[arcsin]

This thread is a really good example of why people like SSC. Personally I have no problem believing biases against minorities exist in this industry. And to whatever extent it does exist I support trying to fix that. But then the discussion starts to get heated and people start saying things that stop making logical sense to me with the implication that if it doesn't make logical sense to me then I'm a racist, sexist or whatever.

Someone in this thread asked how it's not a pipeline problem if 80% of graduating CS students are male, and your response is to just stop caring about CS degrees. But how does that make sense unless you think that there is an equally disproportionate ratio of uncredentialed yet qualified women programmers? And frankly the rhetorical techniques you're using here feel dishonest, implying that if I don't accept your argument then either I didn't think hard enough about it or I'm sexist. Or the "this is my last reply on this topic". If people have genuine questions why not answer them?

And after seeing this kind of discourse so many times there is such a sense of relief when someone is willing to say "let's look at the truth even if it's an inconvenient one" because to come up with a good solution you have to start with what's actually true right? For a lot of people that's what SSC represents and that's why they feel so strongly about defending it.

[h0l0cube]

I'll try to steel-man the OP's argument. The notion that there's both a biological component and a sexism component to the statistical divergence between equal-sex representation in CS, should not be contradictory. OTOH, if someone is primed with an argument about the biological component, they might behave differently when encountering a female peer. So, for instance, there's a psychological component to reading Damore's memo, and even the most objective of minds are vulnerable to a subconscious bias. Furthermore, a genuinely sexist person could easily shield themselves with this argument to justify conscious and biased sexual discrimination.