Re: Harvard's president apologizes

From: George (george_at_wtfiswrongwithyou.com)
Date: 01/24/05 

Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 21:10:38 GMT

"Jayne Kulikauskas" <momkulio@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:35kmi2F4m2rb9U1@individual.net...
>
> "Jo Schaper" <joschapern4ospam@2socketdot.no5net> wrote in message
> news:10v8piaoie31ef6@corp.supernews.com...
>> Jayne Kulikauskas wrote:
>>
>> > "Jo Schaper" <joschapern4ospam@2socketdot.no5net> wrote in message
>> > news:10v8e8t5b3o61c7@corp.supernews.com...
>
> []
>> >>What difference does it make if "some" men tend to excel at one thing,
>> >>and "some" women tend to excel at another?
>> >
>> >
>> > Because it was a discussion of general trends rather than of individual
>> > rights.
>>
>> I guess that's the point. I simply don't care about so-called general
>> trends, because people aren't general trends--they are individuals.
>
> The context of Summers remarks was a discussion of why women are
> underrepresented in certain fields. General trends in abilities are
> relevant to this question whether or not you care about them.
>
>> When
>> you make a statement that because there is a general trend for all men
>> to be X and all women to be Y, you are implying that by being a member
>> of class X or class Y, that the individual will also be X or Y. Which is
>> a logical falsehood.
>
> This is not a grammatical sentence so I'm not sure what you are saying. You
> seem to be saying that a statement that there is a general trend for men to
> be X implies that all individual men are X. No such implication exists.
>
>> Now, if all men must be X, then all men must be
>> X. Period. No exceptions. And that is patently not true in the case
>> under consideration.
>
> Saying there is a general trend in no way implies that there are no
> exceptions to the trend.
> There is a general trend for men to be taller than women. If we take a
> random sample of people we are likely to find that more men than women in
> the sample will be over 6 feet tall. Nevertheless, some individual women
> are taller than some individual men. Some individual women are over 6 ft
> tall.
>
>> If you 'make excuses' for one gender or the other, based on 'general
>> trends' you are dangerously close to proscriptive behavior.
>
> I do not understand what you are talking about.
>
> []
>> >>Why can't we all think and act for ourselves, according to our various
>> >>talents, like the slogan says, with "being all we can be" as a laudable
>> >>goal?
>> >>
>> >>That's the point of this whole brouhaha which hasn't made the least bit
>> >>of sense. Who (man or woman, boy or girl) wants to aspire to fulfill a
>> >>stereotype as a life's goal?
>> >
>> > I suspect the reason it hasn't made
>> > sense to you is that you accepted
>> > distorted accounts of what Summers
>> > said. Summers was not saying anything
>> > about limiting the opportunites of
>> > individuals based on their sex. He was
>> > talking about the underrepresentation
>> > of women in certain fields. He
>> > outlined various factors that might
>> > be involved and mentioned that one worth
>> > considering was whether there were
>> > innate differences between the sexes. If
>> > men tend to excel at math, then it
>> > is indeed plausible that it could be a
>> > factor in there being more men in certain professions.
>>
>> First of all, you are misinterpreting my assessment of Mr. Summers'
>> statement.
>
> The first comment I saw from you on this subject was a counterargument
> against the proposition that women are unfit to do science. This gave me
> the impression that you believed Lawrence Summers to have said that women
> were unfit to do science.
>
>> Secondly, (and others have noted this), Mr. Summers has
>> repeatedly apologized for the insensitivity of his statement. If there
>> were nothing questionable about his statement, he would not have been on
>> the hot-seat to apologize.
>
> And yet others have noted what an absurd argument this is. When lobby
> groups are agitating for one's resignation, one might apologize even if
> there were nothing wrong with one's comments.

If he genuinely believed that he was correct in his assessment, and then
apologized and retracted that statement simply to save face, or his job, then my
opinion is that if he can't stand up for what he believes, he doesn't have what
it takes to hold that position in the first place.

>> Thirdly, 'innate differences' (as opposed to
>> environmental/educational/societal learned behaviours) would be hard
>> to prove unless one were willing to isolate large numbers of children
>> from birth and bring them up in a controlled environment like lab
>> animals, and it is quite unlikely that this will happen. Unless this
>> happens, there will always be an element of uncertainty in the nature vs
>> nurture argument. This is not a new idea; there is plenty of science
>> fiction about creche babies raised this way for just this reason, and
>> people have been speculating about it for far longer than science
>> fiction has existed.
>
> There are ways to study innate differences. Cross-cultural studies, infant
> studies, neurological investigations and gene mapping all provide data
> toward this area.

But then, you tried to make a case, based on some blog site, that men are just
as abused by womn as women are abused by men. The National Domestic Violence
Hotline statistics indicate that you and your blog site are a liar.

http://www.ndvh.org/

Cross-cultural studies have, in fact been done. Some of those studies have
shown that there are sociocultural differences that make a hugh impact on the
issue at hand.

>> > It is not about limiting people by
>> > stereotypes. It is not about oppressing
>> > women. It is about trying to look
>> > at the evidence to determine the truth.
>>
>> Unfortunately, even the researchers people have cited do not look at
>> 'the whole truth', just their statistical sample of it, which is often
>> skewed. I did not say it was about 'oppressing women.' It could just as
>> easily be about oppressing linguistically disadvantaged males. But the
>> point is: why treat people as groups at all, except as psychological
>> amusement and career enhancement for some researcher?
>
> If there is an assumption that sexual discrimination in a given profession
> is the only cause for gender distribution other than that of the general
> population, then it is important to discover if this assumption is true.
> Policies are based on this assumption as people take steps to stop the
> discrimination.

Assuming that people will take steps on their own to stop discrimination is a
dangerous assumption to make. There is no evidence in modern times that people
have ever volunteered to end discrimination of any group. That certainly wasn't
the case with civil rights laws of the 1960s, or in the end to slavery in the
U.S. in the 1860s.