From an evolutionary psychological standpoint I find this ridiculous:
Traditional standpoint is that men go to places where women are (e.g. bars) and hit on them. This requires a combination of various skills on the part of men, including resource acquisition (to be able to buy drinks for women), social skills, and the ability to be aggressive in a non-threatening way (e.g. to approach an attractive woman and chat her up).
There are of course many variations on this, but the skills that men ostensibly need to succeed in them are, generally speaking, some rough combination of the above -- which, perhaps unsurprisingly -- are some combination of the same skills that many women would want for a male partner (i.e. assertive, successful, socially capable, attractive).
The presence of these so-called "feminist" threads on HN often take the form of hackers, who presumably do not have all of the aforementioned skills, attempting to get women to come to them. I think it is reasonably obvious that the motivations include the fact that people who do not have all of the aforementioned capabilities and who are limited to incredible hacking skills, want to be able to succeed with women (e.g. obtain sex and/or relationship) on their own terms.
Personally, I believe this is both selfish and a violation of evolutionary norms. Certainly, there is a place for certain types of affirmative action, but in this case (and many like it) it is pretty clear that the action is not made so that the end product is better (i.e. better computer programs built in less time), but that nerds get babes.
While there may be some success with respect to the unstated motivation, I think the fundamental dishonesty with respect to the approach vector means that you will never attract the type of woman that you would ideally want to couple with (yes, I'm speaking primarily to a male audience here).
There may be "good enough" couplings insofar as there clearly is some appeal here from the standpoint of women, given the relatively high salary of nerds (I saw some unusual couplings
in silicon valley along these lines, particularly in the South Bay), but I don't think this is a very good strategy long term.
At the very least, I think the motivations need to be clear. Why do dudes in industries that are dominated by dudes want to have women around them in the work place so bad? Yes, we know why, and so do most women. There are other reasons of course, but we have to be honest about all of them when we are coming up with a supposed "solution."
Wow, I have to say this was a pretty disgusting comment. Didn't expect to see this on HN.
If you start your post off with any variant of "from an evolutionary psychological standpoint" in a thread about sexism/feminist issues you need to seriously consider not clicking the "add comment" button. Also, look up "projection". I can honestly tell you that no, the reason I support women in tech is absolutely not so I can "get babes."
Thanks for pointing this out, because between the multitude of posts in this forum and the posts which I responded to on the blog, I feel like I am taking crazy pills. What is the big deal here? Seems like so many of my peers have deep seated psychological problems (not like I don't, but damn).
Misogyny is unfortunately scarily prevalent. All we can do is call people out on it. If there isn't social backlash they'll never question their worldview.
It was organized by women. I presume that if she wanted babies she would have them. Sperm is not that expensive.
Programmers who happen to be women are coworkers, not baby-making machines. Your attitude is so wrong I don't even know where to start, except to suggest that you clearly don't understand emergence, evolution or humanity.
Traditional standpoint is that men go to places where women are (e.g. bars) and hit on them. This requires a combination of various skills on the part of men, including resource acquisition (to be able to buy drinks for women), social skills, and the ability to be aggressive in a non-threatening way (e.g. to approach an attractive woman and chat her up).
There are of course many variations on this, but the skills that men ostensibly need to succeed in them are, generally speaking, some rough combination of the above -- which, perhaps unsurprisingly -- are some combination of the same skills that many women would want for a male partner (i.e. assertive, successful, socially capable, attractive).
The presence of these so-called "feminist" threads on HN often take the form of hackers, who presumably do not have all of the aforementioned skills, attempting to get women to come to them. I think it is reasonably obvious that the motivations include the fact that people who do not have all of the aforementioned capabilities and who are limited to incredible hacking skills, want to be able to succeed with women (e.g. obtain sex and/or relationship) on their own terms.
Personally, I believe this is both selfish and a violation of evolutionary norms. Certainly, there is a place for certain types of affirmative action, but in this case (and many like it) it is pretty clear that the action is not made so that the end product is better (i.e. better computer programs built in less time), but that nerds get babes.
While there may be some success with respect to the unstated motivation, I think the fundamental dishonesty with respect to the approach vector means that you will never attract the type of woman that you would ideally want to couple with (yes, I'm speaking primarily to a male audience here).
There may be "good enough" couplings insofar as there clearly is some appeal here from the standpoint of women, given the relatively high salary of nerds (I saw some unusual couplings in silicon valley along these lines, particularly in the South Bay), but I don't think this is a very good strategy long term.
At the very least, I think the motivations need to be clear. Why do dudes in industries that are dominated by dudes want to have women around them in the work place so bad? Yes, we know why, and so do most women. There are other reasons of course, but we have to be honest about all of them when we are coming up with a supposed "solution."