Ever wonder why there are so few women engineers? Well, wonder no more, because carchamp1 over on the Men’s Rights subreddit has the answer! It’s apparently his wife’s fault, or something. In a comment with two dozen upvotes at last count, he explains:
I put my wife through four years of college to be an engineer. That’s four years worth of college tuition and expenses, plus not having any income from her. She got a great job and worked for a couple years. She decided she didn’t want to work anymore so she could be a “stay-at-home-mom”. When I urged her to work she said if I didn’t like it she would take our kid and I could leave.
Women don’t want to be engineers that’s why there are so few. It’s too hard. It’s a lot easier doing the “hardest job in the world”, you know, be a mom and living off your husband.
End of story.
Yeah, it’s not like there might be any other reasons beyond laziness and ingratitude, or anything.
Arthur C. Clarke was fooled by fairies though, Meller. You appear to have been fooled by everything in the pseudo-science and kook spheres.
It’s not just electricity, though, there’s a lot of chemical reactions as well. I guess it’s possible that someday we’ll be able to read and interpret a human brain, but it’s a long way off.
Okay, never the fact that most of the science fiction you’re describing is actually fantasy and is impossible–why do you think men would have invented it?
What exactly is in a testicle that makes you so sure enough of them put together would give you a perpetual motion machine? How freaking magical are those things?
Caraz – Psst, that was Arthur Conan Doyle.
:p
Oh yeah, Arthur C Clarke did a documentary or something about world of strange powers…That’s where I mixed them up I guess.
But what Arthur C. Clarke actually said was “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Which is an entirely different thing from saying technology can do any kind of magic you want–it’s just saying that technology can surpass our ability to understand its internal operations.
Oh, and Terminator 2 was written by two men. I really hate having the words of fictional women written by men used as evidence of women’s evil ways.
Good point, I’d forgotten about the chemicals – and anything on that order is a long, long way away.
Tatjna:
What does feminism really have to do with strong AI? Such machines would have no biological sex and there’d be no actual need to equip them with gender. I’ve always viewed robots that aren’t sexbots to be completely and totally gender neutral.
An ability and willingness to ask thoughtful and perceptive questions is a part of scientific research–or if you can’t ask them, at least listen to those who can–and it certainly seems that the eminent female geniuses who populate manboobz.com have serious limitations there!
What would have happened if everyone from Archimedes to Copernicus, from Galileo to Newton, from Lavoisier to Huygens and Priestly, from van Loewenhoek to Faraday and Pasteur had decided that they (or their teachers) knew everything that there was to know, and didn’t ask such questions?
Could such parochial closed mindedness have played a part in why women were–and are–less active in science and engineering than alleged or imagined social pressures?
That’s true. Can you cite any sci-fi stories about sentient machines written by women where the machines triumph and humanity is wiped out? 😛
Nameless dude:
The AI may be genderless but it will not be operating within a vacuum. While there are other perpecetives, it’s generally accepted that strong AI would be interacting with humans, and humans are gendered. Maybe in the utopian post-singularity transhumanist future, gender will be more fluid both physically and psychologically, but based on our current understandings of humanity, gender is an important thing for an AI to understand. In order for the AI to interact with a variety of genders, a variety of genders must have input into the development of the AI – otherwise all of its interactions will be based on the assumption that it is interacting with white men, and we’ll get an AI that operates like DKM.
Hence, feminism (and other perspectives) are relevant to AI development.
They’d sound like you.
What is this, fuckin’ Trivial Pursuit? You got a point to make here?
*Twitch*
ARthur C. CLarke is not Arthur Conan Doyle (Fairies, spirituality).
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/776.html
Of course DKM mangled it: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Arthur C. Clarke, “Profiles of The Future”, 1961 (Clarke’s third law)
English physicist & science fiction author (1917 – )
What it means is that people seeing more advanced technology cannot distinguish it from “magic” (i.e. have no explanation for it). It does NOT mean all “magic” is actually technology. And I see that Holly and others have jumped in, but fuckit, I’m gonna post, because, hell, I WROTE A BOOK ABOUT CLARKE’S WORK!
*spitshines irrelevant authority appeal and pins to cap*
I haven’t even mentioned the possibilities that would be opened by a robotic(?) entity that could reliably simulate a woman’s emotions, behavior, and mentality in ways that were more pleasant and comfortable to men of homo sapiens than regular women. If it (or she) was also equipped to accomodate men’s sexual pleasures and pursuits, as well as doing other activities which were understood to be feminine, e.g. domestic and homemaking activities, and to do them well, I think that such AI would render many human females obsolete where companionship and love is concerned!
Just a thought…
What would have happened if everyone from Archimedes to Copernicus, from Galileo to Newton, from Lavoisier to Huygens and Priestly, from van Loewenhoek to Faraday and Pasteur had decided that they (or their teachers) knew everything that there was to know, and didn’t ask such questions?
Just a wild ass guess, DKM, but I bet they’d have sounded just like you, more or less, since you claim to know everything, not be unsure of anything, and fall into huge lectures at the drop of a hat, and refuse to acknowledge any opposing points of view.
And you know, you’re a real proponent of the idea that these things come from GREAT MEN and a few mutant women–there is also the fact that context matters, and ideas that were theorized a few millennia ago couldn’t go anywhere without the changes in technology that come as a result of social changes that are NOT attributable to any one GREAT TESTICLE.
@HOlly: You are I are apparently in telepathic rapport, due no doubt to our girly genes, ahahahaha.
Perhaps the “ethical” thing to do, is to program the sentient machine to ignore gender all together and treat men and women the same way.
Right, but a man can’t program a machine to ignore gender, not by himself. Because he only has the experience of being male. You need a man and a woman to teach it to treat people the same, or otherwise its best stab at equality will be treating everyone like men.
Oh! It all makes sense now! DKM comes from a magitek cyberpunk dystopia!
DKM, honey, psi doesn’t exist in this dimension. I know, it startled me too. Without mindmelding as we drift slowly through the waving seaweed of the Planet of Tiny Purple Genderless Octopi (or, I suppose, in your case, as we put on our mirrorshades and prepare to defend the honor of the megacorp), how do they live? But psi is actually physically impossible in this universe! I’m sure this was covered in your orientation packet… have you considered reviewing the frequently asked questions?
Look, I summoned the Kraken! Do not speak his name, for he will come and spew nonsense at you.
Given that he’s convinced that we haven’t had any major advances in technology since the evil feminism put ladies in the workplace I’m willing to speculate that he may in fact have been sleeping under the ocean for a thousand years. Please don’t kill Perseus, MellerKraken, and I will be very upset if you so much as scratch Pegasus.
But what is that way and who decides what the way will be? Because that will influence a great deal in the interactions.
Meanwhile, all this is just a starting point, given that any truly strong AI will immediately begin learning and thus changing. What these ethical debates are mostly about is trying to understand the possibilities in order to ensure that the AI we create is ‘friendly’ – ie that it won’t get switched on, figure out within 20 seconds that we’re a virus on the face of the planet, and systematically start putting us through a meat grinder.
If an AI is logical and logical only,how do you prevent an AI from becoming bigoted based on its experiences?
Strawman argument again , ladies.
I never said that all magic was technology, nor that technology was–or is–magical. I merely used what I thought was A.C. Clarke to illustrate that there are many things that Holly P. seemed to think of as “magic” which probably could be readily explained by (distant) future technology, in her post of 12/13 at 1:45 cited above. That was all.
As it is, we all know why i am anxiously awaiting the development of “cybercuties” or “wifebots”, that will give me all of the advantages of female companionship with none of these (utterly revolting) disadvantages! I don’t think that I am alone here, either!
What I like about Sophie Germaine is that she never married nor had children. In fact, AFAIK she was a virgin her entire life and devoted all of her time and effort to mathematical pursuits and had little to no interest in any kind of non-pragmatic social interaction.
I dunno, Dunning-Kruger Man. I like my GIRLFRIEND. I don’t want a robot that can cook and clean and have sex and giggle at my jokes; I want her and her knitting of Pokemon hats and great smile and love for Frank Turner and classic YA and emotional support when I’m depressed and tendency to call me on my shit. That’s what love means.
Well, there are those who’d rather that the AI *we* create is not ‘friendly’ as you define it. I do wonder if said persons who would prefer to sacrifice themselves AND the rest of humanity with them are more likely to be men than women.