Comments

1

Wrongspeak is clearly double plus ungood.

2

"Quillete is not partisan, but I doubt the podcast will earn the site many new fans from the left."
They just made one new fan from the left.
Thank you for pointing them out Katie.

Maybe I'm old, but I remember a time when being on the left was about holding facts above feelings.
It was the right-wingers who were always putting their feelings first. " think of the children" and all that sort of BS.

I have to say I'm a bit worried.
It seems like the left is going through a bit of a shake-up right now, and it seems like it could split in two.
The fault line seems to be based on this whole fact or feeling debate.
Something similar has been going on in right-wing politics for over a decade now. The main difference is the right-wingers who are in the feelings Camp only feel two emotions, hate and fear.
In fact, I won't be very surprised if within another decade anyone who bases their political beliefs on facts will be called a moderate, and everyone who identifies as either right or left will be making their political decisions based purely on emotion.

5

So did any of you read Wired's clinical dissection of Damore's memo? Since Katie doesn't feel obliged to answer the objections it and other outlets featured, I'm going to assume that she didn't.

It's true that the reaction to the memo was fucking hysterical and that Damore should never have been fired. It's true also that a bunch of bien pensant liberals went batshit over a very short memo that most of them didn't even pause to read. Still, there's a problem with that Damore memo, and it's not that he cites the science of gender differences. The problem is that he used relatively modest differences between men and women to justify vastly lopsided differences in tech. The author of one of the studies on which Damore heavily relied pointed this out. I'm exaggerating a little, but if a man uses a 10% difference in neuroticism between men and women to explain why 90% of Comp Sci grads are men, that isn't using science dispassionately. That's misusing good science to justify a bias, all the while, sigh, styling oneself the very model of Vulcan detachment -- a particularly annoying habit that has been scientifically proven to be closely associated with the autism spectrum on which Damore resides.

Of course, these are points that could not be made at Google because Damore was canned when he should instead have been debated. That couldn't happen because Google is precisely the fucking echo chamber that James Damore said it was.

The Quilette article, by the way, was silly too, but we can get into that in some other forum.

6

I'll stick with Very Bad Wizards.

8

@5 you can do some basic math that will reveal that even relatively small differences by gender can lead to very large differences in impact. I'll check in tonight on this thread with some examples.

@2 I have very similar feelings to you. It feels good that I'm not "the only one". The leftist "but the right does it too" argument has never appealed to be, because I already felt that the right was incorrect on a basic level, so emulating then just meant there were two sides that I felt were incorrect instead of just one.

9

Google's personnel department isn't dealing with statistical distributions. They are dealing with individuals. And the individuals they are dealing with are already self-selected as people who have reasonable expectations of getting highly prestigious jobs as programmers with a blue chip company.

How is pre-natal hormone exposure relevant?

11

@9 because the issue isn't hiring, it's the pipeline. Look at comp sci degree rates; numbers of entries into majors, look at who's taking technical courses in high school, etc, etc, etc. The disparity starts at a very low level, and I don't think we've heard specific complaints that the hiring process itself is the issue (for eg, there was a lawsuit against google that alleged their hiring practices were unfair to men). The orthodox belief today is that women (girls) are filtered out from tech/STEM careers at an early age; and depending on where you stand, it's either because The Patriarchy Made Them Not Do It, or because these girls are self-selecting themselves out because they have a genetic predisposition towards not being interested.

13

@11

57% of college and university students are women.

88% of all nursing program graduates are women.
18% of all computer science graduates are women.
Let's not forget, nursing is a segment of the medical field, and the medical field is highly reliant on science and Mathematics.

We can assume that both socialization and biology play a role in the career choices made by men and women.
The problem is that so many people see it as either socialization (patriarchy) or biological predisposition, rather than a combination of both factors.

15

@blip

While I agree, I would like to point out that women experience sexism in every field, even when they are the majority of the workforce.

17

People are awful at parsing biological differences between men and women. Damore included. It takes a couple of weeks to unpack the relationships between various physical factors and social factors and statistical contexts. And then walk it all back through reasonable deconstructions of the nature nurture dichotomy. But trait overlap, as Katie points out, is vitally important to understand and acknowledge. And you can't overlook social statistic around participation patterns and how culture influences those.

I can tell you for a fact, for instance, that there is essentially no biological reasons why there are almost no female chess masters. But it would take me a week, and it wouldn't deny that men might have marginally better spacial reasoning aptitude.

Anyway Katie good on you for the clear-headedness of your short take on the topic.

18

"It does sound crazy, when a majority of K-12 math and science teachers are already women, that the solution to gender inequity in STEM fields might be to create an even more female-heavy teaching profession. If you followed these studies to their logical extremes, we’d make all high school math and science teachers women."
- JILL BARSHAY March 9, 2015 from
Could it be that the teaching profession isn’t pink enough?
Two studies say more women would study math and science in college if there were more female math and science teachers in high school

http://hechingerreport.org/teaching-profession-isnt-pink-enough/

19

@13 @14 that sounds reasonable and likely to me; but the status quo is that any acknowledgement of the potential biological differences is enough to end a career - see Larry Summers, who if I recall said ~"to the extent that there may be biological differences in ability [referring to the ability of women to do high-level mathematics], I think that should be studied". Gloria Steinam came out immediately and said that any - any study of biological differences between the aptitudes of men and women was inherently sexist and should be outlawed. I can't find that exact quote, but here's a contemporary of Summers, an ethics professor named Mahzarin Banaji: “In this day and age to believe that men and women differ in their basic competence for math and science is as insidious as believing that some people are better suited to be slaves than masters.”

That was what, 2006? The scenario hasn't gotten better since then, we're more trigger happy and knowledge-averse than ever.

In any case, all that is to answer @9's question as to why the focus isn't on the interview process at Google.

21

@16 "The body of relevant science is so much richer than one study."

Thanks.

22

@19

Studies seem to show that the difference isn't in ability, but in interest.

"The researchers found that girls who went to high schools where at least 72 percent of the math and science teachers were female were 19 percent more likely to graduate from college with a science or math major than similar students whose only difference was that they went to a high school where only 54 percent of the math and science teachers were female.
...
Boys, by contrast, were unaffected by the gender mix of their high school teachers."

http://hechingerreport.org/teaching-profession-isnt-pink-enough/

23

I have no idea who any of these people are, or what the fuck they are going on about, and I'm glad....phew....never been on Facebook, Twitter or any of that shit, and I could care less,,,My lovely Mother taught me, you ain't got something nice to say, don't say it....

24

@20

You realize that Roseanne is Jewish and a Zionist, right?

Yeah, she said some pretty nasty shit about George Soros, but then again, lots of Zionist say nasty things about George Soros.

https://www.haaretz.com/amp/us-news/why-netanyahu-hates-george-soros-so-much-1.5493574

https://www.haaretz.com/amp/opinion/.premium-it-s-not-anti-semitism-if-you-just-hate-the-bad-jews-1.5804871

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/attacking-soros-israels-unholy-covenant-with-europes-anti-semitic-ultra-right-1.5493531

25

I agree with 20.

Humans obviously did not descend from apes and evolve in distinct populations.

That whole dark skin thing has nothing to do with the sun, rather, it is just a cruel trick courtesy of our creator intended to sow discord prior to His return.

Snow and water are highly reflective, champions.

We are, of course, creatures of God’s making. Anything else would be science.

Those eugenecists sure got their comeuppance, didn’t they?

26

Mr Kadmon - Terrific; I was Schlafly'd out of a teaching career in my time, and now the left is going to go the right one better and prevent a much larger number of men from becoming teachers.

What accounts for the one-sided difference? I could see this being used by either side in the Gender Wars.

27

And it was ambitious of Ms Herzog to attempt both masc-shaming and fem-shaming in three shortish sentences.

28

This is a good thread. I like this thread. I would like to congratulate everyone for having a decent discussion and ignoring the blatant trolling/derailing attempts of #4 and #20.

Anyway, here is a good article from The Atlantic that looks at some recent studies to try to unravel the issue of women in STEM fields.

Like #16 states, countries which are more open and inviting to women in STEM fields see less women in them, suggesting that even when given a clearer choice women still tend to choose non-STEM fields.

It also shows that while women tend to score the same as men when testing math and science, women tend to underestimate their proficiencies, while men overestimate them, something that holds true in every nation tested.

From Women's Studies professor Janet Hyde:
“Some would say that the gender STEM gap occurs not because girls can’t do science, but because they have other alternatives, based on their strengths in verbal skills,” she said. “In wealthy nations, they believe that they have the freedom to pursue those alternatives and not worry so much that they pay less.”

These studies suggest that when women are given the most choice, they choose non-STEM fields, and it has nothing to do with ability, or lack thereof.

I mean, men do not often go in to careers in nursing or teaching, but we don't just assume that men can't be nurses or can't teach. We just acknowledge that these are not enticing careers for most men. Maybe women are just doing the same thing, and are not necessarily victims.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/

29

All the stuff being discussed here is good info, but old. It’s been banished to the realm of the alt right and misogyny for the last 10 years. I get why, there’s an infinite history of oppression and subjugation involved and, well, back lash.

Within the same history is the evolutionary development of humans where men and women have had distinctly different physiologies, emotional and psychological traits, and functions all formed to ensure the survival of our species. We are the same species, so obviously we will have many of the same capabilities, but we are so different that it’s been infuriating to discuss this topic with anybody either side of the aisle for a hot minute. It’s a combination of causes for the inequity for certain, but “who cares at this point it’s 2018”, let’s have real discourse and science surrounding this issue. The victimization is and was real, but we are in a position where I, for one, believe we can make serious progress on eliminating it if we take a multivariant approach to the issue, because attitudes have (only recently) evolved as well and we have consensus on our side that women are absolutely as capable as men in every field of study and profession(barring physical limitations) and should be able to self determine their path through this world without hindrance and aided by truth and honesty. Hopefully we can get to a place where women don’t have a narrative of oppression anymore.

30

@29 re evolutionary arguments (which you don't rely on), they are fraught with problems. For one they are a priori, which is not the kind if logic nearly all of the rest science runs on. And so the problem of "just so" story telling. My most recent fav that is fairly obviously bullshit is the spun up tale that dogs that eat shit do so to remove it from the area, and so protect weaker dogs from parasitic infection. To this I issue a hearty COOL STORY BRO! Impossible? No. Pretty obviously silly? Yep. Maybe some dogs are randomly hungry pigs who'll eat anything. The truth about evolution is that many many traits are random, not problematic in ways that are selected against, and so just hang around. But a faction of evolutionary scientist see all traits as necessarily having an adaptive purpose, and then deem themselves the authorities who get to make the "just so" story about those traits. They, for instance say that men's slightly superior and very widely overlapping advantage in spacial reasoning is because "or else they didn't make it back to the cave from the hunt." But this minor and widely overlapping difference is more likely just a random side effect of testosterone. After all, this trait exists across nearly all species of animals, regardless of whether the males roam far from home or not.

Note too that women's "superior language ability" is also small and widely overlapping. And potentially (I'd say likely) not caused by "if couldn't understand baby then baby died."

Narratives about evolutionary causes of traits very strongly reflect the biases of the eras in which they are produced. It's essentially unavoidable. And then they are flattened and essentialized and over-applied and you end up with "it's just natural that men/women are better at X." Apriori speculation finds its way to hegmonic dogma very quickly.

Anyway, not saying you are doing any of this. But it's very interesting how hard evolutionary psychology particularly (which is what's being discussed here) flops on its face when subject to rational scrutiny. Normally I wouldn't point anyone to Wikipedia, but this entry on critiques of ev-psych is excellent and comprehensive - if you read it through with consideration you will for instance understand how not-science nearly everything Jordan Peterson spouts is. The bit on wht rape is obviously not adaptive is a highlight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology .

The reader Alas Poor Darwin is also interesting on this topic, if lefty-polemic. If you really want to dig in, Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology, by philosopher Robert C. Richardson is pure gold. It's interesting to me how this work inarguably takes the legs out from under the majority of ev-psych, and yet it's proponent lalala with fingers in ear and continue to write papers making shit-eating dogs into communal heroes.

31

3 of the 4 "scientists" who responded to that google memo are psychologists...you have to be kidding me

32

@30 I don’t think evolutionary psychology flops on its face as a whole. How much testing was done on the dog shit hypothesis? Any? Was it good science? Can it be reproduced? Is it due to other unaccounted for factors?

I don’t know what Peterson said about rape. It was probably stupid. But you shouldn’t discard the field or the idea behind the importance of the field because of a few things people say or present that you think are stupid.

6 million years of different roles as a two part species has definitely affected us at a physiological and psychological level. I am not a scientist, but I know this just from living here and being alive and aware. Cultural practices are also important to examine, and to look at one or the other or any of the plethora of reasons why we are how we are and hyper focus on it as the only valid reasoning behind coming to the conclusion someone wants to come to is pretty silly in the age of information.

Not saying that’s what you’re doing. I have discussions with a female psychologist friend of mine on these topics frequently and she makes a lot of sense in explaining things in a culturally significant light, until she over reaches doesn’t. And I have those blind spots as well. We all do. That’s why it’s important to discuss and convince and argue without being shouted down and shut out. It’s just as important to listen. To hear what other people’s arguments are without automatically seeing them as an attack on your own ideas Andy’s something to be immediately discredited.

33

@vennominon

The reason for the preference of female students for female STEM instructors in high school is still up for debate, but it has been shown that this preference disappears in the early college years.

"...women are much less likely to take courses in the physical sciences in their first year, and less likely to earn a degree in physics or engineering, even after adjusting for pre-college test scores.

...data analysis showed that girls who had higher proportions of female math and science teachers in middle and high school were more likely to take one or more science or math courses during their first year in college.

...in college, women were just as likely to complete a major in a hard science whether they had been taught by male professors or female professors."

“More than half of them (students) make the decision (to major in a science or math subject) before they enter college,” said Bottia, explaining that science majors require more planning and preparation and a commitment to hard work. “It’s not like STEM majors go to college their first year with no idea what they’re going to major in and then decide to do physics.”

It seems that requiring all freshman students to take at least one Science or Math course may increase the number of women completing a hard science major.

It really is a shame that you were chased out of a career in teaching.
Male K-12 teachers are in very short supply, only making up about 25% of K-12 teachers.
It would be nice to see more male teachers outside of math and science classrooms, and in earlier grades. ( male teachers are only well represented in math and science classrooms above grade level 9 currently)

"Personally, I would still prefer to see more male K-12 teachers — because it might increase the prestige of the profession overall."

All quotes from
http://hechingerreport.org/teaching-profession-isnt-pink-enough/

34

If you were ever curious about the cultural niche that makes Jordan Peterson into a cult figure, Quillette is a good place to start. The opinion-makers and thought leaders of the Left have opened the way by increasingly pushing a narrative that opposes debating certain ideas on principle, and at the extreme opposes debate itself as a means of arriving at the truth. Salesmen like Peterson have really run with this, presenting themselves as unabashed truth-tellers, based on little more than an apparent willingness to defend their positions in a public forum. The reaction to Damore, where he was instantly denounced as a misogynist troll by a furious commentariat that for the most part hadn't read what he wrote and refused, on principle, to dignify his position by addressing any of it, did an incredible favor to these self-styled academic rebels. In the minds of their fans, they win the debate by default because their opponents refuse to show up. When Google solicited employee feedback and then fired Damore for giving the wrong feedback, it compounded this perception problem by also making him a martyr.

Here's another example of what this can look like. Back in 2015, Buzzfeed published their Standards and Ethics guide, which contained the following sentence:
"We firmly believe that for a number of issues, including civil rights, women's rights, anti-racism, and LGBT equality, there are not two sides. "
On its face this sounds like a principled stance -- "I refuse to debate my humanity" is how it is often presented by people weary of hearing the same old bullshit arguments where their ongoing status as second-class citizens is treated as just another academic exercise. However, once people have accepted the premise that certain topics are simply not debatable, the irresistable temptation is to add to that list until it contains everything you care about. Almost immediately upon publishing those guidelines BuzzFeed fell under harsh criticism for failing to explicitly include abortion rights on its list of issues that do not have two sides.

The more there appears to be a Left consensus that a growing list of issues are off-limits and that to even broach these subjects should be grounds for censure, the more contrarians like Peterson will find fertile ground. Not because they're necessarily right, but because knee-jerk condemnation has replaced debate as the go-to response among the most audible voices on the Left.

And it's not just troglodytes who are listening -- some of the most receptive audiences are moderate liberals.

35

@32 the "dog shit eating is adaptive benevolence" is basically entirely untested because it's figured a priority, which by definition isn't moving from particular evidence to broader conclusion but rather the other way around. It is practically untestable.

As is the assertion that men are naturally rapists because the rapey-est of men gods their seeds planted more often. Peterson repeats that as a "hey I don't like it but the world is what it is" fact. But it's purely a speculation; competing (and better researched) "just so stories" cite anthropological evidence that ancient rapists were regularly killed or exiled, and so less rapey men were actually at an adaptive advantage, and so men are by nature psychologically not at all rapey.

Very difficult to impossible to empirically validate either idea, and I'm pretty skeptical of both narratives.

In my skeptical critique of ev-psych, we haven't even sniffed how our incredible neuroplasticity muddies the waters, or how epigenetics plays into rapid change, or what motivates ev-psych research to keep coming up with new stories with a lot of POP!, or a continuing list of other problems in pysch research in general.

No doubt that some of ev-psych is right, but too much in the way a broken clock is right. It's really a bit disturbing how some modern sciences will be seen in retrospect as being as silly as some of the silly stuff of the past.

Anyway you shouldn't just trust me on this though I know the subject on lock backwards and forwards. I probably would doubt how you thought a wall ought to be knocked out of my kitchen or whatever. But know this: evolutionary psychologists are famously cock-sure and arrogant, and I do very much think that's because deep down they know that behind their feild specific discourse they are essentially talking out their asses. Like most psychologists, they almost never substantively address substantial critiques of their work and methods. Rather ignore and continue to publish unreproducible studies and ch-ching the grant machine for all it's worth. I'd probably do the same if I was neck deep in what they do for a living ....

36

A prioi not priority autocorrect snafu

37

@30 that part I think you are missing is that positive evolutionary behaviors don't need to have intent. The dog doesn't need to know why it eats poop. All that needs to happen is for some dog to have a mutation that causes it to eat more poop, and because the effect is that other dogs in the pack get sick less often, they out compete other, non-poop eating dogs, and we're living with the descendants today. This is a common evolutionary misconception - that things happen for a reason, rather than than entirely random. Additionally, there is no "change" - just less competitive traits being killed out.

38

@35. Sounds like you’re a natural skeptic. I am as well.

You’re right. Evolutionary psyche is hard or impossible to reproduce in a controlled setting and I understand your aversion to trusting someone’s off the cuff theories about the differences in the sexes, especially if they seem to feed into a narrative that benefits a favorable practice that one sex may not want to relinquish.

It’s easy to come to a wrong conclusion from one study or piece of information. I think that’s largely what this shift back to centrism is about. The rejection of far right and left controlled conversations where everyone is screaming about how irrefutably right they are, but no one is being heard.

Also, I honestly believe that attitudes have changed around the topic significantly in the last 40 or so years. I don’t have a friend on the right or left (I do have both) who doesn’t believe in absolute equality between men and women. So the narrative that men today are promoting gender inequality, believe it’s ok, and or don’t have a problem with it doesn’t square with them personally and so instead of accepting a label of inadvertent or purposeful misogynist, they either tap out of the conversation or look for an explanation that makes sense within their world view.

I’ve enjoyed this, btw. And I would never suggest that you knock down a kitchen wall unless you called and asked me to build you a bigger kitchen.

40

@39. It’s not entirely untestable, and that doesn’t make it not science. The theory of evolution was established through observation and explanation. No one saw Darwin’s finches select traits through time, no one has been able to recreate that selection, but there they were, adapted to their environment in a way that was explained and accepted by the entire world.

41

Correction, some of the world.

42

FYI, Muffy, use of the term “female” is unacceptable because in “psychotic drugged-up shutin the terrorists won” female means “my subjective self-projection of either what I really should be doing with my life or what my deluded mind decides what my culture, whatever I’ve decided that is, expects of me after I’m done boiling the onions”.

Really.

43

Mr Kadmon - It's all very depressing, and I don't see it ending well.

44

@34
Outstanding insight! One of the best comments on a difficult topic I have seen in a long time. If you flesh it out a little bit more, I bet Quillette would publish it.

If you do not object, I would like to quote your comment in its entirety in a closed FB political discussion group. Please respond if you would prefer any particular form of attribution.

45

@katie-the problem is that the science isn’t conclusive, and there’s other theories out there. So people pick the study that backs up their viewpoint, whereas the truth is usually in the middle.

Have you read this:
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding

The number of women programmers was growing at the same rate as women doctors and lawyers. But peaked at the mid 80s then actually regressed. The theory is that with personal home computers, more boys where given access to computers early so the bar to enter university went up (ie before no one knew how to do punch card program until they got to university, whereas boys could have exposure to basic programming before university, especially if they came from a rich family like bill gates). So while we may never get a 50/50 spilt, there are social reasons as well.

And as much as women may be want to caring jobs more then men, don’t overlook the women who wanted strong careers often saw elder female role models in strong careers in education and health care (ie a nurse could become head of nursing for a hospital).

The Russian examples also is another example where society plays a role...

Go to any group where it’s mostly males with some females in the role and you’ll find on average most men talk up their experience and skills whereas the women talk down their experience and skills, even if they’re more qualified then the men.

46

Another good article about why there’s more indian women in tech than American women (and no its not biology)

https://www.wired.com/2014/08/silicon-valley-sexism/

And fuck, can we admit that living in a country that doesn’t have a required maternity/paternity leave period may fuck with peoples choices? Amazon had no, no fucking maternity leave until very recently! Most people in tech think a 3 month paternal leave is amazing whereas most other countries require a much longer period regardless of the job (Canada requires a year)

47

@45 there's a followup question - with the advent of home PCs in the 80s, and the general disconnect between punch-card programming and computing by then, why weren't girls as taken with computers as boys, or, more importantly, why did the avertising industry decide that computers were boy-coded toys?

48

I stumbled on thestranger.com and find that surprise, surprise, in spite of the evidence out there from all the usual MSM suspects, there are some left-leaning media out there with considered, rational writers who aren't ideologically strait-jacketed and afraid to actually discuss issues. How refreshing!

I ventured into the comments with trepidation, expecting it to be the usual
cess pool of monospeak and author shaming but again much to my surprise, more (mostly) rational thought.

All together it wouldn't have seemed out of place in the Quillette itself.

I'll be back and I'm an alt-right nazi (as defined by antifa and the alt-left).


Please wait...

and remember to be decent to everyone
all of the time.

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