News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:To do politics or not do politics? Tech startups are divided by tuesdayrain on Sunday November 22, 2020 @06:40PM (#25182134)
That is absolutely sexism. It deeply bothers me that some people think tech must be exactly 50% male/female, and anything else is inherent sexism. It's anti-scientific to deny the possibility that biological gender can influence desired career paths.
Re:To do politics or not do politics? Tech startups are divided by lsiebert on Sunday November 22, 2020 @07:21PM (#25182353)
If there are provable differences that effect performance, by all means cite them. But it's more likely that unseen bias affects hiring and promotions.

Girls and boys mathematical abilities are equivalent.

https://psychcentral.com/blog/myth-busted-girls-cant-do-math...

Blind hiring increases diversity in hiring

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/is-blind-hiring-...

Re:To do politics or not do politics? Tech startups are divided by johncena33 on Sunday November 22, 2020 @10:55PM (#25183425)
I don't have anything to say that directly relates to the evidences you have provided. But I'd take anything coming out of social science with a grain of salt, given that the amount politicization and acitvism going on. People have real incentives to hide evidences, design flawed experiments or conjure up misleading narratives. One of the most prominent doctrines provided social science is now being proven sham and has done great damage to the society https://www.thecut.com/2017/05/self-esteem-grit-do-they-real...
Re:To do politics or not do politics? Tech startups are divided by lsiebert on Friday November 27, 2020 @07:45AM (#25228245)
I think you are confusing the idea of individual people's incentives with the community as a whole.

Just as in our society individuals may have an incentive to do nefarious deeds like robbery or murder, but society as a whole has an incentive to stop it, so it is with science.

And having checked your link, A) the person's theory was overhyped and B) a meta analysis brought it back to earth. Which is evidence that the process of scientific inquiry works.

That's why we know that climate change exists, despite deniers, and that vaccines don't cause autism, despite anti vaxxers having been inspired by a now retracted paper that said it did.

Re:To do politics or not do politics? Tech startups are divided by nshepperd on Sunday November 22, 2020 @10:32PM (#25183333)
Parent said "influence desired career paths", which is not the same as differences in performance. People choose a career path for many reasons besides ability, such as individual personality, ability in alternative jobs (note the quote in your first link which points out that "girls outperform their male counterparts on achievement tests in stereotypically feminine subject areas"), or even their experience being bullied in high school with regard to the job.

Furthermore, if you want to come to valid statistical conclusions about whether a discrepancy is due to a particular cause (and can't just do a RCT), it's not enough to just ignore plausible confounders until they are "provable". You need to systematically control for all possible confounders.

Re:To do politics or not do politics? Tech startups are divided by duckmysick on Sunday November 22, 2020 @08:29PM (#25182727)
> Blind hiring increases diversity in hiring

This one says it doesn't: https://www.pmc.gov.au/news-centre/domestic-policy/beta-repo...

> What we found is that de-identifying applications at the shortlisting stage does not appear to assist in promoting diversity within the Australian Public Service (APS) in hiring. Overall, APS officers discriminated in favour of female and minority candidates. The practical impact is that, if implemented, de-identification may frustrate diversity efforts.

Re:To do politics or not do politics? Tech startups are divided by dane-pgp on Monday November 23, 2020 @12:47AM (#25183943)
As a single data point, this is interesting: "GitHub's ElectronConf postponed because all the talks (selected through an unbiased, blind review process) were to be given by men."[0]

What's interesting, I suppose, is not that the selected speakers were all men (which could have happened by random chance), but the reaction by the conference organisers to that fact.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/6f8u2s/githubs_...

Re:To do politics or not do politics? Tech startups are divided by SamReidHughes on Sunday November 22, 2020 @08:54PM (#25182866)
> Girls and boys mathematical abilities are equivalent.

I have to laugh my ass off. In reality, boys get 800 on the math SAT at over twice the rate that girls do. That article addressing this by stating "the SAT is hardly a random sample of all students" is complete nonsense.

The idea that smart males and females are produced at the same rate is ludicrous on its face, because female brains are made with the information from two X chromosomes and males with just the one.

Re:To do politics or not do politics? Tech startups are divided by lawnchair_larry on Monday November 23, 2020 @10:55AM (#25188061)
Can you explain the last paragraph a bit?
Re:To do politics or not do politics? Tech startups are divided by adamsea on Monday November 23, 2020 @02:15PM (#25190496)
> It's anti-scientific to deny the possibility that biological gender can influence desired career paths.

IMHO what is actually being claimed, and which there is academic consensus based on facts around, is that sexism has been such a pervasive cultural force, to such a degree that it's difficult to parse nature versus nurture.

Plus science is still working on nature vs nature - it's complex.

So. Simpler to start with the known, empirically verified problem in front of our eyes.