I didn't pretend to know the answer. I do know what it is not, however. Falsifiability FTW :-)

I accuse them of doing widely acknowledged poor research. That is not an attack.

Then why did you compare it to IT? If you really believed that discrimination in Y has no bearing on X, then why did you drag it into X?

I never said I believed that - all I did was say that there is overwhelming research that discrimination is much more complex than that. I didn't propose a opinion one way or another, just alerted you to the fact that there's a lot of research that contradicts your "simple as vectors" hypothesis. You can go ahead and read the research, but since I am not proposing a hypothesis (just rejecting yours) I need not provide any evidence. You propose the hypothesis, you provide the evidence.

Which you failed to provide evidence for. You spent the whole thread arguing that the research in area X should not be compared to area Y, so you now cannot supply evidence of discrimination in area X and say it applies to area Y without at least facing the possibility that you are holding two contradictory positions inside your head.

Woosh?


You see "hybrid" means a cross between two things, and the whole "he escaped in a vest" statement.... ah you know what, nevermind.

:-)

Not everything that is not tech-related is worthless... only sports ;->

It must be a hybrid

Well, it's your hypothesis, so you should bring the evidence (did you not yet see the parallels between your argument and the one for creationism?)

Where did I attack the authors? Most scientists doing an empirical test understand that the results are pointless without a frame of reference (I was a research scientist in academia for seven years). When reviewing, we do make statements like "The authors have omitted a small but critical portion of preparation of the study".

And, believe it or not, there have been scientists in the past who've made this very same error - they set out to see if something (say radiation) exists, found it, published it and then got egg all over their faces when it was discovered that the radiation was simply background radiation.

There is no other topic - the one that the researchers chose to look at was "discrimination in X", they did not have to measure discrimination in Y and Z, all they had to do was show us the comparison. They omitted to do so. Search for the measured discrimination for other human attributes and you'll discover why they omitted the fitment test.

If you believe that discrimination is as simple as vectors (i.e. they can cancel each other out) you better be able to provide some reference. There are tons of research that shows discrimination, self-identification, self-grouping, tribalism, etc are driven by very complex processes, not just in humans and not just by environment.

The problem you are facing (which is why I made a reference earlier to cognitive dissonance) is that you (say) that would like there to be no discrimination against women without recognising that the only way to get rid of innate discrimination against women would be to get rid of innate discrimination. But you stated that you don't want this - you want humans to retain a certain characteristic (the intrinsic ability to discriminate) but you also don't want them to exhibit this characteristic (ability to discriminate). Those are conflicting goals, even if you have to resolve the dissonance in your head by stating that it must be possible to have one without the other.

Maybe you are right - maybe it will be possible to take away characteristic X from humans while still leaving characteristic X. I've not seen any evidence that this is possible, so I don't think so. I've also not seen any pink unicorns either. And also, religious folk get annoyed by me too :-)

This is from the top of this thread (emphasis mine):

I read that statement of yours coupled with the grandparent, hence I reached the conclusion that you think that female under-representation in IT is due to discrimination. I know know you feel differently (see below) to what you actually said.

But none of those reasons have any evidence, hence I consider it fine to dismiss them until evidence surfaces. You wouldn't think worse of me if I refused to believe in invisible pink unicorns unless some evidence was provided, so why ask me to believe that "socialisation", etc are reasons as well?

I apologise - I took your statements that discrimination is the cause of the lack of women in IT as just that - I no know that you don't believe that.

As promised:

Yes all forms of discrimination exists. Gender-based is simply one of them. Due to lack of fitment tests or any frame of reference provided by the study you cite it is impossible to tell if the specific discrimination you are against matters at all in the grand scheme of things. Of all the discrimination that exists, it might be the least significant or the most, but we can't tell because the authors refuse to do a proper study that does provide a fitment test.

I don't believe that any demographic in particular will be harmed If discrimination is reduced. However, you did not propose to reduce discrimination - you said:

That isn't reducing discrimination, that's adding more, just in the opposite direction. And I believe, reasonably I think, that the proposed reverse discrimination will be more harmful to women than to men.

For the second time, I never made the argument that discrimination will be worse, or matters at all, elsewhere. I've already told you this. You've already read this. The argument that is getting put out around here is that discrimination is responsible for the low numbers of women in IT. The question you are avoiding answering is why does this discrimination not deter women in other fields? If women in other fields face discrimination (like your linked paper shows) but are still highly represented, then why is it a problem in IT?

That's why research studies are all done with a fitment test or a NULL hypothesis - you believe that X causes Y in area Z? Why does X not cause Y in area Z'?

How about this - I'll answer your questions at the bottom of this post if you can answer just a single two-part question here: Do you believe that discrimination causes low numbers of women in IT? If so, why do you believe that discrimination is the cause of low numbers of women in IT when discrimination hasn't caused low numbers of women in multiple other fields?

Go on, I'll wait.

To be answered when you answer the relatively simply question above (yeah, you're probably experiencing a little cognitive dissonance right now).

I never made that argument - I asked for a fitment test. Luckily, now I don't need to make that argument.

That's the point exactly - the discrimination you are railing against seems to have no effect on the number of women who go into Biology, but yet you ascribe the lack of women in IT to the same discrimination? You have to ask yourself why is it that this discrimination puts women off IT but not off other fields.

You say "Discrimination is why women are not in IT

Your linked paper shows that discrimination doesn't put off women Biology

So there is some evidence, conveniently provided by yourself, that shows that women don't particularly find discrimination off-putting enough to leave the field in the numbers that they are leaving IT. You've made that point yourself.

You, and the other people reacting with faith-based reasoning, are blind to the harm you are doing to women's rights. Leave out the faith-based reasoning for once.

And their corporate backing came from where exactly?

I'm quite familiar with that repeatedly-posted link. Let me quote from my previous post which you have appeared to only lightly skimmed:

In the sciences, unlike the religions, it is customary to present data with a fitment test; a frame of reference, if you will. That paper does not present any evidence that the so-called burden for women in IT today is any more or any less than the other fields in which women have persevered and dominated. As of writing, there is no evidence (well, not any science evidence) that women in IT face more discrimination than past women in Medicine, Law, Accounting and the Vetinary Sciences. FCOL, the paper you link to does not even examine IT subjects, only Biology, Chemistry and Physics.

Even worse (for your argument), the study appears to be of discrimination against women in a field that they are currently close to parity in - Biology is the one I'm looking at.

So perhaps you want to explain how, if discrimination is the reason for a lack of women in IT, that Biology with actual studied and reported gender discrimination as per your very own reference, manages to have so many women compared to IT? If women are discriminated against in Biology, then why aren't their numbers the same as IT? Your very own reference points to the fact that discrimination cannot be the sole, or even largely part of, the reason for a lack of women in IT.

Plays^H^H^H^H^H Updates for Sure? I can hardly wait.

Firstly, no, I did not. What I said was that the current/proposed practice would change the landscape far more than you can imagine (Law of unintended consequences, and such). The proposed changes which force men to either choose a different field or take a risk for more money in the same field is going to end up with the average male income in the field rising (some of those risks will pay off, the ones that don't won't be counted).

I also pointed out that by giving women an easier ride than the men get is going to result in getting only those women who are looking for an easy ride. We already have enough female game "developers" who don't know how to program but get a ton of attention and money via patreon nevertheless just for being female! We don't need any more of those types of people, regardless of gender.

Secondly, there is no evidence that there is more discrimination in IT at this point in time than there was in the past in fields that were overwhelmingly male but are now female-dominated (such as Vetinary Science). Evidence of skewness is not evidence of discrimination. Faith-based reasoning has no place in a discussion such as this, and looking back over the posts that you and the rest of the people supporting your position, the only argument that gets made is the "god-of-the-gaps" argument, in that "There used to be more women in tech than now. It must be discrimination". Faith-based reasoning, in other words.

Maybe not, but everyone has already decided that it's a pretty good start to the definitions of reality and morality. The people who broke laws in the past because those laws were "unjust" (for whatever meaning of unjust you want to use) didn't do it purely to make money first, and perhaps make a statement later. They made a statement; money, if any, came later.

Ghandi didn't have his hunger strikes sponsored. Mandela didn't have corporate backing. They broke laws too.

Uber is no different than a common patent troll, with the only difference being that the patent troll at least has the laws on their side.

The problem is that this sort of "correction" tends to push even more men into working for themselves, thus widening the income gap even more. If you're unable to get hired due to diversity practices the normal thing is to go into business for yourself, i.e. contract. At that point, as a contractor (LLC) the "employer" (now the purchaser) gains no value from discrimination, and will therefore buy for the best value they can get.

How do I know that it won't be a woman? As another poster pointed out below, a man and woman of equal competence and qualifications aren't really equal - the women in the group will tend to prioritise their family while the man won't, hence the man will offer slightly better value (more working hours, etc).

What people like you, I Kan Reed, AniMoJo, Dave420 and others cannot understand is that this cause you are supporting hurts women much more than men. Hell, I'm gainfully employed and I'm STILL doing business on the weekends. More men then ever are willing to jump into a startup while still employed elsewhere, thereby sacrificing ALL oif their time - I haven't met a single woman who is willing to sacrifice their family life, nevermind sacrificing all of their time.

So this "let's push men out of IT" issue simply means that the most motivated male IT workers will make even more, while only the lesser motivated females (the ones who need a scholarship and a round of applause before they'd even apply) are the ones in IT, thus furthering the perception that women shouldn't be in IT. You guys are destroying the cause of women everywhere, and all so that you can feel good about yourself. You should be working on convincing the most highly motivated women to enter; those women aren't looking for handouts in the form of affirmative action. Instead with this noise over making things easier, you're only attracting the dumbest and least motivated, like game "developers" who don't know how to program and have no intention of learning, or former scammers who referred to women as sluts when she was working the con as a pickup artist motivational speaker.

Because those are the people who are chasing away the bright women, not the men.