Recently, I came across an interesting article by Philip Greenspun regarding the real reason behind the deficit of women in science. The long and short of it is: smart women are smart enough to get better jobs elsewhere, while smart men stay in shitty academic positions out of misguided ambition. I agree with it for the most part, but I wouldn't be true to my principles if I didn't take this opportunity to alienate half my readers by putting my two cents in.
Let's get one thing out of the way first. Everyone knows it, nobody is allowed to say it in public. Harvard president was fired for implying it and Greenspun skillfully avoids it in his text.
Women are inferior at math and all-around less intelligent.
There, I said it. Feel free to get offended and tear me a new one in the comments. In fact, anticipating the outrage I prepared a preemptive FAQ:
Q: Actually, according to statistics girls all around the world get the same or even slightly better grades in math exams and aptitude tests then boys their age.
A: Let's be honest with ourselves: statistical human being is a (functionally) illiterate moron. You can train a monkey to pass those tests. The only thing the statistics tell us is that female monkeys are a little tamer which makes training easier.
Q: If it's not tests and grades, what else evidence do you have?
A: You want pure talent? Go to the hall of fame of the International Mathematical Olympiad. Or any mathematical Olympiad for that matter. Or any programming competition. See how many female first names you can find there. You're saying that girls aren't encouraged enough to participate in these? Ok. You must be trying really hard not to see this. Try counting females among:
If you counted more than 20%, you're cheating.
Q: This is bullshit. I'm a woman, and I'm 100 times more intelligent than you! Asshole.
A: That's terrific. You know what you can write that would better prove your point than an angry comment? A research paper. Or a novel.
Q: But Emmy Noether and Marie Curie were women and...
A: I didn't say that every man ever born was more talented than every woman ever born. But the fact that you have to resort to examples born in 18 hundreds is saying something.
Q: You can bring up some anecdotal evidence, but you can't really prove that men are smarter!
A: True. This statement is only meaningful because I can't prove it. If I were to confine myself to facts I can prove, all I would be able to say is: men have more Y chromosomes.
Q: I bet you're a sad, pathetic loser, forever alone in your parents' basement. You're bitter because no woman would ever come near you and your inflated ego.
A: :(
That being said, this is not what stops women from pursuing academic careers. You see, contrary to popular belief, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to make a... well, a rocket scientist. Don't get me wrong - science is hard - it is just not that hard. Take quantum mechanics for instance. Sure - it's abstract and counterintuitive. But anyone who learned it knows that it isn't nearly as big a deal as popculture makes it out to be. If you have enough free time and mental capacity to learn a foreign language, you could easily learn QM instead (and that is including the time spent on preliminaries like algebra and classical mechanics). My point is: if a woman can be a successful doctor or lawyer (and there's no shortage of those) then with the same amount of effort she would become a decent scientist. Why doesn't she? This one's simple: doctors and lawyers get better money, better hours, more respect and they can really make a difference. The question you should be asking is this: what makes males choose science despite all of that? According to Greenspun it's their unrealistic expectations, ambition, testosterone-driven competitiveness and lack of foresight. Maybe it works like this in Ivy League universities, where you can't throw a rock without hitting a nobelist. But in the world's scientific outskirts like Poland, grad students are all painfully aware that there's neither prestige nor money to be had in academia. And it doesn't stop them (the males) from trying. This brings me to the most interesting and relevant observation in the Greenspun's article:
A lot more men than women choose to do seemingly irrational things such as become petty criminals, fly homebuilt helicopters, play video games, and keep tropical fish as pets (98 percent of the attendees at the American Cichlid Association convention that I last attended were male). Should we be surprised that it is mostly men who spend 10 years banging their heads against an equation-filled blackboard in hopes of landing a $35,000/year post-doc job?
This is exactly it! The key difference between sexes that makes males dominate the following groups:
- scientists
- suicide bombers
- Klingon speakers
- 4chan users
- cult leaders
- stamp collectors
- political assassins
- conspiracy theorists
is this: men are fucking crazy!
Not convinced? Try to guess the sex of each of these people:
This is not to say that women can't be as passionate or as irrational. There's plenty of them dedicated to various charities - which is admirable but not crazy - and there's the whole phenomenon of fashion - which is retarded but understandable. After all it's just women seeking approval of other women and gay men. The thing that is male-specific is the devotion to something both impractical and completely unprofitable. It's the sweet combination of hardheadedness and crazy for the sake of crazy.
We've established that it's not their subpar cognitive abilities but rather their down-to-earth attitude that is responsible for the underrepresentation of women in science. Furthermore, it is entirely possible that all the cases of male intellectual superiority that I pointed out in the FAQ, are like that. I.e. they can be traced back not to differences in intellectual potential but differences in motivation and priorities that influence how does one act upon that potential. That may very well be, but I don't see how this is any less offensive to women than telling them that they're downright stupid. After all, it is exactly this Darwin-defying element of selfless impracticality that sets us apart from animals. All the greatest works of art, literature and science*** humanity is so proud of, we owe to stubborn men pursuing their chimerical dreams in the time they could have spent making money, socializing or watching Grey's Anatomy. Is it any consolation for you women, that you're making us sandwiches while we're solving equations not because you wouldn't understand equations but because you have no aspirations beyond sandwiches?
*And don't tell me it's the social pressure that prevents females from acting like this. Because nutty basement crusaders are all about conforming to social norms.
**with a beer in his hand and a bacon-cigar in his mouth. Riding a shark.
***as well as all the religions, ideologies and political systems
Let's get one thing out of the way first. Everyone knows it, nobody is allowed to say it in public. Harvard president was fired for implying it and Greenspun skillfully avoids it in his text.
Women are inferior at math and all-around less intelligent.
There, I said it. Feel free to get offended and tear me a new one in the comments. In fact, anticipating the outrage I prepared a preemptive FAQ:
Q: Actually, according to statistics girls all around the world get the same or even slightly better grades in math exams and aptitude tests then boys their age.
A: Let's be honest with ourselves: statistical human being is a (functionally) illiterate moron. You can train a monkey to pass those tests. The only thing the statistics tell us is that female monkeys are a little tamer which makes training easier.
Q: If it's not tests and grades, what else evidence do you have?
A: You want pure talent? Go to the hall of fame of the International Mathematical Olympiad. Or any mathematical Olympiad for that matter. Or any programming competition. See how many female first names you can find there. You're saying that girls aren't encouraged enough to participate in these? Ok. You must be trying really hard not to see this. Try counting females among:
- the makers of the wittiest webcomics
- the cleverest bloggers
- your favorite writers
- the most acute movie critics
If you counted more than 20%, you're cheating.
Q: This is bullshit. I'm a woman, and I'm 100 times more intelligent than you! Asshole.
A: That's terrific. You know what you can write that would better prove your point than an angry comment? A research paper. Or a novel.
Q: But Emmy Noether and Marie Curie were women and...
A: I didn't say that every man ever born was more talented than every woman ever born. But the fact that you have to resort to examples born in 18 hundreds is saying something.
Q: You can bring up some anecdotal evidence, but you can't really prove that men are smarter!
A: True. This statement is only meaningful because I can't prove it. If I were to confine myself to facts I can prove, all I would be able to say is: men have more Y chromosomes.
Q: I bet you're a sad, pathetic loser, forever alone in your parents' basement. You're bitter because no woman would ever come near you and your inflated ego.
A: :(
That being said, this is not what stops women from pursuing academic careers. You see, contrary to popular belief, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to make a... well, a rocket scientist. Don't get me wrong - science is hard - it is just not that hard. Take quantum mechanics for instance. Sure - it's abstract and counterintuitive. But anyone who learned it knows that it isn't nearly as big a deal as popculture makes it out to be. If you have enough free time and mental capacity to learn a foreign language, you could easily learn QM instead (and that is including the time spent on preliminaries like algebra and classical mechanics). My point is: if a woman can be a successful doctor or lawyer (and there's no shortage of those) then with the same amount of effort she would become a decent scientist. Why doesn't she? This one's simple: doctors and lawyers get better money, better hours, more respect and they can really make a difference. The question you should be asking is this: what makes males choose science despite all of that? According to Greenspun it's their unrealistic expectations, ambition, testosterone-driven competitiveness and lack of foresight. Maybe it works like this in Ivy League universities, where you can't throw a rock without hitting a nobelist. But in the world's scientific outskirts like Poland, grad students are all painfully aware that there's neither prestige nor money to be had in academia. And it doesn't stop them (the males) from trying. This brings me to the most interesting and relevant observation in the Greenspun's article:
A lot more men than women choose to do seemingly irrational things such as become petty criminals, fly homebuilt helicopters, play video games, and keep tropical fish as pets (98 percent of the attendees at the American Cichlid Association convention that I last attended were male). Should we be surprised that it is mostly men who spend 10 years banging their heads against an equation-filled blackboard in hopes of landing a $35,000/year post-doc job?
This is exactly it! The key difference between sexes that makes males dominate the following groups:
- scientists
- suicide bombers
- Klingon speakers
- 4chan users
- cult leaders
- stamp collectors
- political assassins
- conspiracy theorists
is this: men are fucking crazy!
Not convinced? Try to guess the sex of each of these people:
- spent 15 years and over 4*10^6 matchsticks building a 20ft long replica of an oil platform [a real person]
- got his/her arm chopped off and transplanted to his/her twin (who has now 3) [google it]
- made up a new moral system in which the ultimate goal of all human endeavours should be to increase the total intelligence and knowledge in the universe. Doesn't care if it's human, artificial or alien intelligence. Makes life decisions accordingly - got a PhD in theoretical physics, then turned to neurobiology. Wants to artificially modify human sense of morality so that everyone shares the same goal. [a person I know]
- found a proof that Einstein was wrong, and now spends every waking hour harassing scientists hopelessly trying to get this message across [a lot of real people, actually]
This is not to say that women can't be as passionate or as irrational. There's plenty of them dedicated to various charities - which is admirable but not crazy - and there's the whole phenomenon of fashion - which is retarded but understandable. After all it's just women seeking approval of other women and gay men. The thing that is male-specific is the devotion to something both impractical and completely unprofitable. It's the sweet combination of hardheadedness and crazy for the sake of crazy.
We've established that it's not their subpar cognitive abilities but rather their down-to-earth attitude that is responsible for the underrepresentation of women in science. Furthermore, it is entirely possible that all the cases of male intellectual superiority that I pointed out in the FAQ, are like that. I.e. they can be traced back not to differences in intellectual potential but differences in motivation and priorities that influence how does one act upon that potential. That may very well be, but I don't see how this is any less offensive to women than telling them that they're downright stupid. After all, it is exactly this Darwin-defying element of selfless impracticality that sets us apart from animals. All the greatest works of art, literature and science*** humanity is so proud of, we owe to stubborn men pursuing their chimerical dreams in the time they could have spent making money, socializing or watching Grey's Anatomy. Is it any consolation for you women, that you're making us sandwiches while we're solving equations not because you wouldn't understand equations but because you have no aspirations beyond sandwiches?
*And don't tell me it's the social pressure that prevents females from acting like this. Because nutty basement crusaders are all about conforming to social norms.
**with a beer in his hand and a bacon-cigar in his mouth. Riding a shark.
***as well as all the religions, ideologies and political systems
