It sounds like you're saying, "Programming was offered to them, but they didn't take it, so apparently they didn't want it."
But what was "programming"? Was it a skill/profession, or a lifestyle that was being offered to the women? I think it's often seen as a lifestyle - i.e. programmers only eat pizza and wear hackathon t-shirts and spend their free time playing video games. Of course this is wildly inaccurate. Good programmers need to only have knowledge and an interest and ability to learn more - what you eat, wear, and enjoy as a hobby shouldn't matter. But if you go to someone and ask if she wants to give up her own lifestyle and own interests to become a "programmer", she's going to say no.
I suspect that so many people enjoy the stereotypical activities that they're unable to separate out the programming lifestyle from the actual skills necessary.
I always think back to my uni days where the maths department had several specific scholarships/ bursaries/ prizes for female students as part of a drive to increase gender equality. We probably had around 30% girls in my year? There were other, softer elements to the strategy and overall I reckon it was working, personally. That kind of push is probably how you start to improve demographics.
(Side note: I was however, endlessly amused that the psych course which had 2 guys and ~120 girls had no such concerns about equality...)
Sorry, I'm having a hard time figuring out what your question is getting at.
Are you saying that the stereotypical programming lifestyle is equally appealing to men and women? Just looking at video games, I don't think that's the case. For instance, I recently started playing Dragon Age Origins, and playing as a female Gray Warden, I kept getting repeated comments from NPCs saying "Really? A female Gray Warden. Wouldn't expect that", and so forth. Why would a woman choose to make a video game that is continuously surprised that she exists? I really enjoyed the game, but it's honestly the stuff like that that tells you in subtle ways that you're not welcome.
You might be conflating the game telling you the player that you are not welcome, and the game universe telling your character that a female Gray Warden is unusual/unconventional, maybe even offensive to the game universe's (NPCs) sensibilities.
Dragon Age Origins is a medieval fantasy setting, right? I guess that they were more concerned with creating a setting that was more in line with our view of an European medieval age-inspired fantasy setting, as opposed to some parallel universe where men and women are equally represented in fighting classes/hero roles.
I haven't played a Dragon Age game so I might be missing something/getting something wrong.
As a side-note, the "a woman to do a man's job, really?" is a common revenge/I'll-show-them trope used to build up to a pay-off involving proving those people wrong. Or just telling them off immediately, but that is a less satisfying variation.
That's definitely a valid point, but there's two things that make me disagree. First, if you look at the game with the perspective of making the game enjoyable to women, you wouldn't put in mild sexism similar to that which already annoys them in real life, especially if it often comes from friendly characters that you can't trounce in response. :) Video games are supposed to be fun! So, from that I assume that Dragon Age Origins wasn't made with women in mind as the audience, or if it was, they didn't do it very enjoyably.
Secondly, I think attributing the mild sexism in the game to intentional world-building is a bit of a stretch, considering that the main religious figure in the game is a warrior woman prophet. I don't think women warriors would be such a surprise in that world! It's more likely that it's just something that came from our current society that got mapped onto the game because the creators didn't think about it. It's unfortunate, because with such an interesting mythology, you could do some really novel cultural things in that world.
Anyways, I've gotten off topic, but I do think there are characteristics that make it easier to blend into the programmer lifestyle (such as video games) and characteristics that make it harder (such as liking fashion) and all of those characteristics contribute to the person's choice of whether to become a programmer, especially since programming is more of an all-consuming occupation than most. And, these characteristics are not equally shared between men and women.
Nope, this is a legitimate Excel issue when opening CSVs in Excel. If you know a fix without editing the cell data type and saving back into Excel format, I'm all ears!
Edit: I'm referring to the way that most people open CSVs in Excel, by clicking on the file and having Excel be the default CSV program, not by importing it. Is there a way to turn off the scientific notation for good?
You edit the data type because it isn't a number your importing, its a shipping tag. On import you set the column to text, its right there in the import dialog.
I'm always confused by psychological references to Descartes "I think, therefore I am" statement. Isn't this instead a statement about knowledge? That is, starting from no assumptions, what can be known about the world? It's my understanding that Descartes' answer was that the fact that the questioner is currently thinking means that they must exist, and this can be used as a foundation for more knowledge about the world.
Exactly. Unfortunately, it also stops there. Descartes tried to justify trusting your senses by assuming there's a just God that would never let humans' senses lie, but that's kinda naive.
Suppose we freeze time for a second, you're transported to and stuck in a multigalactically large room for countably infinite minutes (or until you're done, also you're temporarily immortal) with all the paper and binding materials you need, and some reference books that together constitute a full description of someone's atomic state and immediate environment, as that person is about to start thinking about the Cogito for a few minutes.
There are a few trillion atoms described, so it takes you a long time, but you spend your infinite minutes (or as long as you need) working through the various states, starting with time t=0 based on the reference books, and then for infinite minutes you just simply dilligently work through the state of the person and immediate environment, i.e. continue to model the atoms using the laws of physics, working it out manually, as a human calculator, and writing down all of your work. It is incredibly boring. About ten hours into it you ask for a pill to let you forget that you've already been doing this for ten hours, because it was only interesting for maybe half that time and there is no way you can do this for almost infinite time. Okay, you get a supply of those pills as well, and take one every ten hours. This leaves you all set to spend practically infinite time writing out all this meticulous description.
Now, once you're FINALLY done, and have done up through t=10minutes, which really practically takes you infinite time, you bind up all of your work and put the volumes in a row in multigalactically large bookshelf. Trillions of volumes. Then you're transported back to Earth and time resumes. Okay, for having trillions of volumes, ten hours (that you remember) wasn't too bad.
And now we know there are a series of volumes of books (that you've prepared by hand). At first (in the first few volumes) they describe an initial state of mind, and, due to the moment that was chosen (someone entertaining a train of thought regarding the Cogito) as you go through the volumes you are reading through someone's thoughts, i.e. the thoughts that this person exists.
But do they exist? Of course not: they are just a character in a book. That they think, "I think" does not cause them to exist, and a few volumes later they are done having that thought.
The volumes are all there from volume 1 up till x trillion trillion. You could, if you wanted to, read through them all. Do the characters inside exist? No.
So, the Cogito does not prove physical or metaphysical existence.
The existence of the character described in the books is a tricky question that cannot be directly answered. Depending on your definition of existance, it either exists, or it doesn't. However, this does not necessarilt disprove Descartes' statement.
Let's say the character does not exist, this means there is no character going through the Cogito. Descartes' statement holds no meaning in this situation.
let's say the character does exist, it is going through the Cogito, which according to Descartes means there is some object that has to exist for these thoughts to arise. And there is! The books that you have painstakingly written exist somewhere to describe the thoughts of the character exist somewhere in the physical world (or whatever hypothetical world or universe you have theorised).
Is this not exactly Descartes' point? If we interpet it broadly: Whenever thought arises, this thought must materialise from some existing state or presence, thus proving the existance of 'something'. To give this object the identity of oneself is perhaps a bit of a stretch, but one could argue that if this state or presence creates these thoughts it can usually be associated with 'self' in whatever way you want to define it.
I was always taught that Descartes "I think therefor I am" quote is often misunderstood or at least misrepresented. What I was taught might be a better way to understand it is very close to what you stated. If a person can doubt the existence of everything then certainly they could doubt even the existence of themselves. Once one starts down a path of doubting then certainly everything is subject to scrutiny. What one cannot doubt is the fact they are doubting. So perhaps the quote should be better paraphrased as "I doubt therefor I am". Ive always found that helpful and while it seems you understand that point very well I just thought Id mention it because prior to such an explanation the process by which one affirms there existence because they think never made much sense to me.
Note also that Descartes expresses a fear, which he doesn't explore very much, that if he were to momentarily stop thinking, he might "cease to exist." He has a formulation along the lines of: "I exist, that's certain—but how often?" The answer: as long as he is thinking, he exists. So the Cartesian affirmation of individual existence has an interesting porosity.
I think the problem goes even further. The cogito assumes an "I" that it never really establishes. "I think, therefore some thoughts exist" seems to hard to challenge, but who is to say that these thoughts are continuous or coherent, that they really define a single entity "I?"
I believe the argument is that he is a thinking thing. And the "I" is merely for convenience he assumes no body, etc. I think, I can't remember, he even considers if the grand deceiver could change his thoughts and memories. I haven't discussed this in a decade :/
"When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence, 'I think', I find a whole series of daring assertions that would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to prove; for example that it is _I_ who thinks, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity or operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego', and finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking - that I _know_ what thinking is. For if I had not already decided within myself what it is, by what standard could I determine whether that which is just happening is perhaps not 'willing' or 'feeling'?
...
Whoever ventures to answer these metaphysical questions at once by an appeal to a sort of _intuitive_ perception, like the person who says, 'I think, and know that this, at least, is true, actual and certain' - will encounter nowadays a smile and two question marks from a philosopher nowadays. 'Sir', the philosopher will perhaps give him to understand, 'it is improbable that you are not mistaken, but why insist on the truth?'"
Yeah, exactly, before I can know anything else 1) I know that I exist, and 2) something has to be performing my little circlejerk of self-awareness.
Seems weird to me that some scientists say the self and self-awareness are an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
I have trouble bringing myself to agree, my existence seems pretty real to me. I don't feel like an emergent property of a complex system.
In a way, we experience directly the metaphysical nature of our existence, and all the science we do is based on things much more indirectly observed and measured, and that metaphysical essence of our existence is sort of inaccessible to science.
Thankfully neuroscience allows us to turn philosophy's inside-out approach on its head and look from the outside in. The very existence (and broad conscious awareness) of things like brain damage, neurosurgery, and mind-altering substances demonstrates conclusively that the mind resides in the brain.
Any philosophical questioning of the existence of existence is rendered moot by its inherent begging of the question and lack of consequence to physical reality.
moot? suppose we are all in a simulation by a higher power who is about to pull the plug...on the one hand the pulling of the plug is outside our reality and not something we can reason about and in that sense moot, and yet would not be moot with respect to our experience when the plug was pulled.
Sir Arthur Eddington:
Let us suppose that an ichthyologist is exploring the life of the ocean. He casts a net into the water and brings up a fishy assortment. Surveying his catch, he proceeds in the usual manner of a scientist to systematise what it reveals. He arrives at two generalisations: No sea-creature is less than two inches long. All sea-creatures have gills. These are both true of his catch, and he assumes tentatively that they will remain true however often he repeats it. In applying this analogy, the catch stands for the body of knowledge which constitutes physical science, and the net for the sensory and intellectual equipment which we use in obtaining it. The casting of the net corresponds to observation; for knowledge which has not been or could not be obtained by observation is not admitted into physical science. An onlooker may object that the first generalisation is wrong. "There are plenty of sea-creatures under two inches long, only your net is not adapted to catch them." The icthyologist dismisses this objection contemptuously. "Anything uncatchable by my net is ipso facto outside the scope of icthyological knowledge. In short, "what my net can't catch isn't fish." Or--to translate the analogy-- "If you are not simply guessing, you are claiming a knowledge of the physical universe discovered in some other way than by the methods of physical science, and admittedly unverifiable by such methods. You are a metaphysician. Bah!
I've seen that analogy before and it's silly, because 1. people have prior experience with sea creatures smaller than two inches, and 2. scientists are keenly aware of the limitations of their "nets," and those limitations leave very little room for metaphysics.
By definition science can't answer the question, "is there a reality that is outside science and what is its nature?" That's what I think Eddington is saying.
I think your 2. seems a little silly, metaphysics by definition is what is beyond science, which is the point Eddington is trying to make.
Thinking about metaphysics is a little like thinking about what happens inside a black hole, what happens to the physics and interactions and information. You can come up with a lot of theories but you'll never be able to test them. It's beyond our experience, but we can't say there is no reality going on beyond where we can measure and experience and reason about it.
The very phrase "beyond science" is a bit nonsensical though, and using it to define a category of knowledge that is "beyond science" is a bit like defining a new land called "metanorth" containing whatever is geographically further north than the geographic North Pole.
I don't think it's fair, either, to compare metaphysics to black hole physics. Everything in my layman's understanding of physics, astronomy, and cosmology suggests that the prevailing theories of what happens inside a black hole are supported by evidence gathered from what happens outside a black hole, rather than being invented from scratch with no evidential basis.
I would find a site that you respect, and then see how they're doing things. That won't help you on the SASS/less end, but you'll be able to see the css and javascript effects. What also helps is keeping a repository of your favorite effects - certain sliders, transitions, etc.
How can we determine what's paranoia and what's factual? Given the mind-boggling extent of NSA programs, nearly anything could be possible, and that makes it all the more difficult to determine the truth.
I was struck by how the art student had no way of showing whether her misfortunes were accidental or related to her investigation. Is there a way she could have seen who was reading her email?
There's the general rule that the more restrictions you have on how employers can hire, how they can pay, and how they can fire, the less likely they are to hire more people and take risks in hiring. This means being less likely to hire the young, the old, those without a spotless record, and even women who may start families.
I'm not by any means an expert on labor in Europe, but it seems like the obvious way to increase the number of jobs, especially to those who need them most, is to allow employers more flexibility. Instead of artificially creating stratification (some people having no jobs or very temporary jobs, and some having incredibly cushy ones) we would have many more low paying jobs in the middle.
I never would have thought myself a socialist, but a basic income (guaranteed payments from government) seems to make so more much sense in this context.
You could scrap the minimum wage, scrap labour laws basically (?), at least from the point of view that if someone was let go they'd still be looked after, so it's more about finding the right fit. If someone gets fired 6 times in a row until they find a job they really do well in then so be it.
Basic income sounds a bit socialist, but it actually lubricates the hell out of a capitalist economy.
So your solution is more of what's described in the second paragraph:
"it was a rare flicker of opportunity after a series of temporary positions, applications that went nowhere and employers who increasingly demanded that young people work long, unpaid stretches just to be considered for something permanent." ?
Why not? It is one of the consequences of removing labor rights. It's a difficult balance: too many labor rights will stifle the economy, too few will stifle the worker.
I am happy that in most European countries workers are entitled to a 40 or 48 hour work week, plenty of holidays, and paid overtime. Because life is not only work...
One area where more flexibility is required in Southern European, and even Western European, countries is making it easier to hire and fire an employee.
I might have been unclear, the question wasn't entirely rhetorical. In my experience "more flexibility" generally leads to weakening of labour rights, more part time, more time limited contracts -- and more of the things featured in the above comment.
In short, in a buyers market (employers purchasing wage labour) -- without regulation, the buyers hold all the keys (starve or work - that's not a choice).
If you have any examples of de-regulation of a labour market benefiting the majority of the population over say a ten or twenty year period, I'd love to hear about it.
I, too, might have been unclear. You were citing a description of a highly, highly regulated labor market as an example of what might come to pass were that market deregulated.
>If you have any examples of de-regulation of a labour market
>> buyers market (employers purchasing wage labour)
>
> That's not what 'buyer's market' means.
That parentheses explain what I mean by market (the labour market) -- was that unclear? The rest of that sentence tried to highlight what "A situation in which supply exceeds demand, giving purchasers an advantage over sellers in negotiations" generally means in the labour market.
If one side might loose a few days of productivity by holding out for a better deal, and the other side will loose their home and starve -- that's a pretty uneven balance of power.
Perhaps ending the emergency low interest rates we have had for years, and letting economics work the way it should. Let house prices come down, let unviable businesses fail and make room for newer more efficient ones.
Employers have stopped hiring excessive numbers of people to sit of their asses because companies can now get get more work for less pay from their young, bright employees, as well as outsource and automate other tasks with software.
Bottom line: today, there are simply too many educated potential laborers to expect jobs to keep up with demand.
Bottom line: today, there are simply too many educated potential laborers to expect jobs to keep up with demand.
Maybe. It would be interesting to think of the consequences of having a situation where there are systematically more laborers than work.
In theory, this means that everyone can work less, or perhaps not even work at all, while we are still able to produce enough food, etc. to give everybody a reasonable life. In practice we seem to end up in a completely different situation: those who have work are rich, those who don't become very poor.
But what was "programming"? Was it a skill/profession, or a lifestyle that was being offered to the women? I think it's often seen as a lifestyle - i.e. programmers only eat pizza and wear hackathon t-shirts and spend their free time playing video games. Of course this is wildly inaccurate. Good programmers need to only have knowledge and an interest and ability to learn more - what you eat, wear, and enjoy as a hobby shouldn't matter. But if you go to someone and ask if she wants to give up her own lifestyle and own interests to become a "programmer", she's going to say no.
I suspect that so many people enjoy the stereotypical activities that they're unable to separate out the programming lifestyle from the actual skills necessary.