lrhot9

> (unless we accept that the US is the world government, and has the interest of all of us in its heart, which is ludicrous).

Only one of those statements is ludicrous.

> There is a 0% chance of the US government becoming an oppressive regime, surveillance or not. Those things just don't happen in times of peace and prosperity. No country has ever gone from being an advanced democracy to being a tyrannical regime.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic

Learning more about the author might convince you that it's worth reading: http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia...

Is this a trailer for a highbrow dismissal?

A scenario: http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/a-three-hour-tour/

No, natural selection is a result of differences in reproductive success. We've lowered death, but does that somehow ensue that everyone has exactly the same number of surviving grandchildren? 30% of german women never reproduce. Among female graduates, the figure is 40%. From an evolutionary standpoint, they might as well never have lived.

At the same time, any traits that helps you maintain a birth control regimen are now strongly selected against.

Similarly, people are also perfectly capable of working while thirsty, hungry, scared, cold or tired.

If you're an actual post-pubescent person, you could do a simple experiment: Try to do serious work with half the screen playing video of attractive people, then try it with video of three-toed sloths. Do they require the same amount of executive functioning? The same amount of energy? Assuming of course that you're romantically indifferent to sloths, that the number of cuts per second is roughly equal, etc.

Suppressing phylogenetically old parts of the brain is never free, even when it's desirable. Is this sentiment inexcusable in the workplace?

It's hard to keep posting when polite, helpful posts like this only gets you references to Pinker and Gladwell, but please do.

Power used to be a function of the number of soldiers at your disposal. It will soon be a function of the quality of your roboticists.

Same guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62jZENi1ed8

It makes complete evolutionary sense, though: Women are always completely sure that their children are theirs, and men can never be.

So if your daughter physically came out of you, any people that physically comes out of her are undoubtedly your actual grandchildren. A safe investment. Your son, on the other hand, could always get cuckolded.

And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen: The modern godless creationist in full crusader gear. Thank you, it's been a pleasure.

Which one of the non-realistic explanations is the closest to being a realistic explanation, and in what way does it fall short?

Alright, if discrimination is the main explanation, what's the second most important explanation? The third? Why are you sure they're less important than discrimination?

So there can only be one explanation?

Is discrimination the only possible explanation for the empirical lack of women?

If you're sure it is, and you're actually interested in these questions, investigating discrimination in tech when you could be investigating discrimination in higher mathematics is like studying swedish-norwegian racism when you could be studying black-white racism.

You don't need personal experience, just casually google it for a while and report your findings.

I'm not sure what you're saying, and even less sure of how it relates to the question at hand.

The dark side

I'd agree that bringing in a different perspective helps a brand or profession appeal to a wider audience. What's not apparent is that diversity fuels innovation. They're different statements.

No, by that logic, it's just up for debate.

The only way for it to not be up for debate would be if there existed a perfect discrimination-measuring machine.

Look, if lack of diversity can only be explained by discrimination, you need to show that the field where women are most underrepresented - higher mathematics - is also the most rife with discrimination. I've never seen a female mathematician suggest it is. How do you explain this?

Surely you can see that those lists doesn't answer the question. "Nineteenth century British geologist" isn't an innovation, and a woman contributing to a field does not mean that "diversity fuels innovation".

Please name a couple of diversity-fuelled innovations

A classic take from 2004: http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue23/Locke23.htm