Prof: Social Justice Warriors Destroying Engineering

[IanB]

1) You've obviously not studied medicine, biology and chemistry. They rely on a deep level of understanding, not just memory.

Actually, I'm not so sure about medicine. I think modern doctors are mainly trained to be technicians. Based on my experience of recent encounters with doctors they have a checklist of "if this, then this" to work through, and little ability to depart from the script based on root cause analysis. This is unfortunate because they will often fail to look at the individual circumstances of a particular patient and understand how a particular presentation requires different actions than the textbook says for the "general case".

[floobydust]

That Dean of Purdue, she seems misguided.

University is the highest as far as education goes, and if STEM enrollment numbers are low there, well it's too late to fix at the university level, it's the end of the chain.

STEM interest is the product of parenting, grade-school, society, stereotypes, media etc.
It is something developed in children. I hope Adafruit's educational efforts succeed in getting more children into STEM, electronics. A much better approach, bottom up.

Socio-economic class is also a decider in not pursuing higher education.
I was poor as a kid and collected electronics out of dumpsters. University is expensive, I'm amazed I got a degree but I worked and paid my way.

The Dean, is she lowering tuition for the sake of "inclusion" ?

[alank2]

I disagree with the BBC's decision to pay Chris Evans more than his peers. He doesn't contribute more to ratings than the other stars, not that should be important to a public service broadcaster.

I don't know enough about the metrics used or the organization.  Isn't the BBC state funded?  Some organizations are run on a capitalist model internally and some are run differently.  I'm not sure we can assign the reasons without being privy to the way it runs internally or even the person who makes that decision or negotiates it.  It is a different set of negotiating rules when we are talking about an actor or actress who is part of a bigger show.  You can't just replace them as easily as you would a technical worker, thought replacing someone because of failed negotiation always has its costs unless they were not worth having in the first place.

wait - I was thinking that he worked for the BBC.  Now I think I'm getting what you are getting at.  If you mean "cap", well, movie stars are in a category all their own.  They negotiate and win or lose parts.   They are paid what it takes to get them.  Supply and demand like anything else.

[Zero999]

account, the gap persists. Look at the BBC's top paid list, as an example. They're mostly men, who get paid for doing exactly the same as their female co-stars.

Their female co-stars aren't being men ... if the audience prefers men their market rates will be higher.

No idea if that is true for presenters, but it is almost certainly true for movie stars (well, except porn )

The audiences didn't know how much they're paid, until recently. Personally that list correlates quite will with my least favourite TV personalities.

I disagree with the BBC's decision to pay Chris Evans more than his peers. He doesn't contribute more to ratings than the other stars, not that should be important to a public service broadcaster.

I don't know enough about the metrics used or the organization.  Isn't the BBC state funded?  Some organizations are run on a capitalist model internally and some are run differently.  I'm not sure we can assign the reasons without being privy to the way it runs internally or even the person who makes that decision or negotiates it.  It is a different set of negotiating rules when we are talking about an actor or actress who is part of a bigger show.  You can't just replace them as easily as you would a technical worker, thought replacing someone because of failed negotiation always has its costs unless they were not worth having in the first place.

wait - I was thinking that he worked for the BBC.  Now I think I'm getting what you are getting at.  If you mean "cap", well, movie stars are in a category all their own.  They negotiate and win or lose parts.   They are paid what it takes to get them.  Supply and demand like anything else.

The BBC is funded by an annual fee, charged to anyone with a TV set or who watches online. It is the UK's main non-commercial public service broadcaster. It does not show advertising, other than trailers for its own shows.

I would not agree with a pay cap. After all, the BBC has to compete with commercial broadcasters for talent.

I admit this might not have been the best example to pick but my point is, sexism still exists today. It might not like it was 50 years ago but it's still there and it's still likely a major contributory factor to the pay gap.

[A Hellene]

<NON Politically Correct Message>

That Dean of Purdue, she seems misguided.
[...]

I think not!
I think that she is an agent; a tool that promotes her masters's agenda. And this is the proof:

[...]
The alarming example at Purdue is:

"The recently appointed dean of Purdue’s school, Dr. Donna Riley, has an ambitious agenda.

In her words (italics mine): “I seek to revise engineering curricula to be relevant to a fuller range of student experiences and career destinations, integrating concerns related to public policy, professional ethics, and social responsibility; de-centering Western civilization; and uncovering contributions of women and other underrepresented groups…. We examine how technology influences and is influenced by globalization, capitalism, and colonialism…. Gender is a key…[theme]…[throughout] the course…. We…[examine]… racist and colonialist projects in science….”

Emphasis is mine.

Dave has nailed it!
Classic Marxist (and Company; see: Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist/etc.) propaganda of the globalist 'progressive' leftist point of view:

Why, really, does she demonise 'capitalism' only? What about 'socialism' or, better put, 'communism'? Are the latter ones beyond criticism?

Taking it a step further, what exactly does the Marxism (et al) dogma* preaching?
1. All the people are the same and equal (despite that there are not even two amoebas 'same' or 'equal' in ANY sense), and
2. - This was a nice presentation, dear Haim Mardochai Kissel.** Tell us, please, what is the role of Central Banks in that theoretical regime of yours that you presented to us? His answer was: - Central Banks? There is no such a thing, even over here...; even if two 75k Sterling Pounds checks, one for Marx and one for Nietzsche, signed by the Rothschilds are were displayed at the British Museum until recently...

Political Left & Right ideologies: When, how and by whom?
Well, this is a piece of information that is not so popular as other ones are. The very instant the Political Left ideology was created, the same exactly moment the Political Right one was also created by the very same people: In 1807 Napoleon Bonaparte reconvened the ancient Council of Great Sanhedrin (the ancient Palestinian council that convicted Jesus and turned him over to the Roman conquers for execution) and gave them a permanent seat in the French Imperial Parliament Assembly (they were mustered at the left side of the emperor --thus their characteristic name-- while the conservatives cringed at the right side of him!) in exchange for more loans from the Rothschilds he could not afford, in order to keep the French colonies of the New World. Keep in mind that the Great Sanhedrin were/are the policy makers; they were not the fanatical mob that [according to officially distorted History] started the French [so-called] Revolution that led all the following European (of the same kind) revolutions...

So, the Left/Right bipolar disorientation, as well as the Communist/Capitalist, the Socialist/Fascist, Stalinist/Hitlerist, Black/White, etc. ones (with the very recent additions of the Male/Female, Straight/LGBT, Specified-/Unspecified-gender children, and what other invention will they come up with...), are yet another form of the winning recipe called 'Divide and Conquer': As long as they are fighting each other they will never notice what we are doing to them...


-George

( * ) This 'divide and conquer'-based dogma has cost the world over 200 million people according to Proffessor R. J. Rummel who coined the term 'Democide' meaning the killing of people by their own governments),
( ** ) This was Marx's real name before he changed it to Carl Marx; why would he do such a thing? Was he ashamed of something of his that needed to be changed, or was he losing customers because of his Mosaic-sounding name? Not to mention that he was the son of a very well-off lawyer of the Party as well as the nephew of a filthy rich Rabbi --yet he officially claimed that he new everything about poverty, while he divided the society in the less- and the more-privileged citizens and encouraged the former ones to be murdering the latter ones...

[buck converter]

I want there to be an equal number of female and male engineers as much as the next guy, but these are my observations as a high school student.
I have not been to college yet, but many people hear forget what high school is like. I will descibe my high school, one that  ironically ranks very high in the US.
Honor and accelerated classes have an equal ratio of male to female students , but the robotics club has 30 male students and only one female student has walked into robotics the entire year . I find this very concerning and would try to fix this, but if the school one day funded a program encouraging female students to be engineers, I would be EXTREMELY upset . Why? because my school has not thrown a dime at the robotics club or any other engineering program  My club is going to spend more time trying to survive before encouraging female students to join.

[cdev]

Scientists, and people who think scientifically, should realize the war is being fought against science. Because science is seen as difficult to control, with money.

Falling for calculated wedge tactics SCIENTIFICALLY calculated to divide otherwise good people is a good way to lose that battle.

[EEVblog]

I'm going to be awful misogynist , male chauvinist and incorrect politically.
1.The medecine, biology , chemist, nursering ,etc all have some on common . The mayor part of the matter have to MEMORIZE. On resume ,the girls and women  tend to memorize(like parrot) when they are learning.

1) You've obviously not studied medicine, biology and chemistry. They rely on a deep level of understanding, not just memory.

As Jordon Peterson said, girls (on average) tend to be less interested in things. Engineering is primarily about building things.
This is one of the primary reasons (if not the primary reason) why the more pure sciences have a much higher female ratio.

[A Hellene]

As Jordon Peterson said, girls (on average) tend to be less interested in things. Engineering is primarily about building things.
This is one of the primary reasons (if not the primary reason) why the more pure sciences have a much higher female ratio.

Our ancient (I despise this term, since it makes me feel more distant from my own ancestors) forefathers used to say that, women ? ('tiktoun' transliterated) meaning that women are giving birth to life (to humans) while men ? ('genoun' transliterated) meaning that men are giving birth to ideas.

-George

[Zero999]

I'm going to be awful misogynist , male chauvinist and incorrect politically.
1.The medecine, biology , chemist, nursering ,etc all have some on common . The mayor part of the matter have to MEMORIZE. On resume ,the girls and women  tend to memorize(like parrot) when they are learning.

1) You've obviously not studied medicine, biology and chemistry. They rely on a deep level of understanding, not just memory.

As Jordon Peterson said, girls (on average) tend to be less interested in things. Engineering is primarily about building things.
This is one of the primary reasons (if not the primary reason) why the more pure sciences have a much higher female ratio.

I agree but wasn't actually disputing that. What I was disputing was the implication that medicine, biology and chemistry rely, less on understanding than engineering. They're STEM subjects.

[EEVblog]

I'm going to be awful misogynist , male chauvinist and incorrect politically.
1.The medecine, biology , chemist, nursering ,etc all have some on common . The mayor part of the matter have to MEMORIZE. On resume ,the girls and women  tend to memorize(like parrot) when they are learning.

1) You've obviously not studied medicine, biology and chemistry. They rely on a deep level of understanding, not just memory.

As Jordon Peterson said, girls (on average) tend to be less interested in things. Engineering is primarily about building things.
This is one of the primary reasons (if not the primary reason) why the more pure sciences have a much higher female ratio.

I agree but wasn't actually disputing that. What I was disputing was the implication that medicine, biology and chemistry rely, less on understanding than engineering. They're STEM subjects.

Yes indeed, no argument there.

BuckConverters story above about the robotics club would be another classic things example. Although I would have expected a better percentage then what he saw. IME with First Robotics the female percentage seemed quite high.

[Ampera]

I think the bottom line here is that there is no reason women should be discouraged from joining STEM fields, but perfect diversity is not a goal we should be forcing ourselves to reach. There will always be a divide between the genders. All we must do is make sure that it's not an unfair one.

[A Hellene]

Yes. While we welcome girls to join us, we shouldn't force girls to do EE. We should also not lower the standard for females, because that on its own is discrimination.

Emphasis is mine.

Fair enough!

But, then, the 'No Child Left Behind Act (of 2001)' dogma would crash and we would lose generously paying customers (along with the accompanying voters)... What gives?


-George

[cdev]

You shouldn't all waste your time arguing about affirmative action, and indeed, preferences of all kinds for national groups of any kind, because they have been functionally barred from use in anything involving trade in services under international trade agreements.

They are deemed to be "protectionism" because they are alleged to be trade barriers, a crafty ruse to keep domestic services markets, such as in government services, including engineering, for example, public works, as well as academia, public education, free of the long promised privatization and globalization with international competition. Its anticipated that some of the biggest protests will come from organizations decrying the loss of diversity due to globalization. But, priorities have shifted.

Wage rules and limits on visas for workers have also been framed as invidious discrimination.

 In the recent G20 meeting in Huangzhou,  all the G20 members declared that all protectionist measured adopted after the 2008 crash would be eliminated by 2018.

[A Hellene]

That's quite right.

I guess that the problem is, WHY should some trade agreements be above ANY country's constitution?
I also guess that obviousness needs not to be answered...

By the way, hello cdev! This is an asmdev!


-George

[cdev]

Good question, I think in services they just saw the market in services as huge and until 1995 it was largely immune to government using it as a bargaining chip. Imagine that. But they saw it- being as it is something like 80% of the world economy, as fertile ground for trading of various services to meet geopolitical goals. Also, its a way of locking the world into an increasingly restrictive system which is in many peoples eyes failed to justify its continued use, which many feel is already past its due by date.

By trading services they turn the current system with all its problems, into an entitlement owned by foreign corporations, as a vested right that cannot be voted away without compensating them for expected lost profits.  Basically they do this by giving corporations rights to sell things without government interference, especially the most necessary things which many feel should not be commercialized, even though they are the most profitable things.

Also, its used as labor arbitrage, as international competition - when the foreign workers are in a state of disempowerment, lowers all wages.

[amyk]

This topic brings to mind another quote I remember, something like this: "the laws of physics do not care about your race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, feelings, or political views; and if you try to fight them, you will lose."

[buck converter]

I'm going to be awful misogynist , male chauvinist and incorrect politically.
1.The medecine, biology , chemist, nursering ,etc all have some on common . The mayor part of the matter have to MEMORIZE. On resume ,the girls and women  tend to memorize(like parrot) when they are learning.

1) You've obviously not studied medicine, biology and chemistry. They rely on a deep level of understanding, not just memory.

As Jordon Peterson said, girls (on average) tend to be less interested in things. Engineering is primarily about building things.
This is one of the primary reasons (if not the primary reason) why the more pure sciences have a much higher female ratio.

I agree but wasn't actually disputing that. What I was disputing was the implication that medicine, biology and chemistry rely, less on understanding than engineering. They're STEM subjects.

Yes indeed, no argument there.

BuckConverters story above about the robotics club would be another classic things example. Although I would have expected a better percentage then what he saw. IME with First Robotics the female percentage seemed quite high.

In my experience FIRST robotics in general has great sex ratios. When I competed in FLL, my team of 6 had  1:3 ratio. At the tourtaments there are girl scout teams, no boy scout teams, so tourtaments are around 1:1, thanks to girl scouts
Most high schools in my area have FTC teams, and they are around 1:3 to 2:3. My club Is 1:30 because we lack the clout to even call ourselves a legitimate thing. We came in 24 out of 26th place!!! Having one girl in a team of 10 did not look good in front of the judges! With just $2000 a year we could be successful at tourtaments and focus on attracting more women
(To those who have not coached First - a part of FTC is showing the judges how your team works etc)

[marshallh]

Here's some anecdotal evidence to provide additional confusion:

My sister did well in high school and got a full ride scholarship to do a Chemical Engineering degree at the state school. After 1 year she quit the program, much to the dismay of the Women in Engineering directors.
Not because she couldn't handle it, she is quite sharp and good at math (finished Calculus BC before even leaving high school), but she simply didn't care for the engineering mindset as a whole. With a future of all day working in a bleak office slaving away over numbers, while she wanted to work with people.

Forgoing the scholarship money, she graduated with a general degree and went off to become a housewife and run social programs. She was tested with 136 IQ when younger.

[aandrew]

I believe it is well documented that female students in high school are treated differently (on average) when it comes to STEM subjects. They do not receive the same encouragement as male students, and career counselors do not propose an engineering vocation as readily as they do for male students. This means that disproportionately fewer women seek a career in engineering compared to the number who are able and qualified to do so.

I don't buy this, not for one damned minute.

You can't take two steps in any high school without coming across some technology programme specifically and only for girls. You can't sign your kids up for camps without wading through tons of female-only camps designed to encourage girls to participate in STEM related topics. There are dozens of websites dedicated to making STEM palatable for the girls. Investors can't throw enough money at STEM, so long as it focuses only on the fairer sex.

I don't mind trying to bring more women into tech, I truly don't. I have two daughters, neither of which have any interest in STEM (one started college today for paramedics and the other wants to be a surgeon). I also have four boys, two of which have some inclination toward my line of work.

What really upsets me is how the boys are being left far, far behind in this race to make sure the girls are looked after. Instead of encouraging everyone to look at technology, the schools and camps fawn over the girls and in one particular case, there were no STEM type clubs for the boys. The camps fill up for the boys, but the "for girls" camps can't accept applications for boys to help correct this overflow, and the boys aren't keen on it either, since instead of being about STEM, it's about "for girls".

We have seen this play out in the general operation of elementary classrooms for decades now. It seems that people can't aim for equality; the pendulum has to be at the extremes at all times.

My boys are safe: I can teach them STEM.  I'm not worried about my own kids. I'm worried about the 8 year old who's got some interest but is left to his own to struggle through it because all of the help is heavily gender-biased. What's so hard about a curriculum focused on cool tech that is able to accommodate both sexes? Surely this isn't a hard problem to solve, it just requires some thought rather than knee-jerk overreaction.

[cdev]

Alank2, you're wrong. Your value judgment that some jobs "should" be paid more because its specialized is not capitalism. Capitalism is based solely on the market and supply and demand. You could be doing one of the most difficult jobs in the world but in the final analysis your pay will break down to how many other people (or machines) can do that job too - and if they will, for less. Thats capitalism, buy low, sell high. What you describe below is "living wag ism" and its anathema to capitalism which is based on the market price for services. 

Also, the real equal pay issue isn't between the sexes, its between the countries. The argument goes that certain restrictions placed on companies on one side of international borders act as non tariff barriers to trade. Not that international borders impede commerce.


Neoliberalism seeks to create a world without walls for corporations. Why should somebody in one country have to artificially make 20 times more than an equally talented person somewhere else? This disparity is likely to be greatly reduced in the coming years by services liberalization. Its not, as they represent, a creation of equal playing fields globally for corporations. Its actually a form of affirmative action for them, with the intent of helping the poorest countries corporations more than the richest countries corporations.

Enter the push to cross license - globally by the Working Party on Domestic Regulation. Its fairly far along, but you wont read about it in the newspapers.

The trend under globalization is for people who do highly technical tasks to run into something called Taylorism (redux- many have thought it was gone but its being pushed more now than ever) which tries to turn workers, especially the most skilled workers like engineers, into standardized, interchangeable parts so that nobody depends on anybody's "irreplaceable" skills. These changes are being forced on countries.

Quote from: alank2 on Today at 11:33:51

Shouldn't a harder more specialized job like a technical one be paid more than a nurturing role that might be challenging, but more people can do it effectively? 



There is that capitalism again.

[IanB]

Here's some anecdotal evidence to provide additional confusion:

My sister did well in high school and got a full ride scholarship to do a Chemical Engineering degree at the state school. After 1 year she quit the program, much to the dismay of the Women in Engineering directors.
Not because she couldn't handle it, she is quite sharp and good at math (finished Calculus BC before even leaving high school), but she simply didn't care for the engineering mindset as a whole. With a future of all day working in a bleak office slaving away over numbers, while she wanted to work with people.

Forgoing the scholarship money, she graduated with a general degree and went off to become a housewife and run social programs. She was tested with 136 IQ when younger.

Confusion indeed. I graduated with a chemical engineering degree and have spent my career working as a chemical engineer. Now granted there are lots of numbers and calculations involved, but you would have to be very unlucky to end up "in a bleak office slaving away over numbers" (and if you did you would change jobs). Not only is engineering heavily about teamwork and communication skills, but I have had many opportunities for international travel and customer engagement (customers and projects can be anywhere in the world), furthermore chemical engineering gives many opportunities to put on a hard hat, leave the office and go outside into the plant.

Overall I have been very happy with my choice of vocation.

[alank2]

Alank2, you're wrong. Your value judgement that some jobs "should" be paid more because its specialized is not capitalism.

I'm not saying it should be paid more simply because it is specialized, I'm saying that:

Specialized --> not as many people available and/or capable to do it --> supply and demand --> capitalism.

[cdev]

There are very large numbers of engineers in countries like India and China. The argument goes (and there is some truth to it) that people in some countries demand more money than people in other countries, and wont do jobs that are offered them for perfectly good wages. meanwhile, lots of companies would like to do that job for a fraction of what it costs to be done now, but are prevented from doing so by protectionist quotas and various other rules.

Thats now a trade barrier or market access barrier, and its being framed as the root of all evil, almost.. in Washington, Geneva, Brussels, London, Canberra, etc.

Those barriers are not long for this world. They are under attack in a multiplicity of ways and from a multiplicity of different efforts.

Perhaps its good that more people don't know this, I have heard a few times from people.

I don't subscribe to that argument. We need to know because these deals end democracy, in all but name only, We also need to know because the shift will destroy the sciences and other professions in developed countries. It will destroy professionalism in a great many fields. It will leave people with nothing. They wont even be able to work, because their "rights" will price them out of a market dominated by a new form of modern day slavery. Its goal is to cheapen everything. And not in a good way.  Its an attempt to enslave the planet in debt during the coming years by stealing everything away from people and giving it, gratis, to corporations by stealth to sell back to them. Things that humanity already owns. The EARTH.

A "second enclosure".  This is all in preparation for the biggest job losses the planet has ever seen. Changes that will leave most people unemployed globally. People ask, what will be done then? Its clear that many people will die because they wont be able to survive.

These secretive deals are in a very real sense a preemptive strike against the entire body of humanity that is not in on it. An attempt to future-proof the future for the very wealthy. Which is impossible.

The people who are pushing it pretend to mean well but they don't. They are greedy, profoundly misguided people.

Engineers need to stop falling for their old trick. Time is running out.

People should be paid equally for equal work but that means that workers in developing countries should get more, not that people in developed countries should get less. Even if that upsets their agenda. Keep in mind that this phase is basically the second phase of colonialism. Except this time its turning on its own people too. Nobody wins under this scheme.

There is a big spin campaign whose goal is distracting all of us so we won't see this attack on working people everywhere.

I'm not kidding.  They are very well prepared and they have done extensive research on wedge issues and extensive simulation.

All of this divisive spin. Its there to hide the fact that we ALL have common values and none of us would agree with their agenda.

So think before you fall for it.

Its a trap.
 

[EEVblog]

Most high schools in my area have FTC teams, and they are around 1:3 to 2:3. My club Is 1:30 because we lack the clout to even call ourselves a legitimate thing. We came in 24 out of 26th place!!! Having one girl in a team of 10 did not look good in front of the judges! With just $2000 a year we could be successful at tourtaments and focus on attracting more women

Well there's the trick.
Why should an all male robotics team have to focus on attracting more women?
Why can't a robotics team just focus on doing cool robotics, and those who are interested will join, those who aren't interested won't.

Where does it stop?
Should a robotics team of all asian kids focus on attracting more non-asian kids lest those people feel like they don't belong?
Should a robotics team of all skinny nerds focus on attracting huge overweight people lest those people feel like they don't belong?
Should a robotics team of all black people focus on attracting white people lest those people feel like they don't belong?
Should a robotics team of all algorithmic based math nerds focus on attracting creative mechanical types lest those people feel like they don't belong?
etc

People with similar interests will tend to naturally gravitate together, and by all means put up flags and try and attract people, but it shouldn't matter who those people end up being. The team will be what it will be.