Ah. So testosterone and estrogen and the other large physical differences between the sexes somehow result in no mental differences whatsoever.
Did I say that? No, I didn't.
You asked why people have a hard time accepting "innate differences" as the reason for different outcomes. I answered you: it's because people have said that for centuries about the difference between well-off upper-class white men and pretty much everybody.
That's not to say that there are no innate differences. But those who want to claim that innate, unalterable biological differences between women and men are 100% responsible for some facet of the current world need to prove their point beyond the shadow of a doubt, rather than just making the same vague, unsubstantiated claims that have been proven wrong again and again.
Since both a moderator and some AC troll have accused me of insincerity, let me be clear. I don't have anything in general against any sort of humor, and over beers my friends and I often compete to peel paint with the raw offensiveness of our jokes. (Fun party game: convince fellow bar patrons that you have confused Helen Keller and Anne Frank and then watch them struggle not to show how horrified they are.) But this is another thing entirely.
If I make fun of my Irish Catholic friend with jokes about priests and candy bars, he knows I'm kidding. If somebody were to talk to me sincerely and with a heavy heart about getting sexually assaulted by a priest and I hauled out my string of Catholic child molestation jokes, I would be an insensitive asshole.
Making "tits or gtfo" jokes to somebody who is explaining sincerely that people who want to be in our field are leaving it because of harassment is a similarly dickish move. I'd say so in person, and I'm saying so here. A funny asshole is still an asshole.
I still don't see any conspiracy here. You'll have to do better than "here are some low paid professions that women mostly do".
Historically, one big driver of this is lack of investment in education for women. Another is their intentional exclusion from higher-paying professions. If you want hard data, The Economist over the years has had a number of articles on this topic.
And to perpetuate an unjust system, one doesn't need active conspiracy. Inertia is incredibly powerful. For centuries, people assumed that women couldn't vote, be professionals, or hold political power because it had never happened. I'm sure most of those people were sincere and not conspiracy-minded in any way, but they still perpetuated an incredible waste of human talent.
Re:don't remember anything of the sort
on
Ender in Exile
·
· Score: 1
My point, just to be clear, isn't that people can't legitimately differ over the merits of a work of art. My point is that if I don't like something that is wildly popular, the reasonable conclusion isn't that everybody else is a fool and a charlatan. It's that people have different tastes.
Seriously, why does every career or activity have to have an exact 50-50 mix of males and females? Last time I checked, the hormonal balance in men and women were quite a bit different and each sex has a general preference to what interests them. [...] The two sexes are different. Why do so many people have a hard time accepting that?
Because of the centuries of total bullshit shoveled off the exact same truck that you're standing on?
To deal with the cold, hard logic of computers all day, you need to be comfortable with such an unemotional, machine-like environment.
I'm not sure how true this is. A lot of the recent innovation in software methods has been around the rise of explicitly more social approaches. The first line of the Agile Manifesto, for example, is "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools."
There's no reason a software shop can't be a socially lively place; I think it's just a historical accident that a lot of them aren't.
Assuming that your hand-waving and generalizing just happens to correspond with an immutable biological reality, what then?
The notion that somehow CS should be done entirely by Vulcans is ridiculous. This might have been plausible in the 70s, when big iron ruled the land, and punch cards were the big advance in user interface.
These days, however, software is and has to be a very human, very social enterprise.
First, most software these days is made for broad audiences to use. A deep understanding of how humans act and interact isn't just useful, it's vital.
Second, software projects are much more collaborative than they were in the days of yore. Back in the day, one or two people could write a best-selling game or an accounting package; there's only so much code you can fit in 32k of RAM. Now, it takes at least a few and often dozens or hundreds of people to make anything serious. And projects are much more interdependent, requiring social skills to interact with other teams and projects.
There are plenty of socially oriented women -- and men -- who would make great programmers who didn't get involved with the field for one reason or another. We need those people desperately.
For some reason its hard to accept that a lot of women simply aren't interested in studying CS, engineering, or hard science.
That's because saying that something "simply is" is just a cop-out. There are always reasons. It may be that these reasons are completely innate and can't be influenced through upbringing in the slightest. In which case, yes, we can just shrug our shoulders and move on.
But until we know that, and especially given that the history of the last couple hundred years has included many revolutionary changes about what "simply is" about women and men, then deciding that this time our prejudices and the status quo just happen to be right is intellectually lazy.
Whether they were male or female didn't really enter into it, but if you want to interpret this as hostility then there's a good chance you might be part of the problem.
Neither of us can know the truth of her situation, but I can totally back the truth of butterflysrage's statement in general. Maybe your conscious intent was to be evenhanded. And heck, maybe if we counted the people you talked to, you really would have been. But when I go to geek conferences with female colleagues, they are continually approached in ways that I'm not. Some are gracious about it, and some are legitimately annoyed, but either way suggesting that the main problem is them without even asking for a bit more detail is certainly arrogant, and there's a "good chance" they'll find it annoying as fuck.
Yes, sexual harassment in response to a sincere post about how somebody feels continually harassed is totally hilarious. Dick.
I don't mind that somebody made the obvious joke, but I do mind that it got modded up to a 5. You people wanna know why there aren't a lot of women in the field? Try a mirror.
So nearly all species in the animal kingdom have inherent behavioral differences between males and females - except humans? You really believe that?
I think it's wise to be suspicious of that for a few reasons.
One, human behavioral plasticity is much greater than other animals; inferring what humans are capable of based on animal capabilities is dubious. Two, there are centuries of historical thought on what the "innate" differences are between men and women, most of which was has turned out to be woefully wrong.
Three, people do a lot of dubious reasoning based on general statements. E.g., it's true that in one sense men are taller than women, in that the average man is a bit taller than the average woman. But it's not true that all men are taller than all women, or that Vietnamese men are taller than Norwegian women, or that women can't play basketball.
So although I agree there are probably fundamental differences in the cognitive hardware between an average man and an average woman, I think there are so many steps between that and practical real-world consequences for individuals that it will be another 50 years of research before we can make conclusions about what's possible or what's right.
My point is that your bitching about to me intolerance can conflation of political opinions with literary merit when I am not doing those things is mainly serving to irritate me. If you have issues with the behavior of other people, go talk to them and not to me.
And you're entitled to your opinion. I still read it the other way. That is what we call a difference of interpretation. Which is hardly the "outright lie" that you called it. I'll look for your apology to those you've slandered shortly.
Or through, like, voting and stuff.
Yes, that's sure what I do with my to-the-death enemies. I vote at them.
It keeps the term "marriage" to mean a man and a woman, that's all.
Card's views go well beyond the label applied.
Since you've brought it up multiple times, I get it--you have gay friends and relatives. I don't see how that changes the conversation, especially since I haven't said one thing for or against Cards' views!
I mention it to help explain why I'm using language that conveys strong emotion.
My point--from the first post on--has been that it's a shame that somebody's personal opinion can cause people to say things like his entire body of works is worthless, and many other things along those lines. It's absolutely fine that you don't like his views, and it's fine if you don't want to support his views and so choose not to give him anymore money. I have no problem with this. I DO have a problem with people acting as if his views change anything that he's written.
Good thing I didn't do that then. Perhaps you should talk to somebody who did.
outright lies about Card's beliefs [...] violently overthrow the government,
It seems that Card does believe that. That's how I interpret this, anyhow:
Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down
He's certainly advocating overthrow of the government over this. I guess, to be fair, he could be talking about destroying his mortal enemy through the playing of patty-cake. But picking a "mortal enemy" means that you'll fight them until one of you is in a coffin. That sounds pretty violent to me.
Now that I think about it, though, he could just be planning to bore them to death. That would explain his recent published output, for sure.
Where has Card demanded breaking up happy families?
What do you think the point of banning gay marriage is, exactly, except to discourage the formation and encourage the dissolution of gay families?
In particular, one of the possible consequences of Prop 8 is that the currently married people will have their marriages invalidated.
I can't judge you as I don't know you from Adam, but going around calling people douchebags, crazy, who holds vile beliefs and is a homebreaker is pretty serious.
Yes. Trying to change the constitution and passed so my friends and relatives can't get married is also pretty serious. But only one of those things is intolerant of living human beings. I just dislike his opinions and his stunted moral sense. If you've got a problem with intolerance, shouldn't you be upset at Card, not me?
Tolerance of a fellow citizen does not require me to approve of his opinions, to listen to them silently, or to use only the kindest words when describing him or them.
Card's opinions are vile. He has let his (crazy) religious beliefs triumph over any sort of consideration for his fellow man. Trying to break up happy, successful families because you don't like something about their members is intolerance. Calling that out isn't.
Sheesh, I have seen more intolerant posts in this thread than just about anywhere on slashdot, ever.
Which part of my post was intolerant? Calling him a douchebag for trying to keep my friends from getting married? From trying to keep my friends' children from having married parents? I'm tolerating him, but I can still do that while saying that he's a morally stunted arrogant asshole. And christ, I'm not the one trying to get the constitution amended to break up his family, so if what I am is intolerant, then what do you call him?
Or was it that I said he's turned into a shitty writer? Because that's purely a literary opinion. Although I kept "Ender's Game", I just put "Xenocide" and a couple of his other books in the giveaway box. I have mercifully forgotten quite why the sucked, but I only bothered to finish one of them, and it's pretty rare I don't finish a novel.
Re:How we respond to technology
on
Ender in Exile
·
· Score: 1
In science fiction, the high technology is a plot device [...] I do not need to know how a technological fountain of youth works.
I personally prefer a little of both.
Some authors in effect write fantasy novels with sciencey trimmings. That can be fine; Star Wars is more a fantasy than what I'd call science fiction, for example. But it can also be a cover for laziness, like the whole "midichlorians" thing in the second Star Wars trilogy.
I favor sci-fi that includes at least a little hard science for two reasons. First, it can be an excellent way consider the implications of a technology. I'm fascinated by how current technology affects current people, and guessing at what comes next is fun. Second, trying to stick with real consequences of plausible science can forces authors to work a little harder.
Actually, my understanding is that it was the black vote in california that tipped the scales.
Imagine that Prop 8 won by just one vote. By your logic, any single person who voted for Prop 8 could be pointed out as the person who "tipped the scales". That's ridiculous, and your suggestion that only Obama's somehow the causative factor for this is equally ridiculous.
The most you can say is that higher black turnout helped Proposition 8 pass. But that doesn't tell you anything about the other factors.
Even ignoring that, the math doesn't support your claims. Black turnout in CA, historically at 6%, was at 10% this year. If 69% percent of them were for Prop 8, then the extra number of black pro-8 voters that came to the poll would be circa 20% * 4%, or 0.8% of voters. The necessary swing to change the outcome is 2.2%, so the additional black turnout was not actually enough to swing things.
You're not quite getting it. My short rule of thumb for things like this is "don't feed pigeons."
Why? Well, pigeons are machines for turning food into crap and more pigeons. The world has plenty of both. Although it can be fun to feed pigeons, I don't do it, because I don't want to contribute to the problems.
Ditto with Card. He's welcome to be a douchebag, but not on my money. Whereas the things you mentioned don't benefit the people you mentioned, so I don't have a problem with people using them.
Accent on wrote, for sure. I hadn't read anything of his in a while, and so I picked up a couple of books last year. Even if he weren't a douchebag, his powers have certainly gotten weak.
Re:don't remember anything of the sort
on
Ender in Exile
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Yes, you not liking a book a bunch of other people like is clear proof that there's something wrong with all those other people. There is no other possible explanation.
Doesn't look so impressive when you look at it this way.
Depends on the payoff.
It's not good if you're betting even money on coin tosses. But if you're a venture capitalist, it's great. The general rule for tech VCs is that 7 bets out of 10 will fail, 2 will do ok, and 1 will be a big success. If that 1 success is buying 10% of Google in the very early days, your 70% failure rate is still pretty awesome, because you're still up billions of dollars.
The problem is, that if you're not a bank, there is no such thing as generating value (out of thin air).
You confuse value and money. I went to a show the other night to hear a favorite singer. She generated value out of thin air, and I gave her money for it. Money I got because I generated value for somebody else.
If you're interested in the topic, Frozen Desire is a very interesting read.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah. So testosterone and estrogen and the other large physical differences between the sexes somehow result in no mental differences whatsoever.
Did I say that? No, I didn't.
You asked why people have a hard time accepting "innate differences" as the reason for different outcomes. I answered you: it's because people have said that for centuries about the difference between well-off upper-class white men and pretty much everybody.
That's not to say that there are no innate differences. But those who want to claim that innate, unalterable biological differences between women and men are 100% responsible for some facet of the current world need to prove their point beyond the shadow of a doubt, rather than just making the same vague, unsubstantiated claims that have been proven wrong again and again.
Since both a moderator and some AC troll have accused me of insincerity, let me be clear. I don't have anything in general against any sort of humor, and over beers my friends and I often compete to peel paint with the raw offensiveness of our jokes. (Fun party game: convince fellow bar patrons that you have confused Helen Keller and Anne Frank and then watch them struggle not to show how horrified they are.) But this is another thing entirely.
If I make fun of my Irish Catholic friend with jokes about priests and candy bars, he knows I'm kidding. If somebody were to talk to me sincerely and with a heavy heart about getting sexually assaulted by a priest and I hauled out my string of Catholic child molestation jokes, I would be an insensitive asshole.
Making "tits or gtfo" jokes to somebody who is explaining sincerely that people who want to be in our field are leaving it because of harassment is a similarly dickish move. I'd say so in person, and I'm saying so here. A funny asshole is still an asshole.
I still don't see any conspiracy here. You'll have to do better than "here are some low paid professions that women mostly do".
Historically, one big driver of this is lack of investment in education for women. Another is their intentional exclusion from higher-paying professions. If you want hard data, The Economist over the years has had a number of articles on this topic.
And to perpetuate an unjust system, one doesn't need active conspiracy. Inertia is incredibly powerful. For centuries, people assumed that women couldn't vote, be professionals, or hold political power because it had never happened. I'm sure most of those people were sincere and not conspiracy-minded in any way, but they still perpetuated an incredible waste of human talent.
My point, just to be clear, isn't that people can't legitimately differ over the merits of a work of art. My point is that if I don't like something that is wildly popular, the reasonable conclusion isn't that everybody else is a fool and a charlatan. It's that people have different tastes.
Seriously, why does every career or activity have to have an exact 50-50 mix of males and females? Last time I checked, the hormonal balance in men and women were quite a bit different and each sex has a general preference to what interests them. [...] The two sexes are different. Why do so many people have a hard time accepting that?
Because of the centuries of total bullshit shoveled off the exact same truck that you're standing on?
To deal with the cold, hard logic of computers all day, you need to be comfortable with such an unemotional, machine-like environment.
I'm not sure how true this is. A lot of the recent innovation in software methods has been around the rise of explicitly more social approaches. The first line of the Agile Manifesto, for example, is "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools."
There's no reason a software shop can't be a socially lively place; I think it's just a historical accident that a lot of them aren't.
Assuming that your hand-waving and generalizing just happens to correspond with an immutable biological reality, what then?
The notion that somehow CS should be done entirely by Vulcans is ridiculous. This might have been plausible in the 70s, when big iron ruled the land, and punch cards were the big advance in user interface.
These days, however, software is and has to be a very human, very social enterprise.
First, most software these days is made for broad audiences to use. A deep understanding of how humans act and interact isn't just useful, it's vital.
Second, software projects are much more collaborative than they were in the days of yore. Back in the day, one or two people could write a best-selling game or an accounting package; there's only so much code you can fit in 32k of RAM. Now, it takes at least a few and often dozens or hundreds of people to make anything serious. And projects are much more interdependent, requiring social skills to interact with other teams and projects.
There are plenty of socially oriented women -- and men -- who would make great programmers who didn't get involved with the field for one reason or another. We need those people desperately.
For some reason its hard to accept that a lot of women simply aren't interested in studying CS, engineering, or hard science.
That's because saying that something "simply is" is just a cop-out. There are always reasons. It may be that these reasons are completely innate and can't be influenced through upbringing in the slightest. In which case, yes, we can just shrug our shoulders and move on.
But until we know that, and especially given that the history of the last couple hundred years has included many revolutionary changes about what "simply is" about women and men, then deciding that this time our prejudices and the status quo just happen to be right is intellectually lazy.
Whether they were male or female didn't really enter into it, but if you want to interpret this as hostility then there's a good chance you might be part of the problem.
Neither of us can know the truth of her situation, but I can totally back the truth of butterflysrage's statement in general. Maybe your conscious intent was to be evenhanded. And heck, maybe if we counted the people you talked to, you really would have been. But when I go to geek conferences with female colleagues, they are continually approached in ways that I'm not. Some are gracious about it, and some are legitimately annoyed, but either way suggesting that the main problem is them without even asking for a bit more detail is certainly arrogant, and there's a "good chance" they'll find it annoying as fuck.
Yes, sexual harassment in response to a sincere post about how somebody feels continually harassed is totally hilarious. Dick.
I don't mind that somebody made the obvious joke, but I do mind that it got modded up to a 5. You people wanna know why there aren't a lot of women in the field? Try a mirror.
So nearly all species in the animal kingdom have inherent behavioral differences between males and females - except humans? You really believe that?
I think it's wise to be suspicious of that for a few reasons.
One, human behavioral plasticity is much greater than other animals; inferring what humans are capable of based on animal capabilities is dubious.
Two, there are centuries of historical thought on what the "innate" differences are between men and women, most of which was has turned out to be woefully wrong.
Three, people do a lot of dubious reasoning based on general statements. E.g., it's true that in one sense men are taller than women, in that the average man is a bit taller than the average woman. But it's not true that all men are taller than all women, or that Vietnamese men are taller than Norwegian women, or that women can't play basketball.
So although I agree there are probably fundamental differences in the cognitive hardware between an average man and an average woman, I think there are so many steps between that and practical real-world consequences for individuals that it will be another 50 years of research before we can make conclusions about what's possible or what's right.
Have you been reading this whole thread? :p
My point is that your bitching about to me intolerance can conflation of political opinions with literary merit when I am not doing those things is mainly serving to irritate me. If you have issues with the behavior of other people, go talk to them and not to me.
I don't interpret it that way at all.
And you're entitled to your opinion. I still read it the other way. That is what we call a difference of interpretation. Which is hardly the "outright lie" that you called it. I'll look for your apology to those you've slandered shortly.
Or through, like, voting and stuff.
Yes, that's sure what I do with my to-the-death enemies. I vote at them.
It keeps the term "marriage" to mean a man and a woman, that's all.
Card's views go well beyond the label applied.
Since you've brought it up multiple times, I get it--you have gay friends and relatives. I don't see how that changes the conversation, especially since I haven't said one thing for or against Cards' views!
I mention it to help explain why I'm using language that conveys strong emotion.
My point--from the first post on--has been that it's a shame that somebody's personal opinion can cause people to say things like his entire body of works is worthless, and many other things along those lines. It's absolutely fine that you don't like his views, and it's fine if you don't want to support his views and so choose not to give him anymore money. I have no problem with this. I DO have a problem with people acting as if his views change anything that he's written.
Good thing I didn't do that then. Perhaps you should talk to somebody who did.
outright lies about Card's beliefs [...] violently overthrow the government,
It seems that Card does believe that. That's how I interpret this, anyhow:
Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down
He's certainly advocating overthrow of the government over this. I guess, to be fair, he could be talking about destroying his mortal enemy through the playing of patty-cake. But picking a "mortal enemy" means that you'll fight them until one of you is in a coffin. That sounds pretty violent to me.
Now that I think about it, though, he could just be planning to bore them to death. That would explain his recent published output, for sure.
Where has Card demanded breaking up happy families?
What do you think the point of banning gay marriage is, exactly, except to discourage the formation and encourage the dissolution of gay families?
In particular, one of the possible consequences of Prop 8 is that the currently married people will have their marriages invalidated.
I can't judge you as I don't know you from Adam, but going around calling people douchebags, crazy, who holds vile beliefs and is a homebreaker is pretty serious.
Yes. Trying to change the constitution and passed so my friends and relatives can't get married is also pretty serious. But only one of those things is intolerant of living human beings. I just dislike his opinions and his stunted moral sense. If you've got a problem with intolerance, shouldn't you be upset at Card, not me?
No.
Tolerance of a fellow citizen does not require me to approve of his opinions, to listen to them silently, or to use only the kindest words when describing him or them.
Card's opinions are vile. He has let his (crazy) religious beliefs triumph over any sort of consideration for his fellow man. Trying to break up happy, successful families because you don't like something about their members is intolerance. Calling that out isn't.
Sheesh, I have seen more intolerant posts in this thread than just about anywhere on slashdot, ever.
Which part of my post was intolerant? Calling him a douchebag for trying to keep my friends from getting married? From trying to keep my friends' children from having married parents? I'm tolerating him, but I can still do that while saying that he's a morally stunted arrogant asshole. And christ, I'm not the one trying to get the constitution amended to break up his family, so if what I am is intolerant, then what do you call him?
Or was it that I said he's turned into a shitty writer? Because that's purely a literary opinion. Although I kept "Ender's Game", I just put "Xenocide" and a couple of his other books in the giveaway box. I have mercifully forgotten quite why the sucked, but I only bothered to finish one of them, and it's pretty rare I don't finish a novel.
In science fiction, the high technology is a plot device [...] I do not need to know how a technological fountain of youth works.
I personally prefer a little of both.
Some authors in effect write fantasy novels with sciencey trimmings. That can be fine; Star Wars is more a fantasy than what I'd call science fiction, for example. But it can also be a cover for laziness, like the whole "midichlorians" thing in the second Star Wars trilogy.
I favor sci-fi that includes at least a little hard science for two reasons. First, it can be an excellent way consider the implications of a technology. I'm fascinated by how current technology affects current people, and guessing at what comes next is fun. Second, trying to stick with real consequences of plausible science can forces authors to work a little harder.
Actually, my understanding is that it was the black vote in california that tipped the scales.
Imagine that Prop 8 won by just one vote. By your logic, any single person who voted for Prop 8 could be pointed out as the person who "tipped the scales". That's ridiculous, and your suggestion that only Obama's somehow the causative factor for this is equally ridiculous.
The most you can say is that higher black turnout helped Proposition 8 pass. But that doesn't tell you anything about the other factors.
Even ignoring that, the math doesn't support your claims. Black turnout in CA, historically at 6%, was at 10% this year. If 69% percent of them were for Prop 8, then the extra number of black pro-8 voters that came to the poll would be circa 20% * 4%, or 0.8% of voters. The necessary swing to change the outcome is 2.2%, so the additional black turnout was not actually enough to swing things.
You're not quite getting it. My short rule of thumb for things like this is "don't feed pigeons."
Why? Well, pigeons are machines for turning food into crap and more pigeons. The world has plenty of both. Although it can be fun to feed pigeons, I don't do it, because I don't want to contribute to the problems.
Ditto with Card. He's welcome to be a douchebag, but not on my money. Whereas the things you mentioned don't benefit the people you mentioned, so I don't have a problem with people using them.
The man wrote brilliant novels,
Accent on wrote, for sure. I hadn't read anything of his in a while, and so I picked up a couple of books last year. Even if he weren't a douchebag, his powers have certainly gotten weak.
Yes, you not liking a book a bunch of other people like is clear proof that there's something wrong with all those other people. There is no other possible explanation.
Doesn't look so impressive when you look at it this way.
Depends on the payoff.
It's not good if you're betting even money on coin tosses. But if you're a venture capitalist, it's great. The general rule for tech VCs is that 7 bets out of 10 will fail, 2 will do ok, and 1 will be a big success. If that 1 success is buying 10% of Google in the very early days, your 70% failure rate is still pretty awesome, because you're still up billions of dollars.
The problem is, that if you're not a bank, there is no such thing as generating value (out of thin air).
You confuse value and money. I went to a show the other night to hear a favorite singer. She generated value out of thin air, and I gave her money for it. Money I got because I generated value for somebody else.
If you're interested in the topic, Frozen Desire is a very interesting read.