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Re:Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore by tptacek on Thursday August 10, 2017 @11:59AM (#14980966)
This attempt at summarizing the research is innumerate, disconnected from empirical data, and offensive. Research on gender and IQ does not show that "there exist fewer females with high IQ" --- even stipulating the validity of the research Damore is leaning on, that's now how the statistics work. And there are an enormous number of women in STEM: the concern is that there are few of them in computer science.

Before you attempt to reason from basic principals to a defense of the status quo, you should attempt to fully understand those principles.

Re:Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore by galacticpony2 on Thursday August 10, 2017 @01:56PM (#14982315)
> This attempt at summarizing the research is innumerate, disconnected from empirical data, and offensive.

Maybe you should elaborate on why it is innumerate and disconnected. As for calling it "offensive", that's entirely irrelevant. It outs you as somebody who is more interested in silencing people than debating them on more objective merits.

> Research on gender and IQ does not show that "there exist fewer females with high IQ"

Research does show that there exist fewer females at either ends of the distribution and more towards the center, compared to males.

http://www.aei.org/publication/statistical-tests-shows-great...

This does mean that there exist fewer female individuals with exceptionally high or exceptionally low IQs. That is indeed how statistics work.

If you want to contest that the research is flawed and that the result is wrong, do that. If we suppose the data is valid, then my conclusion is sound.

> And there are an enormous number of women in STEM: the concern is that there are few of them in computer science.

The broader concern is STEM, not just computer science. Sure, there's an enormous amount of women in STEM, there's also an enormous amount of men in STEM and if you put both in relation, the relative amount of women in STEM is quite low (compared to other fields).

The only real argument here is how much (if any) of that is due to causes that aren't social.

Re:Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore by pcwalton on Thursday August 10, 2017 @03:34PM (#14983281)
> The only real argument here is how much (if any) of that is due to causes that aren't social.

Negligible, based on the statistics. The differences, if they even exist, are minuscule, while the gender disparity is enormous. It strains credibility to imagine that the root cause of the gender disparity in STEM employment is innate, especially since the disparity varies across cultures and subfields.

Re:Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore by tptacek on Thursday August 10, 2017 @03:55PM (#14983505)
I think it's also worth pointing out that their argument just changed dramatically, and that what they said in their followup can't readily be reconciled with their original claim that studies showed "fewer high IQ women".
Re:Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore by hackinthebochs on Thursday August 10, 2017 @08:20PM (#14985615)
His argument from the wider variance in male IQs directly supports the statement of "fewer high IQ women", given some definitions of that term (i.e. where exactly you place the cutoff for high IQ). His follow up served to clarify the ambiguous term. I'm not sure where you're coming from here.
Re:Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore by galacticpony2 on Thursday August 10, 2017 @07:48PM (#14985436)
How so? You're evading supporting your argument. You just make claims.
Re:Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore by tptacek on Thursday August 10, 2017 @08:10PM (#14985559)
I'm not sure you even realized you changed arguments when you switched from "there aren't as many high-IQ women" to "there is a higher variance in the distribution of male intelligence as there is in women". I'm curious to see how you'll rebut, and, if you do, will use your rebuttal to gauge how detailed my response will be.

(Obviously, there is a [weak] rebuttal that preserves the original claim with the new distributional argument).

Re:Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore by blahblah3 on Thursday August 10, 2017 @11:53PM (#14986476)
If M ~ N(u,v_m) and W ~ N(u,v_w) [where N refers to the normal distribution], with v_m > v_w, then P(M > T) > P(W > T) for all T > u. I.e if the trait is approximately normally distributed with equal means among two groups, the group with the higher variance will exhibit more extreme values. Why is this a change in argument?
[dead]
Re:Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore by dang on Friday August 11, 2017 @03:50AM (#14987488)
This crosses into personal attack and violates the HN guidelines. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.
Re:Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore by galacticpony2 on Friday August 11, 2017 @02:46PM (#14992950)
Oh really? How about these statements that I had to "endure":

"Before you attempt to reason from basic principals to a defense of the status quo, you should attempt to fully understand those principles."

"This is armchair-pundit-bullshit akin to climate change denial."

Aren't they worth personal warnings? If so, I'd really like it if you could give them out, just so that there isn't any injustice here.

Re:Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore by dang on Friday August 11, 2017 @03:08PM (#14993165)
You're asking for a level of consistency that's impossible with HN moderation. I wrote about this here if anyone's interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14977025.

Nevertheless, as most of our mothers taught us, two wrongs don't make a right, and someone else violating the rules is no excuse. If you do that repeatedly (and you have), you're going to get banned here for obvious reasons.

Re:Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore by galacticpony2 on Friday August 11, 2017 @03:29PM (#14993337)
... replying here instead because replying @dang is locked:

I'm not asking for a "two wrongs make one right" defense, I'm asking for equal treatment. You flagged my comment even though it was arguably much less of an "attack" than what I quoted.

I don't fault you for not catching those quotes early, I'm faulting you for not flagging those comments as well now that you have been made aware. In the time you wrote your reply, you could've easily copy pasted a warning to those comments as well.

If you really don't want to give the impression that you're singling out me and my position for suppression, that's what you could still do.

Re:Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore by reitanqild on Friday August 11, 2017 @04:23PM (#14993821)
You flagged my comment even though it was arguably much less of an "attack" than what I quoted.

dang most likely didn't flag you.

Everybody can flag (just click in the x minutes ago link and you'll see that post as top leveel including a link to flag it).

I think dang and other mods looks for flagged posts in the backend.

That said: don’t abuse flags like some other people around here do (IMO).

Also: don’t argue with the mods. They have enough to deal with a few people on both sides :-/

Re:Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore by galacticpony2 on Friday August 11, 2017 @05:06PM (#14994273)
> Everybody can flag (just click in the x minutes ago link and you'll see that post as top leveel including a link to flag it).

Thanks for pointing that out. My apologies to @dang, then.

Having said that, that's a pretty lame feature to have, considering that there's no way to see what the flagged comment was. For posterity, this is what I said:

"I never switched anything. The conclusion that "there aren't as many high-IQ women" comes from "there is a higher variance in the distribution of male intelligence". It's been there from the beginning.

You have to actually follow the links I give and pay attention during reading."

Re:Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore by galacticpony2 on Thursday August 10, 2017 @08:17PM (#14985594)
> Negligible, based on the statistics.

This isn't something that's actually known.

> The differences, if they even exist, are minuscule, while the gender disparity is enormous.

Small differences can dramatically change outcomes.

> It strains credibility to imagine that the root cause of the gender disparity in STEM employment is innate, especially since the disparity varies across cultures and subfields.

"It strains credibility" is another veiled argument from authority. The "root cause" can be different for every culture. Let's imagine that a culture forces STEM to be disproportionately desirable because of societal/economic pressure. It will push more people into the STEM field that wouldn't have joined "naturally".

Then, let's imagine a culture where there are no pressures either way whatsoever. The "innate" differences (if they are allowed to exist) will dominate the outcome completely.

Now let's look at some real-world examples: https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-professional/2015/jun/2...

Would you suspect that more societal pressure (in either direction) is applied in Europe/USA or in China/India/Latin America?

Re:Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore by pcwalton on Thursday August 10, 2017 @08:39PM (#14985717)
> Now let's look at some real-world examples: https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-professional/2015/jun/2...

How in the world is this article supposed to buttress your argument that women are somehow innately unfit for STEM careers? The article literally says "A recent study found that rather than too few girls opting to study scientific subjects or women forgoing careers to care for their children, the biggest cause of gender imbalance in Stem is cultural." Clicking through the link, you get to this paper [1], which is in fact a pretty thorough refutation of your entire position.

[1]: http://www.uchastings.edu/news/articles/2015/01/double-jeopa...

Re:Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore by galacticpony2 on Friday August 11, 2017 @04:31PM (#14993907)
reposting my previously flagged post, in the exact wording:

> How in the world is this article supposed to buttress your argument that women are somehow innately unfit for STEM careers?

I never made that argument. You're in the same boat as the people that got James fired by misrepresenting his view. Whether it's lack of reading comprehension or malevolence on your part, I'm not going to deal with you further.

> The article literally says "A recent study found that rather than too few girls opting to study scientific subjects or women forgoing careers to care for their children, the biggest cause of gender imbalance in Stem is cultural."

I'm not actually saying the causes aren't cultural. To the contrary.

> Clicking through the link, you get to this paper [1], which is in fact a pretty thorough refutation of your entire position.

I don't see how exactly that's the case, but given that you're unable to even represent my position properly, I'm not interested in investigating this with you any further.

Re:Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore by tptacek on Thursday August 10, 2017 @08:19PM (#14985608)
Small differences can sometimes dramatically change outcomes, but that's not a response, it's just handwaving. You have to specify the mechanism by which that particular small difference would result in an 82/18 split for CS, but a 65/35 split for mathematics.
Re:Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore by galacticpony2 on Friday August 11, 2017 @03:03PM (#14993117)
Why? I'm not the one making strong claims, why should the burden of proof rest on me?

My "opponent" maintains that any "non-social" causes are "neglible". He doesn't have to explain what exact social mechanism causes one split for CS and another split for mathematics. I think that's entirely besides the point anyway.

My point is merely that because even small differences in variance can dramatically change outcomes, the differences can't be disregarded just because they are small.

My point also is not that the social effects are neglible! I'm sure they're quite significant, in fact.

Re:Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore by tptacek on Friday August 11, 2017 @06:35PM (#14994925)
You did, in fact, make the original extraordinary claim, which was that there are so few high-IQ women that their scarcity significantly explains the 82/18 gender cap in computer science. Obviously, the underlying science does not agree with this argument, and you've presented no other argument backing it up. I don't think you can legitimately retreat to "burden of proof" rebuttals.
Re:Jordan Peterson Interviews James Damore by galacticpony2 on Friday August 11, 2017 @09:19PM (#14995791)
> You did, in fact, make the original extraordinary claim, which was that there are so few high-IQ women that their scarcity significantly explains the 82/18 gender cap in computer science.

I didn't actually claim that, you just keep going with the misrepresentations, otherwise you'd have not leg to stand on. I was very careful to put enough weasel language and conditionals in there to not make a factual claim, exactly because I didn't bother to look into whatever some (potentially flawed) research says.

What I actually said was: "If we suppose that being successful in STEM correlates strongly with a high IQ, the mere fact that there exist fewer females with a high IQ would be one reason why there would be fewer females in STEM. That's just an objective, logical conclusion. Another logical conclusion would be that no diversity program could change this discrepancy."

I'm not making any claim as to whether the supposition is true, or whether the correlation is true, or what IQ is, or whether the influence is even significant. All this is happening in your imagination, through confirmation bias.