March 29, 2011

PC-Whipped

Matthew Yglesias explains that a reason why there aren't many women in engineering is because:
Women Engineers Are Jerk-Averse
Anna North notes new research on why women leave the science and engineering fields, which often comes down to women not enjoying being mistreated by jerks ...

That explains why so many women have instead gone into law, politics, Hollywood, Wall Street, fashion, and real estate sales. They're Jerk-Free Zones. Just look at David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross (real estate) or Speed the Plow (Hollywood): not an insensitive jerk in sight!

Now I finally understand why a talented engineer like James Cameron, who has a reputation for being a jerk on the set, can't get women to audition for his movies and has never been able to find a wife. That also explains why American Apparel CEO Dov Charney, who appears to be slightly jerkish, can't get women to model his merchandise and why Dov sits at home each night without a date.

Similarly, now we know why the mathematics department at top universities are so male-dominated: mathematicians are total jerks, obviously. Look at that Andrew Wiles, who proved Fermat's Last Theorem. What a jerk!

It's all really quite simple when you stop and think about it.

114 comments:

  1. Steve, I like the "troll" aspect of your personality that's revealed in your comments on Yglesias' blog. It's really fun to read.

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  2. Further evidenced by their severe aversion to celebrity athletes, rock and rap stars, etc.

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  3. It's sometimes a bit difficult to distinguish between those individuals who are intentionally dishonest from those who are just too stupid or ignorant to notice the difference between reality and a hole in the ground.

    And, of course, there are probably quite a few who fall into both of those categories...

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  4. Those darned jerks. If only we could just vote for cities and roads and stuff...
    Gilbert Pinfold.

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  5. All my working life I've been hearing women say that they prefer to work in male-dominated environments and that they hate working in female-dominated environments. The stated reason is usually bitchiness, cattiness, whatever you want to call it. Straight men aren't catty to fellow employees.

    I've heard women say this to other women, I've heard them say this to men. It's a pretty common sentiment in offices. I've talked to others who've heard this same exact thing from many women.

    If Mr. Yglesias's writing had any relevance to life on planet Earth, any relationship with anything real and true, if honesty was a trait anyone ever felt like ascribing to him, then he would ask the following question instead:

    "If working in the office environment often comes down to being mistreated by raging bitches, why aren't men abandoning that environment in greater numbers?"

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  6. Women can't read maps because they can't manipulate shapes in their heads.

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  7. Wall Street is full of kindly gentlemen. Such as Gordon Gekko.

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  8. Who is this Don X. Williams? You guys should hang out.
    BTW, you mentioned Bringing Up Baby, but you meant His Girl Friday.

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  9. Yglesias can be kind of a doosh.

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  10. I like the expression "PC-Whipped" I shall use it myself:)

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  11. Now we know why there are few blacks in nuclear physics. All those Jewish geeks are 'racists'.

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  12. Yeah, and there are so many women in porn because they are treated so well.

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  13. I think what Anna means is engineering has too many Asian geeks(than 'jerks'), and them yeller fellers just don't have a way with womenfolks. But if she said it that way, she might have gotten the Alexandra Wallace treatment. So, instead of 'Asians in engineering', she came up with 'Jerks in engineering'.

    The real problem is not that yeller fellers act like jerks to women but don't know how to act in presence of women at all.
    But then, given that the kind of women attracted to science and tech tend to look like that MIT professor monster woman--pictured in a previous post--, I'll bet many guys in engineering aren't too happy either. Your average science geekess looks like Sarah Jessica Parker or Sandra Oh with a big butt.

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  14. Yglesias and North finally jumped the shark.

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  15. I wonder though... conservatives bend over backwards to please and appease American Jews, yet how come so few Jews are conservative? Meanwhile, many blacks say nasty stuff about Jews, but Jews side with them.

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  16. Does Yglesias ever, on any topic, sound intelligent? He always seems way out of his intellectual depth.

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  17. Claudia Zhao3/29/11, 5:34 PM

    I have to apologize for all the snarky things I wrote in response to you. The truth is, 99% of what you say is true, it's just an uncomfortable and disturbing truth. It's a truth that says that there is no God, that there is often no rhyme or reason to anything. For too long I have struggled against you, but no more. No more.

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  18. Claudia Zhao3/29/11, 5:35 PM

    You're a truth-teller and I will no longer resent you for it. It's very tiring.

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  19. Oh, not to generalize from myself or my friends, but I just don't think women are naturally geeky? obsessive? enough about the physical world, or mechanical things, to be good engineers.

    But in fairness, 40 years ago every other guy in college was an engineering major, and I hear many of them were pretty mediocre too, drifting into management instead.

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  20. I don't date supermodels because they're really high maintenance.


    To be fair, I think there are women who have the technical skills to do science/engineering and really do leave because they dislike it. Quantitatively gifted women may be less social than other women, but they are generally more social than quantitatively inclined men.


    Here's one of my favorite examples: http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Body-Problem-Contemporary-American-Fiction/dp/0140172459

    This woman was a PhD philosopher at Princeton and worked with the most famous logician of our age. What did she get out of that? Why, she decided to write a novel about the kind of person a genius is. I don't think writing a novel about dry, technical, analytic philosophy would occur to a man getting his PhD in philosophy at a top department.

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  21. So, Yglesias is basically excusing women by pointing out that they're sissies.

    Tell me, how long can you keep someone down? If women are brimming with engineering talent, and we're losing half our brainpower to male (jerk) engineer boorishness, isn't it pretty simple to set these gals up with some girly engineering schools or something?

    Definitely seems worth it if all the PC ass-umptions are correct.

    Unless you're big into H1Bs, then, not so much. But wait, I forgot, immigration is the all-solution. It's the special sauce of success in an up economy, a down economy, with high unemployment, low unemployment - it goes with everything! It's the Texas Pete of policy.

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  22. There is a difference between being mistreated by a jerk in the hard sciences, where they can prove you wrong beyond the shadow of a doubt, and in the soft sciences, where differences can be dismissed as difference of opinion.

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  23. OT: Here is a 20 minute documentary from an East Indian woman about how lighter skinned people within an ethnic group are treated better...

    http://uncultured.tumblr.com/post/3997171327/in-bangladesh-i-was-constantly-surprised-at-how

    Her "colonialism expert" did point out that light skin was seen as a "good" in India long before colonialism ever occurred.

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  24. "Anna North notes new research on why women leave the science and engineering fields, which often comes down to women not enjoying being mistreated by jerks."

    -As opposed to going into social work, nursing, teaching? All female dominated fields where the worker is frequently treated like crap by the clients. Arguably alot more so than in science or engineering.

    This is just more flat earth nonsense from the left to try to explain minority poor performance on others.

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  25. From the article: "Dysfunctional social norms that drive talent out of key fields are a real burden on the country, as well as on the individual women impacted."

    This reads like an apt description of Detroit.

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  26. "Women can't read maps because they can't manipulate shapes in their heads."

    But Sarah Palin could see Russia from Alaska.

    And this girl is all for more maps. (I admire the guy holding the mike for keeping a straight face.)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww

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  27. BTW- for more left wingnut fun, take a look at Krugman's recent post. He actually claims its the other side of the aisle who are the thought police!

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  28. I'd like to believe that he doesn't read his comments, but these "JuiceBox Mafia" guys (Weigel, Yglesias, Serwer, etc.) love to read their own press.

    It's good to see it's not just me that enjoys pointing out the absolute fraudulent lunacy of hackneyed analysis. That was an epic, LOL takedown.

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  29. "Women can't read maps because they can't manipulate shapes in their heads."


    "I never saw a woman who could fold a map."

    -spoken by Hayduke in The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey

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  30. "Yglesias and North finally jumped the shark."

    No, did that a long, long time ago.

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  31. "Women can't read maps because they can't manipulate shapes in their heads."

    Reading maps is easy and does not require any special ability to manipulate shapes in your head. The reason most women don't do it is because there is usually some guy around willing to do it for her, or willing to drive her around.

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  32. Dong Wang Koon Tang3/29/11, 7:22 PM

    Steve, I don't remember you ever tackling this topic:

    To what extent does the gender of one's child influence one's views about gender politics.

    Have you noticed that if one has sons, one tends to be anti-feminist?
    (ie, you, and Christina Hoff Soomners)

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  33. Cue Whiskey to say how women engineers can't work around jerks on account of all the jerk-induced gina tingling making their brains go mushy; hence they perform better at work around betas...
    Gilbert Pinfold.

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  34. Does Yglesias ever, on any topic, sound intelligent? He always seems way out of his intellectual depth.

    I think that's about right, but he can be relied upon to spout the answer everyone in his circle wants to hear. He'd be much better if he actually done something between going to school and telling us what we should think.

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  35. "They're all weak, all women. They're stupid compared to men. They shouldn't play chess, you know. They're like beginners. They lose every single game against a man. There isn't a woman player in the world I can't give knight-odds to and still beat."
    -Bobby Fischer

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  36. Steve I think you made half the posters on there wet themselves.

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  37. http://abcnews.go.com/US/middle-schooler-raped-teens-park-restroom/story?id=13248297

    Why do so many females hang around shopping malls full of REAL 'jerks' in the above story.

    Gosh, another 11 yr old.

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  38. It's Andrew Wiles, not Andrew Wile.

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  39. But Sarah Palin could see Russia from Alaska.

    She must have good eyes if she can see Russia from her governor's mansion in Juneau in the Panhandle.

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  40. The funny thing is Jim Cameron is only a jerk to men. He adores women, especially accomplished, opinionated ones. A very Rosalind Russell-like woman I know worked with Cameron on several projects, and when I asked about his bad reputation, she waved her hand and called him "a pussycat."

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  41. "Jerk" is such a vague term, as everyone else already pointed out. But there could be some truth in that the blunt, outspoken, honest type of jerks tend to congregate in engineering - while the smooth, smarmy ones otherwise known as "cads" and "alpha males" prefer other fields such as the arts, humanities, biological sciences.

    And at least some women prefer to be around one type of jerk than another.

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  42. Maybe if we all act like jerks, it will end immigration(and all the illegals will go back home).

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  43. The real take away lesson from all of this is that most of the commenters at Yglesias's site are complete idiots, Steve and Don X. Williams excepted.

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  44. "Reading maps is easy and does not require any special ability to manipulate shapes in your head. The reason most women don't do it is because there is usually some guy around willing to do it for her, or willing to drive her around."

    Oh, for God's sake, you men. The reason we don't read a map with hubby or boyfriend behind the wheel is because no matter what we tell you, you insist on saying, "It's just down here a little bit--I know where I am, dammit."

    When we suggest pulling over at the filling station you just passed (the 3rd one) or at the business establishment "right up there to the right," you pretend you didn't hear.

    You fancy yourself hunters who can't possibly be lost...so, after several lost hours on countless Saturdays and Sundays we simply refuse, pick the SOB up, pretend to look at it....and MAKE YOU SUFFER.

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  45. It looks like poor Matt Y. has less understanding of the world than Steve Hsu's five-year-old twins.

    Of course, since their dad's a theoretical physicist, I'm sure their IQ is a whole lot higher. Maybe even higher without adjusting for age...

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  46. Anonymous you are a liar! What Palin actually said:

    "GIBSON: What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?

    PALIN: They're our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.

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  47. There isn't a woman player in the world I can't give knight-odds to and still beat.

    Judit Polgar comes to mind, she would certainly thrash even the Bobby Fischer of 1973 if given knight odds...

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  48. Yglesias is right that women are more "agreeable" and "conscientious" in the five-factor personality types, or more "feeling" than "thinking" in Myers-Briggs. And scientists are generally very low on "agreeability". You're basically pointing out compensating differentials.

    I hadn't heard that women are disproportionately drawn to working on Wall Street. Trying to land a Master of the Universe, sure, living the Liar's Poker dream, no. Real estate is more obviously a "people job".

    Even the Dravidians were invaders into India. There isn't a real proxy for "Ancient South Indian" (Andaman Islanders?) today because the arrival of "Ancient North Indians" happened so long ago and left a genetic imprint on even the most isolated groups within India.

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  49. Lady Engineer3/29/11, 9:41 PM

    God, what bullshit. I graduated in 1986 and never worked with any jerks that I can remember. The reason many smart women don't go into engineering is because if they are smart enough to become engineers they will go into something more lucrative like medicine or law. Additionally, engineering school is really freaking DULL. Being an engineer in the workplace can be very interesting but the classes are soooo dry. Plug and chug, plug and chug. Repeat for four years.

    I quit to be home with my kids. To the best of my knowledge, that is the reason all of my female contemporaries quit. Many female engineers marry other engineers or men with similarly well-paying careers so it isn't truly necessary they keep working. Additionally, quite a few engineering jobs involve travel or needing to work different shifts during testing cycles so that becomes harder to arrange once children arrive. Engineering is the kind of career where it is not easy to structure a part time schedule that is kid- friendly or come back from a long hiatus so once you're out you tend to stay out.

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  50. It's sometimes a bit difficult to distinguish between those individuals who are intentionally dishonest from those who are just too stupid or ignorant to notice the difference between reality and a hole in the ground.

    Usually though it is not difficult at all. Like in this particular example. Matt is completely shameless in his intellectual dishonesty. He knows it himself. Everyone knows it.

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  51. Judit Polgar comes to mind, she would certainly thrash even the Bobby Fischer of 1973 if given knight odds...

    In a match perhaps, in a single game I would bet on Fischer.

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  52. Isn't Matt Y. a perfect example of what's wrong with the USA. Here's a man, a trust fund baby, who makes it clear his political viewpoint is based on (1) Is it good for the Jews? Then, is it (2) good for the world then, (3) is it good for Matt Y then, (4) is it good for the USA, except for white people?

    And do white Americans reject him? Of course not. He's some sort of Blogging God, while Steve, who's (ten times more talented) is mostly forgotten.

    That's what happens when you let Money and Southern boys - like Huckabee who worships a Jew - run your country.

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  53. Andrew Wiles: How adorable and endearing he is.

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  54. (Michael Farris)

    Two points:

    1. Women are mostly not attracted to people-free zones. That is they're not drawn to fields that require spending a lot of unglamorous time by yourself solving a problem for people who have no idea what you've gone through and who wouldn't appreciate it if they did.

    2. Most women don't especially mind aggressive but sociable jerks who thrive on face to face confrontation. They very much mind socially inept men and will label them 'jerks' when they're not agrressive at all, just awkward and shy.

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  55. engineering is 180 degrees against female gender personality. the typical woman has less than zero interest in how machines work or how things are built. from what i've seen over the last 20 years, whether a woman is high school dropout or a math prodigy has almost no bearing on whether she shows interest in engineering. high IQ women have the same average level of total disinterest in the professional engineering field as career waitresses.

    this is, i think, a rock solid constant of HBD, probably equal in predictive value as IQ itself. you can take a lower mean IQ group of men and they will out build, out contruct, and our innovate a higher IQ group of women. like throwing ability, it's really rather remarkable to see how built-in the engineering behavior is in men, and how NOT common it is in women. you could take, for instance, chinese women, with their mean IQ of 100 something, and they'd lose a large scale engineering challenge against men from almost any nation.

    women are interested in medicine and the biology and chemistry fields of science, and do plenty of important and valuable work there at the highest level. except in surgery. men greatly outnumber women as surgeons even though women probably outnumber men as medical students by a pretty good margin now. and women at the highest level of surgery are very rare. few new and difficult surgical procedures are pioneered by women.

    computer science goes in the same category as engineering as far as women are concerned. they are addicted to cell phones and social media web sites, yet their interest in diving into the technical guts of these things runs along the lines of no, hell no, and oh hell no.

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  56. 'I like the "troll" aspect of your personality'

    I like the fact that an honest gadfly can make it easy for inattentive audiences to catch failures in logic.

    But if we call that "trolling" in this culture, then trolling is a art.

    *Cue 1980s power chords*

    Troll the good troll every moment
    every minute, every day...

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  57. Mr Sailer,

    Regarding (part of) a comment you left over at Yglesias' post:

    Engineers aren't jerks, they're nerds.

    This is rather categorical, isn't it? Not to mention not true at all, at least in my own experience working as (I majored in Math) an engineer, as well as with them. I'm tempted to ask you the same question you asked Yglesias:

    Do you know any engineers personally?

    I would characterize the average engineer as intelligent (they're significantly above average in this regard), conscientious, decent, and politically pretty much in step with their (college educated) peers -- i.e. fairly liberal when they are young, less so as they get older.

    You do meet a genuine nerd (also jerks) now and then -- it cannot be denied. But this characterization of engineers as nerds is largely a Hollywood-esque stereotype. And a stupid one at that.

    Even worse than Yglesias' post (which was, to be fair, partly tongue in cheek, it seems to me), are the literally dozens of truly idiotic -- and apparently totally sincere -- comments following it.

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  58. Yes, I'm sure the US would be a much better place if it didn't have so many engineers, err jerks. In fact, I think we should find the country with the fewest engineers per capita, and then try to emulate it.

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  59. Speaking of truly stupid comments over at Iglesias' post, check out this one:

    The difference is that engineering has pretty mediocre pay, so an engineer can always leave and find a comparably-paying alternative.

    Woo-hoo! Great news! Who knew?!

    Attention engineers, or maybe better, former engineers, or even more better white, male former engineers over, say, 40, and with a paunch: Now that you know you can "always find a comparably-paying alternative", get to it!

    Some info about how much engineers make. Which is also info about why their jobs are being outsourced ('when you stop and think about it'). But hey, no problem -- see above.

    Uh oh, wait -- didn't other insightful commenters there say that engineers have no social skills etc etc etc?

    Now I'm confused. I wish I was a smart liberal arts grad who could figure it all out.

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  60. "Her "colonialism expert" did point out that light skin was seen as a "good" in India long before colonialism ever occurred." Probably dead wrong. It probably was brought about by Aryan colonialism. It might even have been amplified by Mughal colonialism.

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  61. "The funny thing is Jim Cameron is only a jerk to men. He adores women, especially accomplished, opinionated ones."

    Cameron sounds similar to Robert Heinlein, who was a big influence on Cameron. In fact, Cameron seems like the fulfillment of Heinlein's ideal image of himself, the master of science fiction storytelling who'd prefer to be a science fiction hero.

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  62. "But this characterization of engineers as nerds is largely a Hollywood-esque stereotype."

    No, it's not. Let me guess: you've found yourself out of your depth in a technical field recently? Been humiliated by an actual nerd about a technical point?

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  63. Let me guess:...

    Actually, via working in the field as a consultant for several dozen companies over more than a couple of decades, I 'found myself' in contact/working closely with literally hundreds of engineers.

    Really good guesses tho'.

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  64. Anonymous said...

    The funny thing is Jim Cameron is only a jerk to men

    On the Titanic set, he would call Kate Winslet 'Kate Weighs-A-Lot.'

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  65. Judit Polgar comes to mind, she would certainly thrash even the Bobby Fischer of 1973 if given knight odds...

    In a match perhaps, in a single game I would bet on Fischer.


    I hear Bobby's been losing all of his timed matches for the last few years. Untimed matches are always draws though.

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  66. Lady Engineer:

    What the hell is the point of going through four years of college if you're just going to become a housewife?

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  67. none of the above3/30/11, 5:27 AM

    Yeah, the explanations for why there are few women in engineering/math/cs/physics always sound kinda plausible, till you reflect on what medical and law school graduating classes look like these days, or what college graduating classes look like these days.

    And the really entertaining bit is that people who worry about too few women in math fields basically can't see gender imbalances the other way. More women than men graduate college--is that a problem to be solved, a neutral fact to be observed, or a victory to be celebrated?

    Most people enter this debate knowing what side they're supposed to take, and they have no intention of taking the other side, regardless of facts and logic.

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  68. But if we call that "trolling" in this culture, then trolling is a art.

    Oh, you have no idea...

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  69. What the hell is the point of going through four years of college if you're just going to become a housewife?

    You raise an interesting point, if perhaps more so regarding graduate professional schools, especially ones at public universities.

    Of course both men and women leave the profession they were trained for. But it seems a likely finding would be that this happens more often with women than with men. I'm thinking here about people who've received expensive professional educations -- law, pharmacy, medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, etc -- which is heavily subsidized by the taxpayer. And then stop working in that profession after a few years.

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  70. Sylvia - "if you're just going to become a housewife"

    I think a quote from the Islamist theoretician of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb, is in order here. I'm not implying that all women need to get back to the kitchen, but pointing out that raising the next generation is also a vital task. No 'just' about it:

    "... if, on her own or under social demand, she prefers to become a hostess or a stewardess in a hotel or ship or air company, thus using her ability for material productivity rather than the training of human beings, because material production is considered to be more important, more valuable and more honourable than the development of human character, then such a civilisation is ‘backward’ from the human point of view ..."

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  71. "Sylvia said...
    Lady Engineer:

    What the hell is the point of going through four years of college if you're just going to become a housewife?"

    I dunno about engineering specifically, but smart women OUGHT to have higher education in maths, the Classics, biology, chem, physics, a foreign language, so she can provider her high-IQ children with an excellent home-schooled k-12 education.

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  72. . . .one in four women who had left the field reported doing so to spend more time with family . . .while almost half departed due to “working conditions, too much travel, lack of advancement or low salary”

    So one quarter left for family reasons and one half because the work was too hard and low status (men are, of course, expected to put up with long hours, low pay. And low status).

    I understand that respondents could select more than one option, but it does not look like there is a "jerk crisis"; more likely, the women stormed the walls of a male domain and found not paradise ("I am sure they all play golf and have three hour lunch breaks, or something"), but a grind. This attitude is perfectly reflected in the following quote:

    because of [women's] perceptions of engineering as being inflexible or the engineering workplace culture as being non-supportive of women

    The phrase "inflexible" meaning that you needed to put in the work and produce results.

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  73. office drudge3/30/11, 7:40 AM

    "All my working life I've been hearing women say that they prefer to work in male-dominated environments and that they hate working in female-dominated environments. The stated reason is usually bitchiness, cattiness, whatever you want to call it. Straight men aren't catty to fellow employees."

    I dunno, Anonymous. Most men are basically ok (like most women really), but I work in D.C., and there's plenty of smarmy backbiting guy people in pol offices. The types who got drunk when they were 18, and yelled "bitch" at any random female walking alone at night. As Sarah Silverstein says, you yell racial/sexual slurs only at people you don't fear.
    But you're right. Women do say that in enough numbers to be noticed for it. One v. attractive friend of mine didn't want to work for women lawyers because she thought they got jealous of her; but a few years later her favorite boss was a lady lawyer ; in fact, I think there might have been two female lawyers she was working for with reasonable contentment. Maybe after it became more common, she just figured, what you can't beat, live with. It's complicated. But you know what? A more loyal and generous friend of either gender could not be imagined.

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  74. Perhaps it is the women engineers who are jerks and unable to work with their basically softspoken and occasionally(but less than you might think) nerdy male counterparts?

    Or that the work was too hard and they aren't about to admit that to anyone, anonymously or not.

    in the spriti of disclosure, I'm a woman engineer.

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  75. Andrew Wiles is NOT a Jerk. The term 'Jerk' implies obnoxious and pushy. Wiles is at worst a Nerd - a term that means socially inept.

    Albertosaurus

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  76. Dysfunctional social norms that drive talent out of key fields are a real burden on the country

    Somebody has to ask it: Why is the "key field" of punditry populated by such nitwits?

    I'm not singling out Yglesias and the rest of the lefty gasbags here. The ones on the right likewise strike me as mediocre at best and pathetic at worst. And yet, Steve here can't get a paying gig anywhere in the country?

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  77. If engineers were jerk in male-sense of word, women would have been trying their level best to get in. The sex ratio would make it a heaven for those who could pass the bar.

    We could always have all-female engineering schools, but that wouldn't sound really gender equal.
    Gender-sensitivity classes is the solution!

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  78. "Better than mortal man deserves.." *closes eyes, listens to music in headphones while idiot boyfriend is plowing her* <- J. Cameron on the sexes

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  79. "What the hell is the point of going through four years of college if you're just going to become a housewife?"

    Really. I'm sure that's what Michelle Obama thought. After her AA-faciliated college career, she ascended (can't really say "worked her way") up the ladder into a job with a six figure income. It was a job so worthy of such a high salary that it was completely eliminated when she was vaulted into the pages of the history books by becoming the first black First Lady. She'd have been a fool to go to college only to become a housewife when all those perks and goodies were just waiting to fall into her ample lap.

    Contrast that with the career of a college-educated housewife, Stephenie Meyer. She toyed with the idea of going to law school but then decided to stay at home and write. Her novels have only sold 100+ copies and been translated into a mere 37 languages. What a waste of a college education! And on top of that, she had to do it all herself!

    I'm sure the rest of us would share your POV if we were members of not just one but two protected and privileged demographics.

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  80. "Cameron sounds similar to Robert Heinlein, who was a big influence on Cameron. In fact, Cameron seems like the fulfillment of Heinlein's ideal image of himself, the master of science fiction storytelling who'd prefer to be a science fiction hero."

    Wow, I just lost all respect for Heinlein if that's the case.

    My impression was that Heinlein was a tough guy who could pare down big ideas into essentials whereas Cameron is a wimp who inflates simple ideas into Good Year blimps.

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  81. Women don't like jerks? Then why did so many of them vote for Clinton?

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  82. "What the hell is the point of going through four years of college if you're just going to become a housewife?"

    Moreover, if she went to a state-financed institution, what's the taxpayers' ROI?

    No offense intended, Lady Engineer. If my wife was in the same position, I'd encourage her to do the same as you. But at a societal level, you have to wonder if it makes sense.

    It reminds me of my wife's former doctor. Started work around age 30, went half time at age 45, quit to become a yoga instructor at age 55. Meanwhile, her husband started as an ER doctor and progressed from there.

    In return for a huge public investment, she's done the equivalent of 20 years of service. By age 65, he'll have done a minimum of 35 years, possibly more like 50 years given the hours he probably works.

    So, again, what's the comparative ROI from the public's point of view?

    Cennbeorc

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  83. Reading maps is easy and does not require any special ability to manipulate shapes in your head. The reason most women don't do it is because there is usually some guy around willing to do it for her, or willing to drive her around.

    The military has found that men do considerably better than women at tasks involving normal maps but, if you replace them with a different type of map (focused on landmarks and such), women do better relatively and absolutely.

    There do seem to be some brain differences at work

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  84. "Somebody has to ask it: Why is the "key field" of punditry populated by such nitwits?"

    Ethnic nepotism. Only members of a certain special group and their sycophants are allowed to work in the field.

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  85. Somebody has to ask it: Why is the "key field" of punditry populated by such nitwits?

    Because their purpose is to make us stupid, too.

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  86. Re: Mr. Eh's first comment. That is about the right description of engineers with the exception that I think most of them (at least in my day, maybe not now) are smart enough to be fairly conservative even when they are in school.

    I think Steve may not know the difference between real engineers and computer "engineers" (meaning programmers, developers and whatever other names they should use for what they do) when he refers to them as "nerds". It is a lot more applicable to computer people, in my opinion, but still only a minority of them.

    Hollywood has no idea of the difference between engineers and computer programmers, and Steve seems to be a bit obsessed with Hollywood, so, there you go.

    To Lady Engineer: I think if all you thought your engr. classes were about was plugging-and-chugging, then you did not get the concepts. There must be visualization of the material, even stuff that doesn't lend itself to it, such as heat transfer or electromagnetics. If a student can't do that, he won't make a good engineer (and by "he" I mean "the student")

    If one can visualize well, the engineering courses are great. If not, there is always journalism and black studies - they are pretty easygoing majors, well, unless you are a conservative or white person, respectively.

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  87. "Attention engineers, or maybe better, former engineers, or even more better white, male former engineers over, say, 40, and with a paunch: Now that you know you can "always find a comparably-paying alternative", get to it!"

    A friend of mine that moved to Idaho who resembles this archetype sure wishes this were the case. He's been diligently looking for an engineering job within an a one-hour radius of Coeur d'alene for six months with no luck so far.

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  88. "To what extent does the gender of one's child influence one's views about gender politics."

    Having only children of the opposite sex tends to open the mind.

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  89. Jerk = "not sexually attracted to them" for women. Women don't find Chris Brown a jerk (Good Morning America invited him back after he trashed a dressing room). Women still lust after Bill Clinton and Charlie Sheen (who had no fallout from putting a knife to his wife's throat on Christmas Day).

    Women only care about one thing: SEXY.

    Heck, its almost as if I wrote a post on it!

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  90. Yglesias is pandering to women. His religion/ethnicity is irrelevant. That sort of pandering is demanded in the media, which has a dominant (likely around 80% or so) female audience/readership. Doubt me? CHECK OUT THE ADS. Men don't buy feminine hygiene products.

    Women find non-sexy men appalling. By contrast, any sexy man (socially dominant, charismatic, arrogant A-hole with women mixed with charm) is irresistable. Along with high status.

    Doctors have much higher status than engineers, hence women flocking to medicine (over half the Med School students according to the AMA).

    Heinlein is the anti-Cameron. Cameron hates technology in his films and extols a flat, tribal hierarchy with explicit rejection of technology. Heinlein goes into loving detail of technology and its social implications in "Moon" and "Starship Troopers."

    Cameron like most non-natural Alphas, whose position depends entirely on status not physicality and charisma and inborn cockiness has a longing for the noble savage. Something alien to Heinlein.

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  91. Claudia Zhao,

    Sailer isn't saying that there is no God. He is saying that God is not a 21st Century American idealist. He is saying that God laughs.

    -Osvaldo M.

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  92. Why is the "key field" of punditry populated by such nitwits?


    You have to be pretty arrogant to think you have some special insight into the issues of the day, and you have to be pretty dumb not to realize that you don't.

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  93. Sylvia said...

    Lady Engineer:

    What the hell is the point of going through four years of college if you're just going to become a housewife?


    Predators go where the prey are. (I am indebted to someone else for this observation.)

    It is widely reported that there are high quality males/mates available at colleges.

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  94. "Or that the work was too hard and they aren't about to admit that to anyone, anonymously or not."

    I am a woman. I was a very strong student in high school. Physics was my favorite class. Aced my exams, yada yada. The thing is in high school I was competing against a bunch of average kids. When I was sitting in college physics classes, I officially became the dumbest smart person. I got it. I could pass, but the guys, and they were all guys, were freakin' curve wreckers. That was enough for me. FWIW I am now a home school mom and my 7th grade son just matched my 12th grade SAT math score. Whatever talent I have is better spent on my kids than being on the lowest rung of some engineering field. Probably true for a lot of women like me who were flattered and scholarshipped into going into a field that is really cool and interesting but not really the best use of their time and certainly not the most rewarding.

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  95. Lady Engineer3/30/11, 4:15 PM

    @ Sylvia (as to why get I got an engineering degree only to become a housewife) -

    #1 - You must not have kids because they have a way of changing your plans.

    #2 - I became a wife at 33 so I still needed a way to pay for food and housing until then.

    #3 - Others: 1)Engineering is highly paid and relatively prestigious (particularly if you are a woman). 2)I knew I didn't want to work in a field dominated by women. 3)I wanted to work with other smart people. 4)I used to be shy and still not much of a people person. 5)My father is an engineer.

    #4 - I intended to work part time after the children were born but the company said work full time or nothing. I had an hour+ commute each way so it left very little time for the children after work and I didn't feel like outsourcing the bulk of raising of my children to others.

    There was $0 public investment in my education. I went to a private university where my education was funded by my parents and myself. I worked for 18 years before quitting and paid lots of taxes so I've paid my share to "society", Comrades.

    @ Mel Torme - It was mostly plug and chug, not all. Electromagnetics and thermodynamic theorems are pretty dull stuff until they are applied to problems in the real world. You don't get to do that as an undergrad. Real world engineering = fun. Don't make the assumption because I thought my courses were on the dull side that I didn't do well. I was a member of engineering honor societies Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu, which put me ahead of 80% of my classmates.

    @ Leisel - I agree. By saying women engineers are quitting because their co-workers are jerks makes them sound like they can't hack it in any workplace, let alone engineering. I never joined SWE (Society of Women Engineers) because they seem to encourage similar whining. Most of the men I worked with/for treated me with respect. The ass hat coworkers and bosses were ass hats to everyone not just the women.

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  96. I hear Bobby's been losing all of his timed matches for the last few years. Untimed matches are always draws though.

    I guess so. Bobby would be horrible at any matches these days, timed or not. You see, he died on 17 January 2008.

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  97. I liked the comment about women removing themselves from the workforce. I live in Bergen County, which is a little less wealthy then Greenwich, and half the women I meet socially are "retired" lawyers. Thing is, they are about 40 yeas old.

    I think women were told the male model was supreme, that anything else was second class and when they went out and entered the workforce even at elite levels of law they discovered that they were working hard, enriching other people, having to subordinate their pesonal concerns, and in general that they really preferred being taken care of by a man who could command the resources for both of them and their kinder.

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  98. Steve Sailor said:
    Having only children of the opposite sex tends to open the mind

    No it closes the mind. If you are male, you are never going to believe what your daughters are attacted to and what they do in the privacy of their home.

    Someone who refuses to see, a closed mind.

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  99. >"If working in the office environment often comes down to being mistreated by raging bitches, why aren't men abandoning that environment in greater numbers?"<

    Because most of them have already left, or have been let go.

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  100. Svigor said

    >[I]mmigration is the all-solution. It's the special sauce of success in an up economy, a down economy, with high unemployment, low unemployment - it goes with everything! It's the Texas Pete of policy.<

    Quotable.

    Svigor, doubled-up on yr writin pills this morn, eh?

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  101. >The reason most women don't [read maps] is because there is usually some guy around willing to do it for her, or willing to drive her around.<

    In which case, who is smarter?

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  102. "Most of the men I worked with/for treated me with respect. The ass hat coworkers and bosses were ass hats to everyone not just the women."

    I am not an engineer but have worked in otherwise all-male environments. I had the same experience you did. Most men treated me with the respect I earned for pulling my weight and doing my fair share, just as I respected them for doing the same. The jerks were jerks to everyone, not just to me.

    I found it much easier than working in an all-female environment. The last time I worked among only women, I got so fed up that I walked off the job.

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  103. "Women still lust after Bill Clinton and Charlie Sheen (who had no fallout from putting a knife to his wife's throat on Christmas Day)."

    Okay, now my head is totally spinning.
    I thought you recently said us women had put Charlie in the beta column, (for acting crazy). So, which is it? Is he alpha and I, being a woman, find him irresistable? Or is he a yucky beta?

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  104. I hear Bobby's been losing all of his timed matches for the last few years. Untimed matches are always draws though.

    Apparently, an anonymous someone didn't get it, but that was pretty damn funny.

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  105. yeah, that damn Andrew Wiles...such an ignorant @#@#@ SOB. Always trying to be an alpha male. The guy will never amount to anything with his lackadaisical attitude towards life.

    PS Absolutely thrilling, triumphant, brilliant documentary on him by Simon Singh, as you already know, Steve.

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  106. "Really. I'm sure that's what Michelle Obama thought. After her AA-faciliated college career, she ascended (can't really say "worked her way") up the ladder into a job with a six figure income."

    A little...jealous are we?

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  107. "'Really. I'm sure that's what Michelle Obama thought. After her AA-faciliated college career, she ascended (can't really say "worked her way") up the ladder into a job with a six figure income.

    A little...jealous are we?"


    No. Not a little jealous, not a lot, not at all, not now, not ever.

    The reasons are quite simple, though I know that for you, they may be hard to believe. That, like all your other failures to understand, is your problem.

    Put bluntly, I'm bright and she's not; I'm white and she's not.

    Both personally and historically, I have intangibles she cannot possibly have, things I value highly. And I have the unshakeable confidence that comes with them.

    Even with her Ivy League education, Michelle Obama cannot compose a comment as insightful and well-written as the ones I routinely submit here.

    Even with her Ivy League education, Michelle Obama cannot claim the glories of Western Civilization as part of her heritage, as I can.

    Why would I be jealous of someone who has less than I do and who had to be given everything she does have? Even for you, that was a remarkably stupid comment.

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  108. "Put bluntly, I'm bright and she's not; I'm white and she's not."

    "I'm married to the president of the United States and she's married to a Midwestern chimney sweep!...Oh wait, that's not right..."

    "Even with her Ivy League education, Michelle Obama cannot compose a comment as insightful and well-written as the ones I routinely submit here."

    Wonderful, than maybe you should use that talent elsewhere and prove it to someone instead of grinding for Svigor and Albertosaurus' approval here, and separating your shoulder patting yourself on the back.

    "Even with her Ivy League education, Michelle Obama cannot claim the glories of Western Civilization as part of her heritage, as I can."

    Sure she can, she has 39 servants...and you have dish-pan hands.

    Reality.....................Fantasy

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  109. Kylie, Michelle my Belle has more loot. In Amurica, that's everything.

    Well, no, being on TV and having more loot is everything.

    That's what she has.

    Everything.

    And yet every word you said is true.

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  110. none of the above4/1/11, 5:30 AM

    Women aren't the only ones who decide on a different, less demanding career path when they have kids. I used to travel a lot and sometimes work crazy hours as a consultant. Now that I have kids, I have a job that requires much less travel and much less insane hours, and that provides more job security in exchange for less pay. This is not uncommon.

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  111. "The real problem is not that yeller fellers act like jerks to women but don't know how to act in presence of women at all."

    How about not even needing to know how to act around women when the task at hand is scientific reseach? This reminds me of that study that showed women do better in the hard sciences when they can prattle on about their inane emotional life in a an essay at the beginning of the term. People act like it's possible to integrate women into academic and business life without having to deal with the concomitant narcissicm and neuroses they bring into it, not to mention the latent sexual tension. Sometimes these persuits demand extreme concentration, who wants the chore of coddling and teasing some woman at the same time.

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  112. Straight men aren't catty to fellow employees.

    Sure they are. I've seen plenty of straight male employees spread gossip and passive-aggressively undermine coworkers. It's more common among female employees, there are plenty of male bitches in the workforce, too.

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  113. I've read some strange things on this blog. At first I thought it was due to racism, now I think it's due to near autistic nerdiness. The kids who never had a date in high school or were never willingly picked to play any sport but soccer are posting here.

    Kylie, Michelle Obama lives like a queen and you're posting on the Sailer blog. Your criticisms sound like the high school girl hissing in rage over the prom queen.

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