From the NYT:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology acknowledged 12 years ago that it had discriminated against female professors in “subtle but pervasive” ways, it became a national model for addressing gender inequity.Now, an evaluation of those efforts shows substantial progress — and unintended consequences. Among other concerns, many female professors say that M.I.T.’s aggressive push to hire more women has created the sense that they are given an unfair advantage.
Document: Report on Women at M.I.T.What's so "unintended" about that consequence? Or are they just complaining that others have noticed that consequence?
"Or are they just complaining that others have noticed that consequence?"
ReplyDeleteObviously, yes. Really it echoes your discussion of NCLB. Affirmative action proponents hold that all job applicants can be divided into two simple categories: "qualified," and "unqualified."
So when you point out that affirmative action is likely to lead to the hiring of less capable blacks, the response is that under affirmative action, all hirees must still be "qualified."
No, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but then again the popular thinking about race (and sex) in America doesn't make much sense.
So, they just want to signal to the world - "Don't go here if you want the best science education"?
ReplyDeleteInteresting strategy.
Any schools that don't fall for this garbage? I'm thinking about grad school.
Guy A: What's the dating scene like at MIT?
ReplyDeleteGuy B: Carbon 14 is the most common method I believe.
Not wishing to be gratuitously offensive, I must admit I had initial dobts as to the gender of the person whose photograph illustrates this piece.
ReplyDeleteWho is the dude in the picture?
ReplyDeleteYou're all wet:
ReplyDeleteCentral Michigan U has put together a good summary of myths regrading Affirmative Action. For example:
Myth: Affirmative action means settling for second best.
Truth: Affirmative action is not synonymous with mediocrity or second best. In the evaluation process, however, the most qualified candidate may not necessarily be the individual with the most impressive publication record or academic experience. The criteria for selection should include the ability of a candidate to contribute to the life and cultural diversity of a department and to enlarge its research and pedagogical interests.
Myth: Affirmative action is a form of reverse discrimination.
Truth: Affirmative action does not mean giving preference to any group. Affirmative action advances a multi-dimensional nature of excellence. It encourages us to recognize pluralism and diversity as a dimension of our value system. Accordingly, a search committee must create a diverse pool of candidates with a significant representation of women and minorities. A candidate's ability to provide cultural diversity to a department, to serve as a role model for students, and to offer a range of perspectives and scholarly interests should be major elements in the evaluation and selection process.
Myth: Affirmative action means establishing a quota system for women and minorities.
Truth: There is a fundamental difference between goals and quotas. The goal of affirmative action is the inclusion in the job force of individuals previously excluded or under-represented. Ideally, the percentage of women and minorities working in a department, college or university should be similar to the percentage of women and minorities qualified for such positions. Affirmative action does not mean showing partiality but rather reaching out to candidates and treating them with fairness and equity. Quotas, on the other hand, are court assigned to redress a pattern of discriminatory hiring.
They "created the sense" of there being an unfair advantage by actually having a situation of unfair advantage. Note the way they spin the language, implying it's all just a matter of perception rather than being true in actual fact. The accompanying picture was quite unnecessary as looking at it made me gag; please make shock-value photos optional by posting a link with a warning attached.
ReplyDeleteEven PhD's can't expect to have their cake and eat it too. Or maybe they actually can force the admin to enforce thought control penalties.
ReplyDeletewomen should really not be in tech or science fields, except perhaps in the nominal figures that actual ability and work would produce...their contributions are easily replaced by smarter, more driven men, so why do we care about a few sexually stunted harpies unhappy because they are not completely coddled through life in every way and through all their poor decision-making? what is the benefit? there really is none
ReplyDeleteHow could it be otherwise. Getting a job is a classic "zero sum game". For every winner there are one or more losers.
ReplyDeleteIf there are two equally qualified job candidates the employer will not create a second job. The employer has no incentive to do some kind of social justice. They just want the best employee. In this kind of choice regime any preference from an externality will likely be the deciding factor in who wins the job.
Women bear a disproportionate burden in reproduction. That's not a social construct. It's biology. Consequently men are able to sacrifice for the firm more. This means pari passu men are worth more and should be hired over equally qualified women.
Liberals who can grasp this reasoning are in danger of their head's exploding.
Albertosaurus
From the NYT article:
ReplyDelete"'It’s almost as though the baseline has changed, because things are so much better now,” said Hazel L. Sive.... “Because things are so much better now, we can see an entirely new set of issues.'”
Oh, yes, I remember the exact same problem cropping up in another context after the last presidential election.
"And stereotypes remain: women must navigate a narrow 'acceptable personality range,' as one female professor said, that is 'neither too aggressive nor too soft.'"
I'd never know it from the photo that accompanied the article. At first glance, I mistook this female professor for one of the epicene males one so often see doing some sort of "outreach" or "liaising".
"The original effort started in 1994, when Professor Hopkins was frustrated that the university had resisted giving her lab space for new research, and that a course she developed had been given to a male professor."
Ah, yes, good ole Nan of the hair-trigger gag reflex. The university probably figured in the cost of adding a vomitorium to the lab and decided it wasn't worth it. As for her course being given to someone else, you can judge for yourself from this interview (which also contains her famous "throw up" quotation) just how personable she is:
Nancy H. Hopkins and her Gag Reflex.
"'No one is getting tenure for diversity reasons, because the women themselves feel so strongly that the standards have to be maintained,' Professor Kastner said.
Faculty members said that the perception otherwise would change as more women were hired and the quality of their achievement became obvious."
Right. I know my perception changed once I read the writings of Michelle "Thank-you" Obama and Sonia "I'm a Wise Latina Woman So What I Write Isn't Garbled Gibberish--It's Vibrant Sentence Structure!" Sotomayor.
This is pure comedy gold.
Discrimination aganist Asians is the only one acceptable. Jews, Blacks, women are not acceptabl for discrimination in any excuse.
ReplyDeletemany female professors say that M.I.T.’s aggressive push to hire more women has created the sense that they are given an unfair advantage.
ReplyDeleteAlas, the inescapable logic of the tautology.
Among geeks, how can you tell the women apart from the men?
ReplyDeleteWell, affirmative action and open borders are not-so-subtle policies against white people.
ReplyDeleteI pity the academic apparatchik who actually had to pen this stinking pile of poo. He/she/it could have saved a lot ot time by going to the Simpson's:
ReplyDeleteEdna Krabappel: "Are you saying that men and women are identical?"
Skinner: "Oh, no, of course not! Women are unique in every way."
Lindsey Naegle: "Now he's saying men and women aren't equal!"
Skinner: "No, no, no! It's the differences of which there are none that makes the sameness exceptional.
And don't forget blacks and Hispanics. Since MIT doesn't teach its science classes in Ebonics nor serve burritos on a regular basis, it has subtly discouraged those people from attending.
ReplyDeleteAnd MIT doesn't have too many hillbillies either. No doubt its failure to have dance parties featuring country music has discouraged bumpkins from applying for admission.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, MIT has many Jews and Asians. Its policies must be geared to favor those groups. I'll bet MIT serves bagels at every lunch and offers free Tai Chi lessons.
Gender is at least partially a social construct, I mean who is to say that the lady featured can't be considered a "man?"
ReplyDeleteshe surely looks "manly" or as they say androgenius.
maybe we ought to expand the definition of manhood to include people like her, to put her into some kind of "gray" territory.
gender is not going to be dichotomy no more!
it will be a rainbow.... a continuum of sorts.
Anonymous said:
ReplyDeleteDiscrimination aganist Asians is the only one acceptable
Are you kidding me? That white female student was chased out of town after complaining about Asians in the UCLA library. The dean himself even made a response video and every news outlet covered it nonstop.
Kylie, I can barely make out what you're trying to say. More content, less put-downs.
How much pull do Lesbians really have, politically, to get this into action?
ReplyDeleteI'd say a lot, and its the power of women voters, in action. The Oprah effect, if you will. I see this all the time in culture. The constant feminization, and pushing out of "icky beta males" who are interested in things that repel women -- abstract science and the like, and more importantly just are not "sexy" is a fact of US political life.
Almost everything women, particularly Middle Class White women who are in the dating market FAR FAR LONGER than was the norm in any society, is to maximize (sensibly from their short-term perspective) the sexiness of men. Which means not the least pushing Beta White males out of every space.
ReplyDeleteDiscrimination aganist Asians is the only one acceptable
Are you kidding me? That white female student was chased out of town after complaining about Asians in the UCLA library. The dean himself even made a response video and every news outlet covered it nonstop.
Two critical differences. First,
Alexandra Wallace didn't discriminate against anyone in the sense that she has no power over others. She simply voiced an opinion based upon her purported observations.
The supposedly most offensive thing she said was little different from what Shaq said about Yao or what comedians like Rosie O'Donnell and Steinfeld frequently do.
Secondly, Wallace is an obscure private citizen with exactly zero to no influence.
In contract, the official line in elite universities is to use their near monopoly over the greatest conduit of social mobility to actively discriminate against Asians.
The same anti-Asian bias is at work in other high performance and high pay fields like medicine, upper management, etc.
a search committee must create a diverse pool of candidates with a significant representation of women and minorities. A candidate's ability to provide cultural diversity to a department, to serve as a role model for students, and to offer a range of perspectives and scholarly interests should be major elements in the evaluation and selection process.
ReplyDeleteTranslation: We're going to pretend that being black, Hispanic, or a woman makes a teacher better able to serve as a role model, provide cultural diversity, and offer a non-white-male perspective. And therefore we're going to put our thumbs heavily on the scales in favor of those non-white-males.
"Kylie, I can barely make out what you're trying to say. More content, less put-downs."
ReplyDeleteI do not have to give these self-contradictory, self-indulgent yo-yos the respect of taking seriously their frivolous concerns, though I don't underestimate the harm they can do (e.g., Title Nining the sciences). There. How's that for content?
As to the rest of your request, unfortunately, I'm simply not...broad-minded enough to refrain from put-downs in this kind of situation.
But thanks for trying to slog through my comment. I know I'm a minnow among big fish here so I tend to write my comments mainly to amuse myself. It always comes as a surprise to find anyone else has actually read them.
Discrimination aganist Asians is the only one acceptable.
ReplyDeleteI went ahead and did some of the math that Asians just won't do. Assuming an Asian mean IQ of 105 (lol!) compared to a white IQ of 100, and taking the standard deviation to be 15, here is the bottom line for America's population:
For every E. Asian in America with an IQ of 140+, there are 19 whites with IQs of 140+. I'm choosing 140 as the magic number because past that point your chances of getting admitted to "elite" universities hinge on factors other than intellect.
So according to the bell curve, Asians should compose roughly 5% of the undergraduate student body at elite universities like Harvard and MIT, if one is to go purely by the fraction of the intellectual elite of this country that they represent. Yet they make up 30-40%. Yep, somebody is getting discriminated against all right.
Discrimination aganist Asians is the only one acceptable.
ReplyDeleteAnd crips.
"So according to the bell curve, Asians should compose roughly 5% of the undergraduate student body at elite universities like Harvard and MIT, if one is to go purely by the fraction of the intellectual elite of this country that they represent. Yet they make up 30-40%. Yep, somebody is getting discriminated against all right."
ReplyDeleteThis is because Asians already in the academy put their own people first when admitting or hiring people. It is the path of ethnic nepotism.
Asians are harder working and have Tiger Moms, so IQ underpredicts their academic performance. For example, they have only slightly higher SAT scores in California, but take far more APs, so they are hugely overrepresented at the UCs. I don't know where people got the idea that intelligence determines your life outcome.
ReplyDeleteSome universities do discriminate against Asian applicants once their percentage goes too high. Wharton, Yale, Stanford, Duke, Harvard, and some of the other elite institutions are said to have a quota on Asians. The discrimination, however, is not provoked neccessarily by dislike of them. It comes more from the perception that Asians are boring grinds and not vibrant enough. Not that anyone would say it in public.
Felix said...
ReplyDeleteYour math skill is really impressive. Such a perfect understanding of bell-curve! Hope you are not white. If you are, what a disgrace.
The accompanying photo of a GDR athlete quietly contemplating the meaning of life before the shot-putting event is priceless.
ReplyDeleteSo when you point out that affirmative action is likely to lead to the hiring of less capable blacks, the response is that under affirmative action, all hirees must still be "qualified."
ReplyDeleteOnly in a tautological sense, of course.
she surely looks "manly" or as they say androgenius.
ReplyDeleteClassic.
Asians are harder working and have Tiger Moms, so IQ underpredicts their academic performance.
ReplyDeleteAnd, for the same reason, their academic performance underpredicts their life performance.
Felix, your numbers are off in a few ways.
ReplyDeleteFirst, your initial assumption about the numbers of college-age east asians are too low.
Second, you have to account for better asian work ethic/future time orientation, and desire to attend an elite university.
Finally, an IQ cutoff of 140 is far far too low for Harvard or MIT.
Are they discriminating for women or men? Because I honestly cannot tell from the picture....
ReplyDelete--The same anti-Asian bias is at work in other high performance and high pay fields like medicine, upper management, etc.--
ReplyDeleteWhere is the evidence for large scale discrimination against Asians in upper management? Could personality not be a factor? Or are Asians simply better at everything? Does the last 500 years support such a position?
Actually, even though grad programs do discriminate in favor of minority applicants, there is still common sense when it comes to who makes it through running the gauntlet and gets out with a PhD, just like the case with undergrads and getting a Bachelor's degree. In both cases, NAMs have much higher dropout/failure rates than whites and Asians. Universities are stuck with reality at this point because they cannot allow incompetents to walk through en masse, as their graduates would underperform, ratings would drop, they get less $$, etc.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how some indicators of academic success among faculty will be affected downstream. For example, one common metric in judging whether to grant tenure or promotion to full professor is how often one's research is cited by others' research.
ReplyDeleteIs it unrealistic to think that, if the usual suspects are coming up short in that regard, there won't be pressure for aspiring professors to look for "multifaceted excellence" when choosing sources for one's work?
Something about AA occurred to me recently (though I may have read it here first). Many things that are put in place to relieve discrimination end up being accused of causing it. Examples: the SAT, the 1964 Civil Rights Act (as written), the curtailment of employment testing by the Griggs decision that helped push everyone into college. Just a thought.
Felix,
ReplyDeleteYou need to include Asians from outside of America in your calculations, especially in high-end, engineering graduate programs.
Thank you for the link to Myths regarding Affirmative Action, Alexandra Wallace etc. Myths 2 and 3 are contradictory. Affirmative action is not a form of discrimination because: "Ideally, the percentage of women and minorities working in a department, college or university should be similar to the percentage of women and minorities qualified for such positions." Of course, if the criteria for being "qualified" now includes being of a particular race, then the meaning of "qualified" has changed beyond recognition, at least in Michigan. It is amazing that academics can expect us to swallow this nonsense.
ReplyDeleteThe lady in the picture is probably gay. While female nerds pay almost as little attention to looks as their male counterparts, they usually manage to look vaguely heterosexual, and a couple can even do the librarian look well.
ReplyDeleteWhoa! Thanks for the pic Steve. I'm going to have go stare at the sun for an hour now to get that image out of my head. (shudder).
ReplyDeleteWho is the dude in the picture?
ReplyDeleteNice try, but you can do better (*ahem*), grasshopper.
Like this:
Man, that dude is ugly.
See the difference? It ain't Carlin, but it works.
Myth: Affirmative action means settling for second best.
ReplyDeleteTruth: Affirmative action is not synonymous with mediocrity or second best. In the evaluation process, however, the most qualified candidate may not necessarily be the individual with the most impressive publication record or academic experience. The criteria for selection should include the ability of a candidate to contribute to the life and cultural diversity of a department and to enlarge its research and pedagogical interests.
Translation: we changed what "good" is, dumbass! Try and pay attention!
Myth: Affirmative action is a form of reverse discrimination.
Truth: Affirmative action does not mean giving preference to any group. Affirmative action advances a multi-dimensional nature of excellence. It encourages us to recognize pluralism and diversity as a dimension of our value system. Accordingly, a search committee must create a diverse pool of candidates with a significant representation of women and minorities. A candidate's ability to provide cultural diversity to a department, to serve as a role model for students, and to offer a range of perspectives and scholarly interests should be major elements in the evaluation and selection process.
Translation: we changed what "discrimination" is, dumbass! This is getting old!
Myth: Affirmative action means establishing a quota system for women and minorities.
Truth: There is a fundamental difference between goals and quotas. The goal of affirmative action is the inclusion in the job force of individuals previously excluded or under-represented. Ideally, the percentage of women and minorities working in a department, college or university should be similar to the percentage of women and minorities qualified for such positions. Affirmative action does not mean showing partiality but rather reaching out to candidates and treating them with fairness and equity. Quotas, on the other hand, are court assigned to redress a pattern of discriminatory hiring.
Translation: just try and prove it, dumbass!
Svigor, how racially conscious are people in your part of the country? I would think fairly so, as they seem to elect a lot of politically incorrect Republican (Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, Sessions, Barbour, Lott) and even Democrats (Robert Byrd). They almost elected David Duke governor, I remember.
ReplyDeleteThe South in general seems so conservative, but I'm disappointed by how few leaders are actively doing something on the immigration issue. If there's going to be leadership on this issue, it'll have to come from there.
[i]1067 wrote:
ReplyDeleteYou need to include Asians from outside of America in your calculations, especially in [b]high-end, engineering[/b] graduate programs.[i]
(emphasis mine)
I used to work in consulting. My boss was an Indian with a Ph.D. in IE from a school ranked in the mid-30's. He said to me once that he'd much rather have had an M.S. and the years of work experience he'd had to forego rather than the Ph.D.
This got me thinking and I talked to some American engineers. The consensus among them was that there was no reason to get a Ph.D. in an engineering discipline unless you wanted to be a prof - and if that was what you wanted, you'd better go to a top school and get in with a great researcher.
Once you realize this, you realize that Asians and Indians in Ph.D. programs are there not because they're outcompeting American rivals but because most American engineers have no need or use for a Ph.D. Asians and Indians do need doctorates, though, as a way of onshoring their credentials, fixing up their bad English, making US employer connections, etc.
If you're an Indian and your options are (1) making $10k/year working as an engineer in India and (2) making $27k/year as a doctoral candidate at a directional state school, you're nuts not to pick (2). Especially because that $27k could turn into $100k if you become an engineering manager or w/e after school.
-bb
Whenever I think of the sixties and the start of the civil rights era and see the current state of things such as in Alexandra Wallace with epiphany's "myths" and "truths" about AA it reminds me of the Orwell novel 'Animal Farm' I read in middle school. The animals revolt against the farmers and start down the road towards Communism with the stated goal of equality for all animals. As the pigs, the most intelligent animals, start to gain power it becomes less and less about equality for all, and more about changing the rules to give themselves more benefits and power.
ReplyDeleteWhat starts out as
"All animals are equal"
becomes
"All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others".
"Central Michigan U has put together a good summary of myths regrading Affirmative Action. For example:"
ReplyDeleteThe degree of level of entrenched cognitive dissonance and bureaucrat-speak based on nothing but post-modern liberal fairytale is mind-blowing. I cannot fathom how such ridiculousness could be penned by an intelligent adult of any race.
Svigor, how racially conscious are people in your part of the country? I would think fairly so, as they seem to elect a lot of politically incorrect Republican (Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, Sessions, Barbour, Lott) and even Democrats (Robert Byrd). They almost elected David Duke governor, I remember.
ReplyDeleteThe South in general seems so conservative, but I'm disappointed by how few leaders are actively doing something on the immigration issue. If there's going to be leadership on this issue, it'll have to come from there.
Don't take me for an expert on southern politics. That said, southerners are more conservative, yes, but they're also quite used and resigned to sharing living space with other races, moreso than yankees (NE is more segregated than the SE). And they tend to have a somewhat paternalistic attitude toward NAMs.
And we aren't nearly as overrun with Mexicans as Arizona.
As for the racial consciousness of southerners, in my experience they're much more racially aware than other Americans. Get a typical white southern male (hell, plenty of the females, too) away from "polite company" and he'll probably talk pretty frankly about race if you break the ice. Not necessarily intelligently, mind you, but frankly.
But to get back to that resignation and paternalism, the awareness does not translate into action.
If you want the scoop, go to Occidental Dissent. "Hunter Wallace" has been following the legislative rumbles vis-a-vis immigration very closely.
I have no opinion on the presence or absence of this or that discrimination.
ReplyDeleteCalculation of "Felix" are based on him
"Assuming an Asian mean IQ of 105 (lol!) compared to a white IQ of 100, and taking the standard deviation to be 15, ...".
To the best of my (quite limited) knowledge, standard deviaton for people of Chinese ethnicity is smaller than 15.
The latter number, 15, is supposedly the standard deviation for white non-hispanic part of US population.
It means that the distribution is narrower for Chinese. If true,this would strongly suppress both left wing (low IQ) and right wing (high IQ) of the Gaussian curve for them, be it for elevated or for non-elevated average (105 or 100).
Respectfully, F.r.
"It means that the distribution is narrower for Chinese. If true,this would strongly suppress both left wing (low IQ) and right wing (high IQ) of the Gaussian curve for them, be it for elevated or for non-elevated average (105 or 100)."
ReplyDeleteI've seen this claim made elsewhere.
Does anyone know the source?
Steve Hsu claims the Asian distribution is *similar or even somewhat wider* than Whites, based on his extrapolating his analysis of PISA results (a very select group of high achievers) to all of China.
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/06/asian-white-iq-variance-from-pisa.html
NOTE: A *wider* variance means they ought to have not just excess smarties, but excess imbeciles.
So setting aside Hsu's analysis looking for excess Asian smarties done for reasons of ethnocentric cheerleading, is there any convincing evidence for a wider variance, in the form of excess imbeciles in China?
Also, why has this question of Asian average IQ and standard deviations not been settled already? It seems like it should be a straightforward matter of randomly administering IQ tests to East Asians in East Asia. Why have the proper IQ tests of Chinese in China not been yet?
"An array of prizes and professional accolades among female professors has provided a powerful rebuttal to critics who suggested after the earlier report that women simply lacked the aptitude for science — most infamously, Lawrence H. Summers, whose remarks set off his downfall as the president of Harvard."
ReplyDeleteA complete lie. Summers never said women lacked aptitude for science. He surmised, in a speculative manner, that at the tail-end of very great achievement, males might have an advantage over women. It would be like saying, 'yes, there are fast white men, but fastest of the fastest tend to be West Africans'. Because West Africans are the fastest, it doesn't mean that whites have no aptitude for running fast or that many whites cannot run faster than some people of West African origin.
Also, we know that many Asians are good at medicine, computers, science, math, etc, BUT Jews have won many more prizes--Nobel and otherwise--than Asians. To take notice doesn't mean Asians lack aptitude; it means that at the tail end, Jews have an advantage.
Ny Times must know this. Summers spoke of it as a possibility. The people who were unscientific and shrill about the whole made-up scandal were the feminists and leftists.
Oh, by the way, how many of the women at MIT are white(or Jewish) and how many are black? Is MIT discriminating against black women?
"But with the emphasis on eliminating bias, women now say the assumption when they win important prizes or positions is that they did so because of their gender. Professors say that female undergraduates ask them how to answer male classmates who tell them they got into M.I.T. only because of affirmative action."
ReplyDeleteThis may be true for truly deserving women, but given that liberals have supported affirmative action--which admitted the likes of Michelle Obama into both Princeton and Harvard Law School--, what do you expect? It's the whole culture of affirmative action which has cast doubt on the achievements of certain groups. I mean did Sotomayor really deserve to graduate second in her class? Did Obama really have the brains to become editor of Harvard Law Review?
Liberals create the climate of bogus achievement being rewarded and then bitch and whine about suspicions among people.
"Yet now women say they are uneasy with the frequent invitations to appear on campus panels to discuss their work-life balance. In interviews for the study, they expressed frustration that parenthood remained a women’s issue, rather than a family one."
ReplyDeleteBut who made up all these panels? Liberals and feminists. They are the ones who are eager to 'spread the sisterhood' message. And I highly doubt if it's compulsory for female professors to speak at those panels. Liberals create the politics of sisterhood which takes time away from female professors, but then they complain about unfair challenges faced by women pressed for time.
"Administrators say some men use family leave to do outside work, instead of to be their children’s primary care giver — creating more professional inequity.
ReplyDeleteAnd stereotypes remain: women must navigate a narrow 'acceptable personality range,' as one female professor said, that is 'neither too aggressive nor too soft.' Said another woman: 'I am not patient and understanding. I’m busy and ambitious.'"
Yeah, but men are NOT ALLOWED to have children, which means they cannot take part in the joys of motherhood, a real bummer in this progressive age of metrosexual and homosexual men who wanna be effiminate. How unfair is that? While women can be mothers, men can only be fathers. They cannot breastfeed and bond with their kids like mothers can. How sad!! And though a woman can choose to be a single-mother, a man cannot choose to be a single-father since he can't have the baby. When will science fix this biological and 'racist-sexist' prejudice against males, oh boo hoo?
And how unfair it is that men must succeed at a career whereas a woman can choose either career or wife-motherhood? Society is okay with a career woman; society is also okay with a woman who quits her job to be a mother-at-home. But society is only okay with men with jobs. A man who stays at home with the kids is seen as a wuss. And successful women wanna marry even-more-successful men and don't even look at men without jobs--though successful men are open to marrying women without jobs. How unfair, oh boo hoo.
And speaking of having to "navigate a narrow 'acceptable personality range... that is neither too aggressive nor too soft'", WELCOME TO THE CLUB!!!!!!!!!! After all, as James Watson and Larry Summers found out, scientists and academics must navigate a narrow political/ideological range that is neither too politically incorrect(or else they get fired or shunned) or too correct(or else they end up sounding to total idiots like Gladwell).
Looking at the picture, I wonder if MIT favors lesbians over straight women and ugly women over good looking women. If a disproportionate number of genius women are lesbians, could it owe something to male qualities? Haha.
ReplyDeleteThat guy in the picture kinda looks like a white version of Obama, if he were 10 years older...
ReplyDelete"The accompanying photo of a GDR athlete quietly contemplating the meaning of life before the shot-putting event is priceless."
ReplyDeleteI believe the photo is of a "husband" wondering if he needs to text his "wife", Stephanie (birth name: Stephen), and remind her to take her hormones.
Elijah Wood has suddenly aged hasnt he?!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous:
ReplyDeleteThe effect of undermining the real accomplishments of women, blacks, hispanics, etc., is one of the worst consequences of AA. It's a kind of poison, leaving any accomplishment with a whiff of the question "would you have accomplished that without your gender/race?" in much the same way the son-in-law of the boss will always have his latest promotion seen as more a gift than something he earned.
There are some first-rate women scientists at MIT. They ought not to have their accomplishments watered down by the desire of the MIT administration to make themselves look progressive and concerned.
JSM:
ReplyDeleteI think you'd want to test that in Japan or maybe Singapore--China's development into a first-world country is still very uneven, and so you'll get higher variance in IQs from large environmental variance. Though if you're trying to capture the specific effects of stuff like the mandarin tests' effect on frequency of high-IQ genes, you might need to do your analysis in China.
I went ahead and did some of the math that Asians just won't do. Assuming an Asian mean IQ of 105 (lol!) compared to a white IQ of 100, and taking the standard deviation to be 15, here is the bottom line for America's population
ReplyDelete...
So according to the bell curve, Asians should compose roughly 5% of the undergraduate student body at elite universities like Harvard and MIT, if one is to go purely by the fraction of the intellectual elite of this country that they represent.
This reminds me of how La Griffe du Lion "proved" that the large Jewish and Asian percentages in the Ivy League are exactly what you would predict from IQ measurements... if you take the average Asian IQ to be around 110 and the average Jewish IQ to be around 121.
None of the Above:
ReplyDeleteI'm not trying to capture any of those things, and I couldn't care less if the Chinese imbeciles are imbeciles because of environment. I just want to know, are there an excess or shortage of them? THAT would answer to my satisfaction the question of the shape of the East Asian Bell Curve.
I'm surprised this simple question has never been answered.
In fact, I find it *suspicious* that this question has never been answered. IQ testing is a well-understood scientific process, after all.
If the good science had been done and the answer was, yes, indeedy, we've got humongous numbers of brainiacs, I'm sure we'd have been BLASTED with the triumphal news from the Chinese gov't and the likes of Hsu.
Since that hasn't happened, enquiring minds want to know: So, just what is it they are reluctant for us to find out?
Pee Wee Herman (aka Paul Reubens) has a great separated at birth mug shot here.
ReplyDeleteReuben's serial legal run-ins over odd sexual predilections like child pornography haven't seemed to have stopped his career. He was just on NPR's radio show "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me" last week.
Girrrl Power!
"Who is the dude in the picture?
ReplyDeleteNice try, but you can do better (*ahem*), grasshopper.
Like this:
Man, that dude is ugly.
See the difference? It ain't Carlin, but it works"
- Or, to quote Chappelle,"That b**ch wears underwear wit a d**khole."
JSM:
ReplyDeleteGood question. I don't know the psychometry literature enough to know. I strongly suspect the Chinese government would be supremely uninterested in letting test results come out that made them look bad, but I don't know that widespread population IQ tests would really feel threatening to them. Anyone know of papers or studies that have looked at this? (I think the rural/urban divide will be a big confounder, since malnutrition and growing up with no schools is associated with lower IQ scores, independent of genetics.)
One thing to keep in mind with both China and India is that, even a fairly unimpressive intelligence distribution can provide a fair number of first-rate thinkers, when you've got a population of a billion to draw from.
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/forum/2011/03/another_report_on_mits_female_.html
ReplyDeletehttp://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200305/backpage.cfm
"In the three years since I provocatively suggested applying
Title IX to departments in the chemical sciences, I have heard from women and men across all the STEM disciplines saying that they, too, have the same problems
we face in chemistry.
It may be nice to have some
company, but enough is enough.
With nearly ten centuries
of higher education, it is past time to diversify our university system beyond the operative one where the de facto hiring quota in science is 80-90% white men.
Isn't a millennium of affirmative action for white men sufficient?"