[AUDIO FIXED] The Truth Cannot be Sexist - Steven Pinker on the biology of sex differences
Why Hacker News recommends it
Pointed to repeatedly in gender-in-tech threads, especially around the Google memo, as a science-based treatment of sex differences.
What it is
An excerpt of the 2005 Harvard debate in which Steven Pinker gives his prepared case on biological sex differences and the under-representation of women in science. It covers cross-cultural patterns in preferences and abilities and the overlap between male and female distributions.
Recommended by 6 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2017 to 2018.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec onli · 2017-08 · on “Why it may be illegal for Google to punish that engineer over his now viral memo”
> The "scientific consensus" is that women are inherently genetically hard-coded to not be as good at or interested in computer programming? I did not say that, did I? The scientific consensus is that there are biological differences that have an influence on job fit and job choices. But we are talking statistics here, there are always people from the other sex that are a good fit for a specific work. Did you watch the video I linked? [this video] . Really, watch it. Also, the Google memo explicitly did not say that women should not be coders. If you think that, this is the warped media representation of the memo you are talking about, not its actual content.
Strong rec onli · 2017-08 · on “Google Can't Seem to Tolerate Diversity”
If you want to see to which points science does have something to say, you might be interested in watching [this video] . This presentation by Steven Pinker got posted yesterday in one of the other comment threads, and I found it to be an excellent pre-existing discussion of the merits of the memo.
Strong rec ac2018-02-14 · 2018-02 · on “Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies”
Whenever this comes up, I like to mention this video [0]. The video speaks for itself, but generally it advances the position that human behavior and preferences are a distribution, and the distributions for women are in some cases different from the distributions for men (in the sense that summary statistics like mean and variance differ), but there is always significant overlap. The position that men and women are indistinguishable behaviorally and in their preferences is not taken seriously. A notable point advanced in the video is that there is a difference in the summary statistics (not the entire distributions) which indicate men prioritize status and family different from women (with
Recommends Shubley · 2017-02 · on “Telling the whole truth in a post-truth environment”
The thing is, in a lot of ways those gender roles actually are universal. Not among individuals, of course, but among societies, there are no exceptions to these: "M&F seen as having different natures" "F->M direct child care" "M->F more competitive" "M->F greater spatial range" etc Steven Pinker talks about this (and much else) in this speech. Skip to 26:56 for this particular point. [this video] An objective truth doesn't have to apply to every individual without exception, to be an objective truth. It just has to be a consistent trend. So M/F differences like the above really are objective truths, the same as "men are taller than women" or "cougars are more dangerous than goats". (edit: this i
Recommends js8 · 2017-02 · on “Why Do So Many Women Who Study Engineering Leave the Field?”
I am little tired of this. The research is interesting but there should be more consideration for alternate hypotheses. There is lot of evidence that girls are biologically wired to prefer people jobs, while boys prefer jobs with things. I really recommend Steven Pinker talk: [this video] But even if this was cultural, who are we to dictate preferences of people? I think the whole nature vs nurture debate is a non-sequitur. The article talks specifically about three reasons: 1. Self-doubt. It's well known that it affects girls more. But maybe it's how the brain presents risk-aversion to us? Or maybe it's actually needed for the job? Computers can be unforgiving. 2. Assholes. Sexism goes both ways
Recommends DidISayTooMuch · 2017-08 · on “Why it may be illegal for Google to punish that engineer over his now viral memo”
If you're looking for a more scientifically inclined video about this topic, take a look here: [this video] (The Truth Cannot be Sexist - Steven Pinker on the biology of sex differences)
Recommends onli · 2017-08 · on “Why it may be illegal for Google to punish that engineer over his now viral memo”
I think the spirit of the memo even in that section is perfectly acceptable. > Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions. It is also not an extremist position to take, it's the scientific consensus. See [VIDEO
Recommends onli · 2017-08 · on “Google Can't Seem to Tolerate Diversity”
You're welcome :) If you are a bit interested in more references (those claims sound horrible, but they are not as far-fetched as they sound), have a look at [this video] . It's a presentation by Steven Pinker that explains a lot about what science actually has to say about biological differences, and in an aside at the end even mentions stereotypes. I already mentioned it in a subthread to this post, no harm intended.