The costs are quite clear. An entire generation or more of about half the population feeling demolarized and incapable of doing certain tasks as well as their peers is a pretty huge cost.
We can do more/better to ensure that the women who do find their way to technology face less barriers though, ending the 'brogrammer' culture, making sure women are paid a fair and equal salary, and honestly some sensitivity training (on both sides) to help improve us geeks with poor social skills, getting rid of predatory leadership is also a required element.
I'd also suggest not framing this as "incapable", that's a gross disservice to everyone, different should never be treated as inferior - and also, there is no universality here.
But yes, let's say it's inevitable that many individuals nontheless respond the way you describe, considering that this was how the memo was summarized by most.
It's harder to speculate about the costs as they are less concrete in comparison, however migth be more far-reaching in the grand scheme of things. My suggestions:
- a bunch of people who share the core goals (diversity, equality) are being alienated because they disagree with the means that are being used to get there due to too big collateral damage. This is a problem if it keeps happening frequently, and that's at least my impression. One needs more allies, not less. more consensus, no less.
- a bunch of people are being pushed over the edge towards the right which gets more confirmed in their assumptions.
- general radicalization & division - which brought trump. this division will also cause massive internal trouble within the large tech companies. you don't want to have a crowd there which is terrified to bring up an opposing viewpoint.
- science is being weaponized and loses its trust, as people try to use science to prove, not to disprove ideology. i've had some discussions over the past days that clearly were in the realm of alternative realities. so far i was under the impression that this would not happen among the more educated and "well-rounded" groups of society. this realization actually shocked me, as it suggested to me that really nothing is "safe" from being lost.
- the principle that afaik was in place since the enlightenment, that more knowledge and open debates lead to better societies than the active limitation of knowledge and debates, is being sacrificed.
- to me, it is unclear how a democratic, free society can operate properly when a debate that is mostly about science is discussed mostly on an emotional and ideological level. everyone can see the erosion of the democracy rigth now, yet it seems that too few realize how this is connected to the directions discourse takes nowadays.
i firmly believe that people are not reading books. At least not the old books on important subjects. I rarely meet 'educated' people who read books.
I believe that the liberals in particular have lost their way intellectually post-World War II. There used to be Great Intellectuals and widespread public debates e.g. Isaiah Berlin. Today there is nothing. Maybe in place of that there is a smug contentment that we've the right answers, that probably is real.
In my internet travels I've seen that people will vehemently defend the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Yet they have not read it. It is a single page of text. It is easy to mythologize a text that you haven't read. I feel like modern Liberals are becoming like the folk who didn't know Latin but received audience from the priest.
If you can't read a single page but stick up for Human Rights, then you are an idiot in the most literal sense (the original meaning of the word 'idiot' from the Greeks). These people certainly won't have read J.S Mill's On Liberty, or the counter arguments.
tldr; Read more old books.
In my humble opinion, the problem is authoritarianism - left or right doesnt matter - its dangerous - the big concern I see, is historically liberals are rather effective at governing, so a left wing authoritarian movement has teeth, when a right wing one may not.
In my view Authoritarian is something in demand because of poor rulership. People sense that cracks are opening up in society and then they become more authoritarian because they sense that aggressive actions may be required to reverse the trend or prevent cracks from widening. If we have good rulers, we have reduced demand for it. We don't, the governing of Europe and the United States is shockingly bad in comparison to the past. That's not a reference to Trump, it's been a slow rot and it's been systemic. Thiel has been talking about this in his videos on Youtube, there is a basic decline in the ability of government to, putting it bluntly: get shit done.
People seem to forget (of late) that consensus requires discussion and cannot be achieved by fiat.