Sharp: Closing a door [LWN.net]

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 5, 2015 17:25 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313)
In reply to: Sharp: Closing a door by mrshiny
Parent article: Sharp: Closing a door

> There have been several studies that showed that more diverse teams often outperformed homogeneous teams.

The current Kernel development team is extremely diverse, with the one possible exception of the plumbing between the legs of the programmers. So your comparison falls flat to begin with.

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Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 5, 2015 17:27 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (2 responses)

> The current Kernel development team is extremely diverse, with the one possible exception of the plumbing between the legs of the programmers

Gender is far more than "plumbing between legs" and is an important aspect of said diversity. I wouldn't call the current group extremely diverse in the absence of it.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 5, 2015 17:37 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

> Gender is far more than "plumbing between legs" and is an important aspect of said diversity. I wouldn't call the current group extremely diverse in the absence of it.

The current kernel developers come from all sorts of backgrounds, all sorts of economic histories, and from a large number of cultrures and countries around the world.

I think that it's far more diverse than what you would get in any company that hired from people who live/grew up in any one area, even if that company had a exact 51%/49% female/male ratio.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 5, 2015 17:40 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

It is far more diverse is some areas. In gender diversity, not so much. Reducing it to "plumbing between legs" doesn't help at all.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 5, 2015 18:19 UTC (Mon) by mrshiny (guest, #4266) [Link] (6 responses)

Gender is not about "plumbing". It's way more complicated than that. The existence of transgender people would seem to prove that. But in any case, I wasn't speaking only of gender diversity, though the kernel dev team has driven away its fair share of women.

There are many ways to measure diversity. People coming from different countries is one way. Ethnicity is another way. Gender a third. Sexual orientation is another. But also, personality types, culture, etc. The current team is a lot of old white guys. Not 100%, but a lot. Just look at any photo of the kernel dev conferences.

The kernel is supposed to be an open team, where anyone who care write good code is welcome. But it's clear that they must not be as open as they seem, or else their population would be more diverse than it is. And one way they can help is to stop being abusive to people who are trying to help out.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 5, 2015 18:31 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

you can have more diversity in a group of 'old white guys' who come from different backgrounds and different countries than in a 'rainbow' of people who grew up attending the same schools.

you can't tell diversity by looking at a picture.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 6, 2015 2:21 UTC (Tue) by shmget (guest, #58347) [Link] (1 responses)

"you can't tell diversity by looking at a picture."

you're trying very hard to use reason and logic... but it is and will be in vain.
resistance is futile, you will be assimilated....

There is no reasoning with people that take for truth with a straight face the postulate:

"Any subset F of a set E must exhibit the same statistically properties wrt to every conceivable properties than
the set E, regardless of F... except for gym club membership"

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 6, 2015 4:10 UTC (Tue) by mrshiny (guest, #4266) [Link]

"Any subset F of a set E must exhibit the same statistically properties wrt to every conceivable properties than the set E, regardless of F... except for gym club membership"

This is clear proof that you're not listening to the argument. Nobody is claiming that the kernel team's demographics should exactly match the world's demographics. But it's pretty clear that it doesn't even come close. It's so far off that anyone who claims that the kernel team is "diverse" is just laughable.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 9, 2015 18:04 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

> Gender is not about "plumbing". It's way more complicated than that. The existence of transgender people would seem to prove that. But in any case, I wasn't speaking only of gender diversity, though the kernel dev team has driven away its fair share of women.

Give me a scientific definition of sex, or gender, that actually works and I'll be amazed.

The ONLY definition of gender that I know of that works 100% is "you are the sex you feel you". There is not a perfect correlation between your genotyope (which can not only be XX or XY, but can be XXX or XXY, and probably other variations too) and your phenotype (the "plumbing" as someone called it) which can not only be male or female, but hermaphrodite and/or other variations on a theme.

As I say, the ONLY 100% sure fire definition is a brain scan. There are differences between male and female brains. There is, apparently, a 100% perfect match between people who say "I feel a male" and have a male brain, and people who say "I feel a female" and have a female brain.

Cheers,
Wol

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 9, 2015 19:08 UTC (Fri) by mrshiny (guest, #4266) [Link] (1 responses)

It's not even clear what it means to have a male or female brain. There are so many factors involved in the biology and socialization that you can't just divide brains up that way.

"male" and "female" brains

Posted Oct 9, 2015 20:36 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

Yes, it's not clear but there have been interesting studies that hint at differences. There have been both live brain scans and and post-mortem dissections of brains that suggest that transsexuals brains are more similar to other brains of the gender they identify with and less similar to other brains of their biological sex.

We also know that different parts of the fetus develop at different times; genital differentiation occurs way before brain development is far along and there are hints that during fetal development, a baby may develop a female body but a more typical "male" brain and vice-versa. Again, so far we only have hints, but not exact details.

I'm pretty familiar with this topic as a modicum of googling will reveal.

-- Dianne Skoll.