He's too late. Societal norms have already been defined in the media, and all he can now be is a bigot. Charts confuse and hide true feelings and emotions, they erase interpretation, they are empty of justice.
You are right. And I am not sure why you are getting down voted. As stated in the article, CERN distanced itself from these statements. An another physicist present during the presentation consiedered the conclusion superficial.
The posts to these sorts of articles in a forum absolutely littered with male white dudes and a dearth of sociologists is a perfect echo chamber.
Have a look at your statement and see where cultural feedback loops apply.
> Why does YC invest overwhelmingly in more young men than women?
Equating investment, or return on investment of capital, as a barometer of "success" or some form of empiricist metric of adaptability is a first issue.
> Is this just a big ole bastion of discrimination here?
As to the second point regarding discrimination, yes. It is a perfect case in point as to where and how discriminatory practice gains a foothold.
"Equating investment, or return on investment of capital, as a barometer of "success" ... is a first issue"
No, ROI is a great measure of 'success' for an institution like YC, in fact probably the best individual metric.
" It is a perfect case in point as to where and how discriminatory practice gains a foothold"
Or it could be the opposite of that: a place where people are mostly free of ideological assumptions and discrimination.
"absolutely littered with male white dudes and a dearth of sociologists is a perfect echo chamber."
Making such an assumption is 'actual' bigotry, not 'possible discrimination' because the statement devalues the opinions of those making comments essentially on the basis of their gender etc..
Personally, I'm perfectly open to nuanced ideas on how all of this should work out. I definitely think there is work to be done, and we can be more thoughtful about all of this ... but I find so many of the SJW arguments are 'hammers' from the 1960's, like 'unequal outcomes = sexism'. Those arguments are having less and less validity. We need nuance and dispassion on the issue.
> No, ROI is a great measure of 'success' for an institution like YC, in fact probably the best individual metric.
It makes for a broken culture. Have a look around you. Chasing profit is no indicator of cultural value. Unless you want to start discussing Beanie Babies and Tulip crazes. Or the problematic aspects of Facebook et al.
> Or it could be the opposite of that: a place where people are mostly free of ideological assumptions and discrimination.
I'd do a spit-take if I could.
You should try 100 level philosophy and perhaps investigate epistemology.
Because white men constitute a large portion of the population, the working class, and the educated. I'm sure many would agree that that itself presents a bias of "if you're not a white man you're not competent" but I disagree that making it easier for outsiders to become educated or start in the field produces the best outcome for the field.
Surely you read the entire sentence? Simply put, I don't think lowering the barriers of entry, whether universally or for selected groups, on difficult fields produces equally skilled workers.
If he wanted to have a conversation about there being a better method than quotas for overcoming these social problems, I wouldn't have a problem. But that's not what he said, he tried to make the argument that women are worse at physics than men, which is not only patently false, but (I should think) understandably offensive to all the women physicists who do excellent work in the field.
> He also presented data that he claimed showed that male and female researchers were equally cited at the start of their careers but men scored progressively better as their careers progressed.
Is this evidence for or against discrimination?
Say, both male and female researchers start from the same position but females have 1% change for their work not being cited or published because of their gender every time they publish. Number of publications and citations can cumulatively affect the changes of getting the next publication accepted (citations and publications are used when selecting people into groups that produce more citations and publications) In the start of the career the effect is not noticeable, but it will accumulate over time.
It's infuriating that CERN removed the slides. Strumia presented arguments with evidence that can be used in the discussion to argue that he is wrong.
It should be possible to use Strumia's numbers to calculate bias coefficient to this alternative hypothesis. It should be also possible to do scientific experiments to find out the correct hypothesis. You would think that experimental physicists in CERN could solve this problem.
> They should well and indeed be studied, but not there.
Yes, let's discuss them in social sciences (which is presumably what you're advocating).
Because then we guarantee
* no use of actual facts or figures
* idiots will be doing the discussing purely for virtue signaling (looking good, not for doing the right thing)
* these people (social sciences) justify their own existence because of a problem ... wanna bet they'll find the problem is worse than we thought ? They are not neutral observers, nor are they even taught to be that (by contrast, CERN is filled with people that are trained to be neutral observers)
What's worrying most is that society at large seems to have made the decision that looking good and pretending to be morally correct is far more important than actually achieving something ...
The social sciences themselves are designed like that: they start from the goal to modify society to achieve theoretical aims ... Allow me to make some modest predictions:
1) they'll fail
2) they'll do a LOT of damage before they fail
3) they'll cheat, fraud, ... in the process to prove the problem they fix exists and gets worse all the time despite ever more draconian efforts to fix it
You cannot - and should not - control society for ANY ideology. You'll end up pushing very anti-women ideologies or worse.
* people are now taught to cheat for "good causes" are going to cheat for their own personal ends (much) more as well ?
* people will simply lie about things like gender equality, as that's rewarded, so it won't even achieve what you want
* people will use these policies to undermine the organizations implementing them (or do you think women scammers are worse than male scammers ? This will be abused)
* we are actually going to judge projects ... like the large hadron collider ... based on how much they advance women in science ? If we rate stupidity from 0 to 10, this has got to be well on the way to 20.
* and of course there's once again the dedicated victim class. Much too few male mathematicians, for instance, are we going to start sabotaging women mathematicians ? No, only one group gets punished. This is not at all going to lead to resentment ...
* it is fundamentally unfair. And no, you cannot fix one kind of unfair with another. This make society more unfair, not less.
I think you're interpreting that sentence too harshly.
CERN has to concern itself with politics, it is a organization funded by them. Controversial discussion endangers that funding. It is perfectly reasonable to ask that this controversial discussion not on their topic of study go elsewhere.
That doesn't mean to the faculty of woman and gender studies, or social sciences as a whole. I in particular am delighted that a physicist feels safe enough to discuss it even though I disagree with him. It just means that I'd rather this was broadcast as a paper, blogpost, non-CERN conference, etc.
Folks are passing the slides, which don't actually have data (EDIT: supportive of his preference or σ=1.15 arguments, he does summarize and offer a bit of data about how women claim to be marginalized in the field). Folks there say the slides are not reflective of quite how angry and off-putting the talk was. It was not presented calmly.
WARNING: These slides are not very good or compelling and invoke, "Cultural Marxism" as a causal agent for why women want to and feel entitled to a fair shot at STEM positions by merit.
You can be modestly sure anyone who says, "Cultural Marxism" (a direct invocation of the specter of Nazi propagandists' "cultural bolshevism") isn't arguing with the best of intentions. Folks invoking that nonsensical saw aren't about to present a huge quantity of well sourced and organized evidence.
Usually that phrase is associated with statistics about the number of Jewish investors in the US, how CoCs are destroying culture, how dangerous Muslims are to "European cultures," or how women and socialism caused the fall of the Roman empire.
I agree with you about "Cultural Marxism", the author clearly is not presenting neutral facts. However he also poses a theory based on existing data.
---
For those who don't know:
"Cultural Marxism" a term with two meanings: Obscure and irrelevant meaning and more common based on conspiracy theories.
If you have been reading about "Cultural Marxism" and have thought it's something you can just drop into dissuasion, maybe check your facts. It's about as neutral and academic term as "capitalist pig" or "Illuminati".
Personally I think that it's much better to point to it's near-indisitinguishability from "Cultural Bolshevism" which was an anti-jewish & anti-worker-union movement in Germany prior to WW2.
It's a real problem for anyone seriously attempting to use the term. It makes me wonder why people cling to it as a classification (when literally hundreds of other options exist), which are more descriptive and don't try and invoke the specter of authoritarian Russian regimes. What's actually "marxist" about it?
I should clarify he doesn't present data for his pivotal claim (a gaussian IQ distribution and Damore's preference argument). He does present a bunch of data that to me reads like a bunch of good examples of gender discrimination in his field.
And maybe he's a super genius at math and I'm not, but I don't see a lot of the statistical machinery I would expect to see to carry the weight of the σ=1/1.15 claim that we're currently seeing as a proposed caused for the data.
> reads like a bunch of good examples of gender discrimination in his field.
You don't need good arguments or good data to have argument based on data.
What you need is common context based on science and statistics that helps you to point out that what he presents is rubbish. Data is not ok, conclusions are wrong, not enough significance.
Mathiness and using mathematical models is good because you can say more exactly what you mean so that others understand your argument and can point out the errors.
I'm taking quite the beating on moderation for this, but I'm genuinely curious if someone thinks I've actually misrepresented the contents of the talk. I actually read the slides carefully, talked with some folks on Twitter, and tried to lay it out. Other than the bit about the comics I think I wrote an outline here devoid of the specific statistical arguments we already covered.
Doesn't matter if you present facts and actual studies, if you go against the narrative you're done. And Strumia is a dead man walking, he just doesn't know it yet.
This implies that statements can be disproven on a scientific basis. Sometimes we don't have the metrics, and we gather them too late. Sometimes statistics can be interpreted either way.
Look at the IQ-bias in non-western countries. Racists take it to mean that people are less 'smart' in non-western countries, the scientists working in the field have a number of opinions, from considering it a cultural bias on part of the test, to considering the bias to be correctible, and a problem created by poor material circumstances such as poverty, lack of nutrition, and inadequate education.
The problem with the former, is that because the test itself is the metric, you can't 'prove' that it is biased. Are these people less intelligent, or is the test at fault? We need to devise another test to see if we can correct for the bias. But wait, that means that the second test might be biased towards non-western cultures! Societal bias in general becomes ridiculously fiddly and difficult to prove either way, simply because there are so many different places in the process where something can go wrong. From the test itself, to the pruning of the numbers, to the slice of the community selected for the tests (historically 'gender difference' studies have had such small -- and inequal test groups that they are laughable), and so on -- all can have bias. It is to some degree impossible to prove whether your test is biased or if the bias is in culture, because cultural bias can lead to material effects. How do you isolate for how the researchers treat the subjects? Are women being driven out by lack of skill, or because the male-domination of the environment has led to an inhospitable culture. How do you test for that in the first place? Etc. There are much too many variables to make it a 'simple' job.
>What I expected to happen: Presentation's veracity is disproven on a scientific basis.
This was a physics related thing, do you want the physicists to start now studying social issues? Next you want the physicists to tackle climate change and flat earth deniers.
If there is a discussion to be had then the people with the skills in that domain, social studies, statistics(I am not sure who exactly are qualified too make good studies) should have those discussions.
His arguments seem to fall into two categories to me:
- Women are cited less
- Women publish less.
Other people are addressing the first... and how his statistics aren't sufficient to show a lack of bias.
I think the second is on even weaker grounds. That could easily be the result of discrimination by professors, collaborators, reviewers, etc. in deciding who to work with, how early to try and get students work published, whether to accept or reject something for publication, etc. I have no real evidence for this, he has no real evidence against it.
If I was going to expect discrimination somewhere in the process. It would be professors and collaborators who actually see the person they are working with. And it would be by people reading papers many years later based on the reputation of the authors name instead of the content of the paper. Neither of which are disproven by any of his slides.
That said - I find the fanatical attacks from the side I am currently arguing for far worse than the work itself. Ignoring and punishing people for opinions isn't just wrong, it encourages them to hold the opinions more strongly in secret. Open discussion is key, and we should know that as a society by now
>That could easily be the result of discrimination by professors, collaborators, reviewers, etc.
Your go-to analysis of this data is that there's a grand conspiracy of misogynistic discrimination? I'm finding it really hard to imagine anyone deciding not to cite a paper on the sole basis that they saw a female name in the authorship.
Conspiracy implies co-operation and planning. The far stronger argument for this is pervasive unconscious bias.
Edit: You added your second sentence after I posted this (that's fine, I do the same sometimes)
And indeed, his slides agree with you. There appears to be no substantial bias towards citing recent work by women. So that doesn't really counter what I said except in the sub-case of older papers.
That sub-case could easily be explained by there being a bias towards citing older work of people considered to be the key people in a field (I would expect so), and a bias against considering women to be the key people in the field. That second bias could be explained by a bias against considering people with female names key people in the field, or it could be considered a bias against considering people with fewer papers (see data/previous arguments for this) key people in the field, or both.
This is a giant unsupported hypothesis. I don't pretend otherwise. It seems to be just as supported as the hypothesis that women are just worse at physics then men though.
In, unconciously, slecting these facts for your paper and ignoring others. And with facts being facts even peer-review only helps you so much. Also it was just a talk / presentation and no peer-reviewed paper. He's a physicist and not in social sciences after all.
Setting aside that the mere existence of unconscious bias is still a matter of debate on an universal level, it's baffling that people still think this accusation is a valid argument on an individual level. You have to prove it exists. The accused does not need to prove he or she is free of bias.
I work in a Psychology department that has some members who specialize in the study of various kinds of bias, and I can assure you that unconscious bias is very real, and measurable in ways that I honestly can't find any reasonable way to claim measure anything else.
Look up the Implicit Association Test for a good example of this. I've taken it, and while it wasn't exactly a shocker to me to discover that I have an unconscious bias against black people (I grew up in an area that had maybe 5 of them, and despite my very liberal upbringing, our society and culture still label black people as "other" and "dangerous"), it was eye-opening to be able to see the effect so clearly.
I had the same experience after moving to the US for the first time. I'd never had a personal interaction with somebody of color, and all my views had been shaped by what I'd seen on American TV (typically not flattering, in the 80s/90s).
IATs are a good example for the immaturity in this area. It's a test designed to create the desired results. Switch the good/bad/black/white categories with any other two categories and I will take the bet you will get the same results.
The Implicit Association Test is - shall we say, non-scientific. Because the results depend on the ordering of the associated categories[1]
Psychology has too long been a field where people draw a conclusion first and then create some experiment or hypothesis to support it. It is only now with the advent of analytics that we are shedding light on this quackery.
I posit that your bias is more likely due to you not being black rather than not being around them while growing up, and your reaction to a person of color is an a priori programming which simply tells you "not my tribe." Feelings following that, however, are what you as an individual and, to a lesser extent, what society dictate.
I'm not a fan of his talk, but I wanna be honest about its contents.
That's the kernels of coherency we can extract from his slides (found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c_NyUhOZ8erdqU2AGZJZtNfFeA9...). In reality he literally argues "conservative theory vs cultural marxism." He reuses Damore's claim of "preferences" with a cite to a humanities paper from the 1800s (talk about a replication crisis), and uses this newish claim of σ=1.15 on an IQ distribution which is not faring well in peer review.
He does specifically try to argue that women are cited equally when they are listed contributors. This argument is of course plagued by historical evidence he doesn't really care to refute, let alone address.
Well, some flaws I see in his reasoning: qualification is based on publications and quality of work is based on citations. With the ongoing discussin about "publish or vanish" (I'm following it as a bystander, not being a scientist in any way myself) raises the question if that is really the best indicator or if less publications are rather a sign of more diligent work. Working at CERN one would think he is in a position to judge the quality of work himself.
Also, this approach fails to identify the underlying reasons for the perceived difference in citations. Is it due to some inherent discrimination that women get publiches less and thus cited less or not. I would have expected some deeper analysis of the numbers and data he worked with. From what I saw he just picket numbers to confirm his own POC, classic case of confirmation-bias and pretty self-revealing.
EDIT: To make it alittle bit clearer. I don't just doubt his conclussion / message, I already doubt the way he is trying to measure the different quality of work done bymale and female physicist as deeply flawed and error prone.
Preferential treatment of anybody when for anything other than merit when it comes to science is just blatantly idiotic and unproductive.
That said, discriminating based on whatever factor outside of control is also idiotic. Saying things like "Women scientists are harder to work with because if you criticize, they cry" is just plain wrong. Not all women scientists are that way, and saying so or judging women scientists in general is wrong.
I wish CERN kept the slides published and opened a scientific discussion instead of hiding behind the bushes.
Making any minority(based on age, race, gender, whatever) artificially preferred is going to be unproductive to science. Science progresses by hard work and innovation and not by invitation indeed.
If a person from minority is given a easy ride just because they're minority, EVERYBODY loses. In India, where I grew up, a person from a "lower" caste(not backed by financial standing, only birth status) is given a lower standard to clear to say becoming a doctor. Which only leads to bullshit doctors. If you really care to be inclusive, make the minority groups become eligible on par with everyone else. Give them financial incentives to study harder. Don't tell a minority person that they only need to run 80 meters to finish a 100 meters race. That's just stupid.
> In India, where I grew up, a person from a "lower" caste(not backed by financial standing, only birth status) is given a lower standard to clear to say becoming a doctor. Which only leads to bullshit doctors.
I'd like to see a credible source to this statement.
I'm in a plane, and cant supply sources at the moment, sorry.
Personal anecdotal evidence from 2003. I finished school, and applied for studying engineering. There is a "cutoff" for colleges and programs. Because I was not born in a "backward caste", I needed to get 92.4% to get into the program I aspired to. Whereas, someone who was born in a "lower caste" and has a paper that says so, will only need something to the tune of 65-68(don't remember the exact number) to get into the same program. As far as I know things have not changed for the better in decades.
For what it's worth, the person with that piece of paper might be a millionaire, and their parents more educated than mine, and it doesn't matter, they get ahead of me with lower score.
>For what it's worth, the person with that piece of paper might be a millionaire, and their parents more educated than mine, and it doesn't matter, they get ahead of me with lower score.
So what is a better solution in your opinion in a country where you say the corruption is very high?
Poor people can't afford tutoring with the "right" professor, buying books from the same "right" professor or buying the exams questions for the same professors, or later buying the exams and paying for poor people to write theyr projects and thesis. I this corrupt environment I assume a rich medical student will obviously have the bigger grades and grab the "money making jobs"
That is not enough because the professor will ask you to buy his books, also you can tutor with that professor and he will give you the questions for the exams(my experience is from Romania 15 years ago where corruptions was/is big enough)
Edit: To be fair and paint a correct image not all professors are corrupt, there professors that are fair and there are ones that are also very good as teaching not only good at their domains, unfortunately the corrupt ones are the ones with higher positions probably are the ones better are politics.
> There is a "cutoff" for colleges and programs. Because I was not born in a "backward caste", I needed to get 92.4% to get into the program I aspired to. Whereas, someone who was born in a "lower caste" and has a paper that says so, will only need something to the tune of 65-68(don't remember the exact number) to get into the same program.
Your initial claim was about "affirmative actions leading to bullshit doctors". Your current comment talks about "affirmative action implementation".
>India is the only country where medical seats are officially sold, therefore, acknowledging the importance of money power over merit (6). In private medical colleges significant numbers of seats are paid seats at undergraduate and post graduate levels, which are beyond the payment capacity of a common person.
caste based reservations are a real thing. Every government institute or any institute which takes govt funding has to allocate seats to OBC,SC,ST,NT tribes and castes.
> "Women scientists are harder to work with because if you criticize, they cry"
Let me fix the quote for you:
> "Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry."
He was making an obvious joke about his love interest, not "women scientists".
Very well said. As if this comment you're the top top-level comment. But only because you claim yo be from India and have an Indian sounding name. If I said the exact thing I'd be called names.
I agree with all your points up to the anecdote about India. Personally I have a big problem with the Indian caste system already, so yes, I am biased here. Without further details, especially the overall picture, in the last paragraph I get the impression that you are loathing someone of perceived lower standing to get things easier than you and maybe having more already. Not sure how I should understand that, either you are against castes and for treat people based on merit (not preferring the already rich) or you want to be treated based on some perceived social superiority. I cannot judge.
Not sure what I wrote that made you think I perceived myself or anyone to be superior or inferior. I hate the caste system unconditionally. I believe everyone should be treated fairly and only on merit at least when it comes to education, science, and healthcare.
That said, I agree that there may be a social imbalance and there exists groups of minorities identified by whatever(financial standing, family background, etc) that have fewer opportunities that are reachable. Example, Someone living at poverty line aspiring to be a doctor. My ask is that the policies should help them with financial incentives and tutoring to compete at the same merit level as everyone and then help them become a good doctor as opposed to saying they only barely need to study to become a doctor.
Honestly, I had about 6 different answers to your original post :)
So, we agree then on everything. As someone else pointed out, Affirmative Action is a difficult thing to implement, regardless it is the only realistic way to get things started. Sad that the cast system is actually making life difficult for everyone. For higher castes based on money they don't have due to ill implemented affirmative action and still for lower castes due to birth.
And yes, the policies you ask for are an ideal. Unfortunately, it seems, they are against human nature sometimes. Still worth figjting for, so.
>I get the impression that you are loathing someone of perceived lower standing to get things easier than you and maybe having more already
I largely agree with OP's comment and I think you're conflating disliking the system with disliking those who benefit from it; they're not mutually inclusive.
If you have a historical system of imbalance (e.g.: caste system), and today we decide we're going to get rid of it, do you think it's just going to fix itself and everybody is suddenly equal? Even though all the people in power are from the upper caste, and the lower castes are uneducated, and poor?
It's not "blantantly idiotic"! I often think the way affirmative action is implemented is flawed, but at least it takes into account the momentum of the problem and tries to do something about it. It takes a long-term view of how equality might be achieved by propelling those up who wouldn't make it otherwise, to disrupt the infinite loop. In the short term those who are used to privilege find it a little harder (boo-hoo, you've tasted a little a tiny slice of what the other side has had... for centuries). It's for the long-term achievement of what you ostensibly support.
Ah! The classic "optimize for only and only productivity and nothing else" argument.
The purpose of living in society has many goals. One of them is to work in such a way to improve what and how we improve so we can have more wealth. But there are plenty of other goals. Such as not destroy the environment. And most importantly, to make people in society happier.
A coal power plant is not allowed to use low grade highly polluting coal because even if its cheaper to do so, the outcomes for society are worse with it than forcing the power plant owners to spend more money on more expensive coal. Its a reasonable restriction on what inanimate resources can be used by a corporation.
A university should be made to have better parity between genders. It might lower the scientific productivity of the university - evidence needed. But not doing so has the negative societal outcome of making a lot of people very very unhappy. Affirmative action is a reasonable restriction on what human resources can be used by a corporation.
But here you are not talking about coal. The alternative is not a more polluting fuel, is another person that is also very unhappy his opportunity was taken away because he had the wrong gender. We all agree that situation sucks, so we don't make a net possitive by making more people misserable AND being less productive.
The irony is his rant like other recent controversial cases proves the bias they are arguing against. He has 'come out' but given his deep seated beliefs what are the chances a female receives fair and equal opportunity from 'professionals' like him?
If you believe in 'meritocracy' and rational behavior you can't suddenly 'choose' to ignore the real risk to women and their careers from men who hold such views. Even with a small proportion of such men and there is no way to tell the numbers, there is a huge risk women will be discouraged right at the start and face a possibly hostile environment.
Research and life is difficult enough and women will drop off or be discouraged. And this will then further feed sexists more data points to justify their positions making a neat cycle of discrimination and 'scientific data'. The large number of men who continue to defend these regressive and unscientific positions proves beyond doubt the huge risk women in professions continue to face with them in it.
> The irony is his rant like other recent controversial cases proves the bias they are arguing against. He has 'come out' but given his deep seated beliefs what are the chances a female receives fair and equal opportunity from 'professionals' like him?
I'm sorry, I do not understand the irony you saw in what I said. I'd appreciate if you take a couple minutes and explain what you think my bias is. I'm honestly hoping that you'd give me something to introspect and change my opinion if necessary. I'm genuinely not understanding what I 'came out' with... I did not take any side, I only argue to be fair and judge only based on merit.
I'm not 'choosing' to ignore any real issues. I'm only saying the way to deal with it is not artificially affecting fairness either side.
I don't have the power to hire people for any jobs or give out opportunities of any kind at the moment, but if I ever get there in the future, I believe that I will treat candidates purely on merit and not care if it was woman/man/which color/age/whatever. If they are better than others, and have the will & attitude to take job, they win. I'd like to be chosen for something myself the same fair way.
I'm guessing prof Strumia could use some mandatory people skills training, with approval or his firing being decided by a panel of minority and female coworkers.
It's 2018, it's not acceptable to be a cunt to large tracts of humanity anymore.
Outrage and censure and ritual calls for apology at any divergence from the party line. If this trend goes unchecked - which nothing suggests it won't - I shudder, literally, to think what will become of us in twenty years. Unspeakable things will happen after closing time in the gardens of the West.
Seems disingenuous to claim your field is built on merit (not invitation) while ignoring the historically exclusive and discriminatory nature of work in society.
While I don't agree with a lot, he does have a point with the discrimination against men slide: why is it still OK in 2018 to allow men to be drafted into war, but not women?
I have an idea, that could be applied to STEM and anywhere else..
Carry out interviews anonymously. The people actually doing the interview and making the hiring decision dont learn the applicants name or background.
When they talk to them, its text only or using a voice modulator.
They can see their work (with all names or hints at the applicants sex redacted) and interview them.. But they never learn any of their personal details..
You could even use fancy technology to do a video interview and capture their mannerisms and facial expressions but project it onto a neutral character.
This is one way I can think of, to try and achieve truly merit based hiring.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 173 ms ] threadThe least I expect from him is to not use terms based on conspiracy theories in his slides.
That said, CERN shouldn't be the place for this kind of discussion. Though it should be happening somewhere.
Why exactly do you think so many men, and in particular _white_ men, are in these positions to begin with?
Is this just a big ole bastion of discrimination here?
Or is the answer more complicated than just "because bigotry!" ?
Have a look at your statement and see where cultural feedback loops apply.
> Why does YC invest overwhelmingly in more young men than women?
Equating investment, or return on investment of capital, as a barometer of "success" or some form of empiricist metric of adaptability is a first issue.
> Is this just a big ole bastion of discrimination here?
As to the second point regarding discrimination, yes. It is a perfect case in point as to where and how discriminatory practice gains a foothold.
No, ROI is a great measure of 'success' for an institution like YC, in fact probably the best individual metric.
" It is a perfect case in point as to where and how discriminatory practice gains a foothold"
Or it could be the opposite of that: a place where people are mostly free of ideological assumptions and discrimination.
"absolutely littered with male white dudes and a dearth of sociologists is a perfect echo chamber."
Making such an assumption is 'actual' bigotry, not 'possible discrimination' because the statement devalues the opinions of those making comments essentially on the basis of their gender etc..
Personally, I'm perfectly open to nuanced ideas on how all of this should work out. I definitely think there is work to be done, and we can be more thoughtful about all of this ... but I find so many of the SJW arguments are 'hammers' from the 1960's, like 'unequal outcomes = sexism'. Those arguments are having less and less validity. We need nuance and dispassion on the issue.
It makes for a broken culture. Have a look around you. Chasing profit is no indicator of cultural value. Unless you want to start discussing Beanie Babies and Tulip crazes. Or the problematic aspects of Facebook et al.
> Or it could be the opposite of that: a place where people are mostly free of ideological assumptions and discrimination.
I'd do a spit-take if I could.
You should try 100 level philosophy and perhaps investigate epistemology.
Surely you didn't mean to type that?
Is this evidence for or against discrimination?
Say, both male and female researchers start from the same position but females have 1% change for their work not being cited or published because of their gender every time they publish. Number of publications and citations can cumulatively affect the changes of getting the next publication accepted (citations and publications are used when selecting people into groups that produce more citations and publications) In the start of the career the effect is not noticeable, but it will accumulate over time.
It's infuriating that CERN removed the slides. Strumia presented arguments with evidence that can be used in the discussion to argue that he is wrong.
It should be possible to use Strumia's numbers to calculate bias coefficient to this alternative hypothesis. It should be also possible to do scientific experiments to find out the correct hypothesis. You would think that experimental physicists in CERN could solve this problem.
They should well and indeed be studied, but not there.
Also, it's a really hard one. Biases abound.
Yes, let's discuss them in social sciences (which is presumably what you're advocating).
Because then we guarantee
* no use of actual facts or figures
* idiots will be doing the discussing purely for virtue signaling (looking good, not for doing the right thing)
* these people (social sciences) justify their own existence because of a problem ... wanna bet they'll find the problem is worse than we thought ? They are not neutral observers, nor are they even taught to be that (by contrast, CERN is filled with people that are trained to be neutral observers)
What's worrying most is that society at large seems to have made the decision that looking good and pretending to be morally correct is far more important than actually achieving something ...
The social sciences themselves are designed like that: they start from the goal to modify society to achieve theoretical aims ... Allow me to make some modest predictions:
1) they'll fail
2) they'll do a LOT of damage before they fail
3) they'll cheat, fraud, ... in the process to prove the problem they fix exists and gets worse all the time despite ever more draconian efforts to fix it
You cannot - and should not - control society for ANY ideology. You'll end up pushing very anti-women ideologies or worse.
* people are now taught to cheat for "good causes" are going to cheat for their own personal ends (much) more as well ?
* people will simply lie about things like gender equality, as that's rewarded, so it won't even achieve what you want
* people will use these policies to undermine the organizations implementing them (or do you think women scammers are worse than male scammers ? This will be abused)
* we are actually going to judge projects ... like the large hadron collider ... based on how much they advance women in science ? If we rate stupidity from 0 to 10, this has got to be well on the way to 20.
* and of course there's once again the dedicated victim class. Much too few male mathematicians, for instance, are we going to start sabotaging women mathematicians ? No, only one group gets punished. This is not at all going to lead to resentment ...
* it is fundamentally unfair. And no, you cannot fix one kind of unfair with another. This make society more unfair, not less.
CERN has to concern itself with politics, it is a organization funded by them. Controversial discussion endangers that funding. It is perfectly reasonable to ask that this controversial discussion not on their topic of study go elsewhere.
That doesn't mean to the faculty of woman and gender studies, or social sciences as a whole. I in particular am delighted that a physicist feels safe enough to discuss it even though I disagree with him. It just means that I'd rather this was broadcast as a paper, blogpost, non-CERN conference, etc.
Here are the slides:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c_NyUhOZ8erdqU2AGZJZtNfFeA9...
WARNING: These slides are not very good or compelling and invoke, "Cultural Marxism" as a causal agent for why women want to and feel entitled to a fair shot at STEM positions by merit.
You can be modestly sure anyone who says, "Cultural Marxism" (a direct invocation of the specter of Nazi propagandists' "cultural bolshevism") isn't arguing with the best of intentions. Folks invoking that nonsensical saw aren't about to present a huge quantity of well sourced and organized evidence.
Usually that phrase is associated with statistics about the number of Jewish investors in the US, how CoCs are destroying culture, how dangerous Muslims are to "European cultures," or how women and socialism caused the fall of the Roman empire.
---
For those who don't know:
"Cultural Marxism" a term with two meanings: Obscure and irrelevant meaning and more common based on conspiracy theories.
If you have been reading about "Cultural Marxism" and have thought it's something you can just drop into dissuasion, maybe check your facts. It's about as neutral and academic term as "capitalist pig" or "Illuminati".
The "conspiracy theory" charge is just push back because it's easier to criticize ideas if you can name them.
It's a real problem for anyone seriously attempting to use the term. It makes me wonder why people cling to it as a classification (when literally hundreds of other options exist), which are more descriptive and don't try and invoke the specter of authoritarian Russian regimes. What's actually "marxist" about it?
And maybe he's a super genius at math and I'm not, but I don't see a lot of the statistical machinery I would expect to see to carry the weight of the σ=1/1.15 claim that we're currently seeing as a proposed caused for the data.
You don't need good arguments or good data to have argument based on data.
What you need is common context based on science and statistics that helps you to point out that what he presents is rubbish. Data is not ok, conclusions are wrong, not enough significance.
Mathiness and using mathematical models is good because you can say more exactly what you mean so that others understand your argument and can point out the errors.
"Why does this inequality persist."
"But what if it's not unequal."
"Note this inequality paradox of M theory (dun dun dun what's the M)"
"Women in the field ARE treated equally if they deserve it."
"Women getting into the field don't deserve it."
"Because they are entitled cultural marxists."
"Gender studies is literally the problem."
"Please see these comics which I'm sure you haven't seen on reddit, tumblr, twitter and gab about a hojillion times."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18112125
That said, I know that HN is a "safe space" for white male bigots, so feel free to pretend that you're very smart and insightful.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c_NyUhOZ8erdqU2AGZJZtNfFeA9...
Situation: Presentation claims "male scientists were being discriminated against because of ideology rather than merit."
What happened: Presentation's ideology is criticized.
What I expected to happen: Presentation's veracity is disproven on a scientific basis.
Look at the IQ-bias in non-western countries. Racists take it to mean that people are less 'smart' in non-western countries, the scientists working in the field have a number of opinions, from considering it a cultural bias on part of the test, to considering the bias to be correctible, and a problem created by poor material circumstances such as poverty, lack of nutrition, and inadequate education.
The problem with the former, is that because the test itself is the metric, you can't 'prove' that it is biased. Are these people less intelligent, or is the test at fault? We need to devise another test to see if we can correct for the bias. But wait, that means that the second test might be biased towards non-western cultures! Societal bias in general becomes ridiculously fiddly and difficult to prove either way, simply because there are so many different places in the process where something can go wrong. From the test itself, to the pruning of the numbers, to the slice of the community selected for the tests (historically 'gender difference' studies have had such small -- and inequal test groups that they are laughable), and so on -- all can have bias. It is to some degree impossible to prove whether your test is biased or if the bias is in culture, because cultural bias can lead to material effects. How do you isolate for how the researchers treat the subjects? Are women being driven out by lack of skill, or because the male-domination of the environment has led to an inhospitable culture. How do you test for that in the first place? Etc. There are much too many variables to make it a 'simple' job.
This was a physics related thing, do you want the physicists to start now studying social issues? Next you want the physicists to tackle climate change and flat earth deniers.
If there is a discussion to be had then the people with the skills in that domain, social studies, statistics(I am not sure who exactly are qualified too make good studies) should have those discussions.
- Women are cited less
- Women publish less.
Other people are addressing the first... and how his statistics aren't sufficient to show a lack of bias.
I think the second is on even weaker grounds. That could easily be the result of discrimination by professors, collaborators, reviewers, etc. in deciding who to work with, how early to try and get students work published, whether to accept or reject something for publication, etc. I have no real evidence for this, he has no real evidence against it.
If I was going to expect discrimination somewhere in the process. It would be professors and collaborators who actually see the person they are working with. And it would be by people reading papers many years later based on the reputation of the authors name instead of the content of the paper. Neither of which are disproven by any of his slides.
That said - I find the fanatical attacks from the side I am currently arguing for far worse than the work itself. Ignoring and punishing people for opinions isn't just wrong, it encourages them to hold the opinions more strongly in secret. Open discussion is key, and we should know that as a society by now
Your go-to analysis of this data is that there's a grand conspiracy of misogynistic discrimination? I'm finding it really hard to imagine anyone deciding not to cite a paper on the sole basis that they saw a female name in the authorship.
Edit: You added your second sentence after I posted this (that's fine, I do the same sometimes)
And indeed, his slides agree with you. There appears to be no substantial bias towards citing recent work by women. So that doesn't really counter what I said except in the sub-case of older papers.
That sub-case could easily be explained by there being a bias towards citing older work of people considered to be the key people in a field (I would expect so), and a bias against considering women to be the key people in the field. That second bias could be explained by a bias against considering people with female names key people in the field, or it could be considered a bias against considering people with fewer papers (see data/previous arguments for this) key people in the field, or both.
This is a giant unsupported hypothesis. I don't pretend otherwise. It seems to be just as supported as the hypothesis that women are just worse at physics then men though.
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~srugheimer/Women_in_STEM_Resour...
Look up the Implicit Association Test for a good example of this. I've taken it, and while it wasn't exactly a shocker to me to discover that I have an unconscious bias against black people (I grew up in an area that had maybe 5 of them, and despite my very liberal upbringing, our society and culture still label black people as "other" and "dangerous"), it was eye-opening to be able to see the effect so clearly.
Psychology has too long been a field where people draw a conclusion first and then create some experiment or hypothesis to support it. It is only now with the advent of analytics that we are shedding light on this quackery.
[1] http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=22...
That's the kernels of coherency we can extract from his slides (found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c_NyUhOZ8erdqU2AGZJZtNfFeA9...). In reality he literally argues "conservative theory vs cultural marxism." He reuses Damore's claim of "preferences" with a cite to a humanities paper from the 1800s (talk about a replication crisis), and uses this newish claim of σ=1.15 on an IQ distribution which is not faring well in peer review.
He does specifically try to argue that women are cited equally when they are listed contributors. This argument is of course plagued by historical evidence he doesn't really care to refute, let alone address.
Also, this approach fails to identify the underlying reasons for the perceived difference in citations. Is it due to some inherent discrimination that women get publiches less and thus cited less or not. I would have expected some deeper analysis of the numbers and data he worked with. From what I saw he just picket numbers to confirm his own POC, classic case of confirmation-bias and pretty self-revealing.
EDIT: To make it alittle bit clearer. I don't just doubt his conclussion / message, I already doubt the way he is trying to measure the different quality of work done bymale and female physicist as deeply flawed and error prone.
That said, discriminating based on whatever factor outside of control is also idiotic. Saying things like "Women scientists are harder to work with because if you criticize, they cry" is just plain wrong. Not all women scientists are that way, and saying so or judging women scientists in general is wrong.
I wish CERN kept the slides published and opened a scientific discussion instead of hiding behind the bushes.
Making any minority(based on age, race, gender, whatever) artificially preferred is going to be unproductive to science. Science progresses by hard work and innovation and not by invitation indeed.
If a person from minority is given a easy ride just because they're minority, EVERYBODY loses. In India, where I grew up, a person from a "lower" caste(not backed by financial standing, only birth status) is given a lower standard to clear to say becoming a doctor. Which only leads to bullshit doctors. If you really care to be inclusive, make the minority groups become eligible on par with everyone else. Give them financial incentives to study harder. Don't tell a minority person that they only need to run 80 meters to finish a 100 meters race. That's just stupid.
/rant.
I'd like to see a credible source to this statement.
Personal anecdotal evidence from 2003. I finished school, and applied for studying engineering. There is a "cutoff" for colleges and programs. Because I was not born in a "backward caste", I needed to get 92.4% to get into the program I aspired to. Whereas, someone who was born in a "lower caste" and has a paper that says so, will only need something to the tune of 65-68(don't remember the exact number) to get into the same program. As far as I know things have not changed for the better in decades.
For what it's worth, the person with that piece of paper might be a millionaire, and their parents more educated than mine, and it doesn't matter, they get ahead of me with lower score.
So what is a better solution in your opinion in a country where you say the corruption is very high? Poor people can't afford tutoring with the "right" professor, buying books from the same "right" professor or buying the exams questions for the same professors, or later buying the exams and paying for poor people to write theyr projects and thesis. I this corrupt environment I assume a rich medical student will obviously have the bigger grades and grab the "money making jobs"
For books, there is (luckily) Library Genesis.
Your initial claim was about "affirmative actions leading to bullshit doctors". Your current comment talks about "affirmative action implementation".
>India is the only country where medical seats are officially sold, therefore, acknowledging the importance of money power over merit (6). In private medical colleges significant numbers of seats are paid seats at undergraduate and post graduate levels, which are beyond the payment capacity of a common person.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action#India
https://www.google.com/search?q=obc+sc+st+education+reservat...
Let me fix the quote for you:
> "Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry."
He was making an obvious joke about his love interest, not "women scientists".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Hunt#The_toast
That said, I agree that there may be a social imbalance and there exists groups of minorities identified by whatever(financial standing, family background, etc) that have fewer opportunities that are reachable. Example, Someone living at poverty line aspiring to be a doctor. My ask is that the policies should help them with financial incentives and tutoring to compete at the same merit level as everyone and then help them become a good doctor as opposed to saying they only barely need to study to become a doctor.
So, we agree then on everything. As someone else pointed out, Affirmative Action is a difficult thing to implement, regardless it is the only realistic way to get things started. Sad that the cast system is actually making life difficult for everyone. For higher castes based on money they don't have due to ill implemented affirmative action and still for lower castes due to birth.
And yes, the policies you ask for are an ideal. Unfortunately, it seems, they are against human nature sometimes. Still worth figjting for, so.
I largely agree with OP's comment and I think you're conflating disliking the system with disliking those who benefit from it; they're not mutually inclusive.
It's not "blantantly idiotic"! I often think the way affirmative action is implemented is flawed, but at least it takes into account the momentum of the problem and tries to do something about it. It takes a long-term view of how equality might be achieved by propelling those up who wouldn't make it otherwise, to disrupt the infinite loop. In the short term those who are used to privilege find it a little harder (boo-hoo, you've tasted a little a tiny slice of what the other side has had... for centuries). It's for the long-term achievement of what you ostensibly support.
The purpose of living in society has many goals. One of them is to work in such a way to improve what and how we improve so we can have more wealth. But there are plenty of other goals. Such as not destroy the environment. And most importantly, to make people in society happier.
A coal power plant is not allowed to use low grade highly polluting coal because even if its cheaper to do so, the outcomes for society are worse with it than forcing the power plant owners to spend more money on more expensive coal. Its a reasonable restriction on what inanimate resources can be used by a corporation.
A university should be made to have better parity between genders. It might lower the scientific productivity of the university - evidence needed. But not doing so has the negative societal outcome of making a lot of people very very unhappy. Affirmative action is a reasonable restriction on what human resources can be used by a corporation.
If you believe in 'meritocracy' and rational behavior you can't suddenly 'choose' to ignore the real risk to women and their careers from men who hold such views. Even with a small proportion of such men and there is no way to tell the numbers, there is a huge risk women will be discouraged right at the start and face a possibly hostile environment.
Research and life is difficult enough and women will drop off or be discouraged. And this will then further feed sexists more data points to justify their positions making a neat cycle of discrimination and 'scientific data'. The large number of men who continue to defend these regressive and unscientific positions proves beyond doubt the huge risk women in professions continue to face with them in it.
I'm sorry, I do not understand the irony you saw in what I said. I'd appreciate if you take a couple minutes and explain what you think my bias is. I'm honestly hoping that you'd give me something to introspect and change my opinion if necessary. I'm genuinely not understanding what I 'came out' with... I did not take any side, I only argue to be fair and judge only based on merit.
I'm not 'choosing' to ignore any real issues. I'm only saying the way to deal with it is not artificially affecting fairness either side.
I don't have the power to hire people for any jobs or give out opportunities of any kind at the moment, but if I ever get there in the future, I believe that I will treat candidates purely on merit and not care if it was woman/man/which color/age/whatever. If they are better than others, and have the will & attitude to take job, they win. I'd like to be chosen for something myself the same fair way.
This is PC landmine! In fairness, how different is silencing him and the likes from witch burning?
I am not endorsing him but it's obvious that he will face retaliation. Check his last slide
They can see their work (with all names or hints at the applicants sex redacted) and interview them.. But they never learn any of their personal details..
You could even use fancy technology to do a video interview and capture their mannerisms and facial expressions but project it onto a neutral character.
This is one way I can think of, to try and achieve truly merit based hiring.
Is there a startup here prepared to try this out?