Feminist Professor Thinks "Rigor" is Evil

[KL27x]

^ What I saw of her lecture (what was basically cherry picked by Youtube Man-gineer) essentially says that there is room in the engineering profession for people to contribute in ways other than complex math and science. And this is true. We need people who do hardcore coding and circuit and IC design (and mechanical engineering of course, lol). And we need people who can get the most out of these hardcore engineers by tying them in to a larger picture.

There's room in engineering for dumb asses with good communication skills, just like Youtube Man-gineer and his super complex Pugh diagrams and Sigma6 hardcore math and science (sarcasm). All she's saying is hey, maybe this Man-gineer with his glowing people skills and 4 day Sigma6 certification should be MORE appreciated compared to the technical gods. (And that maybe Man-gineer's type of job, being the ring leader of brain storming sessions and master of sticking post it notes on white boards and breaking it down in regular English to the top brass, don't all have to go to white men.) In a million years, he couldn't do what I do. And vice versa, in a million years, I could never do what he does: Manage to be so smug and pleased with myself for getting a job I wasn't as qualified for as many other indian and Chinese engineers.

I'm the first in line to believe in a global conspiracy to make the world population dumber. It has been going on for decades if not longer. But this conspiracy doesn't achieve anything by giving dumb people DIFFICULT jobs. Our ultimate masters on earth get the most out of our slave labor and squeeze us for as much as they can. And the dumbed down masses are best taken advantage of in other jobs/roles.   

[Fungus]

As a straight white male engineer with 3 decades of experience, I have reached some conclusions.

While early in my career I focused entirely on technical rigor, and while I still take pride in being thorough and complete in my work, the problems in the world that distress me the most are not technical but social.

True, but we don't train engineers to fix those problems. We train engineers to build bridges that stay up and aircraft that don't fall out of the sky.

If an engineer can use his skill to help society, that's a bonus, but not a priority at the training stage.

[DimitriP]

Probably for the same reason those outside Czechoslovakia are concerned with what happens there

You do know that Czechoslovakia hasn't existed for a quarter of a century?

old habits 

[Ampera]

This thread has surprised me though. I don't think it's truly out of control yet. Threads only ever really get locked here if they get really cancerous and people start throwing virtual things.

Shouts: Snowball! [FX: throws snowball] (It's quite white and cold here, for London.)

About 18-20 inches where I am. fite me

[Neomys Sapiens]

Well, I read it as "Rigol" at first, and I tried to imagine what kind of crazy logic would lead from feminism to thinking that scopes are evil.

Me too. It's capitalised, in quotes, and on an electronics forum. I thought it would be about someone who couldn't even get the name right.

And word from OREGON actually says that RIGOL IS EVIL! (Ask your Tektronix representative for further information)

[EEVblog]

Dr Riley is not a threat to the scientific process.

Yes, she is.
She is in charge of engineering education at a university, and she wants to teach these engineers all sorts of social justice stuff I have linked to before.
Now, that stuff in itself is not really the problem as such (if it's elective), the problem is that there is a finite amount of time in any EE degree course and teaching that social justice stuff must come at the  price of less engineering related subject mater.
She has no place being in charge of engineering education.

[EEVblog]

Although putting himself in the position of starting AND stopping a thread is more than a little puzzling. The thread title definitely seems at odds with a genuine desire to be surprised.

The tread title is exactly the same as the video in question.

[engineerguy]

Yes, it's all a conspiracy against non-white males, this whole notion of 'rigor'. Some of these university administrators/professors have way too much time on their hands that they spend it conjuring up these bizarre notions. This is all actually very insulting and demeaning to those of us with a genuine interest in engineering...whilst I was at university, I was involved with an engineering student group (and being electrical, all of us were males, not that we ever made it a point), but the dean of our school saw it as his mission to sit us down and literally say "You guys have done a lot of great work...but when I see that photo of you all on your website, I can only think of one problem: where are all the female students?! Too many males!" No kidding...then we had another university administrator try to convince us to take some "diversity course" on how to deal with other people from different backgrounds, as if we were actively making it our mission to deter females from joining the student group, nevermind that our classes were something like 90% male. Reminds me of people complaining on Twitter of that live stream video of the SpaceX employees cheering on the Falcon launch, that there were too many "white males" and not enough females...it's amazing that they even managed to get the rocket to launch with so many males involved...

This whole politicisation, or the notion of injecting social issues into science/engineering is so dangerous and detrimental to the disciplines because eventually it will gut them out of any quality, and any semblance of competent engineering students. It's a very dangerous road to take...just look at what's happened to the humanities; it's a total farce and perversion of what it once stood for.

[TerraHertz]

Although putting himself in the position of starting AND stopping a thread is more than a little puzzling. The thread title definitely seems at odds with a genuine desire to be surprised.

Perhaps he's got boreout?

Dave: "I know, I'll start a political (slightly related to tech) thread, let it run a while, then ban myself. Need a holiday."

(Hopefully you'll understand this is my idea of a sense of humor.)

Btw, that communist manifesto post was supposed to be just about the two lines in red. The rest was only for context.
I'm quite surprised to see some people denying that Communism even had manifestos, or plans for taking over the west, or that those plans could still in some sense be in operation.

And I guess the concept that Feminism and Communism are both ideologies crafted by a common class of people, for very similar objectives (deliberate social disruption of target nation states and societies)  is beyond the grasp of some.

[EEVblog]

Btw, that communist manifesto post was supposed to be just about the two lines in red. The rest was only for context.
I'm quite surprised to see some people denying that Communism even had manifestos, or plans for taking over the west, or that those plans could still in some sense be in operation.

And I guess the concept that Feminism and Communism are both ideologies crafted by a common class of people, for very similar objectives (deliberate social disruption of target nation states and societies)  is beyond the grasp of some.

And that's how you'll get this thread locked...

[Ampera]

Yes, it's all a conspiracy against non-white males, this whole notion of 'rigor'. Some of these university administrators/professors have way too much time on their hands that they spend it conjuring up these bizarre notions. This is all actually very insulting and demeaning to those of us with a genuine interest in engineering...whilst I was at university, I was involved with an engineering student group (and being electrical, all of us were males, not that we ever made it a point), but the dean of our school saw it as his mission to sit us down and literally say "You guys have done a lot of great work...but when I see that photo of you all on your website, I can only think of one problem: where are all the female students?! Too many males!" No kidding...then we had another university administrator try to convince us to take some "diversity course" on how to deal with other people from different backgrounds, as if we were actively making it our mission to deter females from joining the student group, nevermind that our classes were something like 90% male. Reminds me of people complaining on Twitter of that live stream video of the SpaceX employees cheering on the Falcon launch, that there were too many "white males" and not enough females...it's amazing that they even managed to get the rocket to launch with so many males involved...

This whole politicisation, or the notion of injecting social issues into science/engineering is so dangerous and detrimental to the disciplines because eventually it will gut them out of any quality, and any semblance of competent engineering students. It's a very dangerous road to take...just look at what's happened to the humanities; it's a total farce and perversion of what it once stood for.

This and this exactly.

The one thing that gets my blood to boil is when people, who try to ham fist equality despite it often not being fair treatment, telling someone to force a gender quota.

Almost ALWAYS the reason there aren't women in a STEM field is because the population of women interested in the fields is significantly smaller than that of men.

It's similar, maybe in fact worse with more traditionally female dominated careers like child/elder care or design, liberal arts, etc, where men can be considered as inferior to women because they lake innate motherly, or creative, maybe even to be considered "girly" qualities. Nobody in this modern age would say a woman shouldn't enter a STEM field, and many people would encourage it intensely, but there aren't so many people trying to get men interested in being actors, or stage makeup artists, or nannies, etc. In fact, I know some people who, just because of some statistics alone, would refuse to hire a male babysitter. If someone refused to hire a woman based on a statistic they could not control, they would be labeled sexist, discriminatory, and not willing to give someone a chance because of their gender.

Don't take this to mean I do not want women to participate in STEM fields because other people don't want men to participate in other fields, in fact, quite the opposite. I think if people consider gender equality in industries to be an important goal, (and I can see how it could be for regulatory and power control reasons), that we should try to encourage men to enter more traditionally feminine fields, as much as we are trying to get women to engage STEM fields.

The one thing that really annoys me, is when this "problem" is taken on at the college level, at which point students have had (normally) 18 years of their life to make solid choices about their careers, and most people don't want to change just because someone says that they have to. I HATE it when colleges introduce gender quotas, as it just ends up turning into waiting for the one, rare female interested into the career before you can let in equally capable and interested men in.

Nobody, or at least very few, at least in my nation, tries to get girls interested in STEM fields at the elementary or highschool level. I do think that it would be a really cool idea to advertise the field to women specifically in pre-adult education, and I think if we want to get women in STEM fields, that's the only way to do it.

Now onto this topic. If you're going to come on here and make a massive generalization, and call out an entire group of people based on one asshole, or even a group of assholes that said or did stupid shit under the banner, piss off. Generalizations annoy me to no end, and I hate it when I look at something that blindly calls everybody in my political category something that most of us, or even some of us are not.

[EEVblog]

Well then, has the thread surprised you?

Your input didn't surprise me.

The title being the same is a fact but it doesn't say anything about why it was a good choice. What would you have used as a title if you rolled your own?

I don't care, I used the title of the video under discussion, the end.

You had the choice and you didn't exercise it. Why?

Because it's the title of the video. Not rocket science.

I'm not going to play your game. You have a very long history of antagonising and bating me, to the point of being close to getting banned.

[Howardlong]

Firstly, does anyone have a link to the full video of Riley doing her “rigor” speech so we can get some better context, it is possible she was joking (I live in hope). The only link I can find is broken.

Secondly, I’ve still yet to see anywhere near a compelling case for how Riley’s ideologies have any place in engineering education.

The only pro stance has been around ethics citing cases such as Volkswagen. I haven’t seen any evidence that engineers don’t understand ethics as any other human being would. Ethics are nothing without trustworthy, robust (and rigorous?) whistleblowing policies and processes. If you’ve ever been in the position of being a whistleblower, or even thought about it to any degree, you will know what I mean: the career risks, whether perceived or real, are very high. Challenging and changing that culture would be a much more worthwhile pursuit for Riley.

There was an argument that Riley’s teaching “brought people together”; but this thread demonstrably shows the opposite, it’s revealed (in case we needed to know) that she’s very divisive.

Irrespective, there isn’t much ethically that she teaches, her teachings are much more wrapped up in promoting victimhood based on gender and race, assuming that engineers systematically and routinely go about their work with identitarian hatred embedded into their requirements and priority lists: even by her own admission engineers are broadly altruistic in nature. The only engineer I’m aware of who goes around their daily life with thoughts of identitarian bigotry embedded into their work is Riley.

The core basis for her work is around the gender imbalance in engineering, but I don’t see many complaining about the lack of males taking xxxx Studies courses. Should we be forcing more men to do Gender Studies for example?

With the limited amount of response, so far it seems to be agreed that Riley’s methods don’t make an engineer more employable, or improve their career path.

What is the difference for an engineer between the Riley way, and, say, taking a knitting or patisserie course? (I’d actually argue that those last two teach attention to detail, even rigour perhaps, valuable engineering skills, but they can be achieved with more relevance in other ways).

So, can anyone give any reasons, with justification, how Riley’s pedagogy makes a better engineer?

[Ampera]

I actually found a YouTube comment on a video, talking about Anita Sarkeesian (on an unrelated topic to this), but I think it summarizes my opinion on why SJWs are so dangerous.



I'm not against, in fact I am for people who genuinely try to advance the concept of equal rights, but when people like Riley or Anita get a stage, they push their ideas in a way that appears to someone who doesn't put time into proper research (a lot of people) like a genuine and positive advance into equality, when in reality they are baseless, damaging claims that silence critics, pawning them off as being on the wrong side of history.

Just something I thought I could add.

[vk6zgo]

As a straight white male engineer with 3 decades of experience, I have reached some conclusions.

While early in my career I focused entirely on technical rigor, and while I still take pride in being thorough and complete in my work, the problems in the world that distress me the most are not technical but social. It is quite clear, and there is an overwhelming amount of rigorous evidence, that sexism, misogyny, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, ageism, and other sorts of bigotries are not only common but embedded in the structures of our society, in everything from education to hiring to law enforcement to banking to health care to housing to employment and so on.

It is also quite clear that a simple declaration that one is not sexist or racist or otherwise intends to be fair to everyone is at best naive and often a sign of wilful ignorance. Implicit bias is real; we process words spoken by a woman differently from those spoken by a man immediately, on the first word

Most of us males have Mothers, Sisters,Wives, Daughters, Aunts etc, who we talk to for most of our lives.
In a family discussion, we pay as much attention to them & their views as those of our male relatives.

I can sit & have a discussion with my Sister, processing her words in exactly the same manner as those of my Brother in Law sitting alongside her.
They are all people!

This carries over into outside life, where we will listen just as intently to a man or woman if either is  speaking of something interesting.
If they are talking nonsense, their gender is immaterial.

Some years ago, I listened to  a most enthralling address from  Professor Lyn Beazley, then the Chief Scientist of Western Australia.

In this wide ranging talk, she covered things as diverse as how  animals perceive colour ( most animals don't have a red receptor, but humans & lizards do), to Outer Space, including her meeting & working with Apollo 11 Astronaut Buzz Aldrin when he came to open the Carnarvon Space Museum.

Never once did I think "she's very interesting for a woman!"

[EEVblog]

Irrespective, there isn’t much ethically that she teaches, her teachings are much more wrapped up in promoting victimhood based on gender and race, assuming that engineers systematically and routinely go about their work with identitarian hatred embedded into their requirements and priority lists: even by her own admission engineers are broadly altruistic in nature. The only engineer I’m aware of who goes around their daily life with thoughts of identitarian bigotry embedded into their work is Riley.

That's the inevitable result of the modern social justice stance. Hence all the recent hoopla over companies only hiring females or minorities for no good reason other than a number imbalance that is perceived to the "wrong". Their only solution to this perceived problem is actual discrimination. I find it reprehensible to discriminate against anyone based on gender/race/etc.
Equal opportunity and a meritocracy is the only real solution.

The core basis for her work is around the gender imbalance in engineering, but I don’t see many complaining about the lack of males taking xxxx Studies courses. Should we be forcing more men to do Gender Studies for example?

And that's the thing, you can't play this game one sided. If you fight for 50/50 male/female representation in engineering then you have to do the same for everything, including plumbing, motor mechanics, nursing, etc. But you never ever see the social justice people fighting for jobs in those fields.

[EEVblog]

After 8 years here I am starting to feel like a stuck on barnacle that needs scraping off. Maybe I'm asking these questions because I am ready to let go of my own accord. But I still don't want to be banned.

Wilfred, I was done engaging with you a long time ago, for reasons that I know you are well aware of.
Just letting you know that I will not be baited back into doing so again.

[EEVblog]

Almost ALWAYS the reason there aren't women in a STEM field is because the population of women interested in the fields is significantly smaller than that of men.

Actually I believe that's not universally true of all STEM fields. Life sciences (and perhaps general science degrees and some other more niche fields) for example is now supposedly majority females in many places.

It's the well researched "things" gender difference that has a huge impact in this. Engineering is very much "things" related.
It's almost impossible to change these innate gender differences, and the countries that have tried (some scandinavian countries) have shown that it doesn't work no matter how hard you try and "correct" it.
I'll refrain from posting a Jordan Peterson video explaining this stuff, as it might trigger some people 

Equality of opportunity is essential. As is equality of encouragement.
Anything else to try and "correct" things is a bad idea.

I HATE it when colleges introduce gender quotas

It should be illegal, anyone who meets the criteria should get in.

[coppice]

Firstly, does anyone have a link to the full video of Riley doing her “rigor” speech so we can get some better context, it is possible she was joking (I live in hope). The only link I can find is broken.

I don't know of a clean video of a presentation on this topic by Riley, but these talks seem to stem from the article https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19378629.2017.1408631?journalCode=test20

If you look through the article titles in that journal they seem rather sad. Academic article titles tend to obscure rather than illuminate, so the titles are hard to interpret. There are a few interesting sounding ones, like looking at engineering thinking in pre-kindergarten children, and developing better collaboration skills during engineering education. Most of the articles just sound like political agendas gone wild.

[GK]

[LaserSteve]

You'll be happy to know the College of Engineering I work in, has   such a  sufficient quantity of young women enrolled, that you would be hard pressed to tell the difference between our atrium and the student center. If you went by gender count alone.  It's not at all like my entry class in 1989  that had maybe, four or five  that I can remember.

  Now what is sad is every day I walk thru the college of  nursing  and look at the arrays of class pictures on the wall.  Men are a definite  minority, and around here hospital nursing  is a major industry, that  pays damn good.   Cutting thru that hall is the quick way to the parking lot.

 It's obvious to anyone passing by that nursing students are in a curriculum that demands Rigor and Discipline, plus good grades in advanced chemistry and pharmacology  courses.  Generally if you listen a bit while walking in that hall the students are not discussing the Kardashians. If you look at the curriculum for a BSN at my workplace, its a tough course.     I wonder if those who advocate a "relaxed" teaching of engineering would like their ER nurse to not have discipline and rigor in their training.

Yet I don't see many signs around campus urging men to consider nursing.   I've also never once heard a male student advocate that there should be no female students in the college of Eng.  I used to hear quite the opposite when I was working on my Education degree in the mid 90s.  I hope its changed today, but when I was in Education I thought of it being dominated by the "Good Ole' Girls Club".

I AGREE WITH DAVE,  If you've got the skills, anything professional  should be open to you.

PS, These days, I spend as much time teaching guys to use a screwdriver and wrench  for the first time, as I do for gals. It seems something like say the "internet and gaming" plus the fact that cars are highly computerized has reduced the number of guys with the "knack" who already come with in with general technical skills.  That might also have something to do with the phasing out of "shop" classes by most of our local school districts as too expensive, too risky, and the view that "tactile skills" were not conducive to a college track.   Our local high school is down to just a band saw, no lathe, no metal working etc..

,
Steve

[beenosam]

As a student now, I can see this attitude coming in effect to be honest. People are being more lenient on non-white people and the university had a discussion about whether or not it was fair to grade foreign students as strongly as domestic students. This kind of attitude comes about because they want more "diversity"  in the program.

It is becoming too much about equal outcome and not equal opportunity. It's actually sickening.

[coppice]

As a student now, I can see this attitude coming in effect to be honest. People are being more lenient on non-white people and the university had a discussion about whether or not it was fair to grade foreign students as strongly as domestic students. This kind of attitude comes about because they want more "diversity"  in the program.

It is becoming too much about equal outcome and not equal opportunity. It's actually sickening.

Many foreign students are not first language speakers of the language in which they are being taught. I have Chinese friends who speak English to a standard that would make you think they are a native speaker of English, yet their written English can still be a little weird. For decades many science and engineering courses have held second language speakers to a lower standard for writing skills, as long as the marker is sure of the student's intent. This seems pretty reasonable to me. If foreign students are held to a lower standard in any other regard, its probably just part of the trend of turning academia into an education industry, that's primary goal is to keep up the flow of revenue.

[LaserSteve]

Evil Thought of the Day..  Dr. R and Meredith in the same room... 

Steve

[Cerebus]

I'm quite surprised to see some people denying that Communism even had manifestos, or plans for taking over the west, or that those plans could still in some sense be in operation..

We're quite surprised to see is that you don't realise that what you posted were the rabid imaginings of a US Senator, well known to be an anti-communist zealot. What is contained therein has as much basis in reality in the then US political climate as "crisis actors" and "alternative facts" do in the current US political climate.

Here's the actual Communist Manifesto.