Sex Realism?

[iceaura]

Ok what is the core issue at hand?

For the fourth time: The default assumptions.

 

[ElectricFetus]

For the fourth time: The default assumptions.

and those are? Express them, state them, define them, I suspect we have different ideas what "the default assumptions" are.

Discrimination to reach equal representation is not necessarily unfair, or bad for business, or even "divisive" - once the whiners have been dumped.

A court of law may disagree, worse these whiners vote, have you seen what government they have installed? I think equal representation is not a goal in its self, no one is asking for equal representation of construction workers, boiler welders, coal miners, etc, rather the goal should be to provide the opportunity for everyone to be happy and productive.

 

[billvon]

That's not, actually, reasonable. The two sentences there conflict.
Discrimination to reach equal representation is not necessarily unfair, or bad for business, or even "divisive" - once the whiners have been dumped. That's only the case if one assumes the "may in part" PC talk in the first sentence was not honest, and in fact the matter had been decided in the affirmative by assumption.

"Discrimination" to ensure equal access to opportunity is not unfair or divisive - indeed, is not even discrimination.

Discrimination to achieve 50/50 representation (when such ratios are not seen in the pool of qualified applicants) is unfair, divisive and bad for business.

 

[billvon]

And people with down-syndrome have lower IQs and learning disabilities... so? If these stereotypes are true, even universally, not just on average, that does not mean we should use it to justify abuses.

Agreed.

So should Google hire people with down syndrome? They should hire anyone who has the most aptitude and skill for the position they can get, but how can that be determined without bias entering?

Should Google hire anyone, no matter what their qualifications? No.
Should Google hire qualified people without regard to their sex, skin color, religion, orientation or number of copies of their 21st chromosome? Yes.

 

[ElectricFetus]

Discrimination to achieve 50/50 representation (when such ratios are not seen in the pool of qualified applicants) is unfair, divisive and bad for business.

no, no that is too sane to consider.

"Hey bum on the street, yes you, we need to fill our quota, what are you, Cherokee? Fuck yeah, get in here! You know how to program in Mat Lab, ok ok yeah we will figure that out."

Should Google hire qualified people without regard to their sex, skin color, religion, orientation or number of copies of their 21st chromosome? Yes.

Yes, but if that does not meet some kind of quota they are fucked.

 

[iceaura]

and those are? Express them, state them, define them, I suspect we have different ideas what "the default assumptions" are.

What they are here is the central matter at hand - regardless of their nature - and "overlooked" by the whining techie.

Yes, but if that does not meet some kind of quota they are fucked.

Says who? Whining techies who appear to be thinking in stereotypes and otherwise clueless?

Discrimination to achieve 50/50 representation (when such ratios are not seen in the pool of qualified applicants) is unfair, divisive and bad for business.

Not necessarily. Depends on how it's done and why, what the hires are for, the actual composition of the pool, the actual situation. (For example: suppose Google has identified a morale and retention problem among its very expensively trained and very valuable female execs, who find themselves looking elsewhere due to some unfortunate side effects of a simple shortage of lower level female hires, and meanwhile Google is getting fifty highly qualified applicants for each position but only 10% of them women - that would mean they have five highly qualified women to select from for any given hire, and the various costs of not hiring enough women in the past damaging their bottom line. What would be wrong with hiring 2/3 from that 10%? They'd be foolish to do otherwise).

Meanwhile: why are you accepting that whiner's description of Google's goals? Does it strike you as in the least plausible?

 

[Michael 345]

Here is another spanner to toss into the mix

Sports

Men who identify as female can compete in female sports as long as they are below a certain level of progesterone for 1 year

For females who identify as male so far as I understand there is no equivalent test

Men passing the hormone test apparently are doing well in female sports

No info on females in men's events

 

[Kittamaru]

You know that's fallacious logic, right?

May I ask - how do you figure? My contention is that men and women can both be exceptional in IT related tasks/fields, gender be damned - I presume you have some sort of evidence to the contrary?

 

[DaveC426913]

May I ask - how do you figure? My contention is that men and women can both be exceptional in IT related tasks/fields, gender be damned - I presume you have some sort of evidence to the contrary?

Your evidence was in the form of an anecdote. And it does not represent a good cross section.
It is akin to saying "I just saw several female drivers driving skillfully. This shows that female drivers are as skilled as men."

I'm not saying the conclusion is false, simply that the logic used to reach it is faulty.

 

[Kittamaru]

Your evidence was in the form of an anecdote. And it does not represent a good cross section.
It is akin to saying "I just saw several female drivers driving skillfully. This shows that female drivers are as skilled as men."

I'm not saying the conclusion is false, simply that the logic used to reach it is faulty.

I would contend the logic used to reach the conclusion in the report was just as faulty - not disagreeing with you (or trying to say that my experience alone makes what I said true) - until I see some serious evidence that women are, for some reason, incapable of doing the same or better in IT positions as men, though, I'm gonna call that claim out as bullshit

 

[DaveC426913]

I would contend the logic used to reach the conclusion in the report was just as faulty - not disagreeing with you (or trying to say that my experience alone makes what I said true) - until I see some serious evidence that women are, for some reason, incapable of doing the same or better in IT positions as men, though, I'm gonna call that claim out as bullshit

The one thing that can't be denied is that women are not represented equivalently in the IT industry. So they got that right. It then becomes a matter of cause.

My stance is that, frankly, I do not know if men and women think/process the same, therefore I cannot say that the claim is false.
But Different does not mean inferior/superior.

I would say the issue is, at least partly, due to lopsided values and a myopic view.

I am better at sprinting than you. You are better at marathons than I. We are different, but not unequal.

Unless, currently, sprinting is seeing a huge boom and paying more. Sprinting is all the rage right now.

 

[billvon]

Not necessarily. Depends on how it's done and why, what the hires are for, the actual composition of the pool, the actual situation.

There is no situation where hiring unqualified people is good for business. It is also unfair to the qualified people in the pool of applicants.

For example: suppose Google has identified a morale and retention problem among its very expensively trained and very valuable female execs, who find themselves looking elsewhere due to some unfortunate side effects of a simple shortage of lower level female hires, and meanwhile Google is getting fifty highly qualified applicants for each position but only 10% of them women - that would mean they have five highly qualified women to select from for any given hire, and the various costs of not hiring enough women in the past damaging their bottom line. What would be wrong with hiring 2/3 from that 10%? They'd be foolish to do otherwise)

No problem at all.

Now, if there are fifty qualified applicants but only 10% of them women - and there is a need for 10 hew hires, and HR says "at least 7 of them must be women due to blah blah" (like the reasons you list above) then we have a big problem - because that leads to hiring of unqualifed workers. Result - there will be a (valid) opinion in the company that women tend to be incapable, since at least two of those female execs will likely be unqualified for the work they are doing.

Meanwhile: why are you accepting that whiner's description of Google's goals? Does it strike you as in the least plausible?

I'm not. EF listed the whiner's core tenets, and I was responding to that.

 

[Kittamaru]

The one thing that can't be denied is that women are not represented equivalently in the IT industry. So they got that right. It then becomes a matter of cause.

My stance is that, frankly, I do not know if men and women think/process the same, therefore I cannot say that the claim is false.
But Different does not mean inferior/superior.

I would say the issue is, at least partly, due to lopsided values and a myopic view.

I am better at sprinting than you. You are better at marathons than I. We are different, but not unequal.

Unless, currently, sprinting is seeing a huge boom and paying more. Sprinting is all the rage right now.

I haven't seen any real evidence to support a claim that there is an inherent biological difference that would make men or women better at IT related tasks.

There has been, for some time, this notion that Women didn't "belong" in the IT field... how often was the stereotype of the "sexy geek girl" at store simply batting her eyelashes and blowing a kiss to get some dork to buy the most expensive POS on the shelf used in TV, after all? It seems incredibly foolish to think that whether or not you have a pair of testicles would have any impact on the ability to learn a complex system such as diagnostics, repair, and troubleshooting a computer.

 

[DaveC426913]

I haven't seen any real evidence to support a claim that there is an inherent biological difference that would make men or women better at IT related tasks.

Well, that's what this thread is about.

Is there any evidence to support the claim that men and women are the same? I think we cannot assume that men and women being identical is the null hypothesis. i.e. we know there are many differences; it's a question of whether those differences extend to the nature of analytical thought processes.

There has been, for some time, this notion that Women didn't "belong" in the IT field... how often was the stereotype of the "sexy geek girl" at store simply batting her eyelashes and blowing a kiss to get some dork to buy the most expensive POS on the shelf used in TV, after all? It seems incredibly foolish to think that whether or not you have a pair of testicles would have any impact on the ability to learn a complex system such as diagnostics, repair, and troubleshooting a computer.

This seems needlessly inflammatory. It's emotional and it invokes a strawman.

 

[Kittamaru]

Well, that's what this thread is about.

Is there any evidence to support the claim that men and women are the same? I think we cannot assume that men and women being identical is the null hypothesis. i.e. we know there are many differences; it's a question of whether those differences extend to the nature of analytical thought processes.

Does it matter if the nature of the processes are different if the net result is the same (ergo, someone able to proficiently do the job?) To make the example as simple as possible: does it matter if a person prefers to drive a Stick Shift or an Automatic, if both are able to get to work?

This seems needlessly inflammatory. It's emotional and it invokes a strawman.

I'm quite sorry you feel this way. I am curious how you feel it invokes a strawman at all, given it is a rather applicable example. What is false about it? Are you saying that the "sexy geek girl" stereotype isn't real? Or perhaps you are saying that having a pair of testicles should have an impact on the ability to learn complex systems?

What, pray tell, are you attempting to argue here Dave?

 

[iceaura]

I'm not saying the conclusion is false, simply that the logic used to reach it is faulty.

The various reasoning that has people using social status quo as evidence for their presumptions of genetic this or that is all radically flawed, to the point of invalidating any conclusions whatsoever.
And that is the overwhelmingly influential, currently standard, expensively and elaborately defended, reasoning at issue. We need not quibble over fringe stuff.

I think we cannot assume that men and women being identical is the null hypothesis. i.e. we know there are many differences; it's a question of whether those differences extend to the nature of analytical thought processes.

And whether those differences, if any, are assets, deficits, or contingently useful depending on overall arrangements - as independently evaluated.

Because building a bad sociological bias into one's "null hypothesis" would be a fundamental and crippling error here, to be avoided at almost all costs. Right? Much worse than taking the null to be "no difference" when there is one - that would come out in the wash.

That is: We cannot assume we know anything about what those differences are, other than what we have correctly and carefully measured. Which would be very little in general, and include almost nothing relevant to computer software development, as things stand.

Example: For all we know, women are inherently (genetically, due to the extra X chromosome) let's say (any small number will do) 15% better at writing usable code for usable computer systems than men. On average.

We have some evidence for that - for example, we know that an extra tendency to acquire auto-immune diseases is common to men who are better at such things, and also common to women on average, and has a genetic component of some kind. We also know that the ability to read and write, to handle syntax and grammar in multiply referential situations, seems to track with the ability of the brain to communicate with itself - the size of the connection between the left and right halves, the speed of connection, etc, - and this seems to be both partially under genetic control and to be favored in women's brains. And so forth.

And another piece of evidence we have for that, an elephant in the room here: a very large percentage of the code we are talking about has been written by men only, and is bad, buggy, poorly designed, inconvenient, user-hostile and hassle-crippled stuff. After dealing with it for decades now, and acquiring some familiarity with its characteristic flaws, I have a suggestion: try firing the gender that wrote that shit, and hire the gender that nine times out of ten is the one that has actually managed to get it to work in real life. At least that gender would have some idea of how the final product should behave.

Now, if there are fifty qualified applicants but only 10% of them women - and there is a need for 10 hew hires, and HR says "at least 7 of them must be women due to blah blah" (like the reasons you list above) then we have a big problem - because that leads to hiring of unqualifed workers

But that is exactly as described: a matter of contingency and stupidity, a strawman in this discussion, an obviously bad situation that need not exist and that we have no reason to believe exists. No reason whatsoever.

 

[DaveC426913]

Does it matter if the nature of the processes are different if the net result is the same (ergo, someone able to proficiently do the job?)

I'm arguing that the net result may not be the same.

I don't argue in defense of the article, I'm just not seeing much in the way of refutation. To wit:

I'm quite sorry you feel this way. I am curious how you feel it invokes a strawman at all,

Because you are attempting to equate the issue at-hand with "sexy geek girl at store simply batting her eyelashes and blowing a kiss".
That is a certainly a more lurid and obvious target to shoot at, but it is not the target under discussion.

What, pray tell, are you attempting to argue here Dave?

That your emotional response is indicative of a lack of objectivity.
That's OK, but this problem will never be solved until/unless people can analyze it without clouding their judgement with emotion and their words with strawmen.

I think the issue of women's equality is very important. Important enough that it had better have a stronger case than this.

And before you ask - no I don't have a better case to offer. Which is why I'm drawing attention to the weakness of arguments refuting the article. Surely we can do better.

 

[iceaura]

And before you ask - no I don't have a better case to offer. Which is why I'm drawing attention to the weakness of arguments refuting the article. Surely we can do better.

There is no such intellectual reason to take the article seriously in that sense - nothing in it needs "refutation", because it's incoherent and stereotypical whinging on its face.

It would only need intellectual "refutation" if it presented a case or argument.

If you are talking instead about political refutation, maybe even in the context of office politics, that's a different story of course - how to deal with this kind of stuff in the political arena. In that arena a strong "case" would not be the focus, though.

 

[billvon]

But that is exactly as described: a matter of contingency and stupidity, a strawman in this discussion, an obviously bad situation that need not exist and that we have no reason to believe exists. No reason whatsoever.

That might well be a strawman, but it was yours - "various costs of not hiring enough women in the past damaging their bottom line." If the company really believes that "not hiring enough women damages their bottom line" then they will be tempted to hire less-qualified women over more-qualified men to prevent that (perceived) damage.

Personally I do not believe there is a level where "enough women" are hired to avoid "damaging their bottom line" any more than there is a level where "enough men" (or "enough blacks" or "enough Asians") avoids such damage. However, hiring unqualified or less qualified candidates absolutely risks damaging a company.

 

[iceaura]

That might well be a strawman, but it was yours - "various costs of not hiring enough women in the past damaging their bottom line."

Now what? That's not the strawman at issue, I didn't present it as an argument, and that quote didn't introduce anything new - it was a direct inline response to an ongoing discussion, illustrating the invalidity ( in general) of this earlier claim:

Discrimination to achieve 50/50 representation (when such ratios are not seen in the pool of qualified applicants) is unfair, divisive and bad for business.

- directly relevant point.
Continuing:

If the company really believes that "not hiring enough women damages their bottom line" then they will be tempted to hire less-qualified women over more-qualified men to prevent that (perceived) damage.

So? Companies should not yield to confused temptations and make bad business decisions accordingly - I think we have agreement here.

That's OK, but this problem will never be solved until/unless people can analyze it without clouding their judgement with emotion and their words with strawmen

Which puts paid to the OP. End of thread?