Gravitahn
6 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2017–2018
39:06 · 272K views · Jan 2, 2017
An excerpt of the 2005 Harvard debate in which Steven Pinker gives his prepared case on biological sex differences and the under-representation of women in science. It covers cross-cultural patterns in preferences and abilities and the overlap between male and female distributions.
Pointed to repeatedly in gender-in-tech threads, especially around the Google memo, as a science-based treatment of sex differences.
14 comments from Hacker News
Whenever this comes up, I like to mention this video [0]. The video speaks for itself, but generally it advances the position that human behavior and preferences are a distribution, and the distributions for women are in some cases different from the distributions for men (in the sense that summary statistics like mean and variance differ), but there is always significant overlap. The position that men and women are indistinguishable behaviorally and in their preferences is not taken seriously. A notable point advanced in the video is that there is a difference in the summary statistics (not the entire distributions) which indicate men prioritize status and family different from women (with men more likely to prioritize status at the expense of family , the opposite of women). Another notable difference (again in the summary statistics, not the entire distribution) is that men prefer careers that are thing -centered over people -centered. I wish statistics were better understood by the general population. [0] this video
> The "scientific consensus" is that women are inherently genetically hard-coded to not be as good at or interested in computer programming? I did not say that, did I? The scientific consensus is that there are biological differences that have an influence on job fit and job choices. But we are talking statistics here, there are always people from the other sex that are a good fit for a specific work. Did you watch the video I linked? this video . Really, watch it. Also, the Google memo explicitly did not say that women should not be coders. If you think that, this is the warped media representation of the memo you are talking about, not its actual content.
If you want to see to which points science does have something to say, you might be interested in watching this video . This presentation by Steven Pinker got posted yesterday in one of the other comment threads, and I found it to be an excellent pre-existing discussion of the merits of the memo.
I am little tired of this. The research is interesting but there should be more consideration for alternate hypotheses. There is lot of evidence that girls are biologically wired to prefer people jobs, while boys prefer jobs with things. I really recommend Steven Pinker talk: this video But even if this was cultural, who are we to dictate preferences of people? I think the whole nature vs nurture debate is a non-sequitur. The article talks specifically about three reasons: 1. Self-doubt. It's well known that it affects girls more. But maybe it's how the brain presents risk-aversion to us? Or maybe it's actually needed for the job? Computers can be unforgiving. 2. Assholes. Sexism goes both ways. I label an asshole as an asshole, a girl might generalize it to "men are sexist". 3. Interesting work. Not much people in computing do world-changing work, you have to fight for it. It seems to me that there was a tacit expectation that someone will bring interesting work to you, which is IMHO false. The fact is nobody is preventing those girls to have a Github account. I am all for removing barriers, but at some point, when we just can't see any, we will have to declare that it is a matter of personal preferences. If people are indeed happier in some other job, why not just call it a day?
The thing is, in a lot of ways those gender roles actually are universal. Not among individuals, of course, but among societies, there are no exceptions to these: "M&F seen as having different natures" "F->M direct child care" "M->F more competitive" "M->F greater spatial range" etc Steven Pinker talks about this (and much else) in this speech. Skip to 26:56 for this particular point. this video An objective truth doesn't have to apply to every individual without exception, to be an objective truth. It just has to be a consistent trend. So M/F differences like the above really are objective truths, the same as "men are taller than women" or "cougars are more dangerous than goats". (edit: this is not to say anything prescriptive about what ought to be done; it's simply a descriptive statement. Of course Pinker covers all this ground; I recommend the whole talk)