canoebuilder

The gist of the question was that if you follow that link you can see that it is the case that most jobs have a sex ratio that is far off from 50/50, jobs with a ratio closer to 50/50 are the exception rather than the rule. I don't think this is a problem, or "problematic" as the kids like to say. I think this is just the way things are. You can learn a lot about the world just by looking.

The interesting thing that I raised in the question above is that some people do think these divergent sex ratios are "a problem," well sort of, the interesting thing is that they think in only a narrow selection of occupations is this a problem, totally ignoring that there is nothing particularly unusual about a divergent sex ratio for a given job. This may not be the case for you, but for the vast majority of problem addicts it is a very narrow focus on just a few occupations, totally ignoring the fact that it is a totally natural and normal thing.

It's like saying that something broadly true about the world is a problem. I can see the Vox headline now, Asians like rice, that's a problem

I don't like this constant grievance mongering worldview where everything is looked at through this lens of who has a "disadvantage" what is "problematic," why can't we just accept the world as it is? The people constantly going out and raising a ruckus about this or that issue would do far more good for the world by simply putting their own lives in order first.

Which of these divergent sex ratios are caused by "problematic environmental pressures," and which aren't?

[0]https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce...

Why aren't men disadvantaged by the fact that women outnumber men as Speech-language pathologists, Dental hygienists, Physical therapists, Counselors, Nurse practitioners, Hairdressers, hairstylists, and cosmetologists?

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce...

The data on that map is from 2015.

If you want to read about migrant/illegal border crossers from Africa in recent years, italy has been bearing the brunt of it.

https://www.google.com/search?q=italy+migrants

Here's a recent video from a spanish beach that looks like some kind of absurdist theater. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA02zZCGTdk

I also have some issues with what qualifies as "mass societal disruption", but I guess that's mostly a semantics argument.

How about pre-meditated and coordinated sex attacks with 1000+ perpetrators?

This was hardly an isolated incident, just one of the more shocking in scale and brazen in execution.

https://www.google.com/search?q=new+year%27s+eve+cologne

Societal disruption needn't be limited to large scale events like the above, just the steady flow of increased crime disrupts and degrades society. https://www.google.com/search?q=migrant+crime

We shouldn't really take someone's degree of divergence from reality as somehow being a point in favor of their argument.

When people remove themselves so far from reality, ignoring significant mounds of evidence, nearly anything not divorced from reality is going to have the effect of an "evidence bomb."

Let's just agree on two things then.

_Every woman at google has every right to be there.

&

_The number of women at google relative to the number of men is not the result of mostly imperceptible, malicious actions by men, but rather due the fact that the personal interests between the sexes varies substantially on average, and this results in skewed sex ratios throughout the entire workforce that match nearly perfectly with what scientific evidence shows us.

Women are more interested in working with people and nurturing professions and men are more interested in working with things and abstract, theoretical, mechanical and spatial professions.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce...

As respectfully as possible, this is completely wrong.

https://www.google.com/search?q=migrant+crisis+economic

I phrased this a little wrong, the source of the current refugee crisis is mostly not Africa, but my point is that the societal disruption you're referring to is not caused by voluntary immigration.

Not even the majority of unauthorized border crossers into Europe are from Syria. Once again with all due respect, these are very definitely voluntary actions on the part of the border crossers.

Check out this article from 2 years ago, even then it wasn't primarily Syrians.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/closing...

The migrants come from a vast swath of Africa and the Middle East, spanning not only war-torn Syria (in the first four months of 2015, Syrians accounted for just 30 percent of those crossing the sea) but also Nigeria and the Gambia and Eritrea and Somalia and Mali.

The migrants who embark upon this journey are typically represented as terrorized and impoverished—as people driven (to quote Amnesty International) “to risk their lives in treacherous sea crossings in a desperate attempt to reach safety in Europe.” The demographic and economic facts complicate that story. When populations flee war or famine, they generally flee together: the elderly and the infants, women as well as men. The current migrants, however, are overwhelmingly working-age males. All of them have paid a substantial price to make the trip: it can cost upwards of $2,000 to board a smuggler’s boat, to say nothing of hundreds or even thousands of dollars to travel from home to the embarkation point in the first place. Very few of the migrants from Libya are actually Libyan nationals.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce...

If you look at this data you can see there is clear distinction in the types of work chosen on average between the sexes. These choices align nicely with the findings of personality research between the sexes.

It's seems such a cliche to say "Sure, sexism exists to one degree or another." But okay, I can agree.

The problem is when you pick some particular gap and say this gap is a problem because the main cause is sexism.

Doing this is a problem not just because it ignores many other relevant factors, but because when proclaiming the cause as mostly sexism you are then accusing many people of something of which they are innocent.

You're unjustly maligning many people when you do this.

What evidence would be sufficient to convince you that the divergence in sex ratios of fields like nursing & elementary teaching compared to engineering and more theoretical pursuits comes down to personality differences between the average man and woman, and not sexism?

In regards to your concerns about the status quo of the tech industry or any other and sexism therein, individual cases should be dealt with appropriately. Individuals should act responsibly and respectfully.

I thought one the guiding principles for people these days was you shouldn't treat members in a group in a way that is informed by the actions or characteristics of other members of the group.

Why would people start leaving Africa, and why would it be a problem if they did?

Are you completely unaware of events that have been transpiring in Europe the past couple years?

So if European society suffers mass upheaval and disruption in coming years owing to causes we can plainly see at present, how many more of these monumental, universally beneficial innovations and achievements will die in the crib?

That's the premise of population forecasters at the UN.

I think for the most part, the nature of the issue just makes it inherently open to objections of "bedside manner" when discussed in "polite society."

What do you think I could have done better in terms of phrasing or what have you?

It is certainly good to consider this perspective, thanks for the insight and link.

To me it seems that potential negative consequences of continued rapid population growth in Africa aren't so nebulous and beyond the horizon, we are already seeing them materialize, certainly there are other problems that need to solved as well, like certain elements of society attempting to browbeat others into thinking these societal disruptions are normal or acceptable or shouldn't be guarded against, but the population growth outside Europe is one of the prime movers of the negative effects we have already observed.

If things continue as they are the only uncertainty is the degree to which European civilization and thus European civilization's contribution to the world is negatively effected.

I harbor no affinity for Malaria or human suffering in general, but by ham handedly addressing this patch of suffering are we pulling open a larger patch somewhere else?

So what's the best way to address the suffering caused by malaria with a little more finesse and awareness?

Is there even a direct provable causal link between mosquito nets and population growth?

As mentioned, we are discussing an immensely complex system with all the surprises and non-linearity that entails.

what, if any, are other causes of African population growth?

What should be the Hippocratic Oath for philanthropy?

"First do no harm" is taken, "Secondarily no harm"?

How many steps toward the horizon should we take to determine if harm is occurring?

I'm surprised if the post read as "more children dying is the obvious optimal path," that wasn't my intent.

I'm meaning to draw attention to the fact that if we are going to have outside interventions into societies that have drastic effects on those societies, then the outside interventions should include plans for all foreseeable(and vigilance in watching for unforeseeable) drastic effects they incur, be they in population structure, political structure, etc.

In this case birth control education seems a prudent corollary plan to disease eradication. But it's more of a thorny problem than just saying here read this book, take this class, take this pill, if these reproduction strategies are expressions of deeply ingrained genetic tendencies.

Certainly birth rate in the western world has declined, but there are lots of differences in the western world and Africa. Not least of which westerners never had outside interventions into their culture and environment of this nature.

Exchange rate, also known as 'cost,' is a form of value.

If great efforts are made to eradicate diseases in an area that has historically been subjected to various diseases such that the local population has adopted the reproduction strategy of having large amounts of offspring to counter premature deaths, but upon eradication/reduction of said diseases there is significant delay in the abatement of the overproduction strategy if it abates at all http://www.unz.com/isteve/the-worlds-most-important-graph/

if this population surge then expands beyond it's historical borders and causes mass societal disruption on a neighboring continent whose civilization has historically contributed great innovation and wealth to the world at large, and subsequently, said wealth and innovation contribution declines because of said societal disruption, do those who sought to eradicate the various diseases harbor some responsibility for the diminished prospects of the world at large?

Granted these are delicate questions but I believe their being asked has not just validity, but importance.

Certainly, simply ignoring pain, disease, and suffering is almost universally unpalatable.

But modifying one aspect of a complex system for what appears to be perfectly benevolent reasons, it is not at all surprising to find there could be downstream negative effects, negative enough to far outweigh whatever beneficent contribution you thought you were initially making. How do you make value judgments in such cases?

Gates himself has said it is far better to help people where they are regarding the recent unauthorized population influx events in Europe.

So I don't believe he is entirely blind to these potential downstream catastrophic effects.

But in this view can't all the world's languages be seen as multiple alphabets that express and manipulate quantum fluctuations?

Or do different human languages create different underlying realities?

Can't off chain systems be seen as simply analogous to transacting in deposited funds with paypal where your paypal password is the signature?

Maybe these systems send something out to a public blockchain, but you're still trusting them to honor withdrawals of your deposited funds in the same way you would with paypal, correct?

What is the actual use in practice of side channels and off chain systems these days?

I'm fairly certain that the aggregation of jobs described as "tech industry" in this statistic are a rather different collection of jobs pre-mid 80s and post-mid 80s. Not necessarily because of people massaging a statistic(but many people no doubt would be happy to overlook the previous supposition in making a case,) but because the nature of most jobs in computing has changed with the advent of personal computers. In the punch card era many "tech jobs" were more secretarial/office management/accountancy roles, nowadays with the explosion of computing devices there are many more software development and hardware engineering roles.

Engineering, broadly speaking can be seen as a "tech job," was there ever a time that the various fields of engineering weren't male heavy?

With that said, if you look at the tech industry

What about other industries with even more skewed sex ratios but fewer or no high-profile articles about sexual harassment, what's the cause in those industries?

the constant stream of reports of sexual harassment and sexist treatment from women that actually work in the industry is a pretty big clue that this industry, maybe, just maybe, has a problem with the way it treats women

Has anyone put to an analysis that these sort of events occur more frequently in the tech industry, rather than the tech industry is high profile and thus these events get more attention?

But I think most people are happy to forego those things and not have to worry about losing significant chunks of cash to fat-finger mistakes or hacks.

When most people barely know what a browser is, illuminating them to the intricacies of bitcoin seems a tall task. And if they can just use some system like Coinbase and "not even know they're using bitcoin," then they're essentially just using Paypal.

It's hard to see how it ever goes beyond a very niche market, and as long as that niche market is in a speculative frenzy it's hard to see how it becomes of much use to that market beyond a vehicle for speculation.

And should some group trade amongst themselves while avoiding censorship from some other group, the persecuted group as it grows in number becomes likely to use it's numerical sway to influence the govt doing the censorship in a new direction, or form a new govt that facilitates more efficient trade between the group.

And efficiency here refers not just to a couple ledgers instead of thousands, but also the massively reduced overhead of every member not having to do extensive security themselves, but rather offloading the security to central authorities.

Trust is beneficial to society, the more trust in a society the better a society scores on a host of other metrics.

If by strictly, he means solely, then something that is strictly an investment vehicle makes no sense. The piper must be paid at some point.

I can invest in shares of a company, but the shares aren't strictly an investment vehicle, they serve as a way for the company to acquire capital to put toward it's mission.

As soon as a critical mass is formed around a particular use case, consortiums, i.e. governments will form to regulate and enforce trust and the system will move to far more efficient centralized ledgers.

The key point of Damore's memo was that the average members of different groups have different interests and strengths.

This is born out not just in observational studies of the labor market, but also from surveys, and performing personality profiles.

What's with the obsession with with square pegs in round holes, but only for certain classes of squares?

If most people are doing things they have at least some interest in, isn't that a success? Why are so many people running around with their hair on fire, trying to solve a non-existent problem?

It's your time and energy if you want to do that, but you should probably recognize you're still treating women differently in that case.

Why do you want to pressure or influence people to do something that all the evidence indicates most of them aren't particularly interested in doing?

Shouldn't we be pleased that in an advanced society people have the opportunity to seek out and perform the work they find interesting and fulfilling?