After my PS4 games, my fancy sneakers, my smart phone every 2 years, half my meals made by McDonalds, and the rent on my apartment that's close to work, I just have no disposable income! Moving goalposts.
Disposable income in China and India is very much on the rise, as those nations "emerge", so worldwide disposable income is growing markedly even with the changing definition.
Are you not following the conversation? The word of the day is not "sports" but "esports". We can't just use "gaming", because it's not specific enough.
Anyhow, chess is recognized by the IOC as a sport, just like Starcraft.
No, equality of outcomes is definitely not a measure of equality of opportunity, because preferences are never equal, competing opportunities are never equal, and so on.
Divide up people along any non-arbitrary lines, and you don't expect equality of outcome, even with equality of opportunity, because people in any two non-arbitrary groups won't necessarily have the same values, or the the same pool of unrelated options or anything else that makes people different.
I'm struggling to think of any jobs where the male/female ratio is very close to 50% - I'm sure there is one, just at random, but it's got to be rare. Same with any division of people where you'd expect values to differ.
Statistics are clearly showing that minorities and women are greatly over represented in college intakes in comparison to their grades.
Too broad a statement. Asians are significantly under-represented in comparison to their grades.
I don't see a problem with a bit of bias in favor of low-income students, because we know grades aren't a sufficient measure there: give them a bit of slack. But of course there are too many places with explicit racial quotas, instead of basing stuff on other background factors, which actually screws some minorities badly.
Meh, at least in software development the demand has grown as a result of growth in supply: the more you can automate, the more you want to automate. In my long-ish career I've see the labor force double every 5 years or so, and wages in the field rise quickly the whole time.
Training more people to enter a field only makes any real difference in wages when you get a significant over-supply, as h append with lawyers over the last decade or so. Not to say that couldn't happen with software, but these programs won't make that sort of difference. Exponential growth in supply has stopped, and all these programs are trivial in comparison to doubling the worldwide supply of developers again.
RN is a highly paid, highly skilled job. More in-demand than doctors in some fields.
But "nursing" includes a lot of low-skilled jobs as well. From what I understand, there are more men to be found in the lower-skilled tiers of nursing. LVN/LPN etc.
The point is that rational people would rather work in sales or marketing than shovel sludge.
Rational people can have a variety of values. Valuing only financial success to the exclusion of all else is a mental illness. Sane rational people will make choices to maximize their results according to their personal value hierarchy, whatever that may be. Valuing "not being a weasel" is not evidence of irrationality.
"Subjects" or "fields"? Women will have a large career advantage over men at teaching young children, regardless of ability, because the men are assumed to be pedophiles. People have a preference for fields they are likely to succeed in, which is separate from ability in a subject.
That's kind of the point of a lot of the "OMG gender!" stuff going on, right? Accusations that some fields are unwelcoming to women, regardless of ability?
There are no doubt biological differences in ability. There are no doubt biological differences in preference. There are no doubt social differences in preference, both generally and in the culture of specific fields. The interesting question is "how large is each", as only the last is really something we can affect.
"Giving up on helping" is orthagonal to "biological difference". Insisting on equality of outcome (such as perfect gender balance) is tyranny. The goal should be enabling those who want to be a software developer or a nurse or whatever become that without placing gender-based obstacles in their way. Twisting people's arms to make them want to pursue a given field should never be a goal.
I do know that after males were largely evicted from schools, they even turned to drugging the boys to start the feminization process. Boys are rambunctious, rowdy, and cannot sit still. They need to be drugged to make them compliant like the girls, who show superior cooperation skills.
Eliminating recess was insane, IMO. Of course you're going to end up drugging young boys to get them to sit still!
They tried to get me to put my kid on Ritalin, I said no way. Instead, we put him in Ice hockey./quote
When there's a difference between the sexes, "biological difference" is the null hypothesis, though it's hard to see how that expresses itself except in personality. There are plenty of psychological differences between men and women as statistical groups (and that's the context here, statistical group tendencies, not individuals). It would be interesting to see if that explains it entirely: measure the Big 5 personality traits of a large sample of e.g. physics grad students or working software developers, and see if the gender imbalance is what you'd expect if the gender differences in those traits was all that was going on, or what the correlation was (how big is "what's left to explain").
Of course, that would leave the question of why the personality traits that are commonly found in those successful in a field are what they are, and if that's necessarily true, or just the current culture. But that question's a bit moot without data.
An answer so obviously true will never be accepted by those seeking a political tool. You'll still find reasonable gender balance in biology classes, though.
I didn't have any problems finding weedkiller without it - glyphosate kills grass, so there's a whole line of "safe for your yard" products without it.
That still doesn't explain why people watch others play video games.
Plenty of streamers are just below professionally competitive skill level. Watching them play is like watching college sports -maybe not as good as the pros, but still way better than everyone else.
As to why do people watch the pros, well, why do people watch and analyze chess games?
I can understand watching others screw up a lot for the humor effect
There's a lot of that too. Sarcastic commentary makes it even better.
Like giving birth or surgery. When will ESPN show those?
Giving birth? ESPN would never show anything that could be perceived as pro-life. But we were talking about sports, not cable political commentary channels.
E-sports are bottom-of-the-barrel bullshit and take up valuable resources which could be spent making non-shit games.
Single-player games will certainly make a comeback after the success of God of War. Other than the recent death of single player titles, I don't understand your complaint. Games that actually become esports are those with a high skill ceiling, and that stay fun to play long enough for that to matter, i.e., good games.
There is something particularly sad about FIFA as an "esport", though, since its a game about sports instead of a game that makes a good esport.
Then please do tell us what "sport" is? I could see it being defined as "playing a competitive game at a high level" and have a hard time seeing too many "real sports" not being included by that definition. In fact, I have a hard time thinking up of a definition that would include all "real sports" but wouldn't include e-sports.
Originally, sport was peacetime games that prepared young men for war: running, hurdling, javelin, shot-put, etc. Heck, the predecessor to modern kickball games with formal rules was a competition between neighboring villages to move a ball to the front steps of the other village's church, with no rules. The violence got so bad that it was eventually banned by both Church and secular authorities. Imagine competitive soccer riots.
In some weird sense, war is changing to look more like video games, and some esports end up closer to the original idea of sport than soccer. I know I'd love to see "drone laser tag" become a thing!
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine the outcry if you reduced a woman to the essential parts!
Men will be obsolete the day they invent a robot that can open jars and kill spiders.
Disposable income in the west is on the decline,
After my PS4 games, my fancy sneakers, my smart phone every 2 years, half my meals made by McDonalds, and the rent on my apartment that's close to work, I just have no disposable income! Moving goalposts.
Disposable income in China and India is very much on the rise, as those nations "emerge", so worldwide disposable income is growing markedly even with the changing definition.
Are you not following the conversation? The word of the day is not "sports" but "esports". We can't just use "gaming", because it's not specific enough.
Anyhow, chess is recognized by the IOC as a sport, just like Starcraft.
No, equality of outcomes is definitely not a measure of equality of opportunity, because preferences are never equal, competing opportunities are never equal, and so on.
Divide up people along any non-arbitrary lines, and you don't expect equality of outcome, even with equality of opportunity, because people in any two non-arbitrary groups won't necessarily have the same values, or the the same pool of unrelated options or anything else that makes people different.
I'm struggling to think of any jobs where the male/female ratio is very close to 50% - I'm sure there is one, just at random, but it's got to be rare. Same with any division of people where you'd expect values to differ.
Wow, modded to "-1" for agreeing that girls and boys are equal in ability. That's a new low even by /. standards.
Why even assume that, it's bizarre.
Because we seem to be measuring against "equal outcomes" as if that were the goal. That's a particularly shitty goal.
Statistics are clearly showing that minorities and women are greatly over represented in college intakes in comparison to their grades.
Too broad a statement. Asians are significantly under-represented in comparison to their grades.
I don't see a problem with a bit of bias in favor of low-income students, because we know grades aren't a sufficient measure there: give them a bit of slack. But of course there are too many places with explicit racial quotas, instead of basing stuff on other background factors, which actually screws some minorities badly.
Meh, at least in software development the demand has grown as a result of growth in supply: the more you can automate, the more you want to automate. In my long-ish career I've see the labor force double every 5 years or so, and wages in the field rise quickly the whole time.
Training more people to enter a field only makes any real difference in wages when you get a significant over-supply, as h append with lawyers over the last decade or so. Not to say that couldn't happen with software, but these programs won't make that sort of difference. Exponential growth in supply has stopped, and all these programs are trivial in comparison to doubling the worldwide supply of developers again.
RN is a highly paid, highly skilled job. More in-demand than doctors in some fields.
But "nursing" includes a lot of low-skilled jobs as well. From what I understand, there are more men to be found in the lower-skilled tiers of nursing. LVN/LPN etc.
The point is that rational people would rather work in sales or marketing than shovel sludge.
Rational people can have a variety of values. Valuing only financial success to the exclusion of all else is a mental illness. Sane rational people will make choices to maximize their results according to their personal value hierarchy, whatever that may be. Valuing "not being a weasel" is not evidence of irrationality.
"Subjects" or "fields"? Women will have a large career advantage over men at teaching young children, regardless of ability, because the men are assumed to be pedophiles. People have a preference for fields they are likely to succeed in, which is separate from ability in a subject.
That's kind of the point of a lot of the "OMG gender!" stuff going on, right? Accusations that some fields are unwelcoming to women, regardless of ability?
There are no doubt biological differences in ability. There are no doubt biological differences in preference. There are no doubt social differences in preference, both generally and in the culture of specific fields. The interesting question is "how large is each", as only the last is really something we can affect.
"Gaming" includes "gambling" - these days more than ever.
Also, "gaming" does not imply "an organized competition", which is what esports is: not just gaming, but something more specific.
"Giving up on helping" is orthagonal to "biological difference". Insisting on equality of outcome (such as perfect gender balance) is tyranny. The goal should be enabling those who want to be a software developer or a nurse or whatever become that without placing gender-based obstacles in their way. Twisting people's arms to make them want to pursue a given field should never be a goal.
I do know that after males were largely evicted from schools, they even turned to drugging the boys to start the feminization process. Boys are rambunctious, rowdy, and cannot sit still. They need to be drugged to make them compliant like the girls, who show superior cooperation skills.
Eliminating recess was insane, IMO. Of course you're going to end up drugging young boys to get them to sit still!
They tried to get me to put my kid on Ritalin, I said no way. Instead, we put him in Ice hockey./quote
Nice! Glad it worked out for you.
When there's a difference between the sexes, "biological difference" is the null hypothesis, though it's hard to see how that expresses itself except in personality. There are plenty of psychological differences between men and women as statistical groups (and that's the context here, statistical group tendencies, not individuals). It would be interesting to see if that explains it entirely: measure the Big 5 personality traits of a large sample of e.g. physics grad students or working software developers, and see if the gender imbalance is what you'd expect if the gender differences in those traits was all that was going on, or what the correlation was (how big is "what's left to explain").
Of course, that would leave the question of why the personality traits that are commonly found in those successful in a field are what they are, and if that's necessarily true, or just the current culture. But that question's a bit moot without data.
Maybe something like those grinders that they throw male chicks into.
Wow, that's taking TERFs to a whole new extreme.
An answer so obviously true will never be accepted by those seeking a political tool. You'll still find reasonable gender balance in biology classes, though.
I didn't have any problems finding weedkiller without it - glyphosate kills grass, so there's a whole line of "safe for your yard" products without it.
Yes, but in the "developed world" it's dwindling
I popular claim to make, but it seems to be based on moving the goalposts for "disposable income".
It's almost as if we need a different word than "sports" just to make the pedants STFU. I propose "esports". What do you think?
That still doesn't explain why people watch others play video games.
Plenty of streamers are just below professionally competitive skill level. Watching them play is like watching college sports -maybe not as good as the pros, but still way better than everyone else.
As to why do people watch the pros, well, why do people watch and analyze chess games?
I can understand watching others screw up a lot for the humor effect
There's a lot of that too. Sarcastic commentary makes it even better.
Like giving birth or surgery. When will ESPN show those?
Giving birth? ESPN would never show anything that could be perceived as pro-life. But we were talking about sports, not cable political commentary channels.
E-sports are bottom-of-the-barrel bullshit and take up valuable resources which could be spent making non-shit games.
Single-player games will certainly make a comeback after the success of God of War. Other than the recent death of single player titles, I don't understand your complaint. Games that actually become esports are those with a high skill ceiling, and that stay fun to play long enough for that to matter, i.e., good games.
There is something particularly sad about FIFA as an "esport", though, since its a game about sports instead of a game that makes a good esport.
Then please do tell us what "sport" is? I could see it being defined as "playing a competitive game at a high level" and have a hard time seeing too many "real sports" not being included by that definition. In fact, I have a hard time thinking up of a definition that would include all "real sports" but wouldn't include e-sports.
Originally, sport was peacetime games that prepared young men for war: running, hurdling, javelin, shot-put, etc. Heck, the predecessor to modern kickball games with formal rules was a competition between neighboring villages to move a ball to the front steps of the other village's church, with no rules. The violence got so bad that it was eventually banned by both Church and secular authorities. Imagine competitive soccer riots.
In some weird sense, war is changing to look more like video games, and some esports end up closer to the original idea of sport than soccer. I know I'd love to see "drone laser tag" become a thing!
Sports were originally training for war : running, hurdling, javelin, shot-put. Polo definitely counts.
Perhaps you're looking for a different word "athleticism" - but polo counts there too. (Scooter polo not so much, by either measure.)