When people first discovered microbes and claimed that people were spreading diseases by, say, not washing their hands properly, they did not mean that people were spreading disease intentionally, but it was nevertheless a fact that they were. But to understand why, you had to know about germs (which are invisible to the naked eye, and were only known to those who study the subject), and you had to be proactive in order not to spread diseased.
Certainly such people exist, but they're drowned out by the outrage machine that's trying to take away their livelihood.
And your patent acceptance that outrage is a legitimate response to these scenarios highlights exactly the problem with how this has been playing out. Suddenly your comparison to Dawkins falls apart quite spectacularly.
It really isn't, but seeing how adamant you are not to study the topic, I have no idea how you'd know whether it's absurd or not. But you are forced to declare the subject absurd, as that is the only thing that can justify, in your mind, not even bothering to examine it with any care (as, I assume, you consider yourself otherwise curious), which is what you want; namely, you don't want to see the fossils, and I really can't make you.
> Suddenly your comparison to Dawkins falls apart quite spectacularly.
Oh! You got me there! But one should bear in mind that creationism isn't what condemned millions to dependence and humiliation. A wise man once said that it's easy to remain cool-headed about other people's problems.
So go ahead, I firmly believe attacking the strongest opposing argument, and I'm only interested in facts. Pick what you believe is Damore's weakest evidence, just one point, and show me the evidence of consensus contrary to Damore's position with a ratio on the same order as above. Then I will happily acknowledge that your analogy to evolution is 100% faithful.
> But one should bear in mind that creationism isn't what condemned millions to dependence and humiliation
A humiliation and dependence that none of the outraged people actually lived through. It's amazing that women could put up with the insane discrimination and sexism to achieve gender parity in so many other male dominated fields, like law and medicine, all without needing the outrage machine, but they are somehow powerless against a bunch of nerds who, by and large, just want to play with cool tech.
Frankly, it makes one question whether outrage is really a useful response at all.
Uh, yeah. A comparable ratio of social scholars are convinced that sexism is a major cause of the power disparity between the sexes.
> If so, evidence of this consensus should be trivial for you to produce.
It is. Like I said, it's on fucking Wikipedia!
> A humiliation and dependence that none of the outraged people actually lived through.
Really? You must lead a charmed life. Do you have any idea how many women experience sexual harassment at work every year in the US alone?
> It's amazing that women could put up with the insane discrimination and sexism to achieve gender parity in so many other male dominated fields, like law and medicine, all without needing the outrage machine, but they are somehow powerless against a bunch of nerds who, by and large, just want to play with cool tech.
Ha! Are you aware of the "outrage machine" (or "political action", in the professional academic jargon) that was required to get us to the point where women are even allowed to practice medicine or at all (or to vote)? That achievement wasn't gained by "putting up" with anything. You think "this is outrage?! Take a look what it took to get women the right to vote in Britain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffragette#Early_20th_century...
I always find it funny (and indicative of a complete ignorance of the subject) when people think that feminists today have taken it too far (of course, conservatives often acknowledge the justice of past progress yet claim that this time it's too much).
The fight with nerds isn't the longest or hardest -- far from it; it's just the most recent.
> Frankly, it makes one question whether outrage is really a useful response at all.
That is a good question, but one that history can thankfully answer. Yes, it turns out that outrage can be extremely effective. Of course, it's hard not to be outraged in the face of injustice (just look at how outraged some people were after Damore's firing, even though this is a truly rare occurrence, and he did cause a scene that required the CEO of Google to cut short his family vacation).
That's not the claim being disputed. Either you're trying to participate in too many threads and losing the context, or you have serious reading comprehension problems.
> It is. Like I said, it's on fucking Wikipedia!
Show it. You keep saying this, yet your comment history cites no specific link showing this consensus, and particularly for the topic we're actually discussing, not the topic you seem to think we're discussing.
> Do you have any idea how many women experience sexual harassment at work every year in the US alone?
Every single one. But that's a false equivalence to what we were talking about.
> Take a look what it took to get women the right to vote in Britain:
Now look at the effect these actions actually had in convincing people. Public opinion only turned in their favour when world war I started and they ceased all violent activities and showed how they could positively contribute to society by stepping into traditional male roles.
> I always find it funny (and indicative of a complete ignorance of the subject) when people think that feminists today have taken it too far
Yet another straw man. Saying it's taken too far today does not entail feminists didn't also take it too far in the past.
> That is a good question, but one that history can thankfully answer. Yes, it turns out that outrage can be extremely effective.
It also led to the election of Donald Trump. Yay for outrage!
Like our other thread, it's clear you have some particular axe to grind and instead of addressing my specific arguments, you're shouting down some imaginary opponent. This is an unfortunate tactic employed on both sides, and I frankly don't have the patience for it.
Obviously, I think this is exactly what you're doing...
https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2008/2/5453-women-and-men-in-...
https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/NSF_Stemming%20the%20Tid...
Programming in the 40s and 50s was very different from programming in the 80s or 90s and it's disingenuous to conflate them or suggest that they are the same.
1. Programming didn't start in the 80s or 90s. It started in the 40s-50s, and we've been doing it for seventy years now. When you were (by your own admission) a socially awkward boy interested in PCs, there were 50-year-old professional programmers working in banks, defense, aerospace and other industries whose programming culture was very different, because they didn't have computers at home at all, and all of them were first exposed to computers in college at the earliest.
2. When historians and sociologists say terms like "crowd out", they do not mean there was any conscious intent behind it, let alone ill-intent. They describe social dynamics. Also, since the eighties at least, professional programmers in the industry have had a lot of power -- whether you felt it or not -- as evident by the size and influence of the tech companies where they worked.