead to similar societal catastrophes as the ones you're trying to prevent from reoccurring.
For sure, the misguided idea that men and women are absolutely, 100% the same, and that any other outcome than some equal distribution between males and females means there must be mysoginy and patriarchy at work (which I don't say you're proclaiming directly), has lead to a lot of real problems in the past decades. And that includes aggressive propaganda against males in general, and against some actually valuable male virtues as well as female virtues, in some circles.
Or if someone says "make America great again", today. I mean who doesn't want America to be great?
From the perspective of a pre-abolitionist society, it evidently was, but that's not a political issue you're gonna have to deal with in 2025. Consider yourself lucky.
> Fascism has a very clear definition.
First of all, that isn't true. Secondly, even if it was true, it wouldn't matter. You are using the word as a though-terminating cliché. That doesn't work in the long run, you'll just get ignored. As a result, you can pat yourself on the back for calling out fascism while all the behaviors and actions that you believe to be fascist are mainstreamed and affecting people's lives. If I was you, I'd be more worried about criticizing those behaviors and actions on their merits (or lack thereof), rather than trying to tie them to some textbook definition fascism and dismissing them wholesale.
...do you not also consider yourself lucky about this? Weird phrasing.
I sincerely doubt the slaves would agree with you. Just because one group was economically and societally OK with it, doesn’t make it morally OK.
> but that's not a political issue you're gonna have to deal with in 2025.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century
Again, I doubt the slaves would agree with you.
> Consider yourself lucky.
That’s a really strange comment. What does that mean?
> First of all, that isn't true.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism
Seems pretty clear to me.
> You are using the word as a though-terminating cliché.
Of course I’m not, I barely use the word. Pay attention to the person you’re replying to. What you’re doing is putting me in a box of other people you’ve seen online and making a bunch of wrong assumptions. You’re not engaging with the arguments, you’re fighting against a straw man in your imagination.
That is wrong, slaves were happy to be alive instead of killed in most societies. It wasn't "slavery or freedom" it was "slavery or death" in most cases. America is an exception there, but in most areas with slavery it was done to criminals that otherwise would have gotten the death penalty.
Christianity forbade enslaving Christians, so we just killed our criminals for the past thousand years, but before Christianity we practiced slavery as punishment of crime everywhere as people thought that was better than killing them.
I sincerely doubt a vegan would agree that eating meat is OK, but as a society, we agree that eating meat is OK. It might not be OK tomorrow, it might not be OK by some moral standard, but that's besides my point.
> That’s a really strange comment. What does that mean?
It means fighting for abolition then was a much tougher fight than the fight you have today.
> Of course I’m not, I barely use the word.
I may have misinterpreted your position to the effect of "look in the textbook, Trump is a fascist by definition". Indeed, I have seen "other people online" argue to that effect, and they weren't made of straw. If that's not the case, I apologize, but the point stands even if you're not the kind of person it should be aimed at.
The reason the advice is "do not flip the bozo bit" is because the default is to flip it. It's what people do naturally. If you're running around getting bozo bits flipped, you better know what you're doing.
It may well have been morally OK to most people (see: moral relativism), and since you're implying it wouldn't have been OK to you, it's worth pointing out that you probably wouldn't have done anything about it in the relevant time periods.
If you're an American you don't even need to try that hard to make moral relativism visceral: was the displacement (and far worse) of Native American tribes "OK"? I'd say no, but it isn't morally urgent enough to me or the 99%+ of Americans who are unwilling to pack their bags and return the entirety of two continents to the native descendants.