I actually don't drink, but when I used too, I preferred Syrah, or whiskey. I understand time domain based analysis is difficult for computer scientists to understand, and most people don't understand the ACOPF.
You can go read more about how all of this works, but I understand it's actual work, and the topic is complex enough to span beyond stereotypical litmus test viewpoints on both convservative and liberal sides, which makes people immediately shut down. That's the best way for media to control people, is to polarize them so they are mentally too close minded to even explore the possibility that anyone in the field of "clean energy" might be engaged in corruption. (oh no! I thought only people who sell oil do that!).
Exposing pricing incentives to clean energy could encourage more generators to increase performance and reliability. Right now, they throw away roughly 70% of the energy and easily 30% of it could be saved and put into the grid and supplied to people if they had any reward/loss mechanism other than receiving flat government subsidies for simply existing.
To believe that clean energy doesn't need a proper incentive system like everything else is fine. Europe does this well, but then the discussion should center around whether real time energy pricing markets should exist at all. To me, it's debatable. I think the fundamentals are sound, but it's too complicated of a system for the average person to understand, so politics rules the compass for how much corruption is at play. That's never a good thing. We would probably be better off operating like how Germany operates.
Still, wind turbines and solar panels could do better on their energy efficiency...
Acting like clean energy generators should get a free pass, free funding and never be reviewed on performance or reliability metrics or incentivised to perform better is like saying "my child is a genius. He's two years old, but he deserves to be at Harvard. He doesn't need to do homework, or work at anything in his life/ He's my son, hes entitled to all the success in the world because he has "potential" and is objectively more gifted than the other competitors".
no, you need to work at things, and get better. Solar panels and wind turbines need to get alot better. They have gaping holes in their performance metrics, all which can be fixed if they could profit from getting better.
I challenge you to a test that requires holding more than one thought in your head for 5 minutes. Go find one clean energy company in the U.S. producing solar or wind. The actual company who funds it, and follow the subsidy money. Where does it go? Does it go to power your home? Go find out, tell me where it goes....
I think the issue is, many regions in the U.S. operate on real time energy pricing markets. Generation companies get paid for what they produce based on these energy prices. When prices go below zero, they have to pay to produce.
The only groups that can afford to do this, are one's who can use clean energy government subsidies to bid in their cost of production at below zero, and essentially pay to produce energy on the power grid.
If you think clean energy should get a preference on the powergrid for dispatching energy, that is fine, and many places in Europe do it well and reliably. However, in this case, real time energy markets are probably not the best reflection of what incentives are truly at play.
An example of this is that clean energy gets an unfair advanatage in that it's weaknesses are not exposed. It is good to provide an economic incentive for the generators to need to perform better.
An example of this is wind plants in NY. They get energy subsidies for producing power, but not necessarily producing power on the power grid. So they can create energy, and never supply anyone with it, and get subsidies per MW for this. You might think the best way for them to double their income by
1. getting subsidies and
2. actually getting paid back the real time energy price on the power grid
would be by supplying power when it's needed by buying batteries and putting that energy they create (when the wind is blowing at night for example, when noones needs it) into the power grid when demand is high, at maybe 5pm on a hot summer day when everyone has their ac cranking, but it turns out that costs money? And they are already getting free money. Some power plants are starting to do that, but they could have easily done that a decade ago.
I believe we should have clean energy, and do what it takes to get there, that's why I specialized in Electric Power, but I think the way it's currently set up in the real time markets creates some preverse incentives that hinders optimisation in the field.
While clean energy is nice (solar panels, wind turbines) they could use alot of improvement on their efficiency and integrate batteries into their substation design. Many do not because it is too profitable as it is.
It's also important to note the people getting paid these subsidies are venture capitol firms funding these clean energy substations. They are not green tree hugging people, and most of the companies have an incredibly diverse portfolio that does not reflect a loyal dedication to clean energy cause. The profits they receive from these government funding go back to VC firms to be reallocated to...well.. whatever they see fit and many times it has very little to do with powergrid stuff at all, much less clean energy. This is free money for venture capitalists...think about that.
It's a very interesting market because people's idea of ethics and moral rightness are able to blind some very basic abuses in the system that degrade the performance, reliability and overall amount of clean energy produced on the power grid.
Hi. I'm an Electrical Power Engineer and I analyzed electrical power energy pricing for three years after working a startup designing renewable stations.
I worked at the NYISO, which runs all the real time energy pricing markets on a realtime power market separate from the public stock market. The issue is this. NYISO, MISO, ERCOT, CAISO run real time energy markets throughout the U.S.
The idea is energy demand is met with energy supply obtained at the LBMP (locational based marginal price) from energy bid into the markets by energy suppliers who can meet demand in that area (transmission line losses are 10%) so there is an advantage to local/decentralized energy as the markets price congestion on these transmission lines.
Transmission lines are expensive (consider buying up all those little protesting family farms lawsuits buying individual land) and will melt or if run beyond 90% of their capacity which could leave an area stranded and blacked out by cascading over voltage conditions and blacking out the entire power grid.
So the tldr is energy can only move so far before it becomes uneconomic and needs to be synced with another power bus.
Now, you have politicians throwing free money in subsidies, grants or 20yr loans to Venture capital funds who contract renewable energy farms like wind for example. They get paid subsidies for the power they produce.
That sounds reasonable, but this is where it becomes unreasonable. Power is realtime and needs to respond to demand usage.
The other important thing to note is even if we did vote for high taxes in the u.s. to fund clean energy, clean energy is massively inefficient right now, and this doesn't provide an economic incentive to innovate in the industry. Quite the opposite. It makes the people raking up this free money hapoy sitting on their behinds, which brings me to my previous point,
The VCs get paid to produce power but not when it's needed. They could store this in a battery somewhere, but it turns out hurricane Sandy flooded a $50million battery that was supposed to back up all of long island. Ironic. Most investors tweaked out after this, and anyways, why would venture capitalists spend their free money on actually investing in making the technology better by buying batteries to save power being produced when it's not needed (a windy night on a mtn vs 4pm the next day when everyone is using power) when they are getting paid either way?
The money that isn't lining their pockets is subsidizing their cost of production bids into thr market. So wind plants in NY always bid in at $0 and they get the bid to produce Everytime.
Since every five minutes economic dispatch (Google "acopf ferc") creates a price signal based on demand needed and this can actually drive the price negative. The decision making tree here is based on a mixed integer programming algorithm for which the implementation is close sourced by an algorithm contracting company, which I personally think is an egregious injustice to stakeholders but that's just me.
Sounds great, how does it get worse?
Well, because not in my backyard policy, all of these wind plants are in upstate NY, so they have to waste and dissipate 10% of the power on the way down to NYC clogging the transmission lines, if they happen to be running when it's needed.
For the few companies truly interested in putting batteries on their plants, the NYISO, CAISO and ERCOT are decades behind implementing the legal economic markets for these generators to engage in to set up batteries at different entry points on the power grid than where they are supplying it.
Germany runs on 50% solar and does well, which clearly shows this is not a technical background but a legal, political and organizational one. However, the economic efficiency is not entirely revealed t us. Do you think the u.s. would vote for 50% taxes like they have in Germany?
Hope that helps and feel free reach out if you have any more questions.
Did I really get downvoted for stating that people who argues about gender diversity should be aware of one of the strongest psychological differences between the sexes? It doesn't matter if the cause is biological or not, fact is that women are on average significantly more neurotic than men in all modern societies.
Didn't downvote you so I can really only guess, but my guess is that you were downvoted for the argument that you were implying.
After all, even if the statistical female population does have a higher baseline for neuroticism, would that fact actually weaken the argument for gender diversity?
How would it be any different from the fact that men on average are taller?
> After all, even if the statistical female population does have a higher baseline for neuroticism, would that fact actually weaken the argument for gender diversity?
Nobody argued against diversity, the document in question only stated that our current diversity efforts aren't really working and that we should consider measurable gender differences such as prevalence of neuroticism if we want to really move the needle.
this study is women ages 65-98. Anyway, did it say how many of those women are on heavy pharmaceutical drugs, the same ones that 30% of all first time heroine addicts used before restrictions were put on the overabundance of medications offered to anyone in pain? Just curious....
Anyways, one study about women age 65-98 does not result in overwhelming evidence.
Furthermore, even if it was, neuroticism and high anxiety could be a result of dealing with thousands of years of being disparaged of independence and socioeconomic venues for freedom. One thing I hope we can all agree on is evolution, and I think to state that women are in general more neurotic and attributing it to their chemistry as individuals and not the way theyve been treated for thousands and thousands of years is possibly a bit of an oversight.
Furthermore, I find it funny the author of the article (the google internal document) uses averages for women to describe his experience working at Google where everyone is generally agreed to be above average, which is why not anyone can roll in and get a job working there.
Undoubtedly, as the gender ratio is still off there, and in many places including, the standards are maintained to some arguable degree, and any woman working at google is probably far above the average woman, but of course the author has no problem applying general averages to the woman of a company who is strictly comprised of top notch and in general outlier performers.
It is honestly an insult to any women regardless of their performance once they get there, who has been offered a job or worked at google to be described by general averages by a male peer and then an argument is made on their biological limitations "with averages in mind of course"
Well, with averages in mind bro, you don't have any averages at google because none of your are average, so you kind of stumped your own point there.
Finally, if men think women are neurotic, this is an average characteristic described by a male gender of which has engaged in mass murder and until less than 100 years ago RAPING and pillaging as common means of procuring land and building societies. To pass off women as simply neurotic without considering how male behavior could have contributed to elongated stress and anxiety levels in women as the majority of their existence in the human species has been one of pure objectification with barely 100 years of voting rights to show for the progression of it, in the most sought after democracy in the world, is neurotic to me. Maybe that makes me neurotic.
This is very similiar to the concept of enslaving a people when it is well known it takes any family of any ethnicity in any country an average of five generations of consistent efforts to get out of poverty, and also encompassing enough cognitive dissonance to blaming an entire ethnicity previously enslaved as being "lazy" for not having achieved the same status as the wealthy elite who enslaved them.
Is there any point where the group of people who are so convinced women are plain and simply neurotic as a form of natural brain chemistry can stop and remember the nature vs. nurture argument? Biology day two, maybe day three?
We are still trying to get basic human rights for women in countries around the world who do billions in business with the U.S. every year. All American politics aside, it is a fact that when Donald Trump was filming a tv show where apparently all women flirt with him whether they mean to or not (they are just women, they don't even know what they are thinking. It's up for me to determine their emotions, not them. That would make them independent human beings who can define their own emotions and behavior and I need control of that) Hillary declared womens rights as human rights and got China to formally acknowledge that in the UN for the first time.
This is not a joke. We live in a world where we are still trying overhaul womens rights, and thats in a relatively globalized country, not to speak of womens rights elsewhere.
To be so confident that a few studies on wikipedia with less than 1000 participants overall provides an undisputable basis for women being more neurotic and agreaeable and furthermore not enabling that characteristic more to sit their job roles as the reason for the gender gap in tech, is nothing short of a blatant inability to see the big picture, and thinking of how global politics plays into a company that has offices in countries all over the world.
I don't even disagree with this guys right to have his own opinion, or his thoughtful attempt at alternative solutions because as a female in tech, and i know many other females in tech who agree, there are some good intentions gone wrong trying to make females feel more comfortable, but none of us have ever said "its actually because were neurotic and we need more people oriented roles for us", i disagree with his noncholant attribution to the "biological differences" in women (on average of course, of which doesnt apply to any google employee, on average) as an indisputable basis for which to base alternative solutions on.
Do you mean this comment: "Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs."?
It seems the premise (different average levels of neuroticism between males and females) passes the 10-minutes-of-scanning-google-results-test. But I am not sure that higher neuroticism necessarily causes lower tolerance to stress, although a connection is suggested by [1]. That is, if we agree to use the word "neuroticism" as defined by the big-five scale.
The conclusion is carefully worded ("may contribute to"), and not obviously implausible, so it might at least be a valid starting point for a dialogue.
Having said this much, I must add that I find the document to not be very well balanced.
Just for example: Women also tend to score higher on extraversion than men. The same study I cited before [1] links low extraversion to social phobia and (tentatively to) anxiety disorders. Shouldn't that have been on that list as well, then? Also women tend to score higher on agreeableness, so I guess I could claim that'd make them better team players, no?
So my conclusion about the document is that while it seems to me to list some arguably valid concerns, it does not play entirely fair. But that is a weakness primarily of what is omitted by the text, not by what's in it.
I kind of wonder about the 'high-stress.' Why is programming (or whatever you want to call it) high-stress? I mean there doesn't seem like there would be an inherent reason for it to be high-stress just considering the task. And what about women in jobs like nurses and teachers?
Programming is high stress in a lot of situations. Its very mentally challenging work but I completely understand your question, especially in relation to nurses who are dealing with life and death situations on a daily basis or teachers who are privileged with venues of essentially being able to teach parent and influence young minds and pivot their future.
I don't want to do programmers a disservice by making the comparison to wallstreet, but I only make the comparison in that stakes are high maybe not with life or death situations (but it could be, because software applies to many things, including technology equipment in healthcare and military or otherwise where peoples well being depends in some way on it) but in general, there is a lot of work to be done, with hard deadlines, and alot of money to be lost or made depending on the rollout, and quality of the code.
Furthermore when the money is good (the ability for the next "unicorn" to make billions or say google to roll out a feature that engages literally billions of users and make money off of that) the pressure it high. You don't want to mess things up. Furthermore, when the money is good, as in potential to make lots of money or otherwise have a huge impact on a lot of people or both, there is alot of competition. You may if you are not in tech think of programmers as esoteric nerdy elites, but in general, getting a job at google say, is not a walk in the park. Many people apply, few are given offers to put it short. The level of rigor is high, and its generally expected that you will put in the hours you need to to get the job done, because theres probably someone more or equally qualified than you that would love to have your position in the next round of tends of thousands of applicants places like Google gets annually.
You do what you need to do to get the job done, meaning nights or weekends, and you are compensated well, treated well, have access to good healthcare food etc. The goal is to alleviate stress caused by financial strein in other areas of your life, so you can focus on work.
In the same way, there is a lot of freedom. If you excel and get the job done in 8 hours a day good for you, but with that level of rigor its also expected that you are probably motivated to do even more outside your job role, which is why Google has 20% time, where employees work on their own projects or projects with other people, and alot of google most successful rollouts to the public and probably internally as well, are a result of employees taking their own initiative outside of their explicit job roles to build and contribute.
These things are all possible I'm sure with nurses and teachers, but those jobs are highly regulated, and in general those jobs allow you to leave at certain times everyday. Being a nurse, as some of my family members are nurses I know is alot of work in school and on the job, but you are on shift, and you can leave when shift is over. This is not the case for a programmer.
You are given work, expected to get it done in your own way, however much time that takes for you, as long as its done on time and it works and has the expected or above quality, and then contribute even more typically and consistently show initiative beyond your job role.
Many programmers work on live components like the internet. An example is when someone at a big tech company last year or maybe earlier this year, entered a typo in a command line while executing a script/small computer program that brought down servers hosting roughly 1/3 of the internet websites hosted in the Unites States, think of the impact.
The same goes for software running wallstreet and otherwise. If the software were to crash, the consequences are dire whether in terms of money, global telecommunications and the busineses that utilize them or in some cases software directly related to human health etc.
Thanks for the nice reply. I do confess though my comment was a bit rhetorical as I'm a programmer myself.
The list of things you point out consists of mostly external factors. I know where they come from and that they seem essential since those are the conditions that all of us are familiar with, but to a large degree, they are ultimately historical impositions: that is how the job has come to be practiced. (There are of course practical concerns that shape how this came to be; namely, the difficulty of getting all the pertinant information necessary to make any changes on a piece of software or debug it).
So there is definitely a cultural aspect of it, but much of the culture may not be strictly necessary to the product. Consider for example Torvalds' rather blunt manner. I am fond of being blunt and I enjoy being a bit combative and adversarial when it comes to advocating ideas. I've seen this attitude commonly in various academic/industry/scientific. To an extent it's useful. But it can become a sport unto itself and mean-spirited easily, especially in unskilled hands. I suspect a great many people would not like to work in such an environment.
My own suspicion is that technical fields tend to attract a lot of people who have trouble reading/relating to emotions and males who've had little contact with women, a lot of contact with bullies, fragile egos, and a need to fit in. It gets ugly fast.
Welp, before the entire document was released I made a long statement below based on what I read, trying to give a reasonable consideration for somebody elses viewpoint, but then I read the document where the reader noncholantly listed the following things as inherent underlying biological differences unique to women, not to be up for debate, as the nondisputable premise for how to address the ideological echo chamber,here were the top most infuriating things I read. I must be infuriated because I'm a women and I'm neurotic, which brings me to #1.
Of course, women are neurotic, so that explains alot of why women in comparable roles just arent doing as well.
"Harder time negociating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. These are just average differences, but this is seen as soley a womens issue"
Well thank you for clearing that up. There is aboslutely nothing that causes these differences in women and it is entirely based on their faulty self perception that is there for a reason which must exist because....well you know the answer, which brings me to my next point...
"Women are more agreeable." The only mental response I had to this statement was "are you sure women are more agreeable, or do you just perceive that they agree with you and have no real comprehension of how much they disagree with you?"
"Men's higher drive for status."
Someone please correct me if there is another response I'm supposed to have other than only being able to utilize blatant sarcasm to try to enter into the mindset of the author of this article, and me trying to be agreeable to it:
Well, thank you for pointing out these fundamental permanent underlying unique biological traits holding women back from progress that Google has taken an unhealthy and self destructive burden on by trying to correct.
If women could just...stop living in denial about how neurotic they are, how they are more agreeable, and overall just, not as motivated to reach high status positions, along with the obvious fact that they are more into social things than code, and that women like people and men like things, then maybe women could start coming to terms with why they are less successful, and we could have more pyschological safety in the work place if more men in the office could be open about these things and not feel scared to propogate them as undisputable truth.
Perhaps some cooperation and pair programming would help, but I'm not necessarily Google should arbitrarily engage in doing that "just" to make it more appealing to women, instead Google should "be more open about the science of human nature". The sooner we can all just acknowledge women are neurotic agreeable socialites that eventually want to work part time and aren't driven by status, the sooner we can close the gender gap here at Google.
Thank you, thank you so much for all the other people just like me at Google who agree with me but are too scared to say it because...well once you say it, it sounds so pathetically incorrect I'm the only one who is so drenched in my own understanding of reality that everyone else is clearly in denial about, who had the courage to say it.
Did you read the sentence right after that where they talk about attributing factors, and do not end any of those sentences with "and thats what gives you your peronality"?
"A plausible explanation for this is that acts by women in individualistic, egalitarian countries are more likely to be attributed to their personality, rather than being attributed to ascribed gender roles within collectivist, traditional countries.[109] "
I wonder if anxiety and neuroticism reports by women are results of historically not being equal or having equal opportunities for venues for independence. I Wonder how living in collectivist traditional countries or working in environments with traditionalist roles about what females roles should be would cause a women anxiety if she didnt really fit those roles.
I wonder if its ever wondered if women are just a certain way or rather is anxiety and "neuroticism" reports are due to the world they live in.
He's trying to reason about why the aggregated trend in the world looks the way it does. He repeatedly points out that this can never be assumed to hold on an individual level.
You are saying women do not experience anxiety more than men? Do men not strive for status more than women? Women are not more people-oriented than men?
The author did not seem to me to be arguing for a biological cause, though I only read the manifesto once and may easily have missed this.
There are genuine sociological reasons for Women, who are on average much shorter and weaker than Men, who have historically raped and murdered in far greater numbers than Women, to have higher agreeableness and higher neuroticism scores on average in any society, much less modern society.
Unfortunately, like most social programs and surveys, these generalities miss the specifics and outliers. But they still statistically generalize.
I don't think it makes that claim? Clearly women can be capable and competent software engineers. I think the study was showing there is an inherent preference for different interests among large population of the sexes and then people who are concerned about the gender gap take this study to argue that the differences (and others) may manifest later in life as choices in career path.
This is interesting. I'm a female Electrical Engineer in the United States. Females are obviously a minority in the Engineering teams, but interestingly enough, there are a few older female Engineers I know who came from Eastern Europe after spending 10-15 years doing Engineering there, and said they never had an issue with sexism until they came to the U.S.
I'm not sure whether an elaboration by them would indicate that they experience more sexism by men, or that overall its more of a topic brought up by women, but they did say there were more issues with men here.
I think alot of the issues with women in the U.S. vs Europe are due to the fact that Europe is more urbanized and concentrated. Women and men live and work in closer quarters with more socialized economics where women are overall more educated, urbanized, financially independent, and the sexual and in general culture is more liberally progressive.
In the U.S., we are way behind when it comes to womens socioeconomic equality, and education quality in general. Concurrently, there are large number of men live suburban lives, with housewives who are to some degree financially dependent on them, and the idea of an a women who doesn't fit the housewife/trophy wife/soccer mom/etc etc whateve that American culture props up as a way of life for women to idolize, causes more cultural friction and results in more emotional isolation for women working in male dominated work forces.
Not all of it is intentional. Most guys I work with are fine, but older than me, married. I'm 27 single and don't intend to settle down anytime soon, maybe travel more if anything. So every company I've worked for, is filled with men who golf together or do other things. I'm not explicitly excluded anymore than I'm not interested in doing those things and they know that. If I was invited, I wouldnt go.
This is overall pretty a pretty trivial example, but I am trying to emphasize how the undercurrent of culture in America is a large contributer to this, and not necessarily any one persons fault or a mans conscious decision to come across as exclusionary.
Regardless, the document this article refers to goes far beyond that, and I have to say, as an INTJ female, this biology crap is ridiculous. I am introvert and would prefer any day to stay inside and read, code, play video games than go out and "socialize".
In my experience, as an educated female introvert, I am demonized for NOT being a social butterfly, I have been called a bitch for not smiling when I say something in a meeting, because there is a subconscious expectation that girls are supposed to be adorably cute in everything that they do, or ease poltiical or social tension and are viewed as "out of line" for being the source of it, and men are rewarded for agressive aberrhant behavior and lauded as the leader of the group for equally outlier behavior. If a man is confident in his capabilities, I've found him to be considered respected, but if a women is confident in her opinion in a meeting or her belief in her own capabilities, I've often been told I'm a know it all, and am reminded immediately why I need to be "knocked" down a peg to be reminded how I'm not as great as I think I am. It can be a little confusing to work in male dominated environment and be punished for the same behavior that men are rewarded for. This does not happen to me as much at my current job, or on my team or my department, but you have to wonder how much day to day life in the long term impacts what paths women take in their lives and careers based on the rewards and punishments they receive and their economic incentive to act and perform like a man, which is all subject to current socioeconomics and politics, moreso than a woman's "biology"
This document serves one purpose and on purpose only, to perpetuate stereotypes that many women do not meet, and recategorize all actions and behaviors they have that women DO meet the "White male" stereotype and according to this document I mean "objectively qualified software engineer with an open mind and idealogical diversity" as non lady like.
Furthermore, the fact that this document is even being considered as potentially accurate to some degree by any "intelligent" software engineer is more of a testament to how they probably should supplement some of their tech education with history.
Inventor of Acorn Computer and ARM Processor: Sophie Wilson
Current CEO of AMD: Lisa Su
Those are just off the top of my head and by the top of my head I mean
Nuclear power, which is the most abundant clean energy source on the planet right now,
First flight to the moon, the precedents for Wifi
etc etc, I'm probably missing some awesome women, there is no proof whatsoever that a females biology makes her less capable of being an equally qualified software engineer.
This general argument has been used for thousands of years in various flavors to justify a lack of womens rights or capabilities and they have never in retrospect sounded anything less than ridiculous, with their conclusions implying nothing less than the ONE thing ANY software engineer, and anyone who listened to day 1 of Intro to Science in the 5th grade should know, and that is correlation is not causation.
Women used to suck at math before they were allowed to go to school.
In the same way, technology is a new industry, and women are already a minority status in so many other industries its bound to reflect here as well, but the existence of a gap is a correlation to biology, as well as the many contributing factors to the cultural differences that influence the mass aggregation of how far women go when it comes to being socioeconomically independent individuals with advanced careers.
less than 50 years ago it was argued women shouldnt have careers because how can we procreate our species if women are working passed when the can have kids.
Well now we have technology and better healthcare to enable women to be healthier live longer and have kids much later in life.
Every excuse about biology as an objectively and permanently limiting factor to womens capabilities is a blatant lie that has shown itself to be one time and time again throughout history .
And to answer your last question, I personally really don't care about the diversity of my team if they are all good people who can work well, but I WOULD care if a coworker propogated a document saying I'm inferior to them because of my biology as a female.
On a very similiar note, to further this argument with studies and words that are not mine, by some of the mst lauded Economists of our time, I recommend the book "Why Nations Fail" which goes through many countries and places in history showing that the socioeconomic advancement of a people or a country, despite many arguments about certain countries or ethnicities being "less evolved over time" which was and in some places still is an argument and justification to why so many countries and millions of people persist in poverty, and actually that the ability for a country and a people to advocate for themselves is very much a result of the soecioeconomic system they live in, supplementing studies of groups of people an entire cities with the same biology and ethnic evolution and history who live in prosperous countries or not, entirely based on the political structure of that country incentivizing venues for massive growth in healthcare, education, human rights etc.
I would argue the existence of highly educated competitive female software engineers is just like most of history and people in the world upon objective studies, based on a complex structure of what incentivizes people and how much their culture allows/encourages/or punishes the advancement of womens education and independence, and this is a snapshot in time of which it would be irresponsible for us to make permanent conclusions about the mental capabilities of women due to their "biology" without efforts to extracate and analyze nature vs nurture in mass.
> but I WOULD care if a coworker propogated a document saying I'm inferior to them because of my biology as a female.
You wouldn't if you were working in Europe.
If this would happen here, all colleagues would have a great laugh out of this document, sharing it with others to show "What crazy John has done this time, making a whole document about his retarded idea."
If this guy is the asocial hunchback working in his office all day, avoiding others, but none the less doing great work, the company probably would keep him. Because everyone already knows what kind of a nutcase he is.
If he is working with other colleagues, this is probably a reason to fire him. First of all because this is not professional whatsoever, and because this obviously shows that he is not able to work with other people.
It this is a manager or HR person, he would be fired on the spot. Everyone would agree with that. If not what would raise some eyebrows too.
I fully understand that in US, you would care, but this is also the reason why the whole situation in US so surreal to me. I read that some coworkers even agree with them. And that makes it a problem indeed.
It is just strange that US and EU cultures are so alike, but still have such a big difference in how female colleagues are treated at the workplace.
> I have to say, as an INTJ female, this biology crap is ridiculous.
That's an interesting way to put it. The estimates I've seen (e.g. [1], [2]) have the frequency of INTJs among men significantly higher than the frequency of INTJs among women. If INTJs are more likely to become engineers, then those frequencies predict that there will be more male engineers than female engineers.
As far as I can see, those statistics are from the US. Which means there might be more to this INTJ-engineer relationship beyond sex. Such as cultural expectations that an engineer is an introvert, which may not be true.
I don't remember the study, but apparently in former communist countries, while gender roles are very strong, women were expected to work in factories along side men for a very long time.
Which is probably why you have a relatively more balanced tech workforce there today vs the West.
However, if you read the document, the author basis the premise of his perception of faulty and "good intentions gone wrong" programs to correct for gender pay gap disparity as due to the "underlying biologicial differences" between men and women.
Women are far less likely to be INTJs, but most female Engineers I know are not INTJs, and furthermore, if you are using the idea that INTJ is an indicator of someone being more likely to be an engineer or STEM I guess we can say in this case, and that somehow there is a biologicial difference (plausible, were not advanced enough in biology and sciences, psychology and neurobiology to be able to atribute personality genres to unique biologicial differences that can correctly an consistently identify a Meyers Brigg personality type, maybe its possible in the future, maybe not, maybe thats not the underlying relationship, who knows yet), then the entire premise of the author is debunked.
If my personality type whether as a male or female, is going to kick me in a direction more likely to end up in STEM (interest in math and sciences) then youre statement reconcludes there is no "underlying biological differences" that exist for all women that never occur with men.
The idea that personality traits contribute to biological nuances that can occur in men and women, then the author loses his point.
I'm also not aware of any Meyers Briggs personality type that comes with the term "neurotic" but according to the author, all women are, and this is not even up for debate.
I'm also leaving out the entire obvious consideration that I would assume is a given in all these conversations, but seem not to be addressed in any way whatsoever by the authors 10 page document, that even if we could attribute say INTJ or similiar MBriggs personality types to highly correlating with females in STEM, and then showing less women are likely to have those personality types, we still don't know what causes personality types, or have biologicial blueprints for them, so we can not assume "underlying biological differences between sexes" especially considering MBs are not sexually based.
Furthermore, we are leaving out the fact that humans are an evolving species and we experience a microcosm of our own societal influences that influence how people think, act, perceive, spend, procreate, educate, eat etc based on our socioeconomic construct. To throw aside the mere idea that being surrounded by men who actually write off most of your actions as neurotic and believe this as truth, could not have some lng term damaging effect on your ability to be taken seriously or perceived as successful or result in an imposed biased with a positive feedback loop on how the gender who is not in an economic majority of empowerment may be held back, is just about as childish and ignorant as missing the point of a first science experiment where you failed miserably because you didn't have controls for your experiment, or consider that different contributing factors could result in different outcomes and calibrate for them.
No, from this authors perspective, women are neurotic. This is a fact:
"Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs."
Right: it's clear that there's no sharp divide between men's and women's aptitude for STEM jobs. There are many excellent women engineers, and many men who have no aptitude for engineering.
It's also true that there seem to be population-level differences that are connected to aptitude for engineering. If we're trying to answer the question "to what extent is sexism excluding women from engineering?" then these differences become important. If there are no population-level differences then any deviation from a 50/50 sex ratio among engineers is probably due to some kind of sex discrimination. But if there are real population-level differences then it would be a mistake to insist on a 50/50 sex ratio, and a mistake to assume that sexism is the problem if the ratio is not 50/50. (Of course, there might still be sexism, even if there are also population-level differences.)
The problem comes when people try to apply population-level sex differences at an individual level. Even if fewer women have an aptitude for engineering, that says nothing at all about any individual female engineer. The right way to assess an the ability of an engineer, whether male or female, is by looking at the information about what they've done -- they've achieved X qualification, won Y award, built Z product etc. -- not by assuming gender differences that can only be observed at the population level. Unfortunately, both negative and positive discrimination muddy the waters here, making these signals less useful.
> Females are obviously a minority in the Engineering teams, but interestingly enough, there are a few older female Engineers I know who came from Eastern Europe after spending 10-15 years doing Engineering there, and said they never had an issue with sexism until they came to the U.S.
Re: Eastern Europe.
You can thank communist regimes for more female workers in technology.
A great comment. I'm wondering have you access to the document and have read it? It seems as if there's no copies around for us to look at and see what it's actually saying, compared to what it's reported as saying. I'd agree with most here in saying that it sounds really bad, bad enough to elicit strong responses but I'd like to make my own mind up if possible.
in my hometown Charlotte, NC, the downtown had some of the worst crime growing up, now many spaces that were completely ignored are beautiful parks, futhermore, dozens of artists have received financial support for soemtimes a lifetime of work or otherwise significantly reimbursed by the local banks that utilize and maintain the public spaces and install artwork.
There is the obvious concept of the potential for abuse encompassing all spaces so you could conceivably not ever be allowed to walk outside without potentially being discriminated against, or utilizing artwork to convey disturbing messages to try to influence public opinion, however, this can be the cases for government owned lands in all countries as well, and it is their private land, and I find the idea of not allowing people or organizations to own private land just because the public who is sitting in the park created to be used by them are noticing its not owned by the government, as an immediate abuse of government power to intervene on weather companies can buy land, and furthermore, choosing to take away their rights to do so because they are creating public spaces for everyone and making them nicer, and its annoys the public who benefits from it, as opposed to the perceived threat that one day it could be abused. Everything that is currently legal can be potentially abused, it just so happens in this case its not at all, and turning abandoned dumps and warehouses into public parks, green spaces, open musuems, and hosting events for the public on them.
in NYC, many of the parks when I worked there were previously total dumps and havens for crime, entire areas of manhattan have been turned around and they have the following effects
1. free urban green space the government cant afford
2. a clustering of small businesses around parks who pop up and do very well catering to lunches and outdoor cafes, 3. immense number of otherwise unrecognized groups being supported such as fashion shows, concerts and other events companies choose to support, public ice skate arenas
4. paying otherwise unrecognized artists millions to install their artwork in one of the most coveted places in Manhattan, etc
5. Making urban places desireable places to live and not just work, which is im pretty sure what the goals are for progressive humanity
Furthermore, I've never personally observed people being removed for looking scruffy, and I think in general you are removed for harrassing people, which police would do anyways.
In the current area I used to live in, there are 28 parks. 27 of them are complete dumps and noone takes care of them, particularly the young activists in town. There is one nice gated park own privately by a private community, who takes care of it, and you must live in the nieghborhood to have a key. Given the rest of the city is ridden with crime, its a safe spot for families to take their kids, or a women to read in the park without fear of beign a victim.
Regardless, despite the 27 other parks which the local government has asked hippie acitivists to come in and help clean etc, they are fixated on the idea of the one private park and trying to make it public, without understanding that the only reason its nice and noticeable is because its privately maintained, and the only reason people want to hang out there is because its safe, which is also because its privately maintained. Instead of taking the concepts that make the park desireable, and putting in the work to show that any of the other 27 complete dump parks could also become desireable and safe for gentrified communities to inhabit, and then use that as proof of concept that this park can be public and safe as well, and benefit more people, it turns out thats more effort than they are willing to put in. They only want to take the one nice park that is, without any plan on how to make the park not turn into the other 27 which are basically abandoned places people are sacred to go so, and as a female I would never go to alone. The government is too broke to maintain them.
Do they provide LBGT sex education as well? Seems like a burden the church should take on given what the leaders of this community have done.
I have a hard time taking men who have engaged in sexual child abuse as valid leaders of pro life or pro choice movement. I don't think they should have a say in anything sex related at all.
They are the last group of people on the planet right now who should be taking a moral stand on sexual rights.
Wait, you think LGBT sex requires different sex education?
When sex education was taught to me, sexual preference wasn't assumed or implied. The parts worked the way they anatomically do. STDs have no gender preference.
What is LGBT sex education? The Church provided the best sex education my wife and I got. During marriage prep, we actually learned how our reproductive systems worked, and how to monitor my wife's cycles, which led to the diagnosis of several health problems that should have been obvious in retrospect. If only we had actually been taught about our bodies in high school, it would have saved us a lot of heartache. Thank God for the Church.
