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[AUDIO FIXED] The Truth Cannot be Sexist - Steven Pinker on the biology of sex differences

Gravitahn · 271.8K views · 2017-01-02 · 39:06

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Overview

An excerpt of the 2005 Harvard debate in which Steven Pinker gives his prepared case on biological sex differences and the under-representation of women in science. It covers cross-cultural patterns in preferences and abilities and the overlap between male and female distributions.

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Pointed to repeatedly in gender-in-tech threads, especially around the Google memo, as a science-based treatment of sex differences.

Recommended by 6 HN people across 4 months · HN mentions 2017–2018

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ac2018-02-14 · 2018-02 · Strong recommendation

Whenever this comes up, I like to mention this video [0]. The video speaks for itself, but generally it advances the position that human behavior and preferences are a distribution, and the distributions for women are in some cases different from the distributions for men (in the sense that summary statistics like mean and variance differ), but there is always significant overlap. The position that men and women are indistinguishable behaviorally and in their preferences is not taken seriously. A notable point advanced in the video is that there is a difference in the summary statistics (not the entire distributions) which indicate men prioritize status and family different from women (with men more likely to prioritize status at the expense of family , the opposite of women). Another notable difference (again in the summary statistics, not the entire distribution) is that men prefer careers that are thing -centered over people -centered. I wish statistics were better understood by the general population. [0] [VIDEO]

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onli · 2017-08 · Strong recommendation

> The "scientific consensus" is that women are inherently genetically hard-coded to not be as good at or interested in computer programming? I did not say that, did I? The scientific consensus is that there are biological differences that have an influence on job fit and job choices. But we are talking statistics here, there are always people from the other sex that are a good fit for a specific work. Did you watch the video I linked? [VIDEO] . Really, watch it. Also, the Google memo explicitly did not say that women should not be coders. If you think that, this is the warped media representation of the memo you are talking about, not its actual content.

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onli · 2017-08 · Strong recommendation

If you want to see to which points science does have something to say, you might be interested in watching [VIDEO] . This presentation by Steven Pinker got posted yesterday in one of the other comment threads, and I found it to be an excellent pre-existing discussion of the merits of the memo.

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Video by Gravitahn, played through YouTube.

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