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Comment by stdgy | Hacker News Reader

What does 'not interested' connote? And how do you frame it?

Consider these two statements: 1) The female sex is intrinsically(biologically) uninterested in Computer Science. 2) Girl's are raised in an environment that pushes their interest away from Computer Science.

In each statement, girls are not interested in Computer Science. But the first statement carries a tremendous amount of baggage with it, and comments on significantly more than cultural interest. It is, to put it lightly, a fantastic claim. And fantastic claims require fantastic evidence.

I don't think anyone is afraid of admitting that girls have been less interested in pursuing Computer Science than men. That's not really at issue. What's at issue is the cause and context guiding the group's interest.

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How about "Computer Science field has innate properties that discourage the female sex (biologically) from it"?

Why is it fantastic? Because last time I've checked, women were also less interested in recreational fishing than men.

And those properties that statistically discourage an entire sex from pursuing Computer Science are...

The problem is that I have seen no significant evidence to support such a claim. And on the flip side, it seems rather straightforward to argue for culturally guided decision making. Marketing, toys(Barbie vs Tools), socially approved courses(home economics vs woodshop), socially approved professions, 'traditional' family roles, historical religious convictions... These make for a convincing argument. And they're especially so when you begin to dissect the progress women have made in other professions, and the changes in cultural attitudes over time that have helped them make and hold on to such gains.

There are places where no such marketing occurs, but the result is predictably same.

And why should recreational fishing be biologically less appealing to women than men either?

- from a woman who quite enjoys fishing, tyvm

It's a great question. Why are women dramatically less interested in construction, coal mining, being fire fighters, joining the military, working on oil rigs, becoming welders or brick layers, etc.?

The two arguments are: it's either how we're wired, that is that we're wired (or even physically built) in such a way that we end up liking or pursuing different things; or it's society / social pressure or influence.

I wish we could scientifically prove once and for all, that men and women are identical, and thus should inherently like identical things; or that we are in fact different in various ways, and thus inherently are going to like different things to different degrees.

Do men and women like programming at a different rate because of how our brains are wired? It seems to me we'd have to start by determining whether our brains are different in such a way as to make that plausible; and if that's not the case, then it practically has to be a social driven issue. Now, how can we determine the brain aspect?

"Should"? They "shouldn't" be one thing or the other. They, as a group, seem to be, but why is that a threat to you if you like fishing? Just because there is a pattern to something, doesn't mean that that pattern is good (or bad, for that matter).

Why do we take such offence when people point out a trend or pattern, and we ourselves are an exception to that pattern (I say "we" as in many people, including myself)? Is it because we think being normal is superior to being unusual, and that we not being part of something that some other person thinks is normal is an implicit threat to our threat as normal people?

OK, well it wasn't really clear by the parent comment whether they were referring to nature, nurture, or both. And I don't think it really matters. He just said

``` [the] "women just aren't as interested in programming" trope rings hollow ```

To me the comment implies he is "afraid of admitting that girls have been less interested in pursuing Computer Science than men".

Why is the first claim more 'fantastic' than the second? Why are nurture-arguments so often viewed as perfectly innocuous and impartial, while nature-arguments are viewed as so controversial?

Throwing around unsubstantiated claims about how "society molded them into who they are" seems like a very fantastic claim to me. And I see a lot of that kind of argument going around.

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