Every time I hear someone mention behavioral differences due to the biological differences between men and women, my response (that I'm stealing from my professor) is that the differences amongst men and women outweigh the differences between men and women. Applied to this topic, that means that you're going to find people that prefer these different learning styles on both sides of the gender gap.

Also, I feel like wanting to increase the human aspect of programming isn't just a girl thing. The people whom I know that best fit the solitary hacker type love sharing their work, offering advice, and collaborating on projects with friends and peers.

> Every time I hear someone mention behavioral differences due to the biological differences between men and women, my response (that I'm stealing from my professor) is that the differences amongst men and women outweigh the differences between men and women. Applied to this topic, that means that you're going to find people that prefer these different learning styles on both sides of the gender gap.

That's a nice sentiment, but it's not actually very true. With regard to this particular article, I think there are plenty of women who can thrive in the environment she described. I know some of them. So, I don't think this particular situation is caused by divergent information processing between men and women.

That being said, information processing is a multi-dimensional thing. The axes of difference between men and women may be different than the axes of variance among men and women. To say that "the differences among men and women outweigh the differences between men and women" is to ignore the fact that they may not be the same differences we're talking about.

This is a thorny question, because it obviously implies that men are better at some things and women are better at other things. This can reinforce biases, and entrench or seem to justify unfair treatment. But the fact that an issue may be fraught does not change the truth-value of its propositions.

> That's a nice sentiment, but it's not actually very true.

It's literally textbook science. Like, if you pick up a university psychology textbook on sex and gender, you will probably find that statement in it.

It's based on evidence, not sentiment. That pattern is exactly what you see when you look at graphs showing the distribution of results broken down by gender on a whole bunch of physical and psychological tests.

Yes, of course the variance of the distributions is greater than the mean difference. That is trivial. But it ignores the actual point. Mean population differences have practical population-level effects. The fact that internal variance exceeds the mean difference is inconsequential and meaningless.

> Every time I hear someone mention behavioral differences due to the biological differences between men and women, my response (that I'm stealing from my professor) is that the differences amongst men and women outweigh the differences between men and women. Applied to this topic, that means that you're going to find people that prefer these different learning styles on both sides of the gender gap.

That's a great way of describing learning. I love your professor's quote. Definitely going to use it :P

> at a fundamental level, there are differences in how men and women think

It's undeniable there are biological differences between men and women, but this seems far fetched. Biological differences don't manifest themselves in an intuitive way; for example, there is no difference between men and women's hair. However we perceive a large difference entirely due to environmental training.

Not that I disagree with the sentiment, but hair is a bad example. Men go bald and get beards, while women don't.

You must be young or not know very many women. Nearly every woman eventually starts growing facial hair. Many remove it every day. And some women do lose their hair, though admittedly it's much less common.

Sure technically both genders grow facial hair. But still, men can grow much more hair on average than women, especially facial hair, no? South Asian females as an example sometimes can have more hair than average in many spots, but then you have many men with forest levels of hair around their body.

It would be odd for there it be zero observable differences considering how different many brain structures are between men and women.

If nothing else women get migraines more frequently than men do. Which seems unlikely to come down to environmental issues.

Are these differences in brain structure observable in the womb, or after years of growing? As an example, abuse victims can also have altered brain structures but they certainly weren't born that way.

> more likely ... due to environmental differences.

Maybe, which still affects how we think because we're still classified by gender in society. The assumption that I made earlier is probably intuited from personal experience and countless books like "Men are from Mars..".

I'm not shy if it does turn out that male and female brains are wired differently (that sounds really awful), but my point is really that ultimately, we all think differently. Because we're not just defined by our gender, there's so many other factors like upbringing, autistic or not, etc. And then there's also free will.

We should celebrate this diversity.

> This is why I dislike Damore. I don't care what his manifesto says ... Playing games is pathetic, dude.

Well, according to his statement he was a top performer at Google, so we can assume he was not afraid of being replaced by a woman. Besides he just started a discussion in a response to, according to him, shady moves in regards of equality performed by Google.

It is worth to listen to the other side: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEDuVF7kiPU

Is there a specific part of what you're referring to with

> This is why I dislike Damore. I don't care what his manifesto says, but I bet that he knew exactly what he was doing. Playing games is pathetic, dude.

I haven't read the manifesto and don't want to procrastinate now. Are you saying he knew his stuff about women being inferior for the work Googlers do (which I wholly disagree with) was him partially BSing and just stirring shit up or trying to get his sexist viewpoint across with any excuse possible?

I haven't read it either, and won't like to. After his arrogant/weird responses, I'm sure it's pure intellectual bullshit. I don't know what his exact motive was, but he sure seems to enjoy the storms he's caused. I just dislike people like that.

uhhh, how can you say it's pure intellectual bullshit without reading? it would me like me calling you an asshole without knowing you.

> it would me like me calling you an asshole without knowing you.

That's not a fair comparison. I skimmed through the manifesto and followed the Damore case close enough to reach that strong opinion (I didn't just wrap myself in Guardianista commentary). After that, and watching his reactions, I just don't have the time nor care to study his manifesto line by line. Would you, if you find a person that you just cannot respect, and have many more to do and think about?

You didn't actually read what he wrote but "followed the Damore case" which means you read what others wrote about him. That's extremely ignorant. I have no respect for people like you who get their opinion served by others. And that's something I can confidently say from your replies.

> we gain richer insights when we take both into account

If there really were fundamental differences, that would not be possible. When I take someone elses viewpoint or way of thinking or anything else that is fundamentally different from what I know "into account", what I really take into account what I imagine that other viewpoint to be, cobbled together from the things I do know. I don't say this to contradict, I think empathy goes a long way and is a very real thing, even though it doesn't mean we magically see things how others do. And luckily we have communication. We can make our own viewpoints and feelings clear, and encourage others to be open about theirs.

I'm wary about fundamental differences and all that.. spectra, maybe (I'm not sold on mutual exclusivity at all), but even then certainly not with one dimension and two poles -- but assuming it were literally that way, then there would be only halves, and nobody with an overview. Just abstractions about the other, which are useless, realize the self and let the other self self-realize, communicate, done. Sorry for sounding like a hippie, no dig against hippies intended. It's really hard to talk about this stuff, but not for political correctness and not for the assholes who take all sorts of things and misuse them anway, just in general.

> If there really were fundamental differences, that would not be possible.

I'm not really sure if I understood your point properly - I've clarified elsewhere in this thread that this was an assumption, and gender isn't the only factor in the differences of the ways we think (so when I said "both" in my parent comment, this is because I am looking at the situation solely with the gender lens).

But I share with the general sentiment of your post. I'm don't really care for fundamental differences etc, even if we have them, so what, it still doesn't change the fact that diversity is generally a great thing. I also found empathy goes a long way, IMO that's the only way to deal with diversity and cut past discrimination. Of course there are also the intellectual and material rewards of diversity that we are all familiar with...

Goodness, it's so hard to explain this, forgive me if this is just more confusing than ever.