Dude, losing battle. People around here believe it's their god-given right to say the n-word whenever they want, because if you're offended or hurt by it, IT'S YOUR FAULT FREE SPEECH I DON'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH THE CONSEQUENCES OF MY ACTIONS.

I don't think you understood my comment. I'm saying the word has two definitions in two different contexts. Like "theory". Or "significant".

Okay, wait, wait. You believe the Republican party is better on voting than the left? For real? Remember those GOP-sponsored "voter ID" laws that were ruled unconstitutional because they disenfranchised minorities, poor, and the elderly? I do, because I went door to door distributing lists of acceptable ID documents (you needed a copy of the rules written down, you see, because they were too complicated to remember). The conservative wing were the folks who challenged the Voting Rights Act, and after that got neutered, there were voter-ID and other voter-suppression bills going into effect inside twenty-four hours. All by Republican politicians, in conservative areas.

Hmm, other stuff. Labor rights, well I can't comment on the American left, but the actual philosophical left is strongly opposed to abuses of the working class and extremely pro-union. (Frankly I'm surprised you mentioned it; seems like "union" is a dirty word to people on the right). Though given that our country is ruled by the rich with zero accountability to anyone else, unions right now are a joke (hey, I bet we agree on this part!). Although actually you also seem to be arguing that unions have too MUCH power, given that they can mandate you join a union if you want to work at a particular place or in a particular capacity. This strikes me as very much unrelated to government, probably because it is a mechanic of how unions function.

Educational rights... you mean private schools? Yeah, I mean, I guess I value equal education for everyone more than I value the rights of rich parents to send their kids to fancy schools? I don't know, that one's iffy, but the people with advantages to tend to send their kids to private schools to avoid being affected by our current educational crisis, and that's not sustainable. (By the way, I also taught in a public school, and for all the money the city was supposedly pouring into the system, we didn't see a dime).

The abortion issue has been widely discussed and religious groups are allowed to opt out of paying for contraceptives for exactly this reason. The "rights" issue with abortion, however, is about whether people are permitted to have them (and if so, to have actual access to them) in the first place. That is a much larger scale issue with huge human and human rights implications. I'm also going to go ahead and point out that most of planned parenthood is mammograms, pap smears, and other crucial preventive care unrelated to sex. Just in case you were talking about that.

Healthcare I'm not going to defend anyone on. I feel like Obama may have had something with the single-payer option, but when that went down, so did most of the real good the ACA could've done. As an actual liberal, I believe in socialized medicine, and even if you don't I think we can all agree that our current system is a price-gouging, patient-neglecting, claim-denying, unnecessary-test-prescribing, big-pharma-driven, loophole-using, corporate-sponsored and generally clawing-kicking-biting-and-hairpulling cash grab. Seriously, fuck our healthcare system. Fuck it entirely.

There are some rather funny statistics on terrorism. Like, IIRC, you are more likely to be killed by a piece of furniture falling on you than a terrorist. There's a psychological thing at work though, of course, where we rationalize and mentally minimize familiar dangers, but sensationalize and freak out over new, exotic health or safety risks. A classic example is that many times more people have died because they decided to drive rather than fly (in the years following 9/11) than the people who died on the actual planes. Because terrorists and planes are weird, but cars are normal and every day, so they're basically safe.

And yet, a lot of conservatives still hate Snowden. I'm sort of scratching my head over that one. Everybody's glad they know what he told us, but half the US still hates him for telling us.

The American left is opposed to too many economic freedoms and pro social freedoms. The American right, largely, is opposed to social freedoms and pro economic freedoms. Don't reduce everything to one issue, please. When it comes to abortion and gay marriage, it's conservatives who want more government in our lives, not liberals. Please look into the "political compass" for more.

I have one quibble with you. I wouldn't call Democrats "the left". We have a right-wing party, and a centrist party. And third parties, god bless 'em.

At the same time, can't you apply that argument in the other direction? "If your only reason for not giving people nuclear weapons is that some bad apples will misuse them, that's no argument at all!" Right? So obviously there's a line somewhere in the middle where you give people every freedom except for the ones that cause a whole lot of people to harm each other. I mean, government IS supposed to keep people from harming each other. Kind of its raison d'etre.

This must be why we believe aliens want to anally probe us: we're projecting.

Oh, but P.S. the posted article doesn't provide any evidence for or against my position. I'm not asserting that it does.

Dammit, I just ran out of mod points. Thank you for providing the answer -- the objective answer -- to this problem (not that there aren't tons of other factors). Protip: women new to tech culture DON'T have a problem with nerds because they're weird; the problem IS that aforementioned nerds are often misogynistic, condescending, constantly making "hilarious" and "ironic" sexist jokes (actually kind of hurtful! please stop doing this!) and leering/ making lewd remarks like it's their job to do so. Often even the teacher or group leader ignores contributions from women. Ask any woman in a tech field -- ANY woman -- if they've had this experience or something like it. We have. WE ALL HAVE, GODDAMMIT.

The word "minority" nowadays usually just means a group that isn't a "majority", or is somehow disenfranchised by society. It's a distinct definiton from the mathetical one, which I realize is annoying as heck. (But I'm used to it; people be stealing us mathematicians' terms all the time.)

The Just World fallacy is, sadly, slashdot's favorite thing. I'm hard pressed to find a single post -- regardless of topic -- where the comments are not full of how poor people are lazy and stupid, minorities are entitled, and if THEY were in those situations, they'd be fine, because all obstacles can be overcome with enough "character".

Considering slashdotters tend to identify as liberal, this is some messed up delusional-rich-Republican thinking.

The article agrees with me. The other commenters clearly do not.

My generation is full of people who were praised for their innate intelligence -- something a child understands is beyond her control -- and subsequently developed the worldview that natural gifts are what matters, that failure is the worst thing, and that if you're not good at something naturally, you won't get good, so, no point trying (these aren't conscious beliefs; more like beliefs we find ourselves slipping into). Research shows that what children need is not high self-esteem, but "self efficacy", which is your faith in yourself to rescue situations, overcome even unexpected obstacles, and develop skill at things via practice and force of will. All telling a kid he's smart will do is make him very, very afraid of anything that might disprove his intelligence. And the fear that, if the intelligence was gone, he would be worth less as a person.

To develop this in others, praise them for their effort and the things they achieved (especially stuff that was harder for them, because the harder it was, the more they've accomplished, really). To develop it in yourself, try focusing on your efforts and strategies, and learn to identify in any situation what is under your control and how those things might be used to achieve your goals, even if it's going to be depressingly hard -- even if it's going to be EMBARRASSINGLY hard. We have to stop being ashamed of needing extra effort, or extra help, and start being proud that we MADE the extra effort, and that we FOUND the extra help. Those things are much, much more useful qualities than innate intelligence... which, by the way, INCREASES when you learn something that is difficult for you to grasp -- like literally, more nerve connections are forged so that later cell firing is infinitesimally faster, each time.

And this is the heart of the matter -- what the hell is intelligence? There are hundreds of qualities we associate with it, and one intelligent person may be completely unable to do something another intelligent person can. Maybe we need to face that fact that "intelligence", like "cancer", does not exist -- it's simply a shorthand for a variety of skills and talents, which for the most part we all have some of but none of us have all of. Stop thinking of the person who doesn't understand math but dances incredibly well as unintelligent. And stop thinking of unintelligent people as inferior. I bet you know some unintelligent people who are among the best people you know. I certainly do.