Can Social Justice Go Too Far? Recently a professor gave a presentation about how men are being discriminated against in physics due to ideology and not merit. His talk was pulled from the CERN website due to being offensive. My opinion is that social justice is great when it helps to promote equality of opportunity. But when we try to regulate for outcome we only end up discriminating against people based on race or gender, among other identities. This means that sometimes the drive for social justice can push us into creating similar laws but in different ways. We end up in a society promoting people based not on merit but on appearance.
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I think the obvious answer is, of course, anything can go too far.
Too much of a good thing can be bad.
Personally, social justice, in my opinion, is a good thing when it creates equality of opportunity.
People shouldn't be restricted from jobs, from educations, from any kind of program, simply because of the way they look, where they come from, what they believe.
People should have an equal access to opportunity.
But when people start advocating for equal outcome, they start putting people who probably shouldn't be in a job in a certain job, and that can be dangerous, and it can be bad for everybody, and it actually results in more discrimination.
When social justice tries too hard, you actually end up seeing racism and sexism, so yes, I think it's fair to say it can go too far.
Recently at CERN, one of the largest scientific research centers in the world, a man gave a presentation which was deemed highly offensive.
In it, he presented evidence that he claimed showed men were being discriminated against in the sciences.
CERN removed the slides and data from their website, because it was upsetting to many of the young women who were at the presentation, and they've issued a statement about it.
It's rather controversial.
And here we have another way in which social justice can go too far.
If this data is factually accurate, then why remove it?
You don't want to hide facts simply because it hurts people's feelings.
This can be bad for everybody.
So, there's my question.
Can it go too far?
And I've got more examples, but first, let's start by looking at what happened at CERN.
From the BBC, CERN scientist, physics built by men, not by invitation.
At a workshop organized by CERN, Professor Alessandro Strumia of Pisa University said that physics was invented and built by men, it's not by invitation.
He said male scientists were being discriminated against because of ideology rather than merit.
He was speaking at a workshop in Geneva on gender and high energy physics.
Professor Strumia has since defended his comments, saying he was only presenting the facts.
CERN, the European Nuclear Research Center, described Strumia's presentation as highly offensive.
The Center, which discovered the Higgs boson in 2012, has removed slides used in the talk from its website in line with a code of conduct that does not tolerate personal attacks and insults.
Strumia, who regularly works at CERN, presented the results of a study of published research papers from an online library.
He told his audience of young, predominantly female physicists that his results proved that physics is not sexist against women.
However, the truth does not matter because it is part of a political battle coming from outside.
And it is entirely possible he's wrong.
People can take studies and facts and present them in such a way to try and mislead people into believing things that may or may not be true.
But if what he presented was true, or if at least the data was factually accurate regardless of how he presented them, removing them from the website is not an argument.
And thus we see scientific data being removed from a research center website because it hurt people's feelings.
This is bad.
This is not a good thing.
We want to know more about the world.
We want to advance our understanding.
We want to advance science.
But we can't do that if we're going to hide information because we're worried about how people feel.
And this, in my opinion, is a really good example of when social justice can go too far.
He produced a series of graphs which, he claimed, showed that women were hired over men whose research was cited more than other scientists in their publications, which is an indication of higher quality.
He also presented data that he claimed showed that male and female researchers were equally cited at the start of their careers, but men scored progressively better as their careers progressed.
Professor Strumia pointed to behavioral research, which he suggested may account for the disparity.
One study, he told his audience, indicated that men prefer working with things, and women prefer working with people.
And another, he claimed, suggested that there was a difference even in children before any social influence.
Strumia said these conclusions may not be fully right, but the opposite assumption of identical brains is ideology.
As evidence of discrimination against male researchers, Strumia claimed that Oxford University extends exam times for women's benefit, and Italy offers free or cheaper university for female students.
He also said that he himself was overlooked for a job that he was more qualified for, which was given to a woman.
Now personally, I like the steel man approach.
It's the opposite of the straw man.
You want to argue against the strongest position of your opponents.
He's claiming that men are more likely to be cited than women, and that's proof that the men are more qualified.
Arguably, you could also say it's proof that women are being discriminated against because they're not being cited as much.
It's not a strong enough data point on its own to make this argument.
And then we can see that Strumia himself claims to have been discriminated against.
That's an anecdote.
We don't know if that's true, there's no data behind that, and it's fair to say that he is personally biased.
It is not hard for someone to take a study, and then present data, and claim it proves their... their conclusion.
So it's possible this is a biased output, but the evidence within the story that CERN was willing to remove the data because it was offensive, and not because it was wrong, and they didn't even argue against it, I think shows that this is actually a bit ideological, and Strumium may be...
He may be at least somewhat correct.
It was really upsetting at those workshops, she said.
at Imperial College London, who was at the meeting, told BBC News that Professor Strumia's
analysis was simplistic, drawing on ideas that had long been discredited.
"'It was really upsetting at those workshops,' she said.
There were young women and men exchanging ideas and their experiences on how to encourage
more women into the subject and to combat discrimination in their careers.
Then this man gets up, saying all this horrible stuff.
I don't understand how such a forward-thinking organization like CERN, which does so much to promote diversity in research, could have invited him to speak to young people just starting off in their research careers when his ideas are so well-known.
A lot of people argue against scientific research because of the political outcomes.
They say, why should you have this data and what are you going to do with it?
And whether or not it's true, it will dissuade women from getting into physics.
We want as many people as possible to want to work wherever they want, but they should choose to work where they want.
There are a lot of people who think that we should be actively telling women they should do this job instead of letting them do the job if they want to.
I don't think we should be trying to shift our culture and society to tell men and women they should do certain jobs.
People talk about how gender roles are bad, they're archaic, and they shouldn't exist.
Well, if that's the case, then you don't need to tell women to do anything.
If a woman wants to become a physicist, by all means let her do so.
Let her take the time to go to school, do the studies, get sighted, whatever she wants to do.
If a man doesn't want to be a scientist, if he wants to be a stay-at-home parent, by all means you should be able to choose to do that.
But I feel, right now, a lot of our society is advocating for people to do certain jobs.
In a statement, CERN, which currently has its first-ever woman director general, said that the organizers were not aware of the content of the talk, prior to the workshop.
CERN is a culturally diverse organization, bringing together people from dozens of nationalities.
It is a place where everyone is welcome, and all have the same opportunities, regardless of ethnicity, beliefs, gender, or sexual orientation, it said.
When the BBC contacted Professor Strumia, he said, This is hardly definitive, and a lot of what I said is just my personal opinion.
It's fair to say that, based on historical disparities between races and nationalities and genders, it is likely that you will see certain trends persist.
If someone grows up in a wealthy neighborhood, they're more likely to have access to good schools and they're more likely to be set on a path that will lead them to be successful.
Someone who grows up in a poor area has less advantages.
One of the problems with all of the equality of outcome stuff that I see is that Look, Serena Williams, she had that whole fiasco a couple weeks ago.
She is not an oppressed minority.
She is a millionaire with massive influence.
She is one of the most influential people in the world.
Should we give her special benefits simply because of her race or gender?
In my opinion, the answer is no.
Absolutely not.
Because she is extremely powerful.
She doesn't need the advantage.
There are poor people of all races, there are people of all genders who do need help to alleviate some disadvantage or disparity so that they can succeed.
But let's look at some modern scientific data, because there's actually a reason why we might see disparities in certain fields, especially physics.
Something I've talked about before is the Variability Hypothesis.
It's also known as the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis, states that males display greater variability in traits than females do.
It has often been discussed in relation to cognitive ability, where it has been observed that human males are more likely than females to have a very high or very low intelligence.
The sex difference in the variability of intelligence has been discussed since at least Charles Darwin.
Sex differences in variability are present in many abilities and traits, including physical, psychological, and genetic ones.
It is not only found in humans, but in other sexually selected species as well.
And they show this image.
It says bell curve comparisons based in sex differences in means and standard deviations for armed service vocational aptitude battery subtests, and total scores and four armed forces qualification test scores.
Women pink curve, men blue curve.
We can see on the higher end of the spectrum, there are more men.
And on the lower end of the spectrum, there are also more men.
When we're talking about competition, when we're talking about people being peer-reviewed or cited in journals, when we're talking about people being good at math, we're going to go to the cream of the crop, the best of the best.
And we can see that outcome will never be equal.
Because some men are just going to be better than some women.
Even though on average men and women are pretty equal.
We're talking about people getting jobs based on merit.
And that means there's going to be a very high density of very intelligent men relative to the amount of intelligent women.
But the same is true on the back end.
There's going to be a lot of really dumb men who are going to struggle and not do well overall.
So in a previous video I made this point, but I'll make it again here.
If you have 100 jobs that are available, and you have 1,000 men and 1,000 women, it is likely that almost every job will be filled by a man because the men are going to be slightly higher in skill than the women, just because men tend to have higher variability.
Most men will never make the cut.
Most women will never make the cut.
And even though the average woman and the average man are relatively the same in ability, there's more male idiots who aren't gonna make the cut than female ones, but there are more male geniuses who will make the cut than female ones.
And thus, you're likely to see unequal outcomes.
More men will be scientists than women.
But going a little bit more into the variability hypothesis, I've got this study from 2010.
It says, Sex Differences in Math-Intensive Fields.
The abstract reads, Despite impressive employment gains in many fields of science, women remain underrepresented in fields requiring intensive use of mathematics.
Here we discuss three potential explanations for women's underrepresentation.
A. Male-female mathematical and spatial ability gaps.
B. Sex discrimination.
And C. Sex differences in career preferences and lifestyle choices.
Synthesizing findings from psychology, endocrinology, sociology, economics, and education leads to the conclusion that among a combination of interrelated factors, preference and choices, both freely made and constrained, are the most significant cause of women's underrepresentation.
So this is just one study that I've pulled up making its arguments, but I think it's fair to say that yes, sex discrimination does play a role in women being restricted from certain jobs.
If people are going to assume that men tend to be smarter, they're probably just going to choose men because of the stereotype and because of the assumption.
And that, that sucks.
Because like I said, we want to make sure everyone has an opportunity to do the job and they shouldn't be discriminated against.
It's really hard to limit that discrimination.
Because when you go too far, you end up discriminating against other people based on their gender and that just doesn't make sense.
Throughout history, people have been restricted access to certain jobs and to academia for reasons that make no sense.
Because of discrimination, because of stereotypes and assumption.
And that means that great talents, great minds, great people weren't able to discover the things they should have discovered, to accomplish the feats they should have, for arbitrary reasons.
And this is why equality of opportunity is so important, and that's why social justice can be a really good thing, because we haven't reached perfect equality of opportunity.
We haven't.
There's still racism.
There's still discrimination.
It's not as bad as it used to be.
Absolutely not.
But when you push too far, you create more discrimination.
It makes no sense to remove a great man from a position or not give them the opportunity simply because they're a man.
Because then you are creating more inefficiency and you are restricting great minds and great thinkers for arbitrary reasons.
You can't end racism by being racist.
You can't end sexism by being sexist.
It just doesn't make sense.
Again, whatever the solution is, I certainly don't have it.
But let me know what you think in the comments below.
We'll keep the conversation going.
How do you feel about all this?
How do you feel about the guy at CERN?
Is he right?
Was he discriminated against?
Is physics discriminating against men?
Comment below.
We'll keep the conversation going.
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