You lost me there, because in no way is that obvious prima facie.
[Trigger warning, because adults can’t have dispassionate conversations about facts and ideas, and will cherry-pick then knee jerk, probably even in spite of this warning: I’m not saying that women don’t want to enter these fields in the next sentence. I’m not saying that the lack of women is purely because they aren’t interest in the subject. I’m not saying the opposite, either.]
If women don’t want to enter these fields, there is absolutely no need to force them to. Taking this prima facie, and denying anyone the opportunity to even question the premise, is exactly the problem people have with this topic and the activism around it.
You could not be more wrong about your claim that he was unserious. He was very serious and he thinks this is an important issue worthy of his time. There is nothing unserious about using cartoons to make a point, nor with using the term “cultural marxism.” That’s far better than “mansplaining”, and I dare you to tell anyone throwing that term around that they are unserious.
And I don’t agree that he was depantsed by his peers and sponsors due to a lack of credibility. Personally, I think the motivations were emotion-driven. But it’s rarely productive to argue motivations.
I don’t know what the Ted Hill thing is, but when I read comments like that, I wonder if they were actually embarrassed, or if you just want them to be.
I think all of this posturing distracts from what really happened here. The guy is sick of identity politics (are we allowed to say that, or is it like cultural marxism?) and the distraction it’s causing in his field. That’s definitely a position I can relate to.
Edit: Oh, that Ted Hill thing. No, his supporters certainly were not embarrassed. I do agree that it was an embarrassing moment for HN, likely for precisely the opposite reasons.
So you think it was embarrasingfor HN, but haven’t yet decided why? :) Hah, yeah, that sounds about right from you.
First and most obviously, the purpose of this workshop was to further women's participation in high-energy physics (physics and computer science are the two most lopsided science fields; the need for need for more participation is obvious prima facie). It was not the purpose of the workshop to hash out Strumia's political beliefs, and had the workshop known what Strumia was going to present, they would have rejected it --- not for lack of truth, but for lack of relevance.
Second, Strumia's presentation was unserious. It was unserious because of the cartoons. It was unserious because of the invocation of "cultural marxism". It was unserious because it had a title chosen to obscure the purpose of the talk. It was obscure because it has a whole slide allocated to Strumia's grievance about losing an academic role to a particular woman. There can be value in presenting a contrarian point of view at a summit with almost any premise. There is no value in trolling a venue, which is what he did.
Third, as the sibling post observes, he was subsequently depantsed by his peers and sponsors, because he had neither the credibility in social sciences nor the credibility in his own field to be persuasive, and his underlying data did not rise to meet the dumb occasion he created for himself.
We're essentially recapitulating the argument HN had over Ted Hill's NYJM paper, which was, I think, a little embarrassing for the Ted Hill defenders on HN.
I stand by my summary: play stupid games, win stupid prizes.