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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I'd trust the guy who wrote "The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently" on gender issues.

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I read a bit of his stuff and he seems reasonably cogent (with perhaps a bias towards ignoring the cultural basis of gender roles), but with a tendency for poorly considered word choices that get him into trouble. The full context for your quote is here:

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102881506316/im-a-what

He addresses your direct quote explicitly lower down the page:

"I realize I might take some heat for lumping women, children and the mentally handicapped in the same group. So I want to be perfectly clear. I’m not saying women are similar to either group. I’m saying that a man’s best strategy for dealing with each group is disturbingly similar."

Is there not still something condescending in proclaiming that a man's best strategy for dealing with women is to deal with them in the same way one would deal with children or the mentally handicapped? It sure seems condescending to me...

Sadly, assholes can be right, too. Having a good asshole filter doesn't mean you have a good 'this person is right' filter, or vice-versa.

"I’m not saying women are similar to either group"

I'm just lumping them together in the same group. Uh huh.

And he continues:

> You don’t punch a mentally handicapped guy even if he punches you first. And you don’t argue when a women tells you she’s only making 80 cents to your dollar. It’s the path of least resistance. You save your energy for more important battles.

Which is kind of a good point. I definitely don't argue with Christians about evolution because it's clearly a waste of time and I have more important things to do.

...a good point, horribly argued. You don't punch a mentally handicapped guy because he is mentally handicapped and is not responsible for what he is doing. How does that relate to a woman only making 80 cents on the dollar? It's an awful, awful analogy.

The implication is that a mentally handicapped man shouldn't do what he does but can't be blamed because he isn't responsible. But women should complain about earning 80c on the dollar.

You probably think you're doing women a favour with this nitpicky attitude, but it only trivializes the focus of the issues to the wording choice of a single fucking person. Let the little things slide.

I'm not arrogant enough to think that "women" care one bit about what I'm doing.

it only trivializes the focus of the issues to the wording choice of a single fucking person

Have you been on Hacker News before?

>How does that relate to a woman only making 80 cents on the dollar?

Because women don't make 80 cents on the dollar, unless you think brain surgeons and hairdressers ought to make the same amount of money.

Amazing people still believe that, despite the evidence staring them in the face.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/upshot/the-pay-gap-is-beca...

"Are women paid less than men because they choose to be, by gravitating to lower-paying jobs like teaching and social work? [...] But a majority of the pay gap between men and women actually comes from differences within occupations, not between them — and widens in the highest-paying ones like business, law and medicine according to data from Claudia Goldin, a Harvard University labor economist and a leading scholar on women and the economy."

Amazing people put forth that bogus 81 cents number and then start talking about data as if it supported their position. I was just pointing out that number was obviously fraudulent as it doesn't take occupation into account. But what happens when we look at education, occupation, hours worked, willingness to travel, etc?

"This study leads to the unambiguous conclusion that the differences in the compensation of men and women are the result of a multitude of factors and that the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify corrective action. Indeed, there may be nothing to correct. The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers."

http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20...

Amazing that the other reply to my post told me to not have such a "nitpicky attitude" [1] when another tells me that such nitpicking is crucial. It's almost as if people are doing any mental gymnastics they can to derail conversation into insignificant side roads rather than the actual issue at hand.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9279813

Amazing that after I present actual data you try to deflect by replying to my post with a criticism of something someone else wrote, completely ignoring the subject.

You clearly didn't get my point. For one, I'm not the one that brought up the 80 cents figure. But is it 80 cents? 70? 90? That's not the actual issue. Does sexism exist in tech? If yes, how about talking about that?

It's like entering into a conversation about how to fix the problem of racism within the police by asking "ah yes, but how racist are they?".

Sure, let's talk about sexism. My company has a program by which women are promoted even though a man with the same skills and experience would not be promoted. Does this seem fair to you?

Somehow I doubt I'll be able to find a lawyer to take the case if I sue.

I can't reply to your comment below:

> You clearly didn't get my point. For one, I'm not the one that brought up the 80 cents figure. But is it 80 cents? 70? 90? That's not the actual issue. Does sexism exist in tech? If yes, how about talking about that?

> It's like entering into a conversation about how to fix the problem of racism within the police by asking "ah yes, but how racist are they?".

I don't understand how you can speak critically of people asking the most mature, rational and productive question in the situation. You can't make a plan to deal with a problem if you don't have at least some idea of how big it is.

  Person A: "The dam is overfilled, we need to drain some of the water." 
  Person B: "Oh, really?  How do you know it's overfilled and how much water do you think we should drain?"
  Person A: "OH MY GOD I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU HAVE THE NERVE TO ASK ME THAT!  CLEARLY YOU *WANT* THE DAM TO BE OVERFILLED, DON'T YOU?!?"
  Person B: "..."

This is a pretty shitty article.

> Take doctors and surgeons. Women earn 71 percent of men’s wages — after controlling for age, race, hours and education.

> A pharmacist who works 40 hours a week generally earns double the salary of a pharmacist who works 20 hours a week, and as a result, the pay gap for pharmacists is one of the smallest.

These two quotes reveal that "controlling for hours" means "calculating per-hour wage", i.e. the underlying assumption is that the wage should depend linearly on the number of hours worked.

Which is obviously not true. Take finance, for example. If you're not willing to work 50, 60 hour weeks, you won't just get paid proportionally less; what will happen is that your career will stagnate, you won't get promoted, or might even get fired!

Also, personally I definitely want to be paid "disproportionately" for all the hours I do outside my "normal" working hours - after all, I want some time to enjoy life as well!

The final suggestion in this article is that workers should strive to make themselves as replaceable as possible. But this is, IMO, the worst advice possible; it won't have the effect of "averaging" the wages to make them more equal; instead, the best performer's wages will be pushed down to match the worst performer's wages, as it will no longer be possible to differentiate workers by performance. Brave New World!

Just...most Christians believe in evolution just fine. Its a few fundamentalists that don't, and ya, I don't want to argue with them either, not worth the energy.

> most Christians

[citation needed]

Given that the most mainstream support for evolution in Christianity involves the magical hand of the Lord pushing every last selection, I don't know that I'd say they believe in it "just fine," more that they believe in a really bastardized version of it so they stop looking silly.

I can't believe I have to argue about this. Ok, citations...

The pope believes in evolution:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/10/28...

A lot of the Christians in the world are catholic, you know. I guess if you want to be American-centric though, so lets go to Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution

There is a nice chart there, but...

> Molleen Matsumura of the National Center for Science Education found, of Americans in the twelve largest Christian denominations, at least 77% belong to churches that support evolution education (and that at one point, this figure was as high as 89.6%).

Really, I'm probably an Atheist also (though I don't identify as one, I just don't believe in God), and the only time I have to deal with creationists is in small town America (evangelicals), but they are not the overwhelming majority of Christians (I guess...I don't really ask).

And if they say they believe in evolution, why doubt them? Why accuse them of making twisted rationalizations? It just doesn't make for intelligent debate on either side.

Thank you for reading my comment. The pope believes in theistic evolution which is essentially incompatible with actual evolution. It's like saying Deepak Chopra is an expert in quantum science. Even better, not all Catholics believe in lock-step with what the pope does (see: Catholics who have gotten abortions, Catholics who are rich, Catholics in favor of the death penalty, etc.).

I don't know why you would think I'm being American-centric, my comment was regarding Christians around the globe, not just the ones you've met. There are an awful lot of Christians in non-industrialized countries who don't behave like the ones you've met.

> I'm probably an Atheist also

Don't try to include me in your fedora-support-group, I'm Jewish.

> And if they say they believe in evolution, why doubt them? Why accuse them of making twisted rationalizations? It just doesn't make for intelligent debate on either side.

If the Russian government says it has fair elections, why doubt them?

Please don't conduct religious flamewars on Hacker News.

I'm not sure why anyone gives Scott Adams credence as an expert on anything other than creating a fairly successful comic strip.

He seems to think things through and come to a lot of his conclusions logically. The parent comment illustrates this well. Just as PG is respected for opinions that aren't directly related to VC, people can be knowledgeable about things outside their main field of work.

Also, nobody said Adams was an expert about feminism and the wage gap.

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