You don't really want to live in a meritocracy. You say you don't find many partners in law firms who are women, and this is because they dislike the rat race. Is that not exactly the reason you want more women hired, even quotaed into partner positions? They dislike the rat race, and them being in a position to kill it is probably good for everyone, then.

Unless you approve of the rat race, something about how it fosters "meritocracy". But I can tell you for sure the following: highly successful people are talented, hardworking, lucky, and good at backstabbing. Only two of those attributes are objectively good (and frankly hardworking is only good in combination with talented), one is noise, and the last is downright negative. Rat races enhance the value of the two latter, and make everyone's life miserable.

You just made the argument for women quotas. Also, for promotions at random.

As for the overrepresentation of women in elementary education, you are right of course, we should bemoan it. Precisely because it is a (doubly sad) indication that as a society we undervalue education.

despite the indefensible rant of the guy you are replying to, I have to defend his point somewhat. Biases which reflect reality, say women are better communicators mean that for the recruiter of a communicator, the optimal strategy would be to interview only women, thus maximising his odds of getting a match.

But this assumes that he has only time for a small number of interviews/cannot interview all candidates. It also assumes that there is one salient characteristic people ought to be recruited for. In reality, the reasons for which one person is hired are complex and multidimensional, and in general, it is not possible to determine the gender of the most likely match (or age, so you should interview an unbiased selection of candidates [1]) . Unless you are looking for candidates to the GDR women's Olympic swimming team.

In which case you are looking for a guy.

[1] if you know that you are biased, you should interview a selection which counters these biases.

The internet is great that way. It dispels your belief about the fact that the average human is enlightened... OP's rant was terrifying. Also, as a guy/gal how can you desire all-male/all-female work environment. These are inevitably unbalanced and unhealthy -- although I have a bias there, I think women-dominated work environments are bad for women, and men-dominated ones are also bad for women.

You realise that there are all those quotas in the South because it is pretty amazingly racist, right? Whenever I travel there, I fell like I'm in a clichéd rendering of "Gone With The Wind" -- minus the class.

Quotas are a terrible idea, except that they are the only way to break the old-boy cliques... Of course, after 1-2 generation you have to remove them.

Large disequilibrium in male-to-female employment in various fields is a cause for worry in general. It means that your field is not very welcoming of difference. It also means that the outcome of your field (say in IT the satisfaction of the users, or in science the amount of knowledge produced, or in management in corporation the long-term productivity) is likely sub-obtimal, because you are not making the bast use of the available resources (men and women do think differently, and each modes of thinking is best for different kind of problems).

For the rest, your post is basically a sexist rant. There are biological factors and sociological ones. One would expect gender imbalance in a number of fields. But such an enormous one, unique to the US/Western world (in south-east Asia, working with computers is considered a woman's job) is clearly due to cultural bias. Which means that we are getting worse software because of that, and this in turn represents untold costs to the whole economy and general well-being of everyone.

So yes, gender equality is a big thing. It is perhaps the single largest open opportunity for increasing productivity (in any affected field) which does not involve significant advances in knowledge.

Actually, there are only two possible outcomes for all of us: all humans in the far future are descended from you or none. Most likely none. This is obviously true if you think about it: your lines will come extinct, eventually, or be everyone. The alternative is two separate species...

Your ideas and creations, however, will have impact to the end of time. Turing as a memeplex is extremely successful, and him not reproducing is irrelevant: in the long run, it's the same for all of us.

NASA uses metric. ESO uses metric. The value in feet is a translation the precision of which you do not know.

I do conversions all the time: I cook. I look up recipes. And US/Canadian recipes are written with deeply moronic idea that quantities of matter are easily measured by volume.

So I have this table of how much grams is a bloody cup of strawberries (and I don't know the kind of mental confusion which may lead anyone to think this makes the remotest amount of sense). Because if you want to be somewhat precise, there is only one single appropriate tool in a kitchen, and it is the scale.

Likewise, it is easier to mix liquids in ml (grams if it is water) and solids in precise amounts by weighing. And most importantly, this allows you to scale the recipes easily by the amount of the main ingredient.

As for the Fahrenheit thing, all I can say is that it is a truly moronic scale. From the freezing point of saturated brine to the body temperature of a human with a slight fever. Obviously this makes sense -- not. Feet, inches, miles, pounds, you know what? its some arbitrary choice. Fahrenheit is just dumb.

But whatever, these conversations usually boil done to this bizarre fact: Europeans like decimal notation, and Americans like fractions. And for sure, if you like fractions, you probably think conversions are not too useful. I can also tell you are American by the fact that you think "KMPH" is not disturbing as a notation: even in science, I find that Americans can think of acronyms as single entities, e.g they read ABC/DEF as "ABC"/"DEF", whereas Europeans will introduce symbols such as A_{foo}/B_{bar}.

As far as I can tell, this is the deep root of why notations/units are such. But the fact remains that measuring quantities of matter in volume is wrong :)

Actually, progress has been clearly exponential. Progress dropping to linear would be a clear regression.

By using TOR, you are also providing cover to people living under repressive regimes. Which means that depending on your interpretation you are also helping terrorists.

However, this argument is profoundly absurd: walls also help with privacy. Most pedophiles do whatever it is they do behind walls. Are all civil engineering bureaus enablers?

At the end of the day, the FBI compromising TOR does two things, help them capture pretty horrible individuals, and weaken privacy. Now in the West, this is somewhat academic what the consequences are. Elsewhere, people may die.

This is exactly how it works now in Cuba.

Thus my larger point that Marriage in the West is really from the Roman/Greek tradition rather than the Judaic.

you are living in la-la-land if you think that rights not defended and imposed by the Leviathan have any value. Justice is part of the apparatus of state. What of your rights with no police or tribunals to enforce them?

That is an argument from ignorance: in the bible, marriage is between a man and a number of wives and concubines and slaves...

In the West marriage comes from Roman and Greek institutions, altered by Germanic traditions, and a post hoc sanction by the church -- inheritor of the Roman tradition.

There is a huge cognitive dissonance in the US about rights. Because Americans are told they have "inalienable" rights coming "from their creator", they have the feeling that the government can only take them away. However, in reality, "rights" stem from social consensus and need to be actively defended by the manifestation of social consensus: "the government"!

Any right that the government does not actively defend is moot. If you wish for "small government" you also wish for weak protection of your rights.

Another source of confusion is that there is some distinction between "state government" and "federal government" and the average American seem to not understand that this is just an arbitrary separation of duties which is not particularly good or appropriate. At the end of the day, you are "governed" and obey "laws" and have "rights" and it matters little where these come from, states or Washington.