I did just add a link to a PDF on my Pubs site to my article, This is how it works on my browser, but everyone's is different: 1. It shows a very tiny image of the first page, so small I had a "WTF!?" reaction when I first saw it, BUT: 2. When I clicked the weird tiny image of the first page, it opens the full pdf.
This line is from the film adaptation from 1971 - they add a bunch of framing to the story and explicate the meaning of the title. I believe Tevye says this within the first ten minutes or so. It is possible that the saying and a line similar to this is also present in the original texts written in Yiddish (Tevye the Milkman by Sholem Aleichem) or in one of the translations into English. The original story was an epistolary - letters from a fictional Tevye written to the author about his life events, whic which include a large number of folk sayings, often used to humorous effect, but it's been a while, so I'm not sure about exact language anymore.
The line you quote, my wife assures me, is in the opening titles of the movie, fiddler on the roof, but may not be in the play. My wife is a Tisch graduate and musical theatre major, and Jewish, sonI trust her judgement on this. :) You might like my 2 part substack article on the subtleties of growing censorship, entitled 'erase the jews'.
I read your linked article about differences being due to preferences rather than bias. I agree to a large degree, but I think there’s a nuance that needs to be acknowledged; preferences themselves can be influenced by bias. What I mean by this is that it’s absolutely true that far fewer women than men choose to pursue degrees in engineering - there’s almost no question this is the reason for fewer women in engineering rather than programs actively not accepting qualified women. The question you can’t ignore, though, is why women do not prefer engineering. Is it simply, as you imply, because there are innate sex differences in the types of work people prefer? Or is it that as children, boys and girls are socialized in different ways that lead women to prefer some fields of work and men to prefer others? This is where things get complicated - teasing out which aspects of a preference are due to nature and which are due to nurture is not easily done. But if we as a society are socializing girls to prefer less lucrative fields of work, I still think that’s a problem, although not one that academia can solve in a vacuum. I think often when people refer to bias, they are referring to this, not suggesting that women (or other groups) are being actively discriminated against and being turned away from programs of study in favor of less qualified people who are not members of that group.
Which was also my opinion, based on the old academia I knew until 20 years ago. That nurture also plays a big part makes sense considering society as a whole... also considering that families tend to raise children according to their own values, and cannot be in any productive way forced to raise them in a different way -- they can only be nudged, and it is a long process where society changes. When I was a child, I was socialised throughout with traditional male values -- some of them turned out useful, some of them very much not so, many of them changed as I learned stuff. I see children today being raised to much less binary and traditional standards and the outcomes also change in part.
So, I tended to interpret the claims of implicit bias along these lines.
But then I began, a relatively short time ago, just before the pandemic, to read the actual articles of academics that describe this kind of bias. And an overwhelming number of them, in the US but increasingly also in the UK and Australia -- a little less so in continental Europe it seems -- speak of bias by exactly suggesting that women, or non-white people or non-straight people, are actively discriminated against by the system that is built to keep them out. Not by any sort of self-absorbed notion that this or that line of work is not right for them (which could be, if found to be true, addressed by encouraging more knowledge of those fields for targeted groups in early education). But by the simple fact that they are not present in numbers, or do not do so well, in certain fields.
The fact that they are not present in numbers is for this kind of research the only proof required for the presence of systemic bias.
Not enough black student pass a certain test? The test is racist.
Not enough women are found in a profession, or at certain levels of the profession? This is proof that the profession sets up obstacles to the access of women.
And so on. This is very poor science in my opinion.
I agree. I can also speak from personal experience - I have a degree is computer science and I’ve worked in the field for 27 years and I just don’t see a lot of obstacles. What I do see is that nearly all of my childhood friends have taken much different paths, and not a single one chose to go into a STEM field (although a few are quite successful in business). It’s hard to say why, or why it was different for me. It’s also interesting to notice that of the other women I work with, few of them are born in the US, so other countries don’t seem to have quite the same culture that prevents women from thinking that STEM fields are a good choice for them. But I think these cultural factors are exactly what people mean when they say “systemic bias”. The fact that when you picture a software engineer, the person you picture is probably male. The fact that young girls don’t often imagine themselves as engineers. The fact that young girls may not know adult women who work in STEM fields. The fact that some technical communities aren’t very welcoming to women. The fact that many young women consider the field “too nerdy” and don’t want to see themselves that way. The fact that a lot of girls think the field is too hard and they’re not smart enough. All of these things are both causes and effects, and that’s why it can be true that sex differences in STEM can be due to both preference and bias at the same time. The million dollar question is what, if anything, can or should be done about it?
I do not believe that’s a solution. My point was simply that saying “it’s due to preference, no bias, nothing else to discuss” tries to oversimplify a complex issue. I don’t think anyone who believes the low participation of women in STEM fields is a problem is going to be convinced by this argument.
I do unsafe science at two substacks etc:
https://cataclysmicearthhistory.substack.com/archive
https://covidandvaxfaqs.substack.com/archive
The link to article doesn't seem to work, I've noticed this on previous posts also.
I just checked all links, and all work fine. Might be a setting on your browser. Did you try a different browser?
Thanks, good to know, will check things out ...
I did just add a link to a PDF on my Pubs site to my article, This is how it works on my browser, but everyone's is different: 1. It shows a very tiny image of the first page, so small I had a "WTF!?" reaction when I first saw it, BUT: 2. When I clicked the weird tiny image of the first page, it opens the full pdf.
This line is from the film adaptation from 1971 - they add a bunch of framing to the story and explicate the meaning of the title. I believe Tevye says this within the first ten minutes or so. It is possible that the saying and a line similar to this is also present in the original texts written in Yiddish (Tevye the Milkman by Sholem Aleichem) or in one of the translations into English. The original story was an epistolary - letters from a fictional Tevye written to the author about his life events, whic which include a large number of folk sayings, often used to humorous effect, but it's been a while, so I'm not sure about exact language anymore.
The line you quote, my wife assures me, is in the opening titles of the movie, fiddler on the roof, but may not be in the play. My wife is a Tisch graduate and musical theatre major, and Jewish, sonI trust her judgement on this. :) You might like my 2 part substack article on the subtleties of growing censorship, entitled 'erase the jews'.
https://open.substack.com/pub/scottcampbell/p/erase-the-jews?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android
https://open.substack.com/pub/scottcampbell/p/erase-the-jews-2?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amileswmathis.com+jews
I read your linked article about differences being due to preferences rather than bias. I agree to a large degree, but I think there’s a nuance that needs to be acknowledged; preferences themselves can be influenced by bias. What I mean by this is that it’s absolutely true that far fewer women than men choose to pursue degrees in engineering - there’s almost no question this is the reason for fewer women in engineering rather than programs actively not accepting qualified women. The question you can’t ignore, though, is why women do not prefer engineering. Is it simply, as you imply, because there are innate sex differences in the types of work people prefer? Or is it that as children, boys and girls are socialized in different ways that lead women to prefer some fields of work and men to prefer others? This is where things get complicated - teasing out which aspects of a preference are due to nature and which are due to nurture is not easily done. But if we as a society are socializing girls to prefer less lucrative fields of work, I still think that’s a problem, although not one that academia can solve in a vacuum. I think often when people refer to bias, they are referring to this, not suggesting that women (or other groups) are being actively discriminated against and being turned away from programs of study in favor of less qualified people who are not members of that group.
Which was also my opinion, based on the old academia I knew until 20 years ago. That nurture also plays a big part makes sense considering society as a whole... also considering that families tend to raise children according to their own values, and cannot be in any productive way forced to raise them in a different way -- they can only be nudged, and it is a long process where society changes. When I was a child, I was socialised throughout with traditional male values -- some of them turned out useful, some of them very much not so, many of them changed as I learned stuff. I see children today being raised to much less binary and traditional standards and the outcomes also change in part.
So, I tended to interpret the claims of implicit bias along these lines.
But then I began, a relatively short time ago, just before the pandemic, to read the actual articles of academics that describe this kind of bias. And an overwhelming number of them, in the US but increasingly also in the UK and Australia -- a little less so in continental Europe it seems -- speak of bias by exactly suggesting that women, or non-white people or non-straight people, are actively discriminated against by the system that is built to keep them out. Not by any sort of self-absorbed notion that this or that line of work is not right for them (which could be, if found to be true, addressed by encouraging more knowledge of those fields for targeted groups in early education). But by the simple fact that they are not present in numbers, or do not do so well, in certain fields.
The fact that they are not present in numbers is for this kind of research the only proof required for the presence of systemic bias.
Not enough black student pass a certain test? The test is racist.
Not enough women are found in a profession, or at certain levels of the profession? This is proof that the profession sets up obstacles to the access of women.
And so on. This is very poor science in my opinion.
I agree. I can also speak from personal experience - I have a degree is computer science and I’ve worked in the field for 27 years and I just don’t see a lot of obstacles. What I do see is that nearly all of my childhood friends have taken much different paths, and not a single one chose to go into a STEM field (although a few are quite successful in business). It’s hard to say why, or why it was different for me. It’s also interesting to notice that of the other women I work with, few of them are born in the US, so other countries don’t seem to have quite the same culture that prevents women from thinking that STEM fields are a good choice for them. But I think these cultural factors are exactly what people mean when they say “systemic bias”. The fact that when you picture a software engineer, the person you picture is probably male. The fact that young girls don’t often imagine themselves as engineers. The fact that young girls may not know adult women who work in STEM fields. The fact that some technical communities aren’t very welcoming to women. The fact that many young women consider the field “too nerdy” and don’t want to see themselves that way. The fact that a lot of girls think the field is too hard and they’re not smart enough. All of these things are both causes and effects, and that’s why it can be true that sex differences in STEM can be due to both preference and bias at the same time. The million dollar question is what, if anything, can or should be done about it?
Promote Homeschooling or Unschooling.
I do not believe that’s a solution. My point was simply that saying “it’s due to preference, no bias, nothing else to discuss” tries to oversimplify a complex issue. I don’t think anyone who believes the low participation of women in STEM fields is a problem is going to be convinced by this argument.