[remote_phone]

You completely misunderstood Damore.

First of “neurotic” is a psychological term. He was using it in the scientific way, not the colloquial way.

Second, the point is not that all women cannot be programmers. It’s the fact that if the goal is to increase the number of female programmers, you need to change the nature of programming to make it more appealing to the average female. There will always be brilliant female programmers, I’ve worked with many that are better than I ever will be and I admire and learn from them every day. And there will always be women that can thrive in make-dominated areas because of their internal make-up.

But you will never get complete 50/50 gender equity until you change the nature of the job so that the average female will be more interested. That’s the point Damore was making. By making the nature of programming more appealing to more females by making the job in grain with what scientific research says are the differences between men and women, that’s how you fairly increase the number of women without biasing against men.

[SolaceQuantum]

I am using neurotic in the way Damore is using it, which is the scientific way, that women are in general less capable of handling the 'stress' of computer science work.

[amw]

Gotta jump on this specifically, first:

>First of “neurotic” is a psychological term. He was using it in the scientific way, not the colloquial way.

Whether or not it was used scientifically doesn't mean much. If I say all HN users named amw have been shown to be sociopaths, does that remove the social burden of the negative association with sociopathy even though I'm specifically referring to the diagnosis from DSM IV?

To the rest: Yes, Damore was making the point that not all women can be programmers. And he was making it with pseudoscience and "intuitive" beliefs that haven't really been shown to have any backing in the essentialist way that he and other apologists have shown them. It's kind of like saying that Charles Murray is "just" demonstrating that professional work just isn't for black people thanks to the "scientific" differences in their IQ: He's not "just" demonstrating anything, he's cherry-picking science for a conclusion he likes, a conclusion that happens to be inherently (and needlessly) discriminatory.