{"id":3389,"date":"2017-08-15T04:26:27","date_gmt":"2017-08-15T09:26:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=3389"},"modified":"2017-08-18T08:35:05","modified_gmt":"2017-08-18T13:35:05","slug":"what-i-believe-ii-ft-sarah-constantin-and-stacey-jeffery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=3389","title":{"rendered":"What I believe II (ft. Sarah Constantin and Stacey Jeffery)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unrelated Update:<\/b> To everyone who keeps asking me about the “new” P\u2260NP proof: I’d again bet $200,000 that the paper<\/a> won’t stand, except that the last time<\/a> I tried that, it didn’t achieve its purpose, which was to get people to stop asking me about it. So: please stop asking, and if the thing hasn’t been refuted by the end of the week, you can come back and tell me I was a closed-minded fool.<\/p>\n

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In my post “The Kolmogorov Option<\/a>,” I tried to step back from current controversies, and use history to reflect on\u00a0the broader question of how nerds should behave when their penchant for speaking unpopular truths collides head-on with their desire to be kind and decent\u00a0and charitable, and to be judged as such by their culture. \u00a0I was gratified to get positive feedback about this approach from men and women all over the ideological spectrum.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

However, a few people who I like and respect accused me of “dogwhistling<\/a>.” They warned, in particular, that if I wouldn’t just come out and say what I thought about the James Damore Google memo thing, then people would assume the very worst—even though, of course, my friends themselves knew better.<\/p>\n

So in this post, I’ll come out and say what I think. \u00a0But first, I’ll do something even better: I’ll hand the podium over to two friends, Sarah Constantin and Stacey Jeffery, both of whom were kind enough to email me detailed thoughts\u00a0in response to my Kolmogorov post.<\/p>\n

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Sarah Constantin<\/a> completed her PhD in math at Yale. I don’t think I’ve met her in person yet, but we have a huge number of mutual friends in the so-called “rationalist community.” \u00a0Whenever Sarah emails me about something I’ve written, I pay extremely close attention, because I have yet to read a single thing by her that wasn’t full of insight and good sense. \u00a0I strongly urge\u00a0anyone who likes her beautiful essay below\u00a0to check out her blog, which is called\u00a0Otium<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sarah Constantin’s Commentary:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had a women-in-STEM essay brewing in me for years, but I\u2019ve been reluctant to actually write publicly on the topic for fear of stirring up a firestorm of controversy. \u00a0On the other hand, we seem to be at a cultural inflection point on the issue, especially in the wake of the leaked <\/span>Google memo<\/span><\/a>, and other people are already scared to speak out, so I think it\u2019s past time for me to put my name on the line, and Scott has graciously provided me a platform to do so.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m a woman in tech myself. I\u2019m a data scientist doing machine learning for drug discovery at Recursion Pharmaceuticals, and before that I was a data scientist at Palantir. Before that I was a woman in math — I got my PhD from Yale, studying applied harmonic analysis. I\u2019ve been in this world all my adult life, and I obviously don\u2019t believe my gender makes me unfit to do the work.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m also not under any misapprehension that I\u2019m some sort of exception. I\u2019ve been mentored by Ingrid Daubechies and Maryam Mirzakhani (the first female Fields Medalist, who died tragically young last month). \u00a0I\u2019ve been lucky enough to work with women who are far, far better than me. \u00a0There are a <\/span>lot <\/span><\/i>of remarkable women in math and computer science — women just aren\u2019t the majority in those fields. But \u201cnot the majority\u201d doesn\u2019t mean \u201crare\u201d or \u201cunknown.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I even think diversity programs can be worthwhile. I went to the Institute for Advanced Studies\u2019 <\/span>Women and Math Program<\/span><\/a>, which would be an excellent graduate summer school even if it weren\u2019t all-female, and taught at its sister program for high school girls, which likewise is a great math camp independent of the gender angle. There\u2019s a certain magic, if you\u2019re in a male-dominated field, of once in a while being in a room full of women doing math, and I hope that everybody gets to have that experience once. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But (you knew the \u201cbut\u201d was coming), I think the Google memo was largely correct, and the way people conventionally talk about women in tech is wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look at some of his claims. From the beginning of the memo:<\/span><\/p>\n