I'm curious - where in Southern Africa where you? I'm in South Africa and have vacationed just about everywhere here and never found a place that only had a few people that spoke english.
> Do you realize that before pension you spend more of your active life [barring sleep] with your colleagues than with your family and friends? How many people understand this simple fact?
It's not 1950. Those people will likely be a different set of people 3 years from now. You don't need to be "pals" with these people. You just need to get the job done. They are quite disposable.
These are people that you TEMPORARILY work with. Playing with them is not required.
Your point is probably where all these "get girls into tech" issues stem from. Men get into tech, find out that there's little to no socialising and are okay with it. Women get into tech, find out that there's little to no socialising and feel "left out".
It's just that companies should try to advertise jobs in ways that attract more female applicants, and create a work environment that facilitates them.
What makes you think that the current advertisements are excluding/less attractive to females? And what is so special about females that you need a different environment to function in? You are insulting both men and women in one go, and you don't even notice...
Regression to the mean is, by definitive, a regression model that is applied to a set of data which fails to disprove the null hypothesis of "no correlation".
"In statistics, regression toward (or to) the mean is the phenomenon that if a variable is extreme on its first measurement, it will tend to be closer to the average on its second measurement—and, paradoxically, if it is extreme on its second measurement, it will tend to have been closer to the average on its first."
This definition is directly contradictory to what you thought the definition was.
You keep throwing out ad hominem attacks, but I have to wonder if you have even taken the standard freshmen and sophmore level math ciriculum for the sciences (statistics, linear algebra, discrete math, single and multivariate calculus, and differential equations) based on what you are writing.
It is not ad hominem to point out that you are making a mistake even HS students don't make. And your error of understanding is not just with "regression to the mean", it's with all the other linear algebra and statistics and logic mistakes you've made over the course of this thread. Be happy that I'm only pointing out one of them - I flat out ignored the incorrect logic statement you posted earlier. For a refresher logic course, you can see this - first semester notes. Note that this particular document was been online since around 2006 so you've had plenty of time to read it if the information was not available elsewhere.
Once again I must point out that stringing together random terms you found on wikipedia is no substitute for actually knowing the subject.
I read your post. I ignored your claim of regression to the mean because there is no factual basis to support such a claim. That would necessitate that the trend is statistically insignificant,
There is no such requirement. Who gave you the idea that regression to the mean only applies to "statistically insignificant trends" (you made that up too, by the way - there's no such thing. "Statistical significance" applies to the testing of a null hypothesis)
which could easily be proved if it were true, In the social sciences, a P-value of only.05 is considered sufficient to disprove statistical insignificance.
The data sets consist of thousands of women graduating with CS degrees every year. It is not like astronomy and astrophysics where the number is low enough that there is some possibility of random noise distorting the signal over a period of a few years. With about a million data points over two decades, the Central Limit Theorem is very applicable.
Of course, if you can show using Gaussian probability in an appropriate regression model that the null hypothesis cannot be disproved, I would be willing to look over your calculations, but with so many data points, the Central Limit Theorem is clearly in full effect.
None of what you said makes sense - did you only just now look up statistics on wikipedia? You said above that regression to the mean does not apply, and now you say that the central limit theorem applies - those things go together (something you won't find out by skimming wikipedia, I'm afraid). Oh sure, you've thrown in some other words you don't understand, like Gaussian, but you still got the most elementary thing wrong - Regression to the mean applies whenever the central limit theorem applies.
I briefly taught both logic and statistics at a university, do you want me to try to find my old notes so you can quickly clue up on what all these things mean, and why your logic is off? Skimming wikipedia whenever you encounter a new term is not really a good way to learn anything, and it's obvious to those in the field when we meet the people who just skimmed for keywords.
I already posted evidence of the existence of artificial barriers. In fact, it was extremely relevant evidence as it was directly related to this article. The participation of women in academic computer science programs has decreased since the 1980s. By some measures, the decrease is by almost 200%.
All that proves is evidence of a decline. Nothing more.
There are two possible factors for that change:
1) Artificial Factors
2) Natural Factors.
Nope, there are more (which, had you bothered to even read my post you would have seen) such as regression to the mean (which was illustrated in my previous post).
A change in the actual physiological nature of women born over the last 30 years can be pretty thoroughly disproved, as I have done previously. By logical deduction: A+B->C => {C,'A}->B, we know that if natural factors can be disproved as a cause of this, then artificial factors must exist.
That is not a proof; I'm sorry, but that "proof" above really would be laughed off any respectable journal. Natural factors cannot be disproved of this because the current situation may be a regression to the mean (only one of several possible explanations).
Demonstrating that natural factors can cause experiences does not logically imply that natural factors cause a specific experience. That is akin to claiming that because most people die of natural causes, the person I found face down in a pool of his own blood with a knife in his back must have died of natural causes.
The question that I was asking was not whether there COULD be natural factors that contributed to the gender disparity in CS, but whether it could be conclusively demonstrated that natural factors were a significant factor. Can you demonstrate that women are naturally disinclined toward computer science the way that have conclusively demonstrated that smoking is a significant cause of lung cancer?
Please read my post again - just because I cannot conclusively prove that unicorns don't exist doesn't imply that your claim that they do exist must be true. In the same vein, just because I cannot conclusively prove the nature argument that doesn't imply that your nurture argument must be true. Science does not work that way - Just because A is unproven does not imply that B is proven.
So again, we get back to my original points which were:
1) There existence conclusive scientific evidence that artificial barriers exist that keep women out of computer science.
No, there doesn't. You keep claiming this, and you repeatedly claimed that there are several peer-reviewed studies to support this position but you have yet to post a link to any of them.
2) There is no conclusive scientific evidence that women are naturally disinclined toward entering computer science.
Because there is no evidence for A, you should assume that B is correct? My word...
If you are just making the claim that women are motivated differently than men without regard to the REASON for their motivation, then why did you respond to my post in the first place, since such a claim is not contradictory to anything I wrote?
The claim I made is contradictory to what you believe. You believe a claim was made over the capability of females, I corrected you and said that GP made no such claim. Let me refresh... you said (repeatedly, but I'll just quote the one post here):
I would ask you to post the best study showing:
1) Women are naturally less capable of competing against men in the CS field because of physiological differences between men and women.
I replied with
Strawman - no one said anything about capability.
You are making an argument against a strawman. GP (that you replied to) never said anything about capability. No one brought capability into it but you.
I do not want to misrepresent your viewpoint or to have a discussion where we are talking around eachother, so please clarify:
1) Do you believe there is conclusive evidence that artificial factors (e.g. cultural, social, economic, et cetera) engender the differences in measured motivations to enter computer science, at least in part?
There is no evidence of that, none that I could find at any rate, so if it exists please post a link.
2) Do you believe there is conclusive evidence that natural factors (i.e. congenital, morphological differences between men and women) must be responsible in whole or in part for differences in motivation in entering computer science?
There are two questions there. Firstly, there is a ton of evidence that natural factors (as you use the term) are responsible for the majority, if not all, of the motivations humans experience; the exceptions are few and far between. For the second part, I've not seen nor heard of any study that found that CS, in particular, was an exception to this rule. You are welcome to find and post a link to evidence that the characteristic "motivation to do CS" is an exception.
However, science is not performed by "proving" a hypothesis, but by failing to disprove a hypothesis. Falsifiability. Let's start with an example:
The claim/assertion: Women are not entering CS due to societal influence
How can we prove this wrong? What experiment can we run which, if successful, shows that the statement is incorrect? Perhaps we could raise the experimental group of children in gender neutral isolation and leave the control group in the real world? That won't pass ethics review but it's a good start. Another option that won't pass ethics review is to forcefully raise the experimental group of children as the opposite gender in isolation from the real world and leave the control group in the real world.
If you do either of the above (somehow you managed to sneak it past ethics review) and at the end of the decades long experiment you find that there is a 50:50 ratio of genders in CS in the experimental group, then congratulations - you failed to prove the assertion incorrect so some weight may be added to your assertion. Doesn't mean that your claim is correct, only that the attempt to prove it wrong failed. Only after many varied repeated (and replicated) falsifying attempts can you start calling your hypothesis "commonly accepted" (still not a "fact" though).
This is the biggest reason that SJW's run into the ire of many respectable scientists. Just because studies have failed to prove the "genetic reason" they make the assumption that the "environmental impact reason" must be true. They fail to realise that the failure to prove/disprove a claim doesn't lend weight to any opposing claim. I.e. failing to prove that nature is the reason doesn't automatically make the nurture claim true.
You repeatedly make the same claim. Your basic cla
None of those studies you cite properly control for social and cultural factors.
I asked you to give me a PROPER CITATION (I'm pretty sure a "real" scientist knows how to do this) to the BEST study showing that women are less NATURALLY capable
You never even read my post above where I said it's already common knowledge that men and women are mostly equally capable, I doubt you are going to read the links I posted. I predicted you will ignore them, and you did.
or interested in science absent CULTURAL, SOCIAL, and ARTIFICIAL factors.
None of the studies you referenced properly controlled for artificial factors.
Surly if there actually existed compelling scientific evidence to support the claim that women are less likely to succeed or enter computer science absent any artificial barriers, you could cite one good study to show this to be true.
I never made this claim, I made the claim that women are motivated differently to men. I provided a peer-reviewed study (see link in previous post) that back this up. I claimed that motivation is a big factor in performance in science and then provided a peer-reviewed study that supported that claim. Seriously, read the studies.
Besides, you made the claim (numerous times in this thread) that there was peer-reviewed research supporting your position, so now show us that peer-reviewed research. I haven't seen any, not in my time as a scientist with access to just about all the journals there were and not in any time after that.
> How about you do what normal guys do and go out, find a lady, impress her enough to sleep with you
Because this isn't satisfying to me. Cognitive intercourse is. You're not going to convince me that I shouldn't want to collaborate with my significant other, and frankly it's offensive that you'd want to do so.
What the fuck? Where did I try to convince you to do that? You want to lazily sit at your desk till a female techie comes to you? That's nonsense. Nothing in what I said prevents you from going out and finding a female techie.
Nope, depression quest was developed using "an open source tool for telling interactive fiction stories" (their own description). For the record, this is something my (almost) eight year old son has done numerous times. Doesn't make him a techie. Makes him a story-teller.
Using a word processor to write an eBook doesn't make you a kindle-programmer, it makes you an author.
Studies showing that, "women are motivated by different things to men [sic]," is not logically equivalent to your claim that, " physiological differences naturally make women less inclined in going into a STEM field." You are moving the goalposts.
Are you seriously too lazy to even see who made the original claim? I made no such claim.
Without even going to the peer reviewed analysis, let us look at the raw data.
That's not what you claimed - you claimed the existence of peer reviewed studies backing up your point, I asked for a citation. Instead of posting a single line citation you post a multi-paragraph explanation of why a citation isn't needed. You do more damage to your own argument than I could ever do.
Just FYI, before you make any more stupid claims to scientists about what we think, here is what peer-reviewed studies look like (and these are all in support of my argument that males and females have different motivations):
In fact, amongst scientists this is already well-known, you can find literally hundreds of peer-reviewed properly done and replicated studies that show that:
a) Women and men are mostly equally capable at all cognitive tasks, and
b) Women and men are almost always motivated by different things, and
c) Motivation is the primary indicator of performance in scientific fields.
The problem, in my not so fucking humble scientist opinion, is that people like you don't have a clue about all the research that exists because:
a) You aren't scientists, you don't want to be scientists and it's too much work to think like one,
b) You have a different agenda to push, and common scientific knowledge like I posted above goes against what you feel should be correct, so you ignore it when you find it, just like you will ignore the above research (and the hundreds of papers that deal with this).
number of good papers and studies, so you can use the bibliography as a starting point.
Eric S. Roberts, Marina Kassianidou, and Lilly Irani. 2002. Encouraging women in computer science. SIGCSE Bull. 34, 2 (June 2002), 84-88.
That paper, which I've already read BTW, doesn't add to your argument in any way. In fact, quote the section that you *think* adds to your argument from that paper. There is not mention of artificial barriers, only strategies of increasing female representation - in fact, that's what the entire paper is about: how to increase female representation. Unluckily for
I give a fuck, actually. I'd like a wife. I'd like her to be a colleague.
Then you're both young and stupid. "Never screw the crew" is a rule I lived by for all of my working life. Occasionally I'd get my rule reinforced by watching the fallout of shenanigans at the office.
You want a wife? How about you do what normal guys do and go out, find a lady, impress her enough to sleep with you, then impress here some more so she'll stay with you, and then impress her some more so she'll marry you. If you want a wife, go out and work for one - don't sit at your desk and expect her to come to you. Life does not work like that.
Fuck off with your ignorance. Women are being pushed out of tech - look at GamerGate.
None of the "victims" in gamergate were techies, you idiot. You want more women like them in IT? More non-techies in information technology? What would they do here?
1) Women are naturally less capable of competing against men in the CS field because of physiological differences between men and women.
Strawman - no one said anything about capability. The common (scientific) consensus is that women are motivated by different things to men. It's not lack of capability that results in skewed numbers, it's lack of motivation to spend more time with machines than with humans.
Oh yeah, one more thing - all those peer-reviewed studies you've been mentioning? Citation needed. All the science studies ones I could find point to different motivational factors for men and women irrespective of fields.
Yeah, but it's the IT industry who's misogynistic (rolls eyes). Where're those SJW's when you actually need them? Out defending those professional trolls who smear an entire group of people based on outdated and outmoded stereotypes, like Anita S. and Zoe Q.
Good question, actually - in this instance there's actual harm, unlike all the other SJW posts we've been seeing on slashdot
Then you control your own manufacturing. Lots of companies do that very thing.
Let's say you do that. You control your own manufacturing, but you don't manufacture everything, do you? You don't put up a multibillion dollar chip fab plant to turn out 150000 $0.99 parts, do you? You buy those things from somewhere reputable, like FTDI itself. You own the logistics (yes, you went out and bought a cargo ship, crewed it and run it just to give you your parts), you own the manufacturing (spending billions of dollars putting up a plant capable of doing this).
Nevermind all that, you go with the $0.99 FTDI part, well, because... and everything seems to work. One year later when you have 150000 $10000 dollar devices in the field FTDI releases a new driver which instantly and permanently bricks half the devices in the field. Your customers instantly pull out the warranty agreement and because you have no devices that definitely won't be bricked you have to give them money instead. Well done, you're now broke and bankrupt!
How did your "genuine" devices get bricked anyway? Well, some lowly paid peon on your cargo ship, or your transport trucks, or in your warehouse, or on your factory floor got paid a small amount of money to switch them out. The erratic nature of the switching over time meant that your strategy of random sampling five out of every 10000 chips was not good enough (perhaps you should have used a stratified random approach?).
The point is that even when you theoretically control everything, if there is money to be made to swap out the chips with fakes someone under your theoretical control will swap it out for the money. At this point it is almost way too risky to trust anything to an FTDI driver - maybe use a different driver (seriously, as a poster above pointed out it's a fairly trivial thing to write a driver for this particular example), but if you're going to use a different driver then why not simply use a different chip?
It is almost stupid, in light of what happened, to actually trust a company willing to damage your property to protect itself from a crime which has already happened. An analogy would be if a grocery store wronged you, and then you decided to take revenge by hunting down everyone else who shopped there and killing their loved ones, or burning their house down - they are an innocent third party!
In no situation is it acceptable to take punitive measures against innocent third parties when someone wrongs you, and in this situation it is even more repulsive than usual as the innocent third party won't even know what FTDI is, or why they should care - they bought a fucking printer, or car diagnostic unit, or snazzy Hi-Fi unit, or whatever. This company should be forced to make reparations for the replacement of any bricked device. It might make them go out of business, but it would definitely set a good precedent. I'm tired of companies getting away with actual crime while individual citizens get their lives destroyed in civil suits brought by companies, with no actual crime getting proved.
I don't need to edit it. You are lying about my position, which I've stated multiple times. Either you have severe reading comprehension problems, or you're attacking an imaginary position out of convenience.
Your position, repeatedly stated, is that my stated position, that marriage gives you default consent unless otherwise retracted, is wrong. Why are you so sexist? What do you have against women having full autonomy over their own bodies?
You completely missed the GP's point. In some religious marriages those involved might not expect their partner to touch them in a sexual way whenever they feel like it. The mere act of marrying does not imply consent, it still has to be given. Granted, most people give it long before they get married, and not explicitly, but that doesn't change the fact that marriage itself does not grant consent in this regard.
I never said that marriage by itself gives consent. GP's point was that my stated position, that marriage puts a couple in a state of default consent unless otherwise retracted, is wrong. I simply don't understand this anti-women stance.
Except, that doesn't describe my side at all. My side just says that certain things are none of the government's business to enforce. Like signing people into slavery, or controlling others' sexuality.
It actually described your "side" perfectly - fact is, if you want to control your own sexuality so that your partner never has consent unless they explicitly ask for it, you can have it easily enough - put it into that contract you're signing. But don't you dare stand up in a crowd of witness and actually swear that you are giving consent, and then try to argue later that those words mean nothing. Even absent an actual contract, you gave consent in front of witnesses.
You are free to withdraw that consent at any time and if you fail to do so you can't very well claim that consent wasn't sought. It was sought, it was given, it was witnessed. You didn't have to give consent, but you did. You could have given qualified consent, but you didn't. You have a rather large number of options in which to practice your particularly horrible brand of relationships so there's no need to jump into other peoples personal lives. How dare you tell women what they can or cannot do with their own bodies? How dare you imply that women should be subject to your special flavour of marriage. You tell women that you know better than they do how their marriage should be? My wife enjoys being awoken in a "special" way, and would be damn pissed if I had to ask her beforehand and spoil any surprise.
People like you should move to places where there aren't any womens' rights - that's the only thing that'll apparently make you happy - removing all rights women have.
All contracts are the governments business, otherwise contracts would be worthless because they cannot be enforced.
Some contracts actually aren't enforceable. I do not believe that marriage should automatically have such restrictive terms, and I don't believe they should be enforceable. Just say, "Well, it's a contract, therefore the government should automatically be involved and it should always be enforced." is stupid and won't work on me.
The government is not automatically involved in all contracts, it is only involved when a dispute arises.
If the person does not want to be "controlled" (as you put it) they are free to not sign the contract.
And you've just ruined any other benefits marriage might have by trying to control such trivial things. Now people can't have any of the other benefits marriage might have because of your religious nonsense.
Well, it's your damn contract - if you want all those other things, hey, feel free to put this into your marriage contract: "This marriage does not include any consent to sexual congress between the parties".
That's what freedom means - you can walk away without signing.
Actually, part of what freedom means is that the government can't do shit to interfere with your business,
That would lead to me "buying" stuff from your business but never sending the money after I receive the goods. Contracts being worthless means that eBay cannot exist, credit cannot exist and even slashdot cannot exist. Not having enforceable contracts would mean that little shits like you who want your particular brand of religious nonsense in other peoples lives would have nowhere to peddle their brand of sky-fairy logic.
even if it means enforcing a silly contract that shouldn't be legally enforceable to begin with. And here, I think they have no business enforcing such "contracts."
But these "adultery" laws seem to be getting weaker, if the very first poster is correct. If so, you and your ilk are already losing. Good, I say.
My "ilk"? Eactly who do you think I'm affilated with? All I pointed out is that anyone who breaches a contract should face penalties. That law is not changing, and it never is going to change without a complete overhaul of civilisation that removes law enforcement (courts, justice system, etc) from society. Face it, My side, the side that will enforce contracts within the law, has already won and is in no danger of losing. Your side, wanting total anarchy where any party to a deal can simply and without penalty fail to fulfill their side of the deal, is never going to win this one. People who sign contracts aren't going to sign if the state refused to enforce penalties for breaches.
As far as I'm concerned, unless my wife indicates that she doesn't want to be touched, I'm gonna touch her however I want to without asking for permission.
Then, unless she told her you could do that beforehand (perhaps when getting married), you have no real consent. Marriage doesn't mean "I can have sex with this person whenever I please."
But you are missing the fact that she did in fact consent to sex with me for the rest of our lives together in a public setting in front of hundreds of witnesses where she said "To have and to hold". What exactly did you think "have" meant? Have over for dinner? I've already got her consent until such time that she explicitly withdraws it. All couples do.
Until she explicitly withdraws consent we're in a default state of consent, not in a default state of non-consent. When she withdraws her consent she makes it perfectly clear that it is only temporary (She says, "next 3-5 days only, I promise"), and even in that situation she doesn't always withdraw her consent (throw a towel on the bed and get busy).
I'm honestly shocked that there is someone out there naive enough to believe what you believe about married couples. Married couples have sex together all the time, and no, we don't ask for permission first. If one party is not in the mood then consent is temporarily withdrawn. But unless it is expressly permanently withdraw we will wait for the mood to change and try again.
I'm not trying to control anything; there are many different contracts which regulate behaviour.
In fact, you are. The instant you try to get government thugs to enforce your contract, you are trying to control someone. Many contracts are, in fact, not enforceable. I see no reason why contracts controlling sexuality should be the government's business. If you believe otherwise, you're an authoritarian of the highest caliber.
All contracts are the governments business, otherwise contracts would be worthless because they cannot be enforced. If the person does not want to be "controlled" (as you put it) they are free to not sign the contract. It is not authoritarian to say "You agreed to this, if you don't follow through on our agreement there will be penalties". It is senseless to tell people that they can sign whatever they want to because the signed contract will be ignored anyway.
TLDR: If you sign a contract, you will be held to it or face penalties, but luckily no one forces you to sign it in the first place. That's what freedom means - you can walk away without signing.
Again, because you shouldn't be trying to control others to that degree.
I'm not trying to control anything; there are many different contracts which regulate behaviour. Violating a contract is a violation regardless if someone's feelings were hurt or not, and penalties accompany violations. There is no "controlling" here - if you don't like the contract then don't sign it. If you sign it and then breach a clause or two in it then you have to pay the penalties. All contracts are like this, why should marriage contracts be different?
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All of us were outcasts in high school, which is why we ain't buying this bullshit of "women in tech are treated differently".
I'm curious - where in Southern Africa where you? I'm in South Africa and have vacationed just about everywhere here and never found a place that only had a few people that spoke english.
> Do you realize that before pension you spend more of your active life [barring sleep] with your colleagues than with your family and friends? How many people understand this simple fact?
It's not 1950. Those people will likely be a different set of people 3 years from now. You don't need to be "pals" with these people. You just need to get the job done. They are quite disposable.
These are people that you TEMPORARILY work with. Playing with them is not required.
Your point is probably where all these "get girls into tech" issues stem from. Men get into tech, find out that there's little to no socialising and are okay with it. Women get into tech, find out that there's little to no socialising and feel "left out".
It's just that companies should try to advertise jobs in ways that attract more female applicants, and create a work environment that facilitates them.
What makes you think that the current advertisements are excluding/less attractive to females? And what is so special about females that you need a different environment to function in? You are insulting both men and women in one go, and you don't even notice...
Regression to the mean is, by definitive, a regression model that is applied to a set of data which fails to disprove the null hypothesis of "no correlation".
No. You're incorrect - from this link:
"In statistics, regression toward (or to) the mean is the phenomenon that if a variable is extreme on its first measurement, it will tend to be closer to the average on its second measurement—and, paradoxically, if it is extreme on its second measurement, it will tend to have been closer to the average on its first."
This definition is directly contradictory to what you thought the definition was.
You keep throwing out ad hominem attacks, but I have to wonder if you have even taken the standard freshmen and sophmore level math ciriculum for the sciences (statistics, linear algebra, discrete math, single and multivariate calculus, and differential equations) based on what you are writing.
It is not ad hominem to point out that you are making a mistake even HS students don't make. And your error of understanding is not just with "regression to the mean", it's with all the other linear algebra and statistics and logic mistakes you've made over the course of this thread. Be happy that I'm only pointing out one of them - I flat out ignored the incorrect logic statement you posted earlier. For a refresher logic course, you can see this - first semester notes. Note that this particular document was been online since around 2006 so you've had plenty of time to read it if the information was not available elsewhere.
Once again I must point out that stringing together random terms you found on wikipedia is no substitute for actually knowing the subject.
I read your post. I ignored your claim of regression to the mean because there is no factual basis to support such a claim. That would necessitate that the trend is statistically insignificant,
There is no such requirement. Who gave you the idea that regression to the mean only applies to "statistically insignificant trends" (you made that up too, by the way - there's no such thing. "Statistical significance" applies to the testing of a null hypothesis)
which could easily be proved if it were true, In the social sciences, a P-value of only .05 is considered sufficient to disprove statistical insignificance.
The data sets consist of thousands of women graduating with CS degrees every year. It is not like astronomy and astrophysics where the number is low enough that there is some possibility of random noise distorting the signal over a period of a few years. With about a million data points over two decades, the Central Limit Theorem is very applicable.
Of course, if you can show using Gaussian probability in an appropriate regression model that the null hypothesis cannot be disproved, I would be willing to look over your calculations, but with so many data points, the Central Limit Theorem is clearly in full effect.
None of what you said makes sense - did you only just now look up statistics on wikipedia? You said above that regression to the mean does not apply, and now you say that the central limit theorem applies - those things go together (something you won't find out by skimming wikipedia, I'm afraid). Oh sure, you've thrown in some other words you don't understand, like Gaussian, but you still got the most elementary thing wrong - Regression to the mean applies whenever the central limit theorem applies.
I briefly taught both logic and statistics at a university, do you want me to try to find my old notes so you can quickly clue up on what all these things mean, and why your logic is off? Skimming wikipedia whenever you encounter a new term is not really a good way to learn anything, and it's obvious to those in the field when we meet the people who just skimmed for keywords.
I already posted evidence of the existence of artificial barriers. In fact, it was extremely relevant evidence as it was directly related to this article. The participation of women in academic computer science programs has decreased since the 1980s. By some measures, the decrease is by almost 200%.
All that proves is evidence of a decline. Nothing more.
There are two possible factors for that change:
1) Artificial Factors 2) Natural Factors.
Nope, there are more (which, had you bothered to even read my post you would have seen) such as regression to the mean (which was illustrated in my previous post).
A change in the actual physiological nature of women born over the last 30 years can be pretty thoroughly disproved, as I have done previously. By logical deduction: A+B->C => {C,'A}->B, we know that if natural factors can be disproved as a cause of this, then artificial factors must exist.
That is not a proof; I'm sorry, but that "proof" above really would be laughed off any respectable journal. Natural factors cannot be disproved of this because the current situation may be a regression to the mean (only one of several possible explanations).
Demonstrating that natural factors can cause experiences does not logically imply that natural factors cause a specific experience. That is akin to claiming that because most people die of natural causes, the person I found face down in a pool of his own blood with a knife in his back must have died of natural causes.
The question that I was asking was not whether there COULD be natural factors that contributed to the gender disparity in CS, but whether it could be conclusively demonstrated that natural factors were a significant factor. Can you demonstrate that women are naturally disinclined toward computer science the way that have conclusively demonstrated that smoking is a significant cause of lung cancer?
Please read my post again - just because I cannot conclusively prove that unicorns don't exist doesn't imply that your claim that they do exist must be true. In the same vein, just because I cannot conclusively prove the nature argument that doesn't imply that your nurture argument must be true. Science does not work that way - Just because A is unproven does not imply that B is proven.
So again, we get back to my original points which were:
1) There existence conclusive scientific evidence that artificial barriers exist that keep women out of computer science.
No, there doesn't. You keep claiming this, and you repeatedly claimed that there are several peer-reviewed studies to support this position but you have yet to post a link to any of them.
2) There is no conclusive scientific evidence that women are naturally disinclined toward entering computer science.
Because there is no evidence for A, you should assume that B is correct? My word...
If you are just making the claim that women are motivated differently than men without regard to the REASON for their motivation, then why did you respond to my post in the first place, since such a claim is not contradictory to anything I wrote?
The claim I made is contradictory to what you believe. You believe a claim was made over the capability of females, I corrected you and said that GP made no such claim. Let me refresh ... you said (repeatedly, but I'll just quote the one post here):
I would ask you to post the best study showing: 1) Women are naturally less capable of competing against men in the CS field because of physiological differences between men and women.
I replied with
Strawman - no one said anything about capability.
You are making an argument against a strawman. GP (that you replied to) never said anything about capability. No one brought capability into it but you.
I do not want to misrepresent your viewpoint or to have a discussion where we are talking around eachother, so please clarify:
1) Do you believe there is conclusive evidence that artificial factors (e.g. cultural, social, economic, et cetera) engender the differences in measured motivations to enter computer science, at least in part?
There is no evidence of that, none that I could find at any rate, so if it exists please post a link.
2) Do you believe there is conclusive evidence that natural factors (i.e. congenital, morphological differences between men and women) must be responsible in whole or in part for differences in motivation in entering computer science?
There are two questions there. Firstly, there is a ton of evidence that natural factors (as you use the term) are responsible for the majority, if not all, of the motivations humans experience; the exceptions are few and far between. For the second part, I've not seen nor heard of any study that found that CS, in particular, was an exception to this rule. You are welcome to find and post a link to evidence that the characteristic "motivation to do CS" is an exception.
However, science is not performed by "proving" a hypothesis, but by failing to disprove a hypothesis. Falsifiability. Let's start with an example:
The claim/assertion: Women are not entering CS due to societal influence
How can we prove this wrong? What experiment can we run which, if successful, shows that the statement is incorrect? Perhaps we could raise the experimental group of children in gender neutral isolation and leave the control group in the real world? That won't pass ethics review but it's a good start. Another option that won't pass ethics review is to forcefully raise the experimental group of children as the opposite gender in isolation from the real world and leave the control group in the real world.
If you do either of the above (somehow you managed to sneak it past ethics review) and at the end of the decades long experiment you find that there is a 50:50 ratio of genders in CS in the experimental group, then congratulations - you failed to prove the assertion incorrect so some weight may be added to your assertion. Doesn't mean that your claim is correct, only that the attempt to prove it wrong failed. Only after many varied repeated (and replicated) falsifying attempts can you start calling your hypothesis "commonly accepted" (still not a "fact" though).
This is the biggest reason that SJW's run into the ire of many respectable scientists. Just because studies have failed to prove the "genetic reason" they make the assumption that the "environmental impact reason" must be true. They fail to realise that the failure to prove/disprove a claim doesn't lend weight to any opposing claim. I.e. failing to prove that nature is the reason doesn't automatically make the nurture claim true.
You repeatedly make the same claim. Your basic cla
None of those studies you cite properly control for social and cultural factors.
I asked you to give me a PROPER CITATION (I'm pretty sure a "real" scientist knows how to do this) to the BEST study showing that women are less NATURALLY capable
You never even read my post above where I said it's already common knowledge that men and women are mostly equally capable, I doubt you are going to read the links I posted. I predicted you will ignore them, and you did.
or interested in science absent CULTURAL, SOCIAL, and ARTIFICIAL factors.
None of the studies you referenced properly controlled for artificial factors.
Surly if there actually existed compelling scientific evidence to support the claim that women are less likely to succeed or enter computer science absent any artificial barriers, you could cite one good study to show this to be true.
I never made this claim, I made the claim that women are motivated differently to men. I provided a peer-reviewed study (see link in previous post) that back this up. I claimed that motivation is a big factor in performance in science and then provided a peer-reviewed study that supported that claim. Seriously, read the studies.
Besides, you made the claim (numerous times in this thread) that there was peer-reviewed research supporting your position, so now show us that peer-reviewed research. I haven't seen any, not in my time as a scientist with access to just about all the journals there were and not in any time after that.
> How about you do what normal guys do and go out, find a lady, impress her enough to sleep with you
Because this isn't satisfying to me. Cognitive intercourse is. You're not going to convince me that I shouldn't want to collaborate with my significant other, and frankly it's offensive that you'd want to do so.
What the fuck? Where did I try to convince you to do that? You want to lazily sit at your desk till a female techie comes to you? That's nonsense. Nothing in what I said prevents you from going out and finding a female techie.
None of the "victims" in gamergate were techies,
Isn't Zoe Quinn a programmer of some sort?
Nope, depression quest was developed using "an open source tool for telling interactive fiction stories" (their own description). For the record, this is something my (almost) eight year old son has done numerous times. Doesn't make him a techie. Makes him a story-teller.
Using a word processor to write an eBook doesn't make you a kindle-programmer, it makes you an author.
Studies showing that, "women are motivated by different things to men [sic]," is not logically equivalent to your claim that, " physiological differences naturally make women less inclined in going into a STEM field." You are moving the goalposts.
Are you seriously too lazy to even see who made the original claim? I made no such claim.
Without even going to the peer reviewed analysis, let us look at the raw data.
That's not what you claimed - you claimed the existence of peer reviewed studies backing up your point, I asked for a citation. Instead of posting a single line citation you post a multi-paragraph explanation of why a citation isn't needed. You do more damage to your own argument than I could ever do.
Just FYI, before you make any more stupid claims to scientists about what we think, here is what peer-reviewed studies look like (and these are all in support of my argument that males and females have different motivations):
Significant difference in motivation between sexes,
Motivation difference in sex responsible for differing levels of performance,
Motivation primarily responsible for differences in performance in the sciences,
In fact, amongst scientists this is already well-known, you can find literally hundreds of peer-reviewed properly done and replicated studies that show that:
a) Women and men are mostly equally capable at all cognitive tasks, and
b) Women and men are almost always motivated by different things, and
c) Motivation is the primary indicator of performance in scientific fields.
Here, check for yourself
The problem, in my not so fucking humble scientist opinion, is that people like you don't have a clue about all the research that exists because:
a) You aren't scientists, you don't want to be scientists and it's too much work to think like one,
b) You have a different agenda to push, and common scientific knowledge like I posted above goes against what you feel should be correct, so you ignore it when you find it, just like you will ignore the above research (and the hundreds of papers that deal with this).
number of good papers and studies, so you can use the bibliography as a starting point.
Eric S. Roberts, Marina Kassianidou, and Lilly Irani. 2002. Encouraging women in computer science. SIGCSE Bull. 34, 2 (June 2002), 84-88.
That paper, which I've already read BTW, doesn't add to your argument in any way. In fact, quote the section that you *think* adds to your argument from that paper. There is not mention of artificial barriers, only strategies of increasing female representation - in fact, that's what the entire paper is about: how to increase female representation. Unluckily for
I give a fuck, actually. I'd like a wife. I'd like her to be a colleague.
Then you're both young and stupid. "Never screw the crew" is a rule I lived by for all of my working life. Occasionally I'd get my rule reinforced by watching the fallout of shenanigans at the office.
You want a wife? How about you do what normal guys do and go out, find a lady, impress her enough to sleep with you, then impress here some more so she'll stay with you, and then impress her some more so she'll marry you. If you want a wife, go out and work for one - don't sit at your desk and expect her to come to you. Life does not work like that.
Fuck off with your ignorance. Women are being pushed out of tech - look at GamerGate.
None of the "victims" in gamergate were techies, you idiot. You want more women like them in IT? More non-techies in information technology? What would they do here?
Google is not a peer-reviewed study.
I would ask you to post the best study showing:
1) Women are naturally less capable of competing against men in the CS field because of physiological differences between men and women.
Strawman - no one said anything about capability. The common (scientific) consensus is that women are motivated by different things to men. It's not lack of capability that results in skewed numbers, it's lack of motivation to spend more time with machines than with humans.
Oh yeah, one more thing - all those peer-reviewed studies you've been mentioning? Citation needed. All the science studies ones I could find point to different motivational factors for men and women irrespective of fields.
Yeah, but it's the IT industry who's misogynistic (rolls eyes). Where're those SJW's when you actually need them? Out defending those professional trolls who smear an entire group of people based on outdated and outmoded stereotypes, like Anita S. and Zoe Q.
Good question, actually - in this instance there's actual harm, unlike all the other SJW posts we've been seeing on slashdot
Then you control your own manufacturing. Lots of companies do that very thing.
Let's say you do that. You control your own manufacturing, but you don't manufacture everything, do you? You don't put up a multibillion dollar chip fab plant to turn out 150000 $0.99 parts, do you? You buy those things from somewhere reputable, like FTDI itself. You own the logistics (yes, you went out and bought a cargo ship, crewed it and run it just to give you your parts), you own the manufacturing (spending billions of dollars putting up a plant capable of doing this).
Nevermind all that, you go with the $0.99 FTDI part, well, because ... and everything seems to work. One year later when you have 150000 $10000 dollar devices in the field FTDI releases a new driver which instantly and permanently bricks half the devices in the field. Your customers instantly pull out the warranty agreement and because you have no devices that definitely won't be bricked you have to give them money instead. Well done, you're now broke and bankrupt!
How did your "genuine" devices get bricked anyway? Well, some lowly paid peon on your cargo ship, or your transport trucks, or in your warehouse, or on your factory floor got paid a small amount of money to switch them out. The erratic nature of the switching over time meant that your strategy of random sampling five out of every 10000 chips was not good enough (perhaps you should have used a stratified random approach?).
The point is that even when you theoretically control everything, if there is money to be made to swap out the chips with fakes someone under your theoretical control will swap it out for the money. At this point it is almost way too risky to trust anything to an FTDI driver - maybe use a different driver (seriously, as a poster above pointed out it's a fairly trivial thing to write a driver for this particular example), but if you're going to use a different driver then why not simply use a different chip?
It is almost stupid, in light of what happened, to actually trust a company willing to damage your property to protect itself from a crime which has already happened. An analogy would be if a grocery store wronged you, and then you decided to take revenge by hunting down everyone else who shopped there and killing their loved ones, or burning their house down - they are an innocent third party!
In no situation is it acceptable to take punitive measures against innocent third parties when someone wrongs you, and in this situation it is even more repulsive than usual as the innocent third party won't even know what FTDI is, or why they should care - they bought a fucking printer, or car diagnostic unit, or snazzy Hi-Fi unit, or whatever. This company should be forced to make reparations for the replacement of any bricked device. It might make them go out of business, but it would definitely set a good precedent. I'm tired of companies getting away with actual crime while individual citizens get their lives destroyed in civil suits brought by companies, with no actual crime getting proved.
I don't need to edit it. You are lying about my position, which I've stated multiple times. Either you have severe reading comprehension problems, or you're attacking an imaginary position out of convenience.
Your position, repeatedly stated, is that my stated position, that marriage gives you default consent unless otherwise retracted, is wrong. Why are you so sexist? What do you have against women having full autonomy over their own bodies?
You completely missed the GP's point. In some religious marriages those involved might not expect their partner to touch them in a sexual way whenever they feel like it. The mere act of marrying does not imply consent, it still has to be given. Granted, most people give it long before they get married, and not explicitly, but that doesn't change the fact that marriage itself does not grant consent in this regard.
I never said that marriage by itself gives consent. GP's point was that my stated position, that marriage puts a couple in a state of default consent unless otherwise retracted, is wrong. I simply don't understand this anti-women stance.
It actually described your "side" perfectly
If you have to lie about what my position is, then I doubt you have anything of value to offer.
No lies - your bone-headed and ill-thought out position was made perfectly clear throughout this thread, and now you can't go back and edit it. Shame.
Except, that doesn't describe my side at all. My side just says that certain things are none of the government's business to enforce. Like signing people into slavery, or controlling others' sexuality.
It actually described your "side" perfectly - fact is, if you want to control your own sexuality so that your partner never has consent unless they explicitly ask for it, you can have it easily enough - put it into that contract you're signing. But don't you dare stand up in a crowd of witness and actually swear that you are giving consent, and then try to argue later that those words mean nothing. Even absent an actual contract, you gave consent in front of witnesses.
You are free to withdraw that consent at any time and if you fail to do so you can't very well claim that consent wasn't sought. It was sought, it was given, it was witnessed. You didn't have to give consent, but you did. You could have given qualified consent, but you didn't. You have a rather large number of options in which to practice your particularly horrible brand of relationships so there's no need to jump into other peoples personal lives. How dare you tell women what they can or cannot do with their own bodies? How dare you imply that women should be subject to your special flavour of marriage. You tell women that you know better than they do how their marriage should be? My wife enjoys being awoken in a "special" way, and would be damn pissed if I had to ask her beforehand and spoil any surprise.
People like you should move to places where there aren't any womens' rights - that's the only thing that'll apparently make you happy - removing all rights women have.
All contracts are the governments business, otherwise contracts would be worthless because they cannot be enforced.
Some contracts actually aren't enforceable. I do not believe that marriage should automatically have such restrictive terms, and I don't believe they should be enforceable. Just say, "Well, it's a contract, therefore the government should automatically be involved and it should always be enforced." is stupid and won't work on me.
The government is not automatically involved in all contracts, it is only involved when a dispute arises.
If the person does not want to be "controlled" (as you put it) they are free to not sign the contract.
And you've just ruined any other benefits marriage might have by trying to control such trivial things. Now people can't have any of the other benefits marriage might have because of your religious nonsense.
Well, it's your damn contract - if you want all those other things, hey, feel free to put this into your marriage contract: "This marriage does not include any consent to sexual congress between the parties".
That's what freedom means - you can walk away without signing.
Actually, part of what freedom means is that the government can't do shit to interfere with your business,
That would lead to me "buying" stuff from your business but never sending the money after I receive the goods. Contracts being worthless means that eBay cannot exist, credit cannot exist and even slashdot cannot exist. Not having enforceable contracts would mean that little shits like you who want your particular brand of religious nonsense in other peoples lives would have nowhere to peddle their brand of sky-fairy logic.
even if it means enforcing a silly contract that shouldn't be legally enforceable to begin with. And here, I think they have no business enforcing such "contracts."
But these "adultery" laws seem to be getting weaker, if the very first poster is correct. If so, you and your ilk are already losing. Good, I say.
My "ilk"? Eactly who do you think I'm affilated with? All I pointed out is that anyone who breaches a contract should face penalties. That law is not changing, and it never is going to change without a complete overhaul of civilisation that removes law enforcement (courts, justice system, etc) from society. Face it, My side, the side that will enforce contracts within the law, has already won and is in no danger of losing. Your side, wanting total anarchy where any party to a deal can simply and without penalty fail to fulfill their side of the deal, is never going to win this one. People who sign contracts aren't going to sign if the state refused to enforce penalties for breaches.
What sort of terrible marriage are you in?
None, because I think marriage is trash.
As far as I'm concerned, unless my wife indicates that she doesn't want to be touched, I'm gonna touch her however I want to without asking for permission.
Then, unless she told her you could do that beforehand (perhaps when getting married), you have no real consent. Marriage doesn't mean "I can have sex with this person whenever I please."
But you are missing the fact that she did in fact consent to sex with me for the rest of our lives together in a public setting in front of hundreds of witnesses where she said "To have and to hold". What exactly did you think "have" meant? Have over for dinner? I've already got her consent until such time that she explicitly withdraws it. All couples do.
Until she explicitly withdraws consent we're in a default state of consent, not in a default state of non-consent. When she withdraws her consent she makes it perfectly clear that it is only temporary (She says, "next 3-5 days only, I promise"), and even in that situation she doesn't always withdraw her consent (throw a towel on the bed and get busy).
I'm honestly shocked that there is someone out there naive enough to believe what you believe about married couples. Married couples have sex together all the time, and no, we don't ask for permission first. If one party is not in the mood then consent is temporarily withdrawn. But unless it is expressly permanently withdraw we will wait for the mood to change and try again.
I'm not trying to control anything; there are many different contracts which regulate behaviour.
In fact, you are. The instant you try to get government thugs to enforce your contract, you are trying to control someone. Many contracts are, in fact, not enforceable. I see no reason why contracts controlling sexuality should be the government's business. If you believe otherwise, you're an authoritarian of the highest caliber.
All contracts are the governments business, otherwise contracts would be worthless because they cannot be enforced. If the person does not want to be "controlled" (as you put it) they are free to not sign the contract. It is not authoritarian to say "You agreed to this, if you don't follow through on our agreement there will be penalties". It is senseless to tell people that they can sign whatever they want to because the signed contract will be ignored anyway.
TLDR: If you sign a contract, you will be held to it or face penalties, but luckily no one forces you to sign it in the first place. That's what freedom means - you can walk away without signing.
Again, because you shouldn't be trying to control others to that degree.
I'm not trying to control anything; there are many different contracts which regulate behaviour. Violating a contract is a violation regardless if someone's feelings were hurt or not, and penalties accompany violations. There is no "controlling" here - if you don't like the contract then don't sign it. If you sign it and then breach a clause or two in it then you have to pay the penalties. All contracts are like this, why should marriage contracts be different?