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Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by primitivesuave on Monday December 26, 2022 @01:14AM (#34135151)
1. Physical harm is a crime and separate issue altogether - there is popular contention with labeling free expression as violence against certain groups, but I certainly agree there are ways that one can escalate into another (ripe for debate)

2. 75% of teachers are women, 97% of coal miners are men - certain professional aspirations attract certain people. When people talk about equality of outcome, does it have to be 50-50 male-female, equally split amongst all demographics and income levels, and if so, what possible realistic path is there to achieve it? On the other hand, I am sure most people in the modern world (especially the young ones) support equal opportunity, so it seems like this is becoming less of an issue.

I see what you're saying though - for example, is Kanye responsible for people committing anti-Semitic hate crimes while yelling "Kanye 2024"? There are also obviously many current event and historical examples of speech escalating to violence, but in a place of learning there should be freedom to consider all ideas and freedom to distinguish good from bad ones.

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by dagmx on Monday December 26, 2022 @01:30AM (#34135264)
I recognize physical harm is separate but that’s why I used the word escalation. I also didn’t imply a direction for the physical harm.

Escalation from speech to physical harm can come in many forms. Like you said, Kanye 2024+antisemitism is a form of stochastic terror, using one persons speech to convince others to cause physical harm. But it can also be emotional abuse that is often not seen by many people that can lead to self harm. Or most simply, it can just be escalation of emotions that leads to mutual physical aggression.

With regards to equality, I don’t think it means that demographics should be evenly split. For one, that’s impossible given the large number of demographics and population variances. But I also think it’s more than equal opportunity.

Equal opportunity only tracks the opportunity to get a job at a superficial level. There’s also the pushing out of non-majority demographics through compounded aggressions. This is quite trackable in many companies and colleges as you can see big differences in percentage shares between career milestones (each year in university, or promotions in companies), but very few companies post it. Netflix and Apple have fairly good reports here

So to that end I’d posit: even if we’ve become better about equality, and agree we should have equal opportunity, are we actually setting up our systems to measure whether we’re being honest about it?

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by Manuel_D on Monday December 26, 2022 @10:01AM (#34138104)
> even if we’ve become better about equality, and agree we should have equal opportunity, are we actually setting up our systems to measure whether we’re being honest about it?

We do have the tools: anonymize the application process. The way to find out if you're orchestra auditions are biased is to put a veil between the musician and the judging panel. In tech, the way to find out if your interviews are biased is to mask the gender of the applicants. Some companies are already doing this: https://interviewing.io/blog/voice-modulation-gender-technic...

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by dagmx on Monday December 26, 2022 @10:52AM (#34138621)
No, you missed the other part of it that I explicitly mentioned. It’s not just about the hiring of the job but the space between any two milestones in the job.

It’s all well if we’re hiring tons of diverse juniors. But if we push them out unknowingly before they grow their careers ,we’re not really helping that much

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by Manuel_D on Monday December 26, 2022 @11:34AM (#34139144)
If someone doesn't like playing the flute, and thus doesn't practice playing the flute, are they going to have the same chances at a blind flute audition as someone who's practiced their whole life? Is that evidence that the audition is biased? If someone grows up in poverty and has to work and thus has no time to play to flute we can recognize the disadvantage of poverty, but that doesn't make the blind audition biased either. The disadvantage stems from the lack of time to play the flute, not the audition process.

If we're talking about the tech specifically, there's compelling evidence that poverty and lack of education attainment is a barrier for BIPOC people entering tech. But it's exceededingly hard to make that argument for women's underrepresented. Women are actually overrepresented in university. There's a strong argument to be made that women actually have more opportunity to enter tech than men. Rates of harassment in tech are actually lower than on plenty of female-dominated industries like education and administration [1]. The claim that women are being "pushed out" lacks a lot of substance.

1. https://www.workingnowandthen.com/blog/workplace-sexual-hara...

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by dagmx on Monday December 26, 2022 @12:25PM (#34139666)
Again, you’re missing the point of demographic attrition or inequity of promotion over a career and are focusing on entrance alone. Your link also only talks about sexual harassment, not harassment in general.

Instead of focusing on just women, extend it to any demographic.

The issue of attrition/inequity in minorities (whatever they may be) within a workplace is easily trackable within companies by looking at the makeup at various seniority milestones.

Again, the few companies that publish this data (Apple and Netflix come first to mind) show there’s inequity in the approaches that exist , but most importantly it also shows that you can’t just view total makeup as the metric but need to break it down into career milestones , and across corporate divisions to really understand the problem space.

Again: equality doesn’t start and end at hiring.

https://www.apple.com/diversity/

https://jobs.netflix.com/inclusion

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by Manuel_D on Monday December 26, 2022 @12:42PM (#34139841)
You continue to assume that anything other than identical outcomes is evidence of some sort of bias or discrimination. Men are more likely to be convicted of murder than women. Is this a bias that needs to be corrected? Or maybe men are more likely to commit murder?

At my previous workplace we instituted minimum representation quotas for underrepresented demographics (we used euphemism for them, of course, "equity standards" and "inclusion targets"). The hiring rates increased, but then so did attrition rates. Similar things happened, but in reverse, when California banned racial discrimination in state universities. Admission rates for underrepresented minorities went down, but then the graduation rates rose. Perhaps increase attrition isn't solved by pursuing identical outcomes, it's solved by instituting blind hiring akin to blind orchestra auditions.

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by dagmx on Monday December 26, 2022 @03:10PM (#34141305)
Sigh, I have never said equal outcome. I have gone out of my way to explicitly talk about consistent outcomes however , and where a discrepancy is found, to understand why.

That men are found more guilty of murder is irrelevant to this discussion . The only relevant discussion is whether men are more likely to be found guilty of murder for a similar crime. The former is not bias, the latter is. However the former may be caused by systemic biases that put men in more likely scenarios to commit violent crimes. This is all high level of nuances that need to be understood, versus just saying “this is the way because it’s the way”

You keep fixating on very broad strokes, especially gender. You keep also missing the point of the not just focusing on intake. I’ve spelled that out multiple times, but you keep returning to intake.

There isn’t a point to continuing this discussion because you aren’t willing to even address the actual point of the discussion.

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by Manuel_D on Monday December 26, 2022 @03:21PM (#34141421)
Gender is just one example of disparities that exist for non-biased reasons. You have indeed used unequal outcomes as evidence of disparities, in fact your repeat it in this very comment:

> I have gone out of my way to explicitly talk about consistent outcomes however, and where a discrepancy is found, to understand why.

My point is that the burden of proof is on the person alleging discrimination to prove that an inconsistent outcome stems from bias. You've concluded that this disparities means underrepresented groups are bing "pushed out" on account of this unequal outcome.

This is a big leap in logic, and instead of actually trying to substantiate your claims you're saying I'm not addressing your point. I fully acknowledge your point: some other discrimination outside the scope of the hiring process, or whatever else we're talking about, is having an effect. And my point is that you're merely postulating this as fact and doing nothing to substantiate this statement.

What am I missing? You say I'm missing your point, so please explain what I'm missing.

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by komali2 on Monday December 26, 2022 @01:58AM (#34135410)
> 75% of teachers are women, 97% of coal miners are men - certain professional aspirations attract certain people

Curious why you're implying your statistic implicitly and naturally leads to the truth of the statement "certain professional aspirations attract certain people (of specific gender)"

Correct my addition of "specific gender" if that wasn't your intention, but it seems what you're implying - that the reason 97% of coal miners are men because men prefer to be coal miners and women don't.

I disagree completely. I think there's probably far, far more reasons behind the statistic "97% of coal miners are men." Luckily for you, I think our society has trained us to nod our heads and think that your statistic makes "common sense," that's a distinct advantage, despite the fact that your proposition is really lacking in logical, deductive, contextual, or evidential rigor. Watch what happens when I make a similarly non-rigorous statement: Actually, 97% of coal miners are men because the people that hire for the job hold the mistaken, antiquated especially with modern technology, belief that men are more capable of the job because "men are stronger than women."

If I had made my argument as such like you have, I bet I'd get a whole stream of comments demanding I demonstrate the hiring bias with evidence, sources, that would challenge my idea, even try to show that men on average are stronger than women (without of course then completing the other half of the argument, demonstrating that greater raw strength leads to greater outcomes in coal mining).

You were replying to:

> Similarly how do they stop majority dominance

So, given that your answer is "common sense," and my argument is "yup, that's majority dominance, men hiring men," I repeat our OP's question: "How do you stop majority dominance when the conservative argument (yours) is so integrated into our social fabric that it goes unchallenged?"

My follow-up is why is the reaction to people protesting the people that make these types of speeches (such as arguing that men are better at a given job than women) so much stronger than the reaction by the mainstream media and the university heads to the person actually making the speech? Especially when those protesting have the much stronger argument that the defense of the bigot is actively contributing to the continuance of unequal opportunity for people (solidifying the "common sense" idea that women don't make good coal miners).

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by P5fRxh5kUvp2th on Monday December 26, 2022 @03:13AM (#34135745)
> Curious why you're implying your statistic implicitly and naturally leads to the truth of the statement "certain professional aspirations attract certain people (of specific gender)"

just stop.

everyone understands why care givers _tend_ to be women and race car drivers _tend_ to be men.

If you want to argue with a specific example, fine, but don't act as if there isn't well known precedent for this. The onus is on YOU to explain the difference away to something other than personal choice.

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by dagmx on Monday December 26, 2022 @03:26AM (#34135792)
> everyone understands why care givers _tend_ to be women and race car drivers _tend_ to be men.

I’d actually like you to explain this beyond a loose and implicit “everyone understands why”.

The old saying goes, assumptions make an ass out of U and I, and I don’t think the “why” of the matter is shared between everyone.

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by defrost on Monday December 26, 2022 @03:28AM (#34135802)
> everyone understands why care givers

I don't.

Would that be

* the natural order of things,

* God's plan,

* the end result of iterative bias such as that which gave us the L-chirality Vs D-chirality of amino acids | sugars,

* something else?

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by P5fRxh5kUvp2th on Monday December 26, 2022 @05:26AM (#34136413)
Sorry, I can't help you there, perhaps you're not human? Am I possibly speaking to a bot?

A bot will never understand in the same way that they'll never understand when I say "everyone understands why water tastes so good". It's just a part of the human condition that everyone picks up on by the very act of existing.

The vast majority of humans grew up around other humans, and these things get learned as a part of that. "Everyone understands how a hug feels".

I'm sorry that you're a bot, but I'm also not going to bother trying to explain something that will never be understood no matter how much I try.

Perhaps at some point ChatGPT will become good enough to better understand the human condition, but we're definitely not there yet.

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by defrost on Monday December 26, 2022 @05:33AM (#34136457)
Not a bot .. go on, take a stab at it.

At least outline your reasoning for what you think everybody understands.

Bear in mind I'm an intelligent human outside of your parochial bubble.

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by bitcharmer on Monday December 26, 2022 @07:58AM (#34137291)
You're either trolling or employing detraction techniques straight out of Shopenhauer's art of being right.

You don't want to learn or engage in meaningful discourse. You just want to be right.

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by komali2 on Monday December 26, 2022 @05:34AM (#34136463)
Normally such a blatantly bad faith reply deserves nothing more than a downvote, but I'll add that all these comments are doing, earnestly, exactly what your opposition is arguing: you're applying naturalist and traditionalist fallacy to maintain a conservative status quo interpretation of gender.

What's funny is it's not even historically accurate: your "universal human" interpretation of masculine / feminine binary is simply not universal by any stretch of the imagination.

Look how easy this was, I googled "examples of non gender binary societies" and got a listicle with ten examples you can go learn more about: https://screenshot-media.com/politics/lgbtqi-rights/non-bina...

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by P5fRxh5kUvp2th on Monday December 26, 2022 @06:29AM (#34136784)
You're arguing about gender identity, I am not.

Let me know when you decide to join the conversation that's actually going on.

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by mpweiher on Monday December 26, 2022 @04:19AM (#34136060)
The problem is that your hypothesis "this is caused by (bigoted) society" is unambiguously contradicted by the facts, aka "wrong".

In more gender equal societies, men and women self-segregate into different jobs more, not less.

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by komali2 on Monday December 26, 2022 @09:53AM (#34138029)
> is unambiguously contradicted by the facts, aka "wrong".

Can you demonstrate this deductively, logically, or with evidence?

I googled your proposition and came up with no obvious study you must be thinking about. Can you link it, please?

My point is also to reject the restrictive assignment of people based on primary sexed attributes. Sorry, you've got a vagina, you can't drive a racecar good. Seems insane to me. Typically when people talk about "certain professional aspirations attract certain people," it's not out of a desire to help people find roles in society that align with their gender identities, it's to enforce cultural stereotypes and maintain, in the case of our society, usually patriarchal hierarchies. Not always, sometimes it's matriarchal ones (such as regarding custody of children). This is to me distasteful and I strongly push for people to justify their positions when they could lead to this enforcement, even if it isn't their intention.

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by mpweiher on Monday December 26, 2022 @01:26PM (#34140292)
Google "gender equality paradox". It's not hard to find.

> reject the restrictive assignment of people based on primary sexed attributes.

That's not what happens or how it works. People largely self-segregate by choice.

> it's to enforce cultural stereotypes and maintain, in the case of our society, usually patriarchal hierarchies.

Actual evidence for this?

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by primitivesuave on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @12:07AM (#34145294)
Likely referring to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox

There is a much higher degree of correlation between personality types and occupation/pay - so for example, one actionable change might be to challenge young girls to develop assertiveness and other useful personality traits. It seems like teaching kids that "if you don't achieve your dreams it's because the cultural majority and/or patriarchy held you down" is not going to translate to any useful skill in approaching the world, and only serves as an easy excuse for them to throw out rather than actually address personal shortcomings.

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by 8note on Monday December 26, 2022 @02:02AM (#34135428)
For 2, the big thing is that things associated with women get devalued. When you're looking for equality, it's to value things women want to do equally to things men want to do.

Without teachers, we cannot uphold our civilization, and clearly from the pandemic, teachers are absolutely considered essential workers to parents. However, society is still unwilling to pay for that because it's women doing the work

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by P5fRxh5kUvp2th on Monday December 26, 2022 @03:11AM (#34135737)
If it's 80% women, why shouldn't it be devalued for men, and vice-versa?

If 80% of your farming community is mexican, why shouldn't their values be more highly reflected?

This is completely natural, it's reality and the way of the world. It's like arguing that a dog shouldn't be a pack animal. Maybe, but they are.

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by dagmx on Monday December 26, 2022 @03:23AM (#34135779)
Actually you accidentally made the point against your own.

Dogs aren’t pack animals. They’re social animals. The pack animal theory it outdated and based on incorrect science+observations.

Here’s just one post on the matter https://www.lecaacademy.com/post/the-myth-of-pack-training-f...

That a particular field has a high majority, may intuitively seem like it’s a better field for that majority if you’re just casually observing, but deeper studies often show that there are tons of systemic factors that go into it.

Are most farm hands Mexican because they’re drawn to it culturally? That may be the repeated observation of the person looking at it without much to gain from being part of it.

However once you start looking into it, you’d see the systemic issues that led to it like ethnic discrimination at higher level jobs and the network effect of hiring.

Similarly for women trying to enter tech. There may be systemic issues keeping them out, but going by “90% of software engineers are men, so it must be because they’re more drawn to it” really doesn’t allow for women trying to enter the field to make changes to policies etc that disadvantage them unfairly.

This is the danger of majority rule. It’s why it took so long for many rights to be won by disenfranchised minorities.

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by P5fRxh5kUvp2th on Monday December 26, 2022 @05:15AM (#34136350)
It amazes me that so many people think trying to refute an example refutes the point. It doesn't, replace social with pack in my comment and move on if you must.

The rest of your post is just trashy thinking. If you believe the ratio of men to women is not due to personal choice, that's a claim YOU need to back up. I don't have to back up the assumption that it's personal choice, especially against someone who is, when you boil it all down, saying that it _IS_ personal choice, but that they were manipulated into that personal choice.

Where is all the angst over the lack of female loggers?

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by dagmx on Monday December 26, 2022 @10:54AM (#34138648)
There is angst over the lack of female loggers. I don’t know why you think there isn’t?

This exists for all trades. Logging just isn’t that visible to most people so it’s not one that’s brought up as often.

You’re conflating many many points in your arguments. You also have yet to say why you think people are drawn to certain trades but keep expecting others to put up more and more evidence.

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by Manuel_D on Monday December 26, 2022 @10:04AM (#34138130)
Women recently became the majority of medical doctors. Are they devalued? Same deal for lawyers. This line of thinking doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

A more plausible explanation is that men prioritize earnings more than women. The reality is that most women still expect to marry a man that outearns them. Men are keenly aware of this understand that their marriage prospects are reduced if they don't get a well paying job. Hence why men tend to take riskier jobs, and jobs with longer hours.

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by defrost on Monday December 26, 2022 @02:14AM (#34135492)
2. Yeah, but that's in Central North America that barely moves any dirt at all - kiddy mining.

When you look at, say, Canada or Western Australia things are different; here (W.Aus) we move in excess of 800 million tonnes per annum (that's iron ore alone) with a bit over 18% of women in the mining work force [1] - driving trucks, operating diggers and loaders, manageing, as geologists, etc.

[1] https://www.miningnews.net/leadership/news/1400133/mining-st...

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by bitcharmer on Monday December 26, 2022 @05:12AM (#34136330)
No idea why you would make this comment as the GP's point still stands. Nursery teachers are another good example. It doesn't matter that in one country the profession is 97% women and in another it's only 92%.

The point is that there are fields that naturally attract a specific gender and what (if anything) should be done about it.

Re:Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT by defrost on Monday December 26, 2022 @07:30PM (#34143468)
* 82% not 92%

* " fields that naturally attract a specific gender " or, more accurately, fields that until recently only hired a specific gender regardless of who was attracted to the field.

Mining in Australia originally didn't hire outside of specific racial groups either, save for extremely manual jobs of an expecially back bracking nature, this changed in the 1970s to a degree and we slowly see advancement into more technical roles.