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Re:One guy by alvinrod · 2017-08-07 12:34 · Score: 3, Interesting · on Google Grapples With Fallout After Employee Slams Diversity Efforts (npr.org)

If women are different from men in a way that would result in them having diverse perspectives, then why is it unreasonable to assume that those same diverse perspectives might lead them to other career choices?

As to your second point, the evidence seems to point the other way. I believe it was you who made a post in the previous thread in this topic indicating that Iranian women were more likely to be involved in software jobs as some evidence that it must be socially based. Interestingly enough, you'll see higher rates in other countries too. India is one example where there are significantly more women in computing. What you fail to understand is that this has little to do with cultural differences (and you'd be hard pressed to argue that either India or Iran have better views towards women in general than western democracies) and is the result of economic ones. Computer science jobs are well paying and in high demand, and do potentially afford you the opportunity to immigrate to a western democracy that may be preferable to the type of people who are intelligent enough to excel in the software development field.

When you remove economic pressures (the Scandinavian countries which have among the best social safety nets have the same low numbers of women in CS as the U.S.) and have a society that leaves you essentially free to pursue whatever ambitions you might have, it is hardly unsurprising that any biological tendencies that may predispose people to one field or another are more prevalent. To use an analogy, you can only really see if one strain of plant yields more only after you ensure that they all have sufficient water to thrive. If you somehow created a society that was able to ensure that everyone in life had an equal start, the only possible variance left would come down to biological differences.

There's a substantial amount of evidence to suggest men and women are different. Even at a surface level, we see large differences in things like personality, which has been demonstrated to be highly heritable. I'm not quite sure how you could look at those differences and come to the conclusion that it isn't going to result in differences in vocation selection or other life choices that can impact a person's career. I suppose you could argue that somehow all of these differences are merely a result of society, but that ignores the heritability of personality as well as evidence from studies that examined sex-based behavior difference in infants. See a recent study that examined children roughly one to two and half years of age in nurseries, a similar earlier study which examined infants 1 - 2 years of age , and another study which examined infants as young as three months old. There was another study that examined toy preference in young monkeys that found similar sex-based differences which does suggest that this is something that goes back quite far in our evolutionary history.

It's funny that you bring up global warming, because a lot of the evidence suggests that you are incorrect, yet you continue to act in much the same way as people who contest the science behind global warming. I seriously question how you could reconcile the studies I've presented above with your beliefs that biology plays such a little role in the outcomes we're observing. I suppose you could claim the science is biased, but then how do you know that the scientists publishing articles about climate change aren't biased?

This is NOT the future. by real-modo · 2012-01-23 12:59 · Score: 2 · on Professor Resigns From Stanford To Launch Online Education Project

The modern lecture format originated in medieval Northern Italy, and hasn't changed significantly. The rationale for the lecture as a method of transmitting knowledge and skill was that books were extremely costly, due to the cost of scribes.

Since Gutenberg the rationale for lectures has disappeared.

Rather than moronically scaling up lectures in a TV-like way, we need some R&D done on better methods of teaching. This has finally been realised and academics are - with great trepidation - starting to measure themselves and experiment with different methods. I expect that this century will see the death of the lecture.

Re:Just wondering.... by Ohreally_factor · 2006-05-29 12:02 · Score: 1 · on Freshman MIT Students Automate Dorm Room

That would be Cal Tech. . . er, Pacific Tech. Interestingly, a good part of it was filmed at nearby Occidental College.

Re:Wrong tense, Mr. Gates. by jhylkema · 2005-07-19 10:38 · Score: 1 · on Gates On Future of CS Education