Today...

[Major Dash]

 

It wouldn't have anything to do with men being able to do those jobs better than women would it?

it's 2016.

 

do people really still believe this in 2016

 

are we really disputing the idea of inherent cultural sexism in a thread where someone actually made this argument in complete seriousness in 2016

 

This is maybe the part where we should step back and figure out what they're arguing about, maybe

 

 

People still believe this because it is true. I'm sorry that I'm not completely blind to the physiological differences between a male and a female.

[Veiva]

I guess he didn't. After all, it's 2016 now and now it's hip to be libertarian.

 

Sucks that most every economic model is based off wrong assumptions about resources or human behavior.

[muggiwhplar]

I don't think it's ever been hip to be a libertarian :P

[Veiva]

How do libertarians policies handle shared resources (e.g., ores, land, water) and problems (pollution)? How do libertarian policies counteract uninformed consumers (i.e., everyone)? How do libertarian policies handle important social services, such as the postal system or infrastructure?

 

Well, to be blunt, libertarian policies simply don't work in those incredibly common examples.

 

A well-regulated capitalist market with strong unions, in combination with ample support of state-provided services (education, healthcare, welfare, etc), is currently the only viable model at this point in time on any large scale. It's not ideal--unions will cause benefits to be a small margin higher than ideal, the various government services would require higher taxes, and other such things, but it reduces the negative aspects of capitalism while ensuring safety for the people (i.e., those without capital).

 

Sadly, the the United States is not well-regulated, nor are unions strong, nor are the various state-provided services funded or, in many cases, even provided.

[Alg]

People still believe this because it is true. I'm sorry that I'm not completely blind to the physiological differences between a male and a female.

 

[citation needed]

[Veiva]

The only time private industries properly label their products is when the threat of government interference is present. Otherwise, it's simply a secondary form of marketing.

 

And correction: private postal services can only work better in urban areas. USPS wouldn't be doing bad overall, and especially in urban areas, if attempts at neutering USPS's efficiency (e.g., unreasonable pension requirements) weren't common in order to incentive privatization. UPS is not going to deliver a package to some farmer without an address 400 miles from the nearest town or city.

 

How would private roads on the scale and importance of the various interstate highways work for the poor? How would they work emergencies (war, natural disaster, etc)?

 

I don't watch YouTube videos for opinions because it's a terrible format. Text is superior.

[muggiwhplar]

 

People still believe this because it is true. I'm sorry that I'm not completely blind to the physiological differences between a male and a female.

 

[citation needed]

 

 

Well most men have penises whilst women have vaginas, for starters :P

[Alg]

 

 

People still believe this because it is true. I'm sorry that I'm not completely blind to the physiological differences between a male and a female.

 

[citation needed]

 

 

Well most men have penises whilst women have vaginas, for starters >_>

 

If your penis is all that makes you a better executive, then one of us is doing our job wrong :v

[muggiwhplar]

 

 

 

People still believe this because it is true. I'm sorry that I'm not completely blind to the physiological differences between a male and a female.

 

[citation needed]

 

 

Well most men have penises whilst women have vaginas, for starters >_>

 

If your penis is all that makes you a better executive, then one of us is doing our job wrong :v

 

 

It's more a matter of hormones, such as men having higher testosterone on average. You should know better than anyone that changes in hormones can cause significant changes in one's behavior and decision-making, for better or worse

[Alg]

It's more a matter of hormones, such as men having higher testosterone on average. You should know better than anyone that changes in hormones can cause significant changes in one's behavior and decision-making, for better or worse

And this makes someone inherently better at their job...? That's what I'm trying to argue, that the whole "testosterone = rational/estrogen = emotional" thing is little better than a meme. It owes its survival more to western cultural roles than it does any actual evidence. I've legitimately never seen it used as anything more than an excuse to exclude otherwise qualified people for very little reason.

 

The one thing I know is that a lot of people flat out do not know what they're talking about when they bring up biological differences in any argument. Like, on even the most basic level. Dash's post does not strike me as an exception, and I'd go as far as to say that it has no place in any discussion that claims to be informed.

[muggiwhplar]

This came up with a quick Google search on the impact of hormones in the workplace

http://web.stanford.edu/~niederle/The%20impact%20of%20sex%20hormones%20on%20competitiveness3.pdf

 

tl;dr men tend to seek competition, women tend to deliberately avoid it

[Alg]

Interesting read. I'll have to go over it a bit more thoroughly when I can focus a bit better. There's too much background noise for anything number-heavy :v

On the other hand, the economic literature also provides some evidence pointing towards nurture rather than nature being at the root of gender differences in competitiveness. Gneezy et al. (2008) investigate the impact of culture by conducting the same experiment, in which participants can choose between piece rate and tournament compensation for throwing balls into a basket, both with subjects stemming from a fiercely patriarchal society (the Maasai of Tanzania) and subjects from a matrilin- eal society (the Khasi of India). While the Maasai exhibit the same gender gap in competitiveness found in Western societies, the roles are reversed in the Khasi sessions. Letting teenage subjects from all-girls, all-boys, and co-educational schools choose between piece-rate and tournament compen sation for solving mazes, Booth and Nolen (2009a) find that girls attending single-sex schools are significantly more likely to choose the tournament.

This generally seems like an underinvestigated aspect of things, at any rate, and it's also probably something that could confound the experiment itself. Going to have to remember to look for this one next time I have a sizable block of time. Even with the study's findings I'm not sure if that justifies the extent of sexism that tends to come up in these sorts of arguments at all, especially since those details still tend to be used to override the way people actually behave, or overrule actual rational decisions. That's more of what I'm arguing against than averages: the idea that individuals are not allowed to exist beyond their stereotypes :v

 

I'll admit I'm a bit leery about how we've gone from "the wage gap is overstated" to "if there was a significant wage gap - which there isn't - it would be because of these factors". also kind of funny since risk-taking is generally not associated with rational decision-making, is it? or at least it's something I find amusing

[Hedgehog]

Seems pretty dumb to pretend that the wage gap isn't important because women take more time off of work & don't work in higher paying fields. Like...that's the whole problem. Women and men shouldn't be taking different amount of time off, and women should have equal representation in every field

[Riku3220]

Seems pretty dumb to pretend that the wage gap isn't important because women take more time off of work & don't work in higher paying fields. Like...that's the whole problem. Women and men shouldn't be taking different amount of time off, and women should have equal representation in every field

That's more of an issue that the husband and wife have to decide on. Businesses can't force their male employees to take the day off when their child is sick because "your wife did it last time". There's also the issue of pregnancy. Men just can't get pregnant so it makes sense that they're working constantly throughout the pregnancy and after the birth.

[Alg]

It's outright dangerous to assume that nature is the cause of certain behaviors, and that's without getting into the fact that the argument only ever swings one way, often transparently so.

 

If nurture is a belief, it's one that's got a hell of a lot less baggage associated with it - the other has got the same arguments that have been used for centuries to justify all manner of atrocities and they're as unfounded now as they were then. The nature argument, in a lot of cases, falls apart if you so much as look at the details, and in cases where it doesn't it's still a massive leap to get to the sorts of things it has been used to justify :v

[Hedgehog]

 

Seems pretty dumb to pretend that the wage gap isn't important because women take more time off of work & don't work in higher paying fields. Like...that's the whole problem. Women and men shouldn't be taking different amount of time off, and women should have equal representation in every field

 

The problem people present is that women are making less because of discrimination.

This is demonstrably not true. 

--------------------------------------------------------

Given that its not a result of discrimination but the choice of millions of individuals deciding that it is the best decision for their work/life balance then using it to promote some agenda is bullshit.

 

 

Why do you want men and women to have equal representation in every field?

 

My guess is you believe that in the nature vs nurture argument for why we behave the way we do you lean heavily on the nurture side. What if your wrong. What if biological differences do affect our behavior in subtle but key ways? 

 

 

And to my original point. You don't know these answers any more than these professors do. Its just this ideology is trendy right now. I'm happy to argue this on forums among equals but to be preached this in a classroom leaves me fuming. Hopefully I expressed this well enough even if you disagree with my stances on these issues.

 

If you want to know why women are underrepresented in the industry, ask any of the women in your classes. From the way you talk about women, I bet the answer will surprise you. Hint: it's not because they're subtly worse at engineering than men are.

[muggiwhplar]

When it comes to complex issues like this it's often a mixture of both nature and nurture. It's silly to deny that men and women are, from a young age, conditioned to conform to their gender roles. But it's also silly to deny that men and women simply view life through different lenses due to their differing genetic makeup and therefore will often make different decisions when faced with similar problems

[champion]

Damn idc what anyone says, Uncrustables are good

[Hedgehog]

Idk how but they taste a million times better than a normal pb&j

[champion]

Probably all the high fructose corn syrup

[Riku3220]

I don't like Uncrustables. Too expensive for something so simple to make.

[RpgGamer]

I promise to close the wage gap if it exists in exchange for paternal work leave. You know that shit's less than 2 weeks unpaid leave? How come only my baby momma can spend time with our kid?

[Bonez899]

@RPG I think in Canda either parent can take the maternity/paternity leave but only one for the 9 months or whatever is allowed by the gov't.

 

@uncrustables conversation, is it weird that I don't like peanut butter?

[RpgGamer]

Peanut butter is hugely overrated

[Riku3220]

Peanut butter is rated correctly. Nutella is overrated. Honey is underrated. I don't know why more people don't use honey.